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THE UNITY OF GOD, THE UNITY OF ALL CREATION
The Rt Rev’d Richard Randerson, Dean
Sermon for Trinity Sunday, 11 June 2006 at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Auckland, NZ
On 16 July 1054 three papal legates sent by Pope Leo IX from Rome walked into the great St Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and laid a letter of excommunication on the altar just prior to the celebration of the eucharist. Thus the Pope excommunicated Patriarch Cerularius of Constantinople and the whole Orthodox Church. The dispute was multi-layered but included issues of power between the Western Church based in Rome and the Eastern Church based in Constantinople. There were doctrinal disputes also, such as between the greater emphasis placed on Christ’s divinity (Eastern) and Christ’s humanity (Western). And also a very specific debate about the addition of the Latin word filioque to the Nicene Creed. Filioque means ‘and from the Son’. It appears in Western versions of the creed when it describes the Holy Spirit as proceeding ‘from the Father and the Son’. The filioque was not part of the original Nicene Creed and became a point of difference between East and West. The Lambeth Conference in 1988 recommended that in the Anglican Church globally the filioque be removed from the creed, but the New Zealand Church has not done so.
The origins of the Nicene Creed lay in the Council of Nicaea which was convened in 325AD by the Roman Emperor Constantine, soon after his conversion to Christianity around 313AD. On our study tour of Turkey last year our party stood in the ruins of Constantine’s palace on the shores of Lake Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea was one of seven ecumenical councils held over about 500 years. It was attended by 300 bishops, all invited and paid for by the Emperor. (One might consider whether a government today would pay for a meeting of all the bishops to resolve doctrinal differences). The debates at such councils were almost always over in what way Jesus was both human and divine, and how the two could be combined in a doctrinal formula. Constantine himself presided over parts of the Council of Nicaea and said of the dispute that he regarded it as being of a “truly insignificant character” and that the discussions should be “intended merely as an intellectual exercise...and not hastily produced in the popular assemblies”. The long-running conundrum over the divine and human natures of Christ was very simply resolved in one of the lines from The Da Vinci Code where Sophie Neveu, the alleged descendant from Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene suggests that "maybe the divine emerges within the human" – a profound insight that indicates how the divine might be expressed in each one of us.
And then another doctrinal debate confronts us on Trinity Sunday each year. How can God be both three and one? The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church describes the doctrine of the Trinity as a “mystery...that can neither be known by unaided human reason apart from revelation, nor cogently demonstrated by reason after it has been revealed”. With all these debates, then, about the filioque clause, the link between Jesus’ human and divine natures, and the nature of the Trinity, it is not surprising that a member of the congregation came to me this week and said he found it very difficult to say the Creed, for after all, what did it all mean? Does it make any sense at all in the 21st century?
I responded by recalling a description from theological college days of the creeds as being symbolic in their truth. That means that the creeds are not to be equated with the ultimate truth about God, for the great mystery of God can never be captured by human thinking. At best all we can do is to seek to express what we may discern about God in human word pictures that can point to the truth, or be symbols of the truth, but not to be confused with the truth itself. Our difficulty is compounded by the fact that much of the language in, for example, the Nicene Creed, dates back 1700 years or more to a time when word pictures arose out of the philosophical constructs of the day, which are very different from our own. In a few minutes notice the words we will use in the Affirmation of Faith – words which are contemporary to us, which express truth in categories we can understand, but who knows, may become equally out-dated in years to come. The truth of God is unchanging, but the words we use to express that truth need to be constantly re-examined. A Scottish theologian, Elizabeth Templeton, speaking at the Lambeth Conference in 1988, said “for some of us the invincibility of God’s love is disclosed in some kind of absolute, safeguarded articulation, whether of Scripture, Church or tradition. And there are those among us who believe that God’s love is disclosed in the relativity and risk of all doctrine, ethics or ecclesiastical structure...which exist at an unspecifiable distance from the face to face truth of God”.
I count myself in the latter group, seeing the creeds as pointing us in the direction of divine truth, but not to be mistaken for the truth itself. The bottom line, when all the creeds have been written and recited, is what does it all mean for us. And the simple truth about the Trinity, as we understand it today, is that the interplay between Father, Son and Spirit, that dynamic interactive mutuality of three persons, each distinct yet inseparably one, is a model of all of life. As within the godhead there is mutuality and co-operative endeavour, so that symbolises our own relationships with God, with each other, and with every person and part of Creation. In the words of Richard Hooker, 16th century Anglican theologian : “God hath created nothing simply for itself : but each thing in all things, and of everything each part in each other have such interest, that in the whole world nothing is found whereunto anything created can say, ‘I need thee not’.
In our Gospel today (John 3. 1-17) we find Nicodemus, unsatisfied by the religion he knows, seeking in Jesus a closer relationship with God, and hearing from Jesus the words that unless he be born of the spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. And Isaiah (6.1-8), as a young man, is confronted with the vision of God, high and lifted up in the Temple. Inadequate though he feels, he is cleansed by God, and hearing God’s question : “Who will be our messenger?” is able to say : “Here am I : send me”. In our own searching and finding, God comes to each of us, calling us uniquely to serve each in our own place. And from that primary relationship flows our relationship with all other people, and our responsibility to them as equal members of God’s family.
The relationship extends to the Earth itself, and every creature and element. In the prayer of the Ojibway people of Canada:
Great Father, look on our brokenness. We know that in all creation
only the human family has strayed from the Sacred Way.
Great Father, Holy one, teach us love, compassion and honour,
that we may heal the earth, and heal each other.
Our church fathers wrestled to formulate the words of our faith at Nicaea, and in many other councils of the early Church. The words may seem strange and uninspiring. But in digging behind them we find what lies at the heart of our faith - a relationship with God that is the basis of the unity we share with all God’s people, and all of God’s earth.
Dean’s e-mail: >randers@ihug.co.nz
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