Lynne Baab

Praise to the Trinity in four movements

Thursday May 26 2016

Last Sunday was Trinity Sunday. Here are my words of praise as I reflect back on my life.

1. Late elementary school. My parents take me to church every Sunday but we never, never talk about God at home. Prayers and hymns at church leave me with the idea that God is a bit mysterious in his holiness, and that humans can rest in this mystery and enjoy God’s otherness. The notion of the Trinity enhances this sense of mystery. I love the analogies of water in three forms (steam, liquid and ice) and the three leaves of one shamrock. How can we understand this three-in-one? Why would we want to? Our job is to enjoy God. My childhood heart is lifted up because of this great mystery.

2. My thirties. I am a student at Fuller Theological Seminary, and my favorite professor is Ray Anderson. In his theology classes, he often talks about the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity. Jesus, he says, is eternally submissive to his Father, obeying his Father and giving him glory. After the Incarnation, he says, the Holy Spirit is permanently stamped with the personality of Jesus. To experience the Holy Spirit is to experience Jesus. We are invited to obey the Father, like Jesus did and does. We are invited to serve and love in the world like Jesus did and does, through the power of the Holy Spirit. We are invited to join with each member of the Trinity, giving praise and glory to the other members of the Trinity. My heart is filled with wonder because I am invited to join into something so huge and beautiful.

3. My forties. I write several books about congregational issues, and my publisher, The Alban Institute, markets to Unitarian as well as Christian congregations. So, along with my interviews in Christian churches, I also interview numerous Unitarians and visit several Unitarian Universalist congregations. The Unitarians I meet are lovely people: good hearted, caring, deep thinkers. Along with my interview questions about how their congregations work, I ask questions about their spirituality. Later I reflect on the differences between what they say as Unitarians and what I believe as a Trinitarian Christian, and I come to the conclusion the difference is the location and personality of the holy/sacred. Christians believe that the holy/sacred has come to earth from heaven in a person, Jesus Christ, and that through the sending of the Holy Spirit, God remains present with humans. God is here in the Holy Spirit, stamped eternally with the personality of Jesus Christ. God is also in heaven. My heart sings with joy at the generosity of a God who would be so close to us and yet also transcendent, holy and exalted.

4. My fifties. I am hired as a lecturer in pastoral theology in a department with two systematic theologians who have a lot to say about the Trinity. I listen to them, and the graduate students they supervise, as they present seminars and public lectures. The theologians and students emphasize the communal nature of the Trinity, that we are called into relationship with a relational Trinity, who then empowers us to be in human community. I am invited to write a chapter for a book on online community, so I read Being as Communion by the great Eastern Orthodox theologian, John Zizioulas, who argues that to be human is to be in relationship because of the nature of the God in whose image we are created. I am stretched by this call to love, and my heart rejoices at the beauty of this communal God, whose three-in-oneness has illuminated my life ever since childhood.

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity.
(Reginald Heber, 1783–1826)

(Here's an earlier post on the Celtic Christian perspective on the Trinity with some beautiful Celtic Trinity prayers. Next week I will begin a series on worshipping God as Creator of a beautiful world. If you'd like to get an email when I post on this blog, sign up under "subscribe" in the right hand column. This post originally appeared on the Godspace blog.)

Celtic Christianity: The Trinity

Saturday May 9 2015

Deeply ingrained in the heart and soul of Celtic Christian spirituality is the mystery of one God in three persons, a truth that is taught clearly in the Bible, even though the word Trinity is not found in Scripture. Three in one; one in three. Esther de Waal writes:

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 most natural and immediately accessible thing in the world. [1]

The image of three in one is found frequently in Celtic art and poetry. Analogies from nature and daily life permeate the Celtic poems about the Trinity:

     Three folds of the cloth, yet only one napkin is there,
     Three joints of 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 water their origin share,
     Three Persons in God; to one God alone we make prayer. [2]

Sometimes Celtic poems go on at length about the Holy Three, but some are brief and vivid, like this one:

     O Father who sought me
     O Son who bought me
     O Holy Spirit who taught me. [3]

I wonder if enthusiasm for the Trinity has fallen into disfavor because our generation has such a nigh need to be able to explain and understand everything in a rational way. I can remember as a child being very enthusiastic about the Trinity. In my simple childhood faith, I enjoyed the riddle of one being three and three being one. The Celts’ enthusiasm for this great mystery has rekindled in me a joy and wonder at the great truth that we simply cannot understand everything about God, and we don’t need to.

A personal story about the way Celtic Christianity helped one person: Integration of so many things

By Sandra, age 30

My background was Roman Catholic and Assembly of God, and I didn’t know how to marry them. I would go into Bible studies in my Assembly of God church and say, “We should take care of the environment,” and no one would respond. On every subject, I got a lot of answers, but no questions, no mystery. Among Catholics, I would talk about the importance of an active faith that relies on the Holy Spirit, and no one could relate. In both settings, I saw in church life a dichotomy between the physical world and the spiritual world. The Celtic Christians just did not see that split. I found in Celtic Christianity an integration of so many things: care for creation, reliance on the Holy Spirit, the presence of God in everyday life, God being present and real and yet also full of mystery. I get so frustrated that we have lost so much of the unique and balanced Celtic world view.

(This post is excerpted from A Renewed Spirituality: Finding Fresh Paths at Midlife by Lynne M. Baab. Copyright © Lynne M. Baab. If you’d like to receive an email whenever I post on this blog, sign up in the right hand column under “subscribe.”)

Other posts on Celtic Christianity:

• Who were the Celts?
• Pilgrimage and the Celtic sense of place
• The earth and art
• Community
• Wholistic prayer
• Sorrow for sin without self-absorption or self-punishment
• Paradoxes
• Ross's story about art
• Jan's story about pilgrimage

[1] Esther de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 38, 39.
[2] Eleanor Hull, The Poem Book of the Gael, quoted in de Waal, The Celtic Way of Prayer, 39-40.
[3] Douglas Hyde, Religious Songs of Connacht, Volume II (London: Dublin, 1906, reprint Irish University Press, 1972), 39.