Trinity–three co-equal persons
Trinity Sunday, 22nd May, 2005
The Rev'd Dr Craig D'Alton
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Roughly three hundred years after the death of Jesus, the Council of Nicea proclaimed, in formal terms, the doctrine of the Trinity. That council did so, because some people, called "Arians", were saying that Jesus was not God, but merely God's son; a human being whom God had adopted because of his purity of life. Jesus, as God's son, was a subordinate creature, and not of equal importance to God the Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The Nicene creed was originally quite a bit shorter than what we recite week by week. That creed ought more properly to be called the Chalcedonian creed. However both versions proclaimed that catholic Christians believe in One God manifested in three equal persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For the members of the early church – normal people in the street as well as bishops and theologians – it mattered whether or not God was defined in this way. People fought and even persecuted each other when they believed contrary versions. Debates in market places, even amongst common folk, were heated and serious. Why? Because religion mattered; God mattered, and it mattered whether Jesus was merely a human being, or God's very self. It mattered whether the Holy Spirit was God or merely a super-angel. It mattered because people understood that if these things were not so, then God had not fully experienced their suffering, and perhaps that God was not now with the Church.
There is, I fear, a real danger in today's church that we might lose sight of this most central doctrine, and fall back into the Arian mistake; that one or more of these central descriptors of God might get lost, as we search either for a God of power, or a God of compassion who adopted but did not take on humanity, or for an amorphous "spirituality" which conveniently passes over the mess of the cross.
Perhaps the most presenting danger in the contemporary Anglican Church, however, comes from those theologians from the diocese of Sydney who have argued, using highly selected texts of Scripture, first that Jesus is subordinate to God the Father, and second that revelation terminates with the gift of Holy Scripture. The first of these arguments has been constructed as an extrapolation of Pauline doctrines of headship and, cutting a long story short, has been used to argue that male heads of household and Church occupy the place of God the Father, and thus that women – "equal but different" – are ontologically inferior to men – they cannot lead worship, teach men, or run a household. This is not a caricature by the way, it's what the Archbishop Jensen and his brother the Dean actually believe. If you find it offensive you are not alone.
The second argument has a much longer history, being able to be traced back to Reformation doctrines of Sola Scriptura. Under the Sydney version of this doctrine God's word is not Jesus, the Word made flesh, but the pure text of Scripture: immutable, unchangeable, absolute, and finished. Under this doctrine the Holy Spirit no longer reveals truth about God in the world; God no longer speaks to us in new ways, and we are to rely solely upon the set texts of previous revelation for information on how to live and carry on God's work in the world. There is only one way to interpret those texts – they will tell you what it is – and we should steer clear of any interpretations which make use of human reason, historical-critical method, or ongoing revelation unless we can prove them directly from other certain texts of Scripture – once again, the Jensens will tell you which ones. Perhaps this is moving towards a caricature, but again it's basically what they teach.
When Anglo-Catholic and liberal Anglican Christians speak out against the leadership of the diocese of Sydney we generally do so because we disagree with some aspect of what they do – their attitude towards women or homosexual people, or their attacks on ritual and sacramental practice, or the way they plant congregations, often barely recognizable as Anglican, in other jurisdictions. Fair enough at one level, because these are presenting issues that affect real people and real Christian communities. But I think it is much more important that we realize that these actions and teachings are basically the outcome of two heresies that deny, first that Jesus is as fully God as God the Father, and second, that God the Holy Trinity continues to speak to the world through the Holy Spirit who has been promised to us as the prompting agent of constant renewal for the Church: that God still does new things.
What we need to do, as orthodox Anglicans, is to put God the Trinity – three co-equal persons – back on the agenda, and to speak out against the Jensenist heresy, which is basically the Arian heresy revived. One God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, co-equal revelations of God's very self. It's been the creed of the Church since 325. We proclaim it week by week, as the Church has done liturgically since that great Council. So do faithful Christians in the diocese of Sydney – and so far, ęthough they might lack the power, they are still in the majority in the pews. (We need, by the way, to be very careful about tarnishing all Sydney Anglicans with the Jensenist brush. Most Anglicans in Sydney are quite faithful and orthodox in their views – I am talking here about the teachings of Peter and Philip Jensen and their acolytes.) We believe that that God is the God of Israel, but also that Jesus is that God, and that God the Holy Spirit continues in our lives the ministry that Jesus continues in heaven. It's complex perhaps, but so is most of what matters in life. We should not be slow to proclaim it in the face of those who would make God fit into a tight-bound doctrinal straight-jacket of their own creation. God created us. God sent himself to us. God in Jesus Christ died. God conquered the power of death, and God sent himself again, as the Holy Spirit, to sustain us and wake us up, as we too follow the journey from life to death, to new life with him. As we pass through that life on our journey we will encounter God in many and often new ways, and praise be that as Catholic Christians, we have the vocabulary to understand at least in some small measure the greatness of the mystery that is God. When we lose sight of these truths about God, revealed in Scripture and taught and developed through centuries of theological reflection, we lose sight of our mission as God's people: to go out to all the world, baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The Lord be with you.
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