Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message
Three-ness
May 27, 2015
This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, the
patronal feast of Trinity churches all over the world. The doctrine of the Trinity is an invitation
into the deeper and deeper mystery and beauty of God. Richard of St. Victor, a canon priest under
the rule of St. Augustine who died in Paris in 1173, taught in his book on the
Trinity that for
God to be truth, God had to be one; for God to be love, God had to be two; and
for God to be joy, God had to be three!
We often miss
the point, being seduced by the categorical definition of the doctrine that
became common in the Western Latin-speaking Church (seen, for instance, the
Quicunque Vult or so-called creed of Saint Athanasius, BCP pp. 864-865). The Western view emphasizes the names
“Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” and what each represents and does not
represent.
The earlier
Eastern view, the teaching of the 4th Century Cappadocian Fathers
who developed the doctrine in the first place, was less static, and more
dynamic: the roles and interactions, the
relationships were the emphasis. In this
view, it mattered only somewhat whether you used the terms “Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit” or other terms emphasizing the timeless relationships: Speaker,
Word, and Medium of Sound, Parent, Child, Uniting Bond; Mother, Daughter, Shared
Love; Light, Reflection, and Brightness; Spring, Reservoir, and Stream. The Orthodox image for this is perichoresis, the divine dance of the three roles (personae in Latin, or prosopoi in Greek).
The shape of the doctrine is that God is social, God is love: the transcendent, the personal, and the
immanent.
As we prepare
to celebrate the feast day for our church sharing the name Trinity, this little
part of Christ’s Church, I invite us to reflect on relationships we have in our
lives, and especially those at Church.
How do we participate in the divine dance?
Grace and
Peace, Fr. Tony+
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