Yeah, I am still working on number two.
What is your understanding of the Trinity? How is it relevant to our faith today?
The Trinity is more than creative language to talk about God. The Trinity, as I understand it, was experienced during worship, in the midst of ministry and in the daily lives of believers as the Church was first being formed.. The Last Supper (Son), the Day of Pentecost (Spirit) and in the struggles of extending the atoning grace of Christ to the Gentiles (Father God) all reveal that the Trinity was and is more than a means of describing ?what we see but dimly.?
And yet, we do see but dimly. Even revelation is subject to a human understanding. Theologies that hold ?maleness? over and above ?femaleness? because God is called ?Father? in the Trinity are perhaps shortsighted and limit the grace of God. The Trinity speaks to the constant movement of God?s grace. As many ancient sources argue, the members of the Trinity are distinct but One. They are a trinity of persons but a unity in substance. The Father gives up all to die as the Son who holds up the Church as the Spirit who leads us in the way of the Son in order that we might rightly live as the created of the Father. The logic is circular. The grace of the Trinity overflows granting to humanity and the world redemption. Again, as Paul says, ?all the world is made new through Christ.? This is possible through the Trinity. I believe it is the responsibility of the contemporary Church to maintain this language without slipping into patriarchal theologies or into the heresy of Modalism . This is a fine line.
The question of relevance is an interesting one. Bob Webber and his ilk have discovered that many churches are stressing again liturgical language of the Trinity. Words like ?In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit?Amen? are used as a language of prayer and not just a tool for static doctrine. They can move us into deeper discipleship because through this language we can enter that generosity of grace that the Trinity reveals. Brad Berglund, too, explores the importance of Trinitarian language in our worship in his book Reinventing Sunday.
Molly T. Marshall has recently published a book on the Holy Spirit. It serves to combat the notion that Christians worship only Jesus, ignoring the other parts of the Trinity by exploring a ?neglected? Holy Spirit. Through engaging the Trinity through the Spirit, Marshall finds many challenging perspectives on what it means to be the Body of Christ and to celebrate the Lord?s Supper. These are recent examples of how Trinitarian language as come again to the fore for Baptists.
Posted by tripp at September 11, 2004 11:44 PM