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| The Council of Nicaea, 325 CE |
“I still have many things to say to you,
but you cannot bear them now.” (John
16:12)
The problem with the Feast of the Holy Trinity is it’s just not sexy enough. After the excitement of Pentecost, Holy Trinity seems as dry as a wino’s tongue after a three-day bender. At least with Pentecost we get some passion and excitement. There’s a rushing wind and tongues of flame and the once wimpy disciples suddenly busting out of the upper room and proclaiming the mighty deeds of God in strange languages. The Holy Spirit is spectacular. She makes us think of miraculous healing or unexpected flashes of insight or some kind of religious ecstasy.[i] It’s all pretty awesome.
Trinity, in contrast, is kind of a let-down. Although it’s supposed to be one of the six major festivals of the Christian Church, it’s the only one that doesn’t have a cool story to go with it. No Virgin birth, no Wise Men, no Resurrection from the dead, no speaking in tongues, no Savior ascending into the clouds. Nothing. Just a weird and confusing piece of Church dogma.
I wonder if the Church made this a major festival because it was such a goat rodeo getting this three-in-one idea of the divine to be our doctrine. We actually went three hundred years before we all agreed on the nature of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We argued and fought and disagreed and sometimes got pretty nasty with each other. If you put yourself in the shoes (or sandals—I guess they didn’t wear shoes back then) of those early Christians, it’s not hard to see why they had such a hard time.
The first Christians were Jews who believed there is only one God. So what do you do with Jesus? Some started saying Jesus was divine, but then you get two gods when you’re only supposed to have one. And just how was Jesus divine? Was he a man who became God or was he God who became man? Even Saint Paul can’t agree with himself on this. In Romans 1:4 he declares Jesus Son of God because of his resurrection. In Philippians 2:6-11, Paul quotes an old hymn which says Jesus was God who humbled himself and took human form[ii]. There were even conflicting ideas in the ancient Near East about what “Son of God” was supposed to mean. If you were a pagan, it meant some divine being knocked up a mortal chick and produced a hybrid god-man. If you were Jewish, it could mean someone was really, really righteous, and God favored them like you would treat your own flesh and blood.
Personally, I think the greatest miracle is that Christianity managed to survive for over three hundred years with all these confusing interpretations and opinions. Finally, when the Roman emperor Constantine decided Christianity could be legal and accepted (and it also become rather fashionable, too, because chic Roman citizens wanted to embrace whatever the emperor was into), he needed to get everyone on the same page for political reasons. Hence, the Council of Nicaea was convened in 325 and we ended up with the Nicene Creed.[iii]
Personally, however politically motivated the Council of Nicaea may have been, I think they somehow managed to give us a pretty good doctrine—even if most of us don’t ever stop to think about it or really give a rip about it. Is it confusing? You bet. But that’s okay. I don’t think anyone can really grasp the nature of God. We can only experience the things God has done and continues to do. I like the doctrine of the Holy Trinity because I can contemplate the vastness of the universe and the beauty of creation and experience God. I can listen to the words of Jesus and remember the love manifest in his sacrifice and experience God. And I can know that I’m alive—that the breath of God and life flow through me, that I have thoughts and feelings and memories—and I can think of all these things and say, “Dang! God is really wonderful. And terrifying. And mysterious. And pretty darn good. And I can feel, somehow, the connection.
I always try to remind my Confirmands that the Spirit of God is in them and in everyone else, too. If they sin against anyone, they’ve sinned against God and against themselves. If they sin against themselves—by neglecting their own gifts, by being too hard on themselves, by feeling unworthy or inadequate or by letting others oppress them—God and all the rest of us will feel it. We are all connected.
What I can’t and won’t believe is that the God who is so vast, mysterious, and inscrutable would ever hold it against us if we didn’t confess a man-made doctrine.[iv] The God who flung the stars into orbit and who died on the cross can’t be that weenie.
Our creeds and confessions are our sorry, lame-assed attempt to define that which is undefinable. We’ll never understand God. This is the best we can do. And it’s okay. I don’t think I ever understood my parents, but I was still their kid. Love can work independently of comprehension. Right now, our pea-brains can’t bear God’s mystery. Thank God we don’t have to.
God bless, and thanks for reading.
[i]
Which, by the way, we Lutherans really don’t like. We prefer worship to be as
composed and un-ecstatic as possible, thank you.
[ii]
This controversy is known as “Adoption versus Incarnation” in case you’re
interested.
[iii] This is a much nicer Trinitarian creed
than the later and much longer Athanasian Creed, which warned you you’d fry in
Hell if you didn’t believe every word of it. The Athanasian Creed was included in the old green Lutheran Book of Worship, but didn’t
make it into Evangelical Lutheran Worship.
It ends with a real “works righteous” warning which Luther probably didn’t
agree with. It’s also long, redundant, and boring and adds another five minutes
onto your Sunday morning worship.
[iv]
Normally I wouldn’t use the sexist term “man-made,” but face it: all the participants
at the Council of Nicaea were guys.
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