Have
you ever wondered what God was up to before getting around to creating the
universe and us in it? Meditating, like Rodin’s “Thinker”? Contemplating, like
some great cosmic mystic, the beatific vision of himself? On one hand,
attempting to answer such a question seems presumptuous. On the other hand,
what we imagine God to be like in eternity affects how we imagine God to be
present in our own lives and in all creation.
All
metaphors are inexact, but I suggest answering the question by imagining God dancing.
More than dancing – before and beyond and within all creation God is a dance, God is a friendship dance.
From all eternity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit dance the dance of love and
truth and joy. God is a dynamic dance of mutual giving and receiving and
delighting. As they sought language to point toward an understanding of God as
Trinity, the early Christian theologians used the Greek word, perichoresis, which means something like
“to dance around together.”
Out
of this Trinitarian friendship dance, God creates. All of creation (and each of
us in it) is an expression of God’s love and truth and exuberant joy. We are
created to participate in the dance of God’s own life.
Jesus
came dancing. He is the perfect image of God – the perfect image, if you will,
of the dance. Jesus proclaimed God’s love and truth and joy. But he didn’t just
proclaim it, he embodied it. Wherever Jesus was, there was the friendship
dance. Jesus comes to us as God’s personal invitation to the dance, inviting us
to participate in the dance at the very heart of it all. In his death and
resurrection, Jesus broke the power of sin and death, making it possible for us
to dance again.
If
Jesus is the invitation to the dance, the Holy Spirit is the power of God
moving in us to RSVP. The Holy Spirit choreographs our participation in the
dance. Wherever the Spirit of Jesus is, there is the friendship dance.
The
triune nature of God is one of the central mysteries of Christianity. But
mystery is not the same as conundrum. Nor is it the result of a presumptuous
desire to explain more than can be explained. Quite the opposite. Historically,
the impetus to clarify some understanding arose in reaction to those who, like
Eunomius, claimed to define the essence of God. Theologians like Basil of
Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa (Basil and the latter
Gregory, under the influence of their sister, Macrina) reacted against such
presumption. Collectively known as the Cappadocians, they argued that all we
can really know of God is what God has revealed in Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
What God is beyond that is unknowable. We do not use trinitarian language for
God out of presumption. It is just that, as Rowan Williams has said, “It is the
least worst language for God we have.”
The
doctrine of the Trinity is the result of Christians living and praying with the
reality of Jesus Christ breaking in on their lives, inviting them to
participate in God’s life. It is the result of Christians experiencing the
reality of the Holy Spirit empowering and enabling their participation in God’s
life. The doctrine of the Trinity springs from the experience of Christians who
knew from the revelation to Israel that God was one, but who, in the invitation of
Jesus Christ and the experience of the power of the Spirit, came to understand
that it was not that simple. God turns out to be more complex. God is love,
dynamic love within God’s self – a friendship dance.
This
is good news because it means that who God is cannot be separated from what God
does. God has done something in the sending of the Son, Jesus Christ. God does
something in the giving of the Holy Spirit. In that sending and giving we know
God. But we are not just given some information about God. Rather, in sending
the Son and giving the Spirit, God sends and gives God’s very self. No doubt
there is more to God than we can hope to understand. But what Christians claim
is that when God reveals himself, God reveals himself truly. Whatever more
there is to God, it will not contradict what we know of God in Jesus Christ and
the Holy Spirit.
The
doctrine of the Trinity means that at the heart of it all is relationship.
Descartes got it wrong when he said, “I think, therefore I am.” It is truer to
say, “I am related, therefore I am.” Or, better yet, “I am loved, therefore I
am.” When Jesus summarized the law as loving God and loving neighbor, he was
simply saying that this is the way it is at the heart of it all. Love – mutual
giving, sharing and receiving – is at the heart of it all. The Father, Son and
Holy Spirit exist through relationship with one another. Because that
relationship is at the heart of it all, the quality of our relationships
matters. Love matters. Relatedness matters. Community and communion matter.
Connectedness is woven into the very fabric of things.
The
doctrine of the Trinity is also good news because it means there is room for
otherness. If there is “space” within God for the Son to be other than the
Father, and the Spirit to be other than the Father and the Son, then there is
space for us to be other than God. God makes space for creation and for us in
it. Understanding God as Trinity means understanding God as involved in, but
not overwhelming, everything. There is room for real freedom. We can celebrate
our unity and diversity, not as a contemporary cliché, but as a reflection of
what it means to be created in the image of God. God is one, but one in whom
there is intimate otherness.
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