Trinity Sunday

Let us pray.

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be alway acceptable unto thee, O Lord, our Strength, and our Redeemer. Amen.

From the Epistle: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.” (Rev. 4:8)

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Today is Trinity Sunday, or as it is also known, “The Solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity.”

Trinity Sunday is very different from all the other Sundays of the Church year because it celebrates God Himself, not an event in time.

Of all our Eucharists, this Feast is for me, the most deeply moving because it comes the closest to being pure unadulterated adoration of God.

Today we mark the special nature of this feast by using the Athanasian Creed instead of the Nicene Creed.

The Athanasian Creed requires some explanation.

Just as the Nicene Creed was written to remove “wiggle room” for wrong ideas about God left by the Apostle’s Creed, the Athanasian Creed removes the “wiggle room” left by the Nicene.

It elaborates the teaching of the Nicene Creed to make it even more definitive.

Whether or not Athanasius wrote the Creed himself, of which there is some doubt, it clearly reflects the Trinitarian teaching for which he suffered so much to uphold.

The Athanasian Creed makes it absolutely clear what we believe about what it teaches is a matter of spiritual life and death.

The preface lays this out succinctly:

“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.”

The creed then goes on to define the catholic faith in great, we might even say exhaustive, detail.

It then concludes with a yet final warning: “This is the catholic faith; which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved.”

It is important to remember the word “catholic” here does not refer specifically to Roman Catholicism.

The opposite of catholic as it is used in the Creeds is not Protestant, it is heretic.

All Orthodox Protestants surely accept what the creed teaches; indeed, the Athanasian Creed is explicitly recognized by many Protestant Churches, including Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists.

What makes the Athanasian Creed controversial are the explicit statements there are beliefs which are essential to our salvation; this is not congenial to many people in our time.

To them, such teaching is unduly harsh.

They think, “Regardless of what you believe, if you’re a nice person and do good things for people, God will let you into Heaven.”

That view, sometimes called Latitudinarianism, sounds to modern ears very open minded and tolerant, but it is dangerous, indeed Hell-spawned, nonsense.

Jesus makes it clear it doesn’t work that way, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life.” (John 3:36)

Having the right beliefs on the Trinity and the Incarnation, those things set forth in the Creeds, is essential to salvation.

I hasten to add, essential, but not sufficient.

As Jesus put it, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21)

Or, in the Great Assize, Jesus makes no mention of theology as the basis for separating the sheep from the goats.

That having been said, right beliefs are essential.

Indeed, the whole plan of salvation stands on the Incarnation and the Incarnation stands on the Trinity.

If Jesus is not very God and very Man, his sacrifice on the Cross, while perhaps noble and inspiring, is just another story of a good man murdered by bad men; His sacrifice would have had no power to atone for our sins.

And if Jesus is not distinct from His Father, to whom did He offer His sacrifice?

Without the Incarnation and the Trinity, the whole plan of salvation simply lacks coherence.

Another aspect of this is how the Trinity pulls the whole of Scripture together.

God wants us to love Him with our hearts, and our souls, and our minds.

We cannot love Him whom we do not know.

The Bible is the record of God’s progressive revelation of Himself over a period of some 40 centuries, from Abraham to Jesus.

The Trinitarian nature of God is all through the Scriptures, in types and shadows in the Old Testament, and more fully revealed in the New.

Under the leading of the Holy Ghost, as Jesus promised, the early Church began to put the pieces together; indeed, although they did not use the highly technical and precise language of the Creeds, the church’s belief in the Trinity is reflected in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch, going back to 110 A.D.

The first used of the term, “Trinity” was in Theophilus of Antioch’s writing in the late 2nd century.

Above all, the Church’s belief in the Trinity is reflected in the oldest known liturgies, especially Baptism.

The notion that a bunch of politically minded graybeards invented the Doctrine of the Trinity in 325 AD is just nonsense, historically.

What did happen at the Council of Nicaea was, to exclude certain heresies, ideas which imperil the souls of the faithful, the Apostles’ Creed was elaborated to preclude those evil and destructive heresies.

This required a great deal of argument about the exact wording of the Creed, which although tedious to our taste, was necessary to firmly exclude those wrong ideas.

And even so, the Church had to reconvene again in Constantinople in 381 to amend the Nicene Creed to address other heresies which had slipped in during the intervening years.

What this seemingly straightforward story of the definition of the Doctrine of the Trinity leaves out is the horrible persecutions visited on orthodox Christians.

Orthodox bishops, like Athanasius and Hosius, were deprived of their Dioceses; indeed, Athanasius would spend a total of 17 years in exile, have been exiled from his see five times by four different Arian emperors.

Eventually, however, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, the Orthodox understanding of the Trinity, as enshrined in the Nicene Creed prevailed and is now the (at least official) teaching of most Christian Churches.

When we read about these controversies, moderns, such as us, may be tempted to wonder what all the fuss was about, who cares whether the Son is of the same substance as the Father, or of like substance, or even what substance means?

What we can scarcely fathom is these men understood, in a way very few today can even imagine, what you believe really, truly does affect your salvation.

They did not brave ridicule, opposition, and exile for the sake of some esoteric philosophical proposition, but rather because they were lovers of men’ souls.

So, in closing, let me just mention one aspect of the Doctrine of the Trinity which deeply touches my heart.

Saint John wrote in what must be one of the most profound verses in Scripture: “God is love.” (I John 4:8)

Not “God loves” or “God is loving” but “God IS Love.”

What may escape our notice is this is an intensely Trinitarian verse.

Love requires an adequate object.

Unless there was at least one other co-eternal divine person, before He created the universe, the Father would have had no one to love.

The essence of a solitary deity could be many things: wisdom, power, holiness, or whatever, you can be all those things by yourself, but His essence could not be love, because you can’t be love all by yourself.

What is truly wonderful is the power of the love of the Trinity which binds the three divine persons in such perfect harmony and joy there has never been, and never will be, any disagreement or difference of opinion among them.

Love is sometimes spoken of as a silly, sentimental thing, but this love is the most powerful force in the universe.

The outflowing of the love of the Trinity brought this universe into existence, sustains it in being, and will finally enfold the creation to its heart in the great consummation.

It is the love of the Trinity which sent Jesus to live and die as one of us.

Once again, quoting John, “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (John 4:9-10)

So, is the doctrine of the Trinity a big deal? Yes, beloved, it really is.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2)

And the word? The word is love.

Amen.

And now we ascribe unto Thee, O Lord, all might, majesty, power, and dominion, both now and forever. Amen.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. (St. Matt. vii. 21.)