Defining the Trinity

The Semitic-oriented authors of Scripture would have a huge problem with our modern Greek-thinking habit of learning definitions of things before we've experienced them.

Even worse, they would cringe to discover that sometimes we actually limit and shape our experiences to fit snugly into the definitions we've memorized.

That often is the case with Sunday's celebration of the Trinity. The dogmatic definition of the Trinity -- three persons in one God -- didn't take shape as such until the Council of Nicaea in 325. That means none of the biblical writers could have used the definition that we, as children, memorized and recited in our earliest catechism classes.

Relating to God

Those who gave us our Christian Scriptures were more concerned with how people of faith related to and experienced God in their lives than with providing their readers with definitions and dogmatic statements.

Notice, for example, how Moses presents Yahweh in Sunday's first reading (Deuteronomy 4:32-34,39-40). He does almost no defining. We simply hear a classic reminder of what Yahweh has done to build a relationship with the Israelites: "Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of a fire, as you did? Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, which Yahweh your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?"

God is how God relates. And whenever relationships are formed, behavior changes. That's why Moses immediately reminds his people of the responsibilities they have that they didn't have before Yahweh stepped into their lives: "You must now know and fix in your heart that Yahweh is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other. You must keep Yahweh's statutes and commandments that I enjoin on you today."

As we hear in the second reading (Romans 8:14-17), Paul believes something similar happens when followers of Jesus experience the Spirit of God working in their lives. According to Paul, such an encounter creates a whole new relationship with God. "Those who are led by the Spirit of God," he writes "are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, 'Abba, Father!'"

Just as freedom and a new relationship with Yahweh resulted from God's breaking into the lives of a group of Hebrew slaves, so freedom and a new relationship with God result when Jesus' followers imitate His dying and rising. It's the same freedom and relating with God that Jesus experienced.

Writing with almost 20 years of additional experience of the risen Jesus working in the Christian community than Paul had, Matthew perceives that the force that entered his community's life when they began to die and rise with Jesus went beyond just Jesus (Matthew 28:16-20).

New ideas

Though it seems Paul and his contemporaries baptized only "in the name of Jesus," Matthew recognizes that the Christian experience goes beyond just one person. Not only do we find a new "Trinitarian" formula for Baptism -- Father, Son and Spirit -- but the Church also aims far beyond the historical Jesus' original mission. The risen Jesus commands His followers to "make disciples of all nations!"

Though he writes for a Jewish-Christian community, Matthew's experience of Jesus forced him to acknowledge that all people -- not just Jews -- should be invited to share in that experience.

Certainly, nothing's wrong with learning definitions, as long as they don't replace an experience that daily expands our understanding of God and His people.

(6/8/06)