Trinity and Tradition
We rely on tradition all the time, and not just in a religious context. Much of education is about learning a tradition. If you go to university and take physics, you will learn a tradition- you will learn the work of those who have come before you. You can look at how they have wrestled with problems and what answers they came up with. You learn a method for approaching a problem. You learn a way of framing a problem. When you learn a tradition, you look at what those who came before us have found out.
We can look at the map they left us, and (through their explorations) we can see where the various paths lead us. We can see which paths are dead ends, and which ones lead us on further. We don’t have to go and explore them all on our own, starting from scratch. We can trust the map that was left to us. … That’s one of the benefits of a tradition. It means we can build on the work that has come before us, and we don’t have to start at the beginning. …
This is also true for theology.
Today is Trinity Sunday. When we deal with a doctrine like the Trinity we are dealing with a map that has been left to us by those who have come before us. And that map can seem strange to look at, until we consider the information we are dealing with to try to understand God.
Take our Gospel passage, for example (Jn 16:12-15). Jesus says that the Spirit of truth will come and tell the disciples things that Jesus would like to tell them, but they aren’t ready for those things yet, so the Spirit of truth will come to tell those things when they are ready. This Spirit speaks what he hears. He doesn’t speak on his own. The Spirit will glorify Jesus. Jesus says, “All that the Father has is mine”. The Spirit will take what belongs to Jesus, which is also the Father’s, and he will declare that to the disciples of Jesus, when they are ready.
So, we have this interweaving of Father, Spirit, and Jesus. The Spirit is called a “Him”, which says that this is a person and not an impersonal power. We are not talking about The Force from Star Wars. There is an intimacy between the Spirit and Jesus, such that Jesus knows what the Spirit is going to do. The Spirit doesn’t act on His own, so there is a kind of community. He says what he hears, and glorifies Jesus. And a similar intimacy exists between the Father and Jesus. Jesus says, “All that the Father has is mine”. … To understand how all this works, The Christian Tradition has given us the doctrine of the Trinity.
I find the easiest way to explain the Trinity is this: When talking about God, when we ask,
“what is it?”
The answer is “God”.
When we ask,
“who is it?”
The answer is “Father, Son, Spirit”.
God has one nature, and three persons.
People sometimes think about the idea of the Trinity as a departure from traditional Judaism. Some believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is evidence of Pagan influence. But the more scholars look at ancient Judaism, they see that the idea of the Trinity is actually quite compatible with the Judaism that the Apostles knew. … The Jewish scholar Dr. Benjamin Sommer wrote a book called, “The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel”. In a lecture he said this,
The more I learn about Judaism at the time of Jesus, the more I realize how their view of God was actually quite complex. … For example, in the Old Testament we read about the “Angel of the Lord”, which I have mentioned before. In Exodus 3 we read, “the angel of the Lord appeared to [Moses] in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush” (3:2). A couple verses later we read, “God called to him out of the bush” (3:4). So, who was speaking to Moses from the bush? The “Angel of the Lord” or “God”?
We see something similar happening with the story of Gideon in Judges 6. We read, “Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak at Ophrah… And the angel of the Lord appeared `to [Gideon] and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.’” (6:11,12). Gideon explains his people’s plight. Then we read, “the Lord [YHWH] turned to him and said, ‘Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. I hereby commission you.’ We see the same kind of ambiguity. It’s not clear if we are dealing with an angel or if we are dealing with God.
In Genesis 18, Abraham acts as host to three angels who come to visit him, but one of those angels seems to speak to Abraham as if He is God. IN Genesis 32, Jacob wrestles with an angel, who also seems to be God in some mysterious way. And his name is changed to Israel after this, which means “struggles with God”.
Exodus 33 is another place in Scripture that shows something mysterious going on. … In Exodus 33:11 we read, “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” … And just a few verses later in the same chapter we read God saying, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (33:20). … So, there seems to be a visible aspect of God who can take human form, and an aspect of God who was invisible and who was even dangerous to try to look at.[2] … In later Trinitarian language the church would talk about a “person” of God, or a “hypostases” of God.
Those who encountered Jesus and authored the New Testament inherited this understanding of God and associated this visible aspect of God with Jesus. … John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:1, 14). And in the letter to the Colossians we read, that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). The followers of Jesus naturally connected Jesus to this visible aspect of God that they inherited.
This is similar to how the early Christians saw the Spirit. In Genesis 1 we read that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2). Why not just say that “God” was over the face of the waters? Why say that the “Spirit” of God was hovering over the waters? There seems to be something similar happening here. The Spirit is seen as an aspect of God (or, in later Trinitarian thinking, a “hypostases” or “person”). In the Old Testament, God sometimes seems to be experienced as a cloud- as a pilar of cloud guiding Israel in the wilderness, as a cloud that descends on the tent of meeting, and as a cloud that fills the Temple. So, they similarly saw certain ways God was experienced and associated that aspect of God with another person of God- the Spirit.
So, the early church inherited an understanding of God with these mysterious nuances. The experience of the Apostles with Jesus made it impossible to understand God apart from Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. … The Church came up with language to describe this experience, which we call the doctrine of the Trinity. But they believed this was completely in continuity with the God of their ancestors.
This teaching comes out of the church’s encounter with God. The teaching of the Trinity is the result of the church struggling to find words to describe that profound experience, and the doctrine of the Trinity is a kind of map that they handed on to us to help us understand their experience with God. AMEN
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-aVQ8MELeg
He writes in his Book “The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel”: “Some Jews regard Christianity´s claim to be a monotheistic Religion with grave suspicion, both because of the doctrine of the trinity (how can three equal one?) and because of Christianity´s core belief that God took bodily form. What I have attempted to point out there is that biblical Israel knew very similar doctrines, and these doctrines did not disappear from Judaism after the biblical Period” (Sommer 2011, P. 135).
[2] This can be seen in the Targums (paraphrases of biblical stories).
People sometimes think about the idea of the Trinity as a departure from traditional Judaism. Some believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is evidence of Pagan influence. But the more scholars look at ancient Judaism, they see that the idea of the Trinity is actually quite compatible with the Judaism that the Apostles knew. … The Jewish scholar Dr. Benjamin Sommer wrote a book called, “The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel”. In a lecture he said this,
“This is actually an old Ancient Near Eastern idea, that is an old semitic idea, that is popping up again among those Jews who were the founders of Christianity, and we Jews have always tended to sort of make fun of the Trinity. Oh, how can there be three that is one? Really … they're Pagans. They're not real monotheists like we Jews are, or like the Muslims are. Those Christians are really Pagan. But I think that what we're seeing … is that … the idea of the Trinity, that there is this one God who manifests itself in three different ways, that's actually an old Ancient Near Eastern idea that can function in a polytheistic context (as it did for the Babylonians and the Canaanites), but it can also function in a monotheistic context … In fact, to say that three is one, heck, the Kabbalah is going to go further than that. … [In Kabbalah] we're taking this reasoning much much farther than the Christians did, so actually one of the more radical conclusions that I came to (much to my own surprise) when I was writing this book (and this is not at all what I had intended to do because in various ways … I'm actually rather uncomfortable with my own conclusion here, but as a scholar I gotta call ‘em as I see ‘em) one of the conclusions that I came to (to my shock) when I finished this book is that we Jews have no theological objection to the doctrine of the Trinity. I came to the conclusion that we Jews have no theological right to object to the Trinity. Theologically, I think that the model of the Trinity is an old Ancient Near Eastern idea, that shows up in the Tanakh [The Hebrew Bible] and that (in a different way) shows up in Jewish mysticism, as well.”[1]
The more I learn about Judaism at the time of Jesus, the more I realize how their view of God was actually quite complex. … For example, in the Old Testament we read about the “Angel of the Lord”, which I have mentioned before. In Exodus 3 we read, “the angel of the Lord appeared to [Moses] in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush” (3:2). A couple verses later we read, “God called to him out of the bush” (3:4). So, who was speaking to Moses from the bush? The “Angel of the Lord” or “God”?
We see something similar happening with the story of Gideon in Judges 6. We read, “Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak at Ophrah… And the angel of the Lord appeared `to [Gideon] and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.’” (6:11,12). Gideon explains his people’s plight. Then we read, “the Lord [YHWH] turned to him and said, ‘Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. I hereby commission you.’ We see the same kind of ambiguity. It’s not clear if we are dealing with an angel or if we are dealing with God.
In Genesis 18, Abraham acts as host to three angels who come to visit him, but one of those angels seems to speak to Abraham as if He is God. IN Genesis 32, Jacob wrestles with an angel, who also seems to be God in some mysterious way. And his name is changed to Israel after this, which means “struggles with God”.
Exodus 33 is another place in Scripture that shows something mysterious going on. … In Exodus 33:11 we read, “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” … And just a few verses later in the same chapter we read God saying, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (33:20). … So, there seems to be a visible aspect of God who can take human form, and an aspect of God who was invisible and who was even dangerous to try to look at.[2] … In later Trinitarian language the church would talk about a “person” of God, or a “hypostases” of God.
Those who encountered Jesus and authored the New Testament inherited this understanding of God and associated this visible aspect of God with Jesus. … John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:1, 14). And in the letter to the Colossians we read, that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). The followers of Jesus naturally connected Jesus to this visible aspect of God that they inherited.
This is similar to how the early Christians saw the Spirit. In Genesis 1 we read that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2). Why not just say that “God” was over the face of the waters? Why say that the “Spirit” of God was hovering over the waters? There seems to be something similar happening here. The Spirit is seen as an aspect of God (or, in later Trinitarian thinking, a “hypostases” or “person”). In the Old Testament, God sometimes seems to be experienced as a cloud- as a pilar of cloud guiding Israel in the wilderness, as a cloud that descends on the tent of meeting, and as a cloud that fills the Temple. So, they similarly saw certain ways God was experienced and associated that aspect of God with another person of God- the Spirit.
So, the early church inherited an understanding of God with these mysterious nuances. The experience of the Apostles with Jesus made it impossible to understand God apart from Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. … The Church came up with language to describe this experience, which we call the doctrine of the Trinity. But they believed this was completely in continuity with the God of their ancestors.
This teaching comes out of the church’s encounter with God. The teaching of the Trinity is the result of the church struggling to find words to describe that profound experience, and the doctrine of the Trinity is a kind of map that they handed on to us to help us understand their experience with God. AMEN
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-aVQ8MELeg
He writes in his Book “The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel”: “Some Jews regard Christianity´s claim to be a monotheistic Religion with grave suspicion, both because of the doctrine of the trinity (how can three equal one?) and because of Christianity´s core belief that God took bodily form. What I have attempted to point out there is that biblical Israel knew very similar doctrines, and these doctrines did not disappear from Judaism after the biblical Period” (Sommer 2011, P. 135).
[2] This can be seen in the Targums (paraphrases of biblical stories).
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