The Trinity: Mystery of Relation What is our experience of God? Our experience of God has many facets to it. We find our very lives shaped by our encounter of God who is, first of all, beyond, with and within the world; who is behind, with and ahead of us; who is above, alongside and around us. What is the symbol of the Trinity attempting to express? It's an attempt to express a dynamic life in God, a relatedness to the world in activity that creates, redeems and renews, an activity which also suggests to us that God's very own being is a relational, dynamic mystery of love. What is the problem for some Christians today regarding the doctrine of the Trinity? The doctrine of the Trinity has become divorced from the original experiences that gave it birth in human understanding. What is a consequence of this "divorce"? This symbol of the Trinity has become unintelligible to many, a kind of doctrine that we learn/memorize, and leave it at that. To paraphrase the late Jesuit theologian Fr. Karl Rahner, "If people were to read in their morning newspaper that a fourth person of the Trinity had been discovered it would cause little stir" --so detached has the triune symbol become from the actual religious life of many people. What has been lost in our understanding of this symbol? For a variety of reasons, the liberating point of the symbol is lost. The doctrine of the Trinity seems to be found in the appendix of the personal catechism of many minds and hearts, as compared with its place in official church teaching and prayer and ecumenical statements.

Structure How does classical theology speak of the Trinity? Classical theology speaks of the Father who sends the Son and, together with the Son or alone, also sends the Spirit. They are equally related, one to another, but distinct in the way they do or do not proceed from one another. This is what the Catechism presents us, a classical theology. Is the biblical witness entirely in agreement with this understanding? The totality of biblical witness is somewhat different: (a) Luke 4:16-20 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and

the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. According to Luke, it is not the Father who sends Jesus to bring good news to the poor, but the Spirit. What are we to make of this varied witness to the Trinity? (b) Before the resurrection, the sequence reads Father-Spirit-Son. The Spirit is active in the birth, baptism, Passover of Jesus, so that Jesus can be said to live from the works of the creative Spirit. (c) After the resurrection, it is Father-Son-Spirit, for Jesus is now made a life-giving Spirit and himself joins in the sending of the Spirit to the community of disciples. (d) In the eschatological transformation of creation, it is Spirit-SonFather, for the Spirit is the power of the new creation and brings all to rebirth. Here the Spirit is not the energy proceeding from Father or Son, but the glorifying God from whom Father and Son receive their glory; the unifying God who gives them their union; the active subject from whom Father and Son receive the world as their home. What is the doctrine of the Trinity attempting to do? When Trinitarian language is pondered as a whole, it is clear that the fundamental attempt of the doctrine is to secure an understanding of God as a profound relational communion.

Freeing the Symbol from Literalness Where does this symbol of holy mystery come from? It arises from the historical experience of salvation and it speaks about divine reality not literally but by way of analogy. An encounter with holy mystery lies at the root of all religious doctrine. So too with the Trinity. It develops historically out of the religious experience of the gracious God who encountered Jews and then Gentiles through Jesus of Nazareth in the power of the Spirit. What does this term Trinity attempt to do? The Trinity is a legitimate concept that synthesizes the concrete experience of

salvation in a "short formula." It is a theological construct that codifies the liberating God-encounter in history. How did the first Christians symbolize God? The first Christian believers symbolized God as YHWH, the God of Israel. What eventually happened in the Christian community's life? Without abandoning this tradition they increasingly focused on how this same God mysteriously encountered them in the person and mission of Jesus the Christ. Again, they experienced this same God's continuing presence and activity through the power of the Spirit in their midst after Jesus' death had removed him from ordinary human interchange. In each they were engaged in a religious experience of divine mystery acting in a very particular gracious way within their history. Do Biblical writings of the 1st century community contain a developed trinitarian doctrine? No. Instead it has stories, words of praise, narratives, doxologies cast in threefold symbols of God that arose spontaneously out of Christian experience of holy mystery in its character of being transcendently mysterious, historically mediated, and liberatingly immanent. What was the prime concern of the first generations of Christians? To announce and celebrate the genesis of human liberation and cosmic reconciliation coming from God through Jesus the Christ in the Spirit. What was the "trigger" for the growth of this doctrine? Reflection about Jesus' relationship with God. The basic motivation was religious, empowered by the question of how one and only God could be so envisioned that each of the ways in which the community encountered divine mystery could be affirmed as genuinely an experience of God. What does this symbol of the Trinity intend to safeguard? God is utterly faithful and does not self-reveal in any way other than the way God is. The symbol of the Trinity intends to safeguard the reality of liberating experience both as given by God and giving the one true God. Is the symbol of the Trinity considered a literal description of God? No. Far from being literally descriptive, the Trinitarian symbol desires to express and protect the fundamental Christian experience of shalom drawing near. It is shorthand for the dynamic, inexpressible God of compassion, liberating love who is involved in history in multifaceted ways.

Do these distinctions that we make about God tell us anything about God's own inner life? The distinctions we experience in divine encounter are not only on the creaturely side. Our experience indicates a three-fold character even of God's own way of being God. God really corresponds to the way we have encountered the divine mystery in time. Once again, to what does this language about God's inner life point? This language is not a literal description of the inner being of God who is beyond human understanding. It is a pointer to holy mystery in trust that God really is the compassionate, liberating God encountered through Jesus in the Spirit. It is language which affirms that what is experienced in Christian faith really is of God, that we are involved in nothing other than saving divine mystery. At rock bottom, it is the language of hope. No one has ever seen God, but thanks to the experience unleashed through Jesus in the Spirit we hope, walking by faith not sight, that the livingness of God is with us and for us as renewing, liberating love. What are we daring to say when we call God "Trinity"? We dare to say in the Trinity that divine mystery is the power of love for us springing from God's being love from all eternity. "In knowing the God who is our origin, ground and goal, we do not know a shadow image of God but the real saving God of Jesus Christ in their Spirit. The God who saves -- this IS GOD!" Such understanding depicts the presence of deep hope, the very essence of the risk of faith.

Spoken Allusively How are we to understand this speech about the Trinity? Such speech is always indirect, having a metaphorical, analogical or symbolic character. Even when taken from scripture, no similarity can be made between God and creatures without the dissimilarity being always ever greater. No model mirrors directly. The concepts are bound by human finitude and do not reach their intended goal without first being negated with respect to their creaturely content. What do we intend when we speak of God by using the numbers "one" and "three"? To say that God is one is intended to negate division, thus affirming the unity of divine being. To say that the persons are three is intended to negate singleness, thus affirming a communion in God. Number, when said of God, cannot be taken in a quantitative sense.

As an analogy, to what does the Trinity itself refer? As an analogy, Trinity refers to divine "livingness." Our speech about God as three and persons is a human way of saying that God is LIKE a Trinity, LIKE a three-foldedness of relation. The triune God is not simply unknown, but positively known to be unknown and unknowable -- which is a dear and profound kind of knowledge.

Metaphors To what does the symbol of the triune God give shape? The symbol of the triune God is the specific Christian shape of monotheism. It points to the livingness of God come to speech through human experiences of being vivified, liberated and created in the midst of the ambiguity of history. What does this Trinitarian symbol radically affirm? It affirms the hope that God really is in accord with what has been mediated through experience; in other words, that God corresponds to the divine self in bedrock fidelity. What is one of the difficulties in describing the Trinitarian symbol exclusively as "Father-Son-Spirit"? All three hypostases or "persons" of the Trinity transcend categories of male and female. The difficulty occurs when the overwhelming weight of usage has been on the side of male imagery of father and son. Is it essential to speak of the triune God only in this fashion? It is not essential for the truth of God's triune mystery to speak always in the metaphors of father, son, and spirit, although virtually exclusive use of these names over the centuries in liturgy, catechesis, and theology has caused this to be forgotten. The metaphors of spirit, wisdom and mother are also appropriate. The one high Creator God is Spirit; so too is Christ the Lord. All three persons may be called Spirit, for all are holy and all are Spirit. What is one of the ways in which Augustine describes the Trinity? Augustine himself reflects: "I know not why Father and Son and Holy Spirit should not be called love, and all together one love, just as Father and Son and Holy Spirit are called wisdom, and all together not three but one wisdom."

Holy Wisdom who is with and for the world What is the experience of Spirit in people's lives? Women and men experience that they are inspired and galvanized by God's Spirit to be wise and bold in speech and courageous in action, engaging the

many tasks involved in renewing, healing, and liberating the world from the grip of sin and suffering. Why the movement to Jesus? Toward this end, believers find their path along the way of Jesus, empowered by the narrative memory of his ways, his imaginative stories of God, his drinking the cup of pain and death, and the rising hope and life that flow from this to their own life-praxis. What do believers experience in the solidarity of community? Their own lives and the whole earth as gifts, freely given from an unspeakably rich source of life that they mirror in their own creative generativity. To what do these varied encounters point? The threefold, interwoven aspects of encounter with the one holy mystery point to God who is a living mystery of relation, bent on the world. How do we understand God as Spirit-Sophia? God as Spirit-Sophia is the mobile, pure, people-loving Spirit who pervades every wretched corner, wailing at the waste, releasing power that enables fresh starts. Sophia-God dwells in the world at its center and at its edge, an active vitality crying out in labor, birthing the new creation. Fire, wind, water, and the color purple are her signs. How do we understand Jesus Christ in light of this? God is God again as Jesus Christ, Sophia's Child and prophet, and, yes, Sophia herself personally pitching her tent in the flesh of humanity to teach the paths of justice. What does Jesus do in the power of this Spirit? In the power of Spirit-Sophia Jesus now takes on a new communal identity as the risen Christ, the body of all those women and men who share in the transformation of the world through compassionate delighting and suffering love. How do we understand God as Wisdom Itself? God is God again as unimaginable abyss of livingness, Holy Wisdom unknown and unknowable. What must we remember about the traditional Trinitarian names of Father, Son and Spirit? They are correctly construed when it is remembered that they are symbols or figures of divine relations.

The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought In what three beneficial ways may the Trinitarian symbol for God function? The Trinity symbolizes that the very essence of God is to be in relation, and thus (1) relatedness rather than the solitary ego is the heart of all reality; (2) the particular kind of relatedness is not one of hierarchy involving domination/subordination, but rather one of genuine mutuality in which there is radical equality while distinctions are respected; (3) this leads us to envision a God who empowers human beings in these same directions.

Mutual Relation What constitutes the Trinitarian persons? Their relationality. Holy Wisdom is a mystery of real, mutual relations. At the heart of holy mystery is not monarchy but community, a threefold koinonia. How might we characterize this relatedness today? The mutuality experienced in genuine friendship offers one fertile clue. Friendship is the most free, the least possessive, the most mutual of relationships, able to cross social barriers in genuine reciprocal regard. Friends are fundamentally side-by-side in common interests, common delights, shared responsibility. Mature friendship is open to the inclusion of others in the circle, assuming an essential stance of hospitality. How does Jesus incarnate divine friendship? Jesus-Sophia is the incarnation of divine friendship, hosting meals of inclusive table community, and being hospitable to people of all kinds. He calls the women and men of his circle not children, not servants, not even disciples, but friends; one can only surmise that they called him friend in return. What is a sign of authentic relationship? Authentic relationship is not a relation between two half selves, but between whole persons. What does the Trinitarian symbol intimate? It intimates a community of equals, so core to the vision of ultimate shalom. It points to patterns of differentiation that are non-hierarchical, and to forms of relating that do not involve dominance. It models the idea of a relational bonding that enables the growth of persons and the genuine flourishing of community in and through the praxis of its members. Is one way of speaking of divine mystery always adequate? In the end it becomes clear that one way of speaking alone is never adequate. Psychological and social models, male and female images or both together, personal and impersonal references -- every one contributes insights that the

others do not, for God's livingness moves in a saving relationality that escapes our imagination.

Speaking about the Triune God What is the nature of belief expressed in our speech about the Trinity? Speaking about the Trinity expresses belief in one God who is not a solitary God but a communion in love marked by overflowing life. Its language is analogical at all times: Holy Wisdom is like a Trinity, like a threefoldedness of personal relations. Of what does the Trinity provide a symbolic picture? It provides a symbolic picture of totally shared life at the heart of the universe. Mutual relationships of different equals appears as the ultimate paradigm of personal and social life. The Trinity as pure relationality, moreover, epitomizes the connectedness of all that exists in the universe. How does the triune symbol stand as a profound critique of human values? The image of God is the ultimate reference point for the values of a community. The central notion of divine Trinity, symbolizing the relational character of Holy Wisdom points inevitably toward a community of equals related in mutuality. The mystery of Sophia-Trinity must be confessed as critical prophecy in the midst of patriarchal rule.

FATHER (ABBA) What does a literal-minded reader of the Gospel believe about the name of God? That the Christian community is not free to expand its repertoire of divine imagery because Jesus spoke to and about God as Father and taught his disciples to do likewise. (Matthew 6:9 "Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Luke 11:2 He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.) What does such a literal-minded person conclude? Jesus' teaching and example make paternal metaphors normative for the Church so that other names for God are excluded. Is Jesus' language about God monolithic? No, but it is distinctive and colorful. For example: a woman searching for her lost money, a shepherd looking for his lost sheep, a baker-woman kneading dough, a traveling businessman, the wind that blows where it wills, the birth experience that delivers persons into new life, an employer offending workers by his

generosity -- these and many more. Plus he prayed as a Jew! Insistence on Father as the only term coherent with his praxis is not naively sustained. What is the scriptural data about "Abba" as Jesus' name for God? Regarding "Abba" -- 4 times in Mk, 15 in Lk, 49 in Mt, 109 in Jn. Actually referring to God as "Father" 1 in Mk, 1 in Q, special to Lk 2, special to Mt 1, Jn 73. It is a matter of theological development in the early Church rather than abundant use by the actual Jesus who lived. What do the synoptic Gospels show as Jesus' habitual term for God? Basileia tou theou -- the kingdom/realm of God. God's own being actively establishing a community of shalom. (In John's Gospel, "I Am" appears at the center of Jesus' self-revelation.) What does the word "Abba" connote in the Gospel context? Abba connotes intimacy of relationship between Jesus and God, along with the sense of God's compassion over suffering, willing good in the midst of evil. Abba is a God of the oppressed, a God of community and celebration. Everyone related to the one Abba stands in a relationship of mutuality with one another. Matthew 23:8-12 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9 And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father--the one in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.