A Trinity Catena

1. The story of redemption is the perfect and absolute love of the persons for each other being separated (for our creaturely sake) like light through a prism on the wall of history. The Godhead does as it is. [Explain]

2. The shalom of the persons is the eschatological shalom of the people of God, which we are called to and long for, which we await with all creation, and to which we summon our neighbors. [Explain]

2a. Love requires a lover and a beloved and the love itself. When we, following scripture, assert "God is love," we confess that God is a plurality in unity; God is love. [Explain]

2b. The life of the church--in all its varied practices--tells and participates in the Father's sending of the Son and the Spirit for the sake of the world. The church community is the imago Dei and its spirituality is no exercise in individualism since God is a fellowship, not a monad.

2c. To state in another way: the Great Commission is a repetition of the sending of the Son, which is itself a reflection of the eternal begetting of the Son in history. But this time, the church is invited.

3. The people of God whose head is Jesus of Nazareth are invited to participate by grace in the loving oneness of the persons. By grace, not by nature. The flesh of Jesus is forever scarred. This is the doctrine of theosis, the foundation of Christian anthropology. In the words of the early church fathers: He became like us so that we can become like him.

4. Christian spirituality is inside out: an always moving current into God and into the community. There is a holy and joyful eros to it as we, through the Son and by the Spirit, are caught up into the perichoretic dance to the Father.

4a. Christian spirituality is triune from the foundations.

5. The Doctrine of the Trinity, revealed just in the light of awareness as we became no longer servants but friends, is a summing up of the whole. And, together with the two-natures of the Son, tells the whole thing in a glance.

6. Afterthought: Do not get overcome by how are there three in one. Sometimes you emphasize the oneness; sometimes the threeness. Heresy cannot be avoided. So, sin boldly!

Channeling Napoleon Hill

What follows is a comment made to a post that my pastor, Father Jody Howard, made following an article in the Living Church about the challenges facing the Episcopal Church. At the end of the article, Rev. Dr. Neal Michell, canon for strategic development in the Diocese of Dallas, writes, “The problems facing our church are spiritual in nature. We have not been faithful enough disciples of Jesus Christ. We have not reached out to those around us with the Good News of Jesus Christ.” My response is as follows:

Brueggemann's call for a return to personal discipleship is definitely part of the solution; however, that is simply not enough. That may become a vibrant monasticism or fundamentalism, (which may be the option that best exemplifies God's design for the church in the world. For me, the jury is still out on that one. And if it does come down here, I choose monasticism over fundamentalism.) but it will not solve the puzzle of why there simply isn't traction in the culture. In my mind, this is a problem with language and with anthropology. Language because there is simply no longer a common linguistic "game" that allows people to talk about religious ideas. (And, one might say, this is part of a broader problem: that the public square has so collapsed that even talking about ideas of public consequence has been reduced to grandstanding, party politics, and the manipulation of conspiracy theories.) Anthropology because the formula for a whole human being living a human life no longer includes the habits and practices of faith as a necessity but has relegated it to, at best, an app that can be downloaded and run on the software of the self if one so chooses, for reasons that are highly personable but lend themselves to the psychotic, the aesthetic, the social/political, or even the pragmatic--but certainly not the necessary. Western human beings are practical atheists, one and all, and it is a struggle even to be religious for the religious. The church catholic in the West has ignored these extremely thorny philosophical problems and applied, instead, Western and especially American ideas of individualism and success-through-right-action (channeling Napoleon Hill).

theological anthropology; Walter Brueggemann; missions; culture; atheism; modernity