May 22, 2016

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” John 16:12-15

So, how do you explain the unexplainable? That is the pastor’s problem with the Holy Trinity. It has been a quandary for 1700 years. I say for 1700 years because for the first three to four hundred years of the church, the persecution of the faithful took away time to argue about how G-d expresses G-d’s self. Then, once Constantine declared Christianity legal, the religious leaders could begin to make some sense of G-d’s expression to the world. Constantine’s decision to cease the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was a turning point for Early Christianity, sometimes referred to as the Peace of the Church. In 313, Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan decriminalizing Christian worship. The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and the second council called the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE worked and reworked the Nicene Creed also called the “Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed”. In this creed is developed the three expressions of G-d which we call Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

To try to give examples of how G-d expresses G-d’s self like I did in the previous devotion fail to hit the mark because, no matter what examples you may try to use, they often become a form of “Modalism”. You see, in trying to explain G-d as a single entity who, throughout Biblical history, has revealed G-d’s self in three modes or forms, we could look for common examples to make the case. For example, we could use an apple as an example. The apple is one thing that has three separate parts: a skin, a fruit and a core. But the skin in not the apple, the core is not the apple, and the fruit is not the apple. And although that helps, it still fails in explaining the mystery of the Trinity because not one of those parts can function without the other two. The true nature of G-d as the Trinity is G-d understood in three eternal “Co-existent persons”: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But there are not three G-ds, only One Eternal G-d.

Here is just one snippet from the Athanasian Creed, a Creed often read on Trinity Sunday, and a creed that helps us understand the true nature of G-d:

Eternal is the Father; eternal is the Son; eternal is the Spirit: And yet there are not three eternal beings, but one who is eternal; as there are not three uncreated and unlimited beings, but one who is uncreated and unlimited. Almighty is the Father; almighty is the Son; almighty is the Spirit: And yet there are not three almighty beings, but one who is almighty. Thus the Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God: And yet there are not three gods, but one God.

So, today we give praise to the Trinity – and though it goes beyond explanation, we still seek a relationship to this One G-d known to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Pastor Dave