Pages

Monday, July 27, 2009

The Trinity and The Church

I have been doing a lot of thinking and some reading about the trinity and I keep hearing a lot about the ideas of community and economy within the trinity. I have been reading a little Barth, Moltmann, Volf, and some other stuff from the early Church Father's regarding the trinity. Moltmann and Volf consistanly talk about the Trinity in relation to the Church and often use the language of economy and community. This is something that I am really struggling with. Moltmann and Volf are two theologians who I respect and I know have the sole ambition of serving the Lord, but the language they are using in regards to the trinity is troubling. In my opinion they are leaning towards a tri-theistic and more individualistic view of the trinity. There is also a tendency to compare the community within the trinity to the community within the Church. I am not so sure of this. I find the comparison of the trinity to the Church to be quite erroneous and far from the views of the Church from Nicea onward. Instead of definning the Church by the community within the Trinity we are defining the Trinity by the standards of the community within the Church. It is often that I hear people attributing human or material qualities to God, and to be all honest with you I don't understand how that works. Creation cannot define the creator, rather creation is defined and exist only in part because the creator created and defined it. We define God in terms of what we want and like rather than in terms of what scripture tells us that God is. We must not strive to define Trinity based on the Church and to describe attributes of God based on ourselves. Rather, the Church must be defined by the Godhead and we, as individuals, must strive to align our personal attributes with those of God. God is not defined by us, we are defined by God, who created us.