Applying All This to Living in Community!
We have seen that the Trinity is the nature of true being, and that this nature is one of a sharing in being, not an individualism or monism. As a result we see that the Trinity has a revolutionary effect on our understanding of personhood and community, moulding our precepts of communication, individuality and otherness, diversity in community, justice and love for the purpose of serving the crucified and risen Christ as our centre.
We see a person not just as an individual but as ‘someone who finds his or her true being in relationship with God and with others…the counterpart of a Trinitarian doctrine of God’.[1] Ultimate reality within a Trinitarian framework is relational reality. We are no longer isolated individuals who exist to strive ahead solely for our own fulfilment, bettering ourselves (even through using religion) whilst stepping over others, all solely for our own happiness. The relational God shows us we can no longer think like this. It is the Spirit who draws us out of ourselves and into the eternal loving relationship between the Father and Son. The Holy Spirit delivers us from this narcissism. Through the Spirit drawing us into union with Christ we now are no longer people ‘who happen to exist in close proximity to others…but as interconnected, interdependent relational beings in community’.[2] Ware portrays a Trinitarian-flavoured character of personhood as one that understands that ‘what one does affects another, what one needs can be supplied by another, what one seeks to accomplish may be assisted by another’.[3]
Clearly this has dramatic consequences to the nature of our relationships with others. Instead of pursuing our own ends and using people in order to achieve our own ends, we seek to serve God and others and consider their needs above our own. In marriage, for example, we seek not to preserve our autonomy at the other’s expense but to love and serve and consistently relate to each other sacrificially and follow Christ together.
Furthermore, our understanding of God as Trinity makes us appreciate diversity amongst each other. Whereas communities are usually accustomed to diversity being discouraged and unappreciated (remembering in the introduction above Gunton’s harrowing example of babies being aborted in the womb, as their parents cannot be bothered enduring their baby’s predicted ‘differences’), a Trinitarian understanding of relation helps us instead to embrace diversity. We have reconciliation with God; God has allowed this to be so in the earthly life, death and resurrection of his Son. Therefore we are called to be at peace with others and be reconciled (eg James 3:181 Peter 3:11; 2 Peter 3:14). There is a unique quality to each person that in community we appreciate and embrace, due to our own participation in the eternal relationship between the distinct persons in the Trinity. Reconciliation ‘removes our alienation from others in a postmodern world’ and enables us to be in dialogue with others including those different to us (eg homosexuals) as we share with them the love of God in the gospel.[4]
As God has gone out of his way to communicate with us through his word, so too we understand that within a Trinitarian understanding of personhood and community, communication with others is of great importance. Communication is vital for relationship and mutual love within an understanding of personhood and community. As God communicates himself to us perfectly through the earthly life of Christ and through the Spirit, so too do we see the essential nature of communication within a community of love and other-centredness.
In a community moulded by the relational self-giving nature of God as Trinity, relationships within the community require faithfulness and constancy and perseverance. As sin breaks down the analogy between our relationships and God’s inner relationship and being, a commitment to serving the community with justice and fairness is required. It is injustice and unfairness that breaks down relationships and destroys them.[5] Systems that provide mercy and justice to preserve the other-centredness of a community are essential.
Clearly God as Trinity has a dramatic impact on our understanding of personhood and community. As we participate in the eternal relationship and fellowship between the Father and the Son through the Spirit, we understand that ‘personhood precludes individualism and separation or self-sufficiency and self-existence’.[6] The community is to model the Trinity in its own relations, to be other-centred, giving, communicating to each other and loving each other with justice and fairness and appreciating diversity within it as the gospel is shared and we seek others to be reconciled to God. In this Trinitarian-shaped community all accept their need for each other, ‘while enabling all to be truly themselves’ and be free to serve with Christ as the head.[7]
We have seen that the Trinity is the nature of true being, and that this nature is one of a sharing in being, not an individualism or monism. As a result we see that the Trinity has a revolutionary effect on our understanding of personhood and community, moulding our precepts of communication, individuality and otherness, diversity in community, justice and love for the purpose of serving the crucified and risen Christ as our centre.
We see a person not just as an individual but as ‘someone who finds his or her true being in relationship with God and with others…the counterpart of a Trinitarian doctrine of God’.[1] Ultimate reality within a Trinitarian framework is relational reality. We are no longer isolated individuals who exist to strive ahead solely for our own fulfilment, bettering ourselves (even through using religion) whilst stepping over others, all solely for our own happiness. The relational God shows us we can no longer think like this. It is the Spirit who draws us out of ourselves and into the eternal loving relationship between the Father and Son. The Holy Spirit delivers us from this narcissism. Through the Spirit drawing us into union with Christ we now are no longer people ‘who happen to exist in close proximity to others…but as interconnected, interdependent relational beings in community’.[2] Ware portrays a Trinitarian-flavoured character of personhood as one that understands that ‘what one does affects another, what one needs can be supplied by another, what one seeks to accomplish may be assisted by another’.[3]
Clearly this has dramatic consequences to the nature of our relationships with others. Instead of pursuing our own ends and using people in order to achieve our own ends, we seek to serve God and others and consider their needs above our own. In marriage, for example, we seek not to preserve our autonomy at the other’s expense but to love and serve and consistently relate to each other sacrificially and follow Christ together.
Furthermore, our understanding of God as Trinity makes us appreciate diversity amongst each other. Whereas communities are usually accustomed to diversity being discouraged and unappreciated (remembering in the introduction above Gunton’s harrowing example of babies being aborted in the womb, as their parents cannot be bothered enduring their baby’s predicted ‘differences’), a Trinitarian understanding of relation helps us instead to embrace diversity. We have reconciliation with God; God has allowed this to be so in the earthly life, death and resurrection of his Son. Therefore we are called to be at peace with others and be reconciled (eg James 3:181 Peter 3:11; 2 Peter 3:14). There is a unique quality to each person that in community we appreciate and embrace, due to our own participation in the eternal relationship between the distinct persons in the Trinity. Reconciliation ‘removes our alienation from others in a postmodern world’ and enables us to be in dialogue with others including those different to us (eg homosexuals) as we share with them the love of God in the gospel.[4]
As God has gone out of his way to communicate with us through his word, so too we understand that within a Trinitarian understanding of personhood and community, communication with others is of great importance. Communication is vital for relationship and mutual love within an understanding of personhood and community. As God communicates himself to us perfectly through the earthly life of Christ and through the Spirit, so too do we see the essential nature of communication within a community of love and other-centredness.
In a community moulded by the relational self-giving nature of God as Trinity, relationships within the community require faithfulness and constancy and perseverance. As sin breaks down the analogy between our relationships and God’s inner relationship and being, a commitment to serving the community with justice and fairness is required. It is injustice and unfairness that breaks down relationships and destroys them.[5] Systems that provide mercy and justice to preserve the other-centredness of a community are essential.
Clearly God as Trinity has a dramatic impact on our understanding of personhood and community. As we participate in the eternal relationship and fellowship between the Father and the Son through the Spirit, we understand that ‘personhood precludes individualism and separation or self-sufficiency and self-existence’.[6] The community is to model the Trinity in its own relations, to be other-centred, giving, communicating to each other and loving each other with justice and fairness and appreciating diversity within it as the gospel is shared and we seek others to be reconciled to God. In this Trinitarian-shaped community all accept their need for each other, ‘while enabling all to be truly themselves’ and be free to serve with Christ as the head.[7]
[1] J.B. Torrance, Worship, 27.
[2] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Role and Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 134.
[3] Ware, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 134.
[4] Doyle, ‘Conflict’, 8-9.
[5] Knox, Selected Works Vol 1, 164.
[6] Zizioulas, ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’, 47.
[7] Gunton, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 17.
[2] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Role and Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 134.
[3] Ware, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 134.
[4] Doyle, ‘Conflict’, 8-9.
[5] Knox, Selected Works Vol 1, 164.
[6] Zizioulas, ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’, 47.
[7] Gunton, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 17.
2 comments:
As we participate in the eternal relationship and fellowship between the Father and the Son through the Spirit, we understand that ‘personhood precludes individualism and separation or self-sufficiency and self-existence’.
Does the Trinity also have implications for the opposite extreme of social organisation (collectivism)?
The Trinity is not a collective that loses its 'threeness' to the 'one-ness' - there are three distinctive persons within the one. Each has its own distinctive character that is not lost within the whole.
the Trinity are distinct persons that cannot but relate to each other. The Trinity models for us something that is not collectivism or communism which, in my ignorance, I understand to be 'give up your individuality to the good of the whole' (but is practically becomes more like 'give your individuality up to the expense of the autocratic dictator? - I could be being harsh there').
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