Deeper understandings Trinity
The One in Three & the Three in One
Editor’s note: This series is intended to be a public conversation among teaching theologians of the ELCA on various themes of our faith and the challenging issues of our day. It invites readers to engage and dialogue with the ELCA’s teaching theologians.
The series is edited by Philip D.W.
Krey, president of the Lutheran Theo- logical Seminary at Philadelphia, on behalf of the presidents of the eight ELCA seminaries.
By John F. Hoffmeyer C
hurch teaching, or “doctrine,” about the Trinity grew from the soil of the church’s life of prayer, praise and testimony. Early Christians found that they could not pray to God or talk about God without invoking Jesus of Nazareth and the life-giving Spirit intimately associated with Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Early Christians experienced the Spirit as the power in whom they prayed to God. They experienced Jesus Christ
as the one through whom they prayed to God. As Ephesians 2:18 puts it, through Christ we “have access in one Spirit to the Father.” Questions naturally arose about
the relations between these three figures who were so central to the church’s life of prayer and testimony. In the ensuing debates, the church sought to become clearer about the relations between “the Three.” The primary concern of these debates was the relation between Jesus and God. Through these debates the church worked out important teaching. One primary expression of this teaching, the Nicene Creed, is a regular part of worship in ELCA congregations. At the heart of these debates was
John F. Hoffmeyer Amy E. Marga
Hoffmeyer is associate professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and Marga is assistant professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn.
18 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
the fact that Jesus suffered and died. No human being avoids questions of vulnerability and suffering. No human being who confesses belief in God avoids questions of how God relates to creaturely vulnerability and suffering. These everyday, press- ing questions are at the heart of the church’s teaching about the Trinity. The Gospel accounts push us to a drastic question: How can we identify God with a person who was tortured to death, as Jesus was? How can we identify the life-giving breath of God, the Spirit, with the breath of that Jesus who was tortured to death? Yet this is what John 20:22 does when it says that the risen Christ “breathed on them and said to them: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ ” The doctrine of the Trinity speci- fies the God in whom Christians believe. This is a God who is the cre- ative source of the entire universe. At the same time, this is a God insepa- rable from the bodily, vulnerable love of Jesus. This is a God by whose
Spirit life triumphs over death—not by avoiding or denying it but by going through death and raising the dead to new life. This is a God whose Spirit acts through time and space far beyond the particular life of Jesus of Nazareth 2,000 years ago. Yet this is a God whose Spirit always resonates with the specific life of Jesus. Teaching about the Trinity
remains anchored in the church’s life of prayer and testimony. When we pray to God “through” Christ or “in the name of Jesus,” we recognize that God is not a distant power with whom we are trying to make contact. God is the very means of contact. In Christ, God meets us right where we are, in the vulnerability of our lives. When we pray to God “in” the Spirit or “by the power” of the Spirit, we recognize that as we pray, the Spirit is breathing through our praying. God is not just the one to whom we pray. God the Spirit prays through us. M
By Amy E. Marga T
he beloved and blessed words of “I baptize you in the name of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit” are for many of us a comfort and even a necessity at the ritual of baptism in our Lutheran congregations. But who are the Father, Son and
Spirit? Are they three separate heav- enly beings shining their faces down from the sky? If we believed that, we’d be guilty of the heresy of trithe- ism. Are the names Father, Son and Spirit just nicknames for a divine being who changes shape? If we believed that, we’d be guilty of the heresy of modalism. Decades, centu- ries even, were dedicated to finding
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