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John 15:26 - 16:15
26”When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. 27You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.
16”I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. 2They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. 3And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. 4But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them. “I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. 5But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts.
7Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9about sin, because they do not believe in me; 10about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; 11about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. 12“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13When 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. 14He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
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When I began seminary, I was quite certain I knew almost everything required to become a pastor.  Before I entered, I had voraciously read theology books on a variety of religious convictions…from conservative to liberal, arriving at what I thought was a logical summation on the nature of God.  I thought I only needed to jump through the hoops to qualify for ordination.  Thank goodness I caught pneumonia my second year and as a result dropped a number of subjects requiring an additional year of study.  Frankly, it was the best thing that could have happened.  It took that long for me to realize I really knew nothing about God! 

Now, I don’t recommend foregoing an education for ministers.  On the contrary, I believe it takes years of study to realize the depth of our ignorance.   Therefore, it should not come as a surprise:  It is really impossible to understand the Trinity.  I’m sure you are familiar with the following attempts although none of them are truly accurate.  

•    The egg fails in that the shell, white and yoke are parts of the egg, not the egg in themselves. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not parts of God, each of them is God.
•    The shamrock is the most popular….but again, each third is only part of the whole. The individual section of the shamrock is not a shamrock!
•    The water illustration is somewhat better, but still fails to adequately describe the Trinity. Liquid, vapor and ice are forms of water.
•    And the description of a man as husband, father, lawyer (whatever) is equally false....no distinct personhood.

Think about it:  Even though the Trinity is in the center of our Christian belief, I doubt most people could describe what it is all about.  In fact, Karl Rahner [one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century] once remarked, one could dispense with the doctrine of the Trinity as false and the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged."  Those of us who admit our ignorance on this topic are in great company.

Yet, there is something in us….our egos?....that prompt us to continue to seek.
Wayne Grudem’s in his book, Systematic Theology, defines the Trinity as follows: “God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God” (p. 226).

Broken down, this amounts to three propositions:

•    God is three persons.
•    Each person is fully God.
•    There is one God.

In addition, it’s helpful to elaborate on the fact that when we say “God is three persons,” we mean that he is not just one person, and that the persons of the Trinity are not to be confused. So we can also say:

•    The Father is God.
•    The Son is God.
•    The Holy Spirit is God.
•    The Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the          Father.
•    The Holy Spirit is not the Son, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit.
•    The Son is not the Father, and the Father is not the Son.

If you are even more confused—then perhaps this little diagram by Norman L. Geisler can help give you a clearer understanding:

For an excellent explanation on the unexplainable, click on the following:  Understanding the Trinity
http://biggergod.com/trinity.html

I really appreciate the following recommended article by Karen Armstrong.  An enormous range of subjects are covered.  Here is her take on the Trinity:  

Are there other doctrines that could help us recover the sense of religion as practice?

We never really got Trinity in the West, but it was also a spiritual practice. In the early Greek church, the Trinity would be imparted not just as a jingle--"Three in one and one in three, oh, the noble Trinity"--but as a meditation after the transformative initiation of Baptism.

You swing your mind back from the three manifestations of God that we can sense, to the ousia of God, the one that we can never know, backward and forward. The doctrine is simply the end of the meditation.

You have to go through the meditation and keep doing it all your life to understand Trinity. It's described very much as a transcendent experience. Ancient theologians were trying to remind Christians that it was impossible to think about God as a simple personality.

Read this and other interesting topics:  How not to talk about God: An interview with Karen Armstrong for the U.S. Catholic Tuesday, December 15, 2009 By Meghan Murphy-Gill  Click on:  http://www.uscatholic.org/node/5076

•    Salon.com calls Karen Armstrong "arguably the most lucid, wide-ranging and consistently interesting religion writer today." "Magisterial and brilliant," Kirkus tagged her 1993 breakthrough bestseller A History of God.
•    The Economist praises Armstrong's biography of Muhammad as "respectful without being reverential, knowledgeable without being pedantic, and, above all, readable."
•    She has become one of the English-speaking world's foremost commentators on religion .  

In my life, I have been a Roman Catholic, a Buddhist,  a Unitarian,  and a United Methodist.  However, I have often been seen in an Episcopal church, at Presbyterian, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Baptist, and many other denominational, independent, and interfaith services.  I’ve gone to a Mormon church, a Quaker meeting house, a Greek Orthodox church, a Hindu temple, a Jewish synagogue…….I have studied many religions and prayed at many churches.

Each denomination offered a variety of dogma and thought.  In the end, I have come to the conclusion as Karen Armstrong, as Rev. Tony Campolo that I wrote about last week, as many others have stated…….that if we live our lives by the Golden Rule…..we don’t really have to worry  about crossing our t’s or dotting our I’s in our theologies.  I am so very sure, we will be living the life that Jesus asked of us.

Read more of another Armstrong interview:

Dave: What do you want readers to take away from your books? Is there one thing more than others?
Armstrong: The main thing I want them to get is this idea of compassion. That's what we need now.
Dave: That everything boils down to the Golden Rule.
Armstrong: I'm convinced of it. It's in all the traditions, and it's what the world needs now more than religious certainty, more than doctrinal statements or more rules about what people can do in the bedroom and who can get married and who can be bishops or priests. All this is like fiddling while Rome burns.

Click:  http://www.powells.com/authors/armstrong.html

A brief bio:  http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/profile.html

Armstrong received a high award for the organization she founded:  Click on charter for compassion….. http://charterforcompassion.org/

I just saw the movie, “The Last Station.”  Tolstoy asked his new secretary what all major religions had in common.  He revealed, “Love.”

Today, I could have gone into the history of the trinity and its evolution from Greek philosophy. Although never literally mentioned in the Bible, the Trinity became a central part of the Christian Creed during the 300’s under Constantine.  The concept of three in a godhead was not foreign at that time as the pagans had embraced the idea within many of their religions. The Christian Trinity blended the belief in a monotheistic religion with the Jewish God the Father, the creator of all, and the Christians’ Redeemer and God, the Messiah, Jesus, with the Spirit found in both holy books.

Now you might want to delve into the historical aspect of the Trinity this Trinity Sunday.  However, isn’t the idea of letting go of our need to have an answer for everything…even those questions beyond our comprehension….to awaken to the truth of our religion:  Compassion!  Love for all our neighbors…..put into action!

The following is John Wesley’s Rule, the founder of the United Methodist Church.  I love it!

JOHN WESLEY'S RULE
Do all the good you can,
by all the means you can
in all the ways you can
in all the places you can,
at all the times you can,
to all the people you can,
as long as ever you can.

For a great hymn, a favorite of mine, "Here I Am," click on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIXBIjDJR6U

Think About It.

 

PSALM 29