Reconciliation within the Trinity, disciples, and the Body of Christ

The German 18^th Century Romantic Friedrich Schlegel quipped that, because God is infinite and langue is finite, all theology is by definition blasphemy, limiting God to the conceptions of language and words. What follows might follow this definition but hopefully offers insight into how the Trinity can inform our notions of beauty and discipleship in addition to our cognition and imagination.

The Council of Nicaea affirmed the paradox “God is no more one than three.” Augustine came up with the normalized Trinitarian diagram: the Father, Son, and Spirit are not the same, and yet all are co-eternal and in union with one another. I have extended Augustine’s thinking as follows, using a Venn diagram. Notice that there are parts of the Father that are unique, parts the Father shares with the Son but not the Spirit, and parts that the Father, Son, and Spirit have in common. Rather than believing that the Trinity is three and the same, maybe the holiness of the Trinity exists in what Bishop Doyle calls “unity in mission” over uniformity in personality or identity. Maybe the miracle and holiness of the Trinity is precisely in their unity amidst difference.

Maybe God made humans in all different shapes and sizes and talents and inclinations and orientations because these seemingly unlimited permutations reflect the diversity in the Godhead itself. And we, like God, can choose to appreciate these, instead of competing amongst them.

Maybe God was not lonely when God Created the universe, but the universe overflowed out of the love that existed between each member of the Trinity. Maybe God loves us as we are because we are icons (and maybe even products) of the intra-Trinitarian love among the Father and the Son and the Spirit. Maybe every time Jesus looks at me, he sees the physical representation of his love for the Spirit and the Father. And then he feels exactly the same when he looks at you. Diversity would be, then, not an idea of God, but a reflection.

Maybe our getting along and making peace and reconciliation is not something that God wants, but something that God is.

The Trinity has often been underappreciated as a doctrine, at least in my experience, when I see so many invitations. Classic orthodoxy defies any subordination within the Trinity: no member “outranks” or pre-exists another. Somehow, the Trinity is separate and equal. And we are to follow, not confusing different roles and talents with different worthiness.

The Trinity has been abused as a mechanism for understanding different modes of God’s being. This is called “modalism.” And it a favorite heresy of many. Noting the almost exclusively masculine nature of the modalistic approach, several folks have rallied to use Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. The Trinity is not an analogy to help us understand roles, but a mystery that inspired our being and hopes to inspire our discipleship. The Father does more than create, and cannot be reduced to a task or function. The Son is more than Redemption. We are more than what we Do.

One of my seminars in seminary, Issues of Women in the Christian Tradition, allowed for a range of class-end assignments. I chose the research paper, but a classmate courageously chose to sculpt a feminine image for the Trinity: a Mother giving birth to a Daughter facilitated by a Holy Midwife. These names were embodied, gender complementary, and pushed beyond modes to relationships. They concretely represented the labor of Creation, its hope, and the community surrounding and facilitating it. I value the sculpture and imagery as a complement and a reminder to expand our imagery with God, lest we limit God with our language and blaspheme by thinking too narrowly. As Gregory of Nyssa famously opined, “Concepts create idols; only wonder truly knows.”

As mystery, the Trinity is worth a little ancient decoding. “Father” is more than just a literal title. In Hebrew, Abba, is a word of intimacy. In Greco-Roman culture, Father is more than literal: it is a position of stewardship and responsibility. The Pater Familias was not only the head of the household, but directly responsible for seeing to the promotion, dignity, advancement, and care of every member of the household. This included the family, the servants, and contractors alike. Surely, we do well to remember God as greater than just Father, but as the One who cares for every member of the household, holds their joy and dreams and advocates for them. In many of our homes this was shared among parents and possibly even more embodied by our mothers or grandmothers.

“Spirit” is a mystery word in and of itself. In both Hebrew and Greek, it means “moving air,” which could be wind or breath (remember that for the Hebrew culture, “soul” lives in the neck, where breath comes and goes). In Hebrew, Spirit is gendered feminine. In Greek, it is neuter. And, of course, God is greater than any gender, even though all gender reflects the image and likeness of God. And diversity exists in the Trinity. Anthropomorphic concepts like gender are only one of many types our minds and bodies can conceive. And God is not threatened by the acknowledgement of this diversity. Since it all reflects God, God must enjoy it; indeed, on the seventh day, God called Creation exceedingly good. God is reconciled to diversity in God’s very self!

When God looks at the first human being in Genesis 2, God notes “It is not good for the human being to be alone.” God exists in community, and we were created from community and get to embody community. It’s beautiful. It’s frustrating. It can sometimes feel really disappointing as much as it can feel transcendent. And it might be one way we live into the Holy Mystery of the Trinity with wonder!

Jesus calls a diverse group of followers into unity in mission. Levi, son of Alphaeus, is traditionally understood to be the Gospel writer himself: Matthew. Astonishingly, he is a tax collector. Tax collectors were hated by Jews. They extorted as much money as possible out of folks to benefit a pagan and ruthless empire, Rome, who used idolatrous coins with the portrait of the self-proclaimed gods, the emperors, and used threats and force to enrich themselves in the process. As convoluted as your taxes may be, there was no tax table. There was maximum collection with high stakes by fellow Jews.

Matthew would have been viewed as traitor by his People, but especially by two of the other 12 disciples: Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot. Zealots were committed to Jewish independence from Rome, even at high costs. They could sometimes employ and condone not only passive resistance to the empire and boycotting, but also guerrilla and even terrorist tactics. Sicarii, a sub-group of Zealots, were especially committed to terrorism against the empire, murdering Roman soldiers in publicly crowded streets with long knives, sicarii, and then slipping into the crowd to avoid detection. Iscariot is most likely an identification of Judas with this group.

All the above means Jesus made friends, students, and disciples of a diverse group of folks who hated one another and had a variety of fragile and even unseemly reputations. He kept them from killing each other, kept the money together, and ultimately helped knit them into a community that has outlived him by nearly 2000 years, to date. Amazing to think that not only the earliest church, but also the 12 disciples, had radically different political, theological, and moral opinions, to say the least. Their differences of opinion may not have changed with Jesus—we don’t know if Simon gave up zealotry or Matthew took it up—but their responses to one another did, with Jesus alongside them.

I grew up in pretty homogeneous churches. Racially for sure. Socioeconomic in general. Theologically and doctrinally required more than anything else. I could offer a question but had to be careful not to ask radical questions. We were loved as we were, unless we thought B instead of A or doubted doctrines. We could not risk questioning whether divorced persons could be deacons or women could be ministers, to name two, because to do so would be an affront to the Bible, to Jesus, or God. God could not tolerate our doubts because God could not tolerate our differences.

But Jesus not only tolerated differences in his disciples, he called them and reconciled their haters. We don’t know if that converted their politics, but we know he transformed the way they treated people with differing politics. He did not seem afraid of these matters that often terrify us. What if we trusted God enough to make risk and difference central to our identity as people of God, precisely because of our trust in God, instead of being threatened by it? What if we were to love folks enough to listen deeply, and not love them in spite of their theology or politics but because of them, even if our own do not change? What if churches, like the disciples, were not just allowed but encouraged to be communities where difference is appreciated and not feared? The question is not whether we can do this, but whether we trust that God can and whether or not we are willing to follow—a journey of reconciliation from uniformity to unity.