Celtic Spirituality June 9, 2008
Trinity and Community
Take up Home Work
Home work:
Visit a gallery, find one piece and meditate on it
Is God present in the piece? How?
Is He absent? How?
- Extra reading: Luci Shaw Art and Christian Spirituality: Companions in the Way in Direction Journal Fall 1998, Vol 27 No.2, 109-22 www.directionjournal.org/article/?980
The Celtic Trinitarian formula
Saint Patrick is famous for a few things, even in the general culture – for driving the snakes out of Ireland (only metaphorically) and explaining the Trinity with the shamrock! He may or may not have done this, but the story almost belittles the importance of the Trinity to the Ancient Celts.
The Trinity is how we describe God who is one and who is three persons
This is what Esther De Waal writes:
“The God whom the Celtic peoples know is above all the Godhead who is Trinity, the God whose very essence is that of a threefold unity of persons bound in a unity of love. Here is a profound experience of God from a people who are deeply Trinitarian without any philosophical struggle about how that is to be expressed intellectually. Perhaps the legend of St. Patrick stooping down to pick up the shamrock in order to explain the trinity is after all more significant than we might have thought. It is as though he were saying to those early Irish people: Your God is a God who is Three-in-One and this is the most natural and immediately accessible thing in the world!
- Esther De Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer, p. 38
It may not have been that difficult to convince the Celts of a Trinitarian God, Esther De Waal writes again:
“…Traditionaly the Celtic people with their love of formulating things and their passion for significant numbers have always given special verneration to the number three. Most beloved of all was the triad, an arrangement of three statements that summed up a thing or person or quality or mood, or simply linked otherwise incompatible things. If there were a paradox or a pun in a triad, so much the better, for they were, above all things, paradoxical.
- Esther De Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer, p. 40
As you’ve been listening to, and praying Celtic prayers over these last few weeks, I hope you’ve noticed the Trinitarian formula in many of them:
A small drop of water
To thy forehead, beloved,
Meet for the Father, Son and Spirit,
The Triune of power.
A small drop of water
To encompass my beloved,
Meet for Father, Son and Spirit,
The Triune of power.
A small drop of water
To fill thee with each grace,
Meet for Father, Son and Spirit,
The Triune of power.
– Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer (Doubleday, 1997) p. 33.
A prayer for washing their face:
The palmful of the God of Life
The palmful of the Christ of Love
The palmful of the Spirit of Peace
Triune
Of grace
- Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer (Doubleday, 1997) p. 77
I Lie Down This Night
I lie down this night with God,
And God will lie down with me;
I lie down this night with Christ,
And Christ will lie down with me;
I lie down this night with Spirit,
And the Spirit will lie down with me;
God and Christ and the Spirit
Be lying down with me.
Esther de Waal, The Celtic Vision (Liguori Publications, 2001) p. 58.
The sacred Three
To save,
To shield,
To surround
The hearth
The house
The household
This eve,
This night
Oh! This eve,
This night and every night,
Each single night.
Amen
- Esther De Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer, p. 48
O Father who sought me
O Son who bought me
O holy Spirit who taught me.
- Esther De Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer, p. 43
Understanding the Trinity
It is not that the Celts just accepted the Trinity without trying to explain it or find metaphors that will help us to understand:
Three folds of the cloth, yet only one napkin is there
Three joints in the finger, but still only one finger fair
Three leaves of the shamrock, yet no more than one shamrock to wear,
Frost, snow-flakes and ice, all in water their origin share
Three Persons in God; to one God alone we make prayer.
We are told that Patrick introduced the idea of the Trinity to the pagan Irish through the Shamrock – its leaf is has three sections, and yet it is one leaf
Others have used an egg to describe the trinity – it is one cell, but it has the shell, the white and the yolk
Some people compare the Trinity to fire having a flame, giving off both heat and light.
These Illustrations might be helpful to get our minds around the idea of something being three and being one, but the analogies cannot be pushed too far before they break down.
The Egg and the Shamrock make God appear very static, and they do not express any idea of the personhood of the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit.
Bob Burridge writes about how these illustrations miss the mark
“God is not presented in the Bible as three different things combining to form a unified idea or mere appearance. God’s substance, power and glory are shared by all members of the Trinity as individual persons distinguished from one another only in ways God has revealed.”
He also says:
“Many attempts to illustrate the Trinity fall into the error of modalism. Modalism says that there is one God, but he reveals himself to us in different forms at different times – sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Holy Spirit) One common illustration presents the godhead as being like water which may exist as a liquid, or as a solid (ice), or as a gas (water vapor). The claim is that all three are water. But these states of water are not like the Trinity. God does not transform himself from one person to the other but is all the time, altogether, all three persons. The distinction of the persons in God is not one of changing states of being.”
- Bob Burridge, Geneva Institute for Reformed Studies GIRS.com
If these common images are not full enough, is there another that is much more full? (we know that any metaphor breaks down sooner or later)
It is not that we need to find a new image, but more that we need to rediscover an old image.
Brian Mclaren writes in a passage about what Eastern Orthodoxy taught him about Jesus:
“I learned that the early church leaders described the Trinity using the term perichoresis (peri-circle, choresis-dance): the Trinity was an eternal dance of Father, Son and Spirit sharing mutual love, honour, happiness, joy and respect.
You don’t find this image among the Celts, but I think if they knew it, they’d love it!
As I meditated on this Idea of the circle-dance of the trinity, This painting the Dave Chapman painted was always in my head. He painted it, not as a painting of the trinity, but as a painting of the children in our church. But it is an amazing image
Pinnock writes:
Gregory of Nanzianzus captured the mystery of triune life using the image of dance (perichoresis)… The metaphor suggests moving around, making room, relating to one another without losing identity. The divine unity lies in the relationality of Persons, and the relationality is the nature of the unity. At the heart of this ontology is the mutuality and reciprocity among the Persons. Trinity means that shared life is basic to the nature of God. God is perfect sociality, mutuality, reciprocity and peace. As a circle of loving relationships, God is dynamically alive. There is only one God, but this one God is not solitary but a loving communion that is distinguished by overflowing life.
God is three, and he always has been three – he did not become two at the first Christmas, and then become three at Pentecost. He has always existed as a community of three. The dance is eternal.
When you think of it, it makes sense – John tells us that “God is love” – He is eternally love, God did not become love when he created us to love, the love of God has always existed in God as the three love each other perfectly.
Genesis 1:26-27 tells us
Then God said, "Let us make humanity in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
So God created humanity in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
The first thing you might notice is that God says, "Let us make humanity in our image.” The next thing that I notice lately is that the line right after God creating in his image is the line that he created us male and female – he creates us in community, with the ability to expand the community. I believe that a large part of being created in the image of God is being created in community as God himself is in community.
God always exists as a Trinity, and he always acts as a Trinity – the Son did not leave the trinity to come to earth, the Spirit does not leave the Trinity to live within us.
You can see this ongoing relationship often in the Gospel like in Luke 10:21
“At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.”
While the Trinity can be compared to a circle dance, it could also be compared to a jazz trio where there are times when the bass has prominence, but the drums and the guitar keep playing, and then the drums come to the fore, and later the guitar. I don’t think that Gregory of Nanzianzus ever heard a jazz trio, but I think he might be happy with this illustration as well
The immanence of the Trinity
I think that where we can often go wrong with the concept of the Trinity is that it stays just that, a concept, something to philosophize and theologize about rather than someone, someones, a community to have a relationship with . But for the Celts, The Trinity was not a concept that kept God far and above their minds: it was what brought God close.
“These people were at ease in speaking of the Trinity, finding analogies not only in nature, but also in daily life:
Esther De Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer, p. 40
The Trinity abides with us exactly the same as the ore in the earth, or a man in the house, or a child in the womb, or a fire in a stove, or the sea in a well, or as the soul is in the eye, so is the Trinity in the godly.” Morgan Llwyd, quoted by Esther De Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer, p. 40
The call to community
What does this mean for us?
Join the Dance!
The Spirit takes us by the hand and leads us into the dance, and he introduces us to the Trinity: This is the Father, he’s been waiting for you to join the dance since the beginning of time! This is he son, he paid you ticket into the dance with his life, and his life will teach you how to dance. And for the rest of eternity, the spirit keeps us in the dance reminding us that we are children of God and he loves to dance with us.
Join the Dance – don’t be wall flower – be united with the Father, Son and Spirit, Embrace the Father, Let the Son teach you to Dance, let the ecstasy of the Spirit fill you with Joy in the dance!
Community
If the God we worship lives in community, is a community. We must come to realize that relationships are a huge part of our faith.
We cannot be a solitary Christian, there is no such thing. – A God who is community must have a community worshiping him, to be “godly” people, we must live in community
John Wesley:
“Holy solitaries” is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than “holy adulterers.” The gospel of Christ knows no religion but social, no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection.
We are not just called to dance with the Trinity, we are called to dance with his people, and to dance with his creation. We need to work out the discord, figure out how not to step on each other’s feet and practice grace and forgiveness when others step on ours.
To live and worship in community is to join in the very character of God. To live in right relationship with those around us and our environment is to be Godly!
The Spirit calls us into community with God – come join the dance!
The Spirit calls us into community with each other
We do pretty good at this here at the pub, but I’m going to invite you to go deeper.
The Celtic church was a monastic movement – centred around the monasteries – the abbots of a region often had more power than bishops, but while they were the abbot or “father” of the monastery, it was a much less hierarchical than it sounds – he or she would be know most for being a “soul friend” or Anam Cara – someone to walk with our guide you on your spiritual journey.
Soul Friend – Anam Cara
Home work:
Find an Anam Cara – go for coffee with someone that you can have a spiritual conversation with, and talk about your relationship with God
