The Trinitarian God is love that unifies difference

[The Great Open Dance]

The Trinity possesses a capacity for sympathetic joy. “If you have two people in a room, you have a conversation. If you have three people, you have politics,” an old lawyer once said to me. In my experience, this statement has proven itself true many times.

This validation reveals something problematic about human nature, but it also reveals the audacity of Trinitarian theology. As mentioned earlier, the Jewish tradition interprets the spirit of God as an aspect of God, not as a person, not even as a functionary in the heavenly court. But the energized Jewish community centered around the risen Jesus experienced this Spirit as a unique power that was inextricably related to the Creator and Jesus, but also distinct from them. In a way, this interpretation continues the Hebrew tradition, because the Hebrew Scriptures do not assert that Wisdom receives her knowledge and power from elsewhere, from any male figure; she has it of herself. She is her own person, and strong (see Proverbs 1:20-33).

Problematically, Christian theology has rarely treated the Holy Spirit as an actual person, but rather as an impersonal force binding the two other persons together. In our view, the Holy Spirit must be personal because a third person suggests the divine capacity for sympathetic joy. Sympathetic joy is the ability to experience someone else’s joy as our own. God’s capacity for sympathetic joy is also a human possibility, present in humanity because preexisting in God, of whom humankind is the earthly expression.

The three persons of the Trinity are co-equal. Historically, Christians have sometimes designated the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity, implying rank between the persons, but such inequality is impossible within divinity. The presence of three persons is imminently consequential, but it doesn’t make any particular person the third. Instead, each person is third to the other two. This status is important because it exemplifies the openness of divine love.

The meaning of the third person of the Trinity struck me one day while driving my two young sons to school. They were in the back seat playing with each other, tickling each other, laughing, giggling, and singing. I listened to them, occasionally glancing in the mirror to watch, and was flooded with joy at their love for each other. I then became aware of the ecstatic power of my third party, sympathetic joy. There was a buoyancy to it that came from observation without participation. This delight accompanied a willing selflessness that celebrated their love without envy or jealousy. I did not want to interrupt their relationship or even join their relationship at that moment. I simply wanted to revel in it—in my perception of it, as third party—more fully.

A cliché description of human purpose claims that we are “to love and be loved.” This description is inadequate because it does not recognize our call to celebrate love that is not our own, nor does it recognize the potential riches implicit in that call. Free of ego investment, third person love offers a kind of spiritual weightlessness. It is a love that we do not participate in yet celebrate wholeheartedly. Thus, the third person of the Trinity symbolizes the infinite openness of the sacred. The Trinity revels in all relatedness, not just their particular relatedness. They consecrate universal interdependence, not just their own network of interdependence.

The third person of the Trinity, as third person, is the symbolic window through which the light of infinite relatedness flows. As C. S. Lewis notes, if John, Mary, and Pat are friends, and Pat dies, then Mary has not just lost Pat. She has also lost how Pat relates to John, and all the aspects of John that Pat brought out of him that Mary couldn’t. We are multifaceted, and different people bring out different aspects of each other.

If we want to see the whole person, then we need to relate to them with others. Someone else may bring out their quirky humor, or oddball interests, or rambunctious adventurousness. If we are not jealous, then we can enjoy these facets of our friends that we cannot elicit, but our other friends can. If we are jealous, then we will know less of the person we seek to control. The larger our circle of friendship, the deeper our knowledge of one another will be. Heaven is other people.

Trinitarian love is open. Love overflows, always seeking to draw more participants into its community. It rejects all exclusive, tribal love. Were tribal love divine love, were God a nationalist god, then the Christian symbol of God would be a closed love that excludes the other. We have all known lovers who loved each other and no one else. They treat one another ethically and support one another, but do not extend that treatment to anyone outside their closed system. Their ethics are particular (for each other) rather than universal (for all). In their worldview, only they can be the victims of injustice, because outsiders do not deserve to be treated justly. Such exclusive love is capable only of self-righteousness and indignation. It locks others out and locks us in.

To love the outsider, as the Hebrew scriptures and Christ command, implies a love of difference. Such love is a godsend, because difference amplifies love. If love within homogeneity sufficed, then the same could simply practice self-love and find satisfaction there. For love to be Trinitarian, for love to be of God, difference must be loved.

As love unifying difference, the Trinity is a great symbol of hope. Power can repress the frictions of difference, creating a superficial peace by force, but true unity is achieved only when difference voluntarily unites. In this Trinitarian worldview, the human rejection of difference is morally wrong because it is ontologically askew—it rejects the diverse reality that God sustains and celebrates.

We will celebrate gender difference. All worldviews that exalt uniformity and control create an artificial chasm between human and human, a chasm that fills with disgust and fear. Unity cannot just tolerate diversity; unity must sanctify diversity, including gender diversity, as an expression of God’s differentiated, relational being. To sanctify gender diversity, all aspects of gender must be expressed in God—those at the ends of the spectrum, those in the middle, and those not on the spectrum at all. To sanctify this diversity, for the remainder of these essays, we will refer to Abba, God our Mother and God our Father, as “they.” (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 155-157)
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For further reading, please see:

Baker-Fletcher, Karen. Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective. Nashville: Chalice Press, 2006.

Boff, Leonardo. Trinity and Society. Translated by Paul Burns. 1988. Reprint, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005.

Lewis, C. S. The Four Loves. Reprint, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991.

[Karadeniz]

1. Jesus didnt teach a trinitarian god.

[LastDemocratInSC]

2. And the emperor Constantine called the First Council of Nicaea

to settle the disputes over the concept of the trinity. When the assembled bishops couldn't agree on the issues, forcing the conference to run long, Constantine cut off the bishops' food deliveries and, amazingly, they got everything wrapped up quickly.

The trinity was an invention of sinful, pretentious men trying to untangled a wicked theological web that they created.

[Karadeniz]

3. Amen......