Trinity Sunday

Last Sunday was Trinity Sunday. This is the day when the Church is supposed to celebrate this distinctive Three-In-One doctrine of ours about the relationship between God as Father, God as Son, and God as Holy Spirit. Most clergy dread having to preach about this, and in my experience, most avoid it, choosing some other topic.

In the history of the Church, the issue of the relationship between these three entities hasn't always been agreed upon. Not until Nicea in 325 was any attempt made to have an official doctrine agreed on by all. Even then it didn't happen. Arians, a group of Christians who had a different idea about Jesus, were to be stamped out now that orthodoxy had been declared. It didn't work. Basically the Arian movement continued for another couple of centuries as "official" teaching in the Germanic areas of Europe in particular.

Not only that, a group known as monophysites (meaning one nature) continued for centuries and still exist in several regional churches, such as Egypt.

So what? Well in this time when so much is made of orthodoxy and fundamentalism is constantly clashing with other views, it's important to ask a question. Does the requirement for accepting the doctrine of the Trinity to be Christian apply to followers of Jesus before Nicea? And what about the Arians and monophysites? Oh, and what about the United Pentecostals, a modern Pentecostal denomination that rejects this doctrine too? Are we saying all these people aren't saved?

Well, of course we are, if by "we" we mean modern Christian fundamentalist (Pentecostals excepted). The rest of us? Heck, we don't really understand the doctrine anyway and in my experience, most Christians I've known are actually not trinitarian in their belief. They say the Creeds, but in the final analysis, they tend more toward the "three God" belief in practice.

All of which is to say, since Jesus seemed way more interested in how people lived than in what they believed, we might focus a little more attention on that too. Maybe we'd cheat less, fight less, steal less, murder less--you get the point. But, I could be wrong.

Peace,

Jerry+