James T. Cleland - "God in Three Persons?" (May 21, 1967)

Download
- Rights
- No Re-Use
  In Copyright
  More Rights Info
- Files (1)
- MP3
- Please be patient with media downloads. They are often large files.
Share

Embed Code
<iframe src='//idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4dj5dj1t?embed=true' height='125px' width='100%' frameborder='0' marginwidth='0' marginheight='0' scrolling='no' allowfullscreen></iframe>
Permalink

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4dj5dj1t
Skip to Item Info

Loading the media player...

Files for this Item

Transcript

Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.

-	Let us pray.	0:09
	Let the words of my mouth	0:12
	and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable	0:15
	in thy sight,	0:19
	O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.	0:20
	Amen.	0:25
	Today is Trinity Sunday.	0:31
	So what?	0:35
	Well, it has no conscious reference to Trinity College,	0:38
	either in Dublin or in Durham.	0:42
	It is a festival in honor of the Holy Trinity,	0:47
	three persons in one Godhead,	0:52
	the triunity,	0:56
	and thereby hangs a tale.	1:00
	Some years ago on a Trinity Sunday,	1:04
	I worshiped in an Episcopal church outside of Philadelphia.	1:07
	I eagerly awaited what the rector had to say	1:13
	on this central doctrine of orthodoxy.	1:16
	He began, "For over 20 years,	1:21
	I have preached a sermon on the Trinity	1:26
	on this particular Sunday each year.	1:29
	I have nothing left to say about the doctrine.	1:33
	So I shall talk to you about Zacchaeus.	1:38
	Zacchaeus was the little tax collector of Jericho	1:44
	who once climbed a tree	1:48
	so as to see Jesus."	1:50
	Now the rector, like Zacchaeus, was a little man.	1:53
	Like Zacchaeus, he was up a tree.	1:59
	Unlike Zacchaeus, he did not make haste to come down.	2:03
	Now, on this Trinity Sunday morning,	2:10
	I want to think aloud with you about God in three persons,	2:13
	and maybe you will come to the conclusion	2:20
	that I too should have concentrated on Zacchaeus.	2:22
	Trinity Sunday is an unusual festival.	2:29
	It is linked with no historical event	2:33
	as Christmas and Palm Sunday	2:38
	and Good Friday and Easter are.	2:42
	It is a purely theological feast,	2:46
	celebrating the accepted interpretation of the Godhead,	2:50
	and yet important enough	2:56
	to give its name to the next 24 Sundays	2:59
	in the Christian year.	3:04
	They are all known as the Sundays after Trinity.	3:07
	Now we here in the chapel acknowledge the Trinity	3:13
	every Sunday	3:16
	in our use of the doxology,	3:18
	as the response to the offering	3:20
	while it is carried to the altar.	3:23
	Praise God from whom all blessings flow.	3:25
	Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.	3:29
	Now, what is it all about?	3:35
	One approach to the doctrine leaves the inquirer	3:39
	in a state of puzzled bewilderment,	3:43
	which may turn into anger or laughter.	3:46
	How can anyone, even God, be in three persons?	3:51
	The bewilderment is not clarified for the average listener	4:01
	when we are told that person does not mean person	4:05
	in the sense of an individual being,	4:09
	but persona,	4:13
	which is Latin for the mask which an actor wore	4:16
	and points to him as one playing	4:22
	a specific and special part.	4:24
	If we make use of that analogy,	4:28
	then God is a divine somebody	4:31
	who appears in three personae,	4:35
	three masks,	4:39
	in the roles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.	4:41
	You can guess what is going to happen now.	4:47
	Questions are going to be raised such as,	4:51
	Does God play all three parts at the same time?	4:54
	Are the three parts in a chronological sequence,	5:02
	with the Father first and the Holy Spirit last?	5:05
	In what way are the three personae related	5:12
	each to the other?	5:16
	And don't think that the church	5:20
	over the years didn't ask questions like that.	5:22
	And don't assume that the answers were always the same	5:28
	or even coherent.	5:33
	Let me read you the Athanasian Creed,	5:37
	the official statement of orthodoxy on the Holy Trinity,	5:42
	ascribed to St. Athanasius, who died in 373,	5:48
	and widely accepted by 670 AD.	5:54
	It presents the Catholic faith	5:59
	over against the heretical teachings of Arianism,	6:02
	Nestorianism,	6:07
	and one which I cannot pronounce,	6:10
	Monophysitism,	6:13
	which heresies are still with us	6:16
	under other names.	6:19
	Now stay with me if you can.	6:22
	Here is the Athanasian Creed.	6:27
	"The Catholic faith is this,	6:32
	that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity,	6:34
	neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.	6:39
	For there is one person of the Father,	6:44
	another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost.	6:46
	But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son,	6:50
	and of the Holy Ghost is all one,	6:52
	the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.	6:55
	Such as the Father is, such is the Son,	7:00
	and such is the Holy Ghost.	7:03
	The Father uncreate,	7:06
	the Son uncreate,	7:08
	and the Holy Ghost uncreate.	7:10
	The Father incomprehensible,	7:12
	the Son incomprehensible,	7:14
	and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.	7:17
	The Father eternal,	7:20
	the Son eternal,	7:21
	and the Holy Ghost eternal.	7:22
	And yet there are not three eternals but one eternal.	7:25
	As also there are not three incomprehensibles,	7:30
	nor three uncreated,	7:33
	but one uncreated and one incomprehensible."	7:35
	Now let me skip some of it for your sakes.	7:41
	"The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten.	7:45
	The Son is of the Father alone,	7:50
	neither made nor created, but begotten.	7:52
	The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son,	7:56
	neither made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding.	7:59
	So there is one Father, not three Fathers,	8:06
	one Son, not three Sons,	8:09
	one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.	8:11
	And in this Trinity, none is afore or after another,	8:15
	none is greater or less than another,	8:20
	but the whole three persons	8:22
	are co-eternal together and co-equal.	8:24
	So that in all things, as is aforesaid,	8:28
	unity in Trinity and the Trinity in unity	8:32
	is to be worshiped."	8:36
	And listen to the last sentence.	8:38
	"He therefore that will be saved	8:40
	must thus think of the Trinity."	8:44
	Now, can we,	8:51
	untrained in the accepted philosophy	8:53
	of the first 10 centuries of the Christian era,	8:56
	understand, far less believe, such a statement?	8:59
	Is it any wonder that an English undergraduate,	9:06
	when asked what is the doctrine of the Trinity, replied,	9:08
	"The Father incomprehensible,	9:12
	the Son incomprehensible,	9:14
	and the whole thing incomprehensible.	9:16
	Something put in by theologians to make it more difficult,	9:20
	nothing to do with daily life or ethics."	9:24
	And yet, as I said to you,	9:28
	the Athanasian Creed ends with the words,	9:31
	"He therefore that will be saved	9:34
	must thus think of the Trinity."	9:37
	And our spontaneous response is gobbledygook.	9:41
	Bafflegab.	9:47
	The whole doctrine is a vague triangular blur.	9:50
	If we start our study of the Trinity	9:56
	with the Athanasian Creed,	9:58
	the normal reaction is one of puzzled bewilderment,	10:01
	and understandably so.	10:06
	A better place to start	10:11
	is with one of the New Testament passages	10:13
	which made up our morning lesson just read.	10:17
	The Matthew passage	10:21
	offers a baptismal formula	10:23
	used to this day,	10:26
	be the recipient a baby or an adult.	10:29
	The Pauline passage closes with a benediction.	10:34
	Now let's look at it.	10:38
	Paul changes the normal order of the three persons,	10:41
	which is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,	10:48
	as in the baptismal formula.	10:52
	Now the Pauline change is important.	10:55
	He starts with Jesus.	11:00
	"The grace of the Lord Jesus."	11:05
	Now do we grasp what this means?	11:10
	The origins of the Trinity are not to be found	11:13
	in the lecture halls of the philosophers	11:18
	but in the experience of the first Christians.	11:23
	Paul starts with what he had come to know about God	11:29
	because of the teaching and person of Jesus	11:34
	to whom he gave the name Lord,	11:38
	the one who reveals the will and character of God.	11:42
	When Paul, the Christian, thought of God,	11:48
	he thought in terms of what Jesus had made known.	11:53
	God, the author of grace,	11:58
	graciousness,	12:02
	forgiveness,	12:04
	deliverance from self,	12:06
	transformation.	12:09
	He wrote in that same letter to the Corinthians	12:11
	that he had experienced the light of the knowledge	12:14
	of the glory of God	12:19
	in the face of Christ.	12:22
	He had experienced the light of the knowledge	12:26
	of the glory of God	12:30
	in the face of Christ.	12:33
	The fact of Jesus Christ	12:36
	was definitive for Paul the Christian	12:38
	when he thought of God.	12:42
	But Paul had been a Jew.	12:46
	Now what does that signify?	12:49
	He had been taught about God.	12:51
	Creator and preserver.	12:54
	Lord of history.	12:56
	Giver of the law.	12:58
	He knew God as awful,	13:00
	just,	13:05
	sovereign.	13:06
	He worshiped that God.	13:08
	There was nothing casual about his devotion.	13:10
	He was trained as a rabbi and as an earnest Pharisee.	13:13
	He was a good man.	13:19
	His persecution of the church was a sign	13:23
	of his legal goodness.	13:28
	And he never gave up that primary loyalty to God.	13:31
	But under the influence of Jesus,	13:37
	he brought a new attribute into his view of God.	13:40
	God was still creator, sovereign, judge,	13:44
	but he was also Father.	13:50
	And that emphasis influenced the others.	13:54
	And so the second phrase in Paul's benediction,	13:58
	not the first,	14:01
	but the second is,	14:03
	"And the love of God."	14:05
	If he had been dictating more carefully,	14:10
	he would've added two more words.	14:13
	And the love of God the Father.	14:17
	Love is upon the throne.	14:22
	Paul learned that from Jesus.	14:25
	There's a third element in Paul's religious experience	14:29
	and it is expressed in the last phrase of the benediction,	14:33
	"And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit."	14:38
	A key word in the Acts of the Apostles is power.	14:43
	Power.	14:49
	The disciples were changed men after the Resurrection.	14:50
	The 11 who had fled from Jerusalem	14:55
	and deserted Jesus at the time of his trial and crucifixion	14:58
	would now stand up to anybody.	15:02
	Ecclesiastical officials.	15:06
	Imperial officers.	15:09
	Angry mobs.	15:11
	They were dynamite.	15:13
	And dunamis, dynamis is the Greek word for power.	15:17
	If you asked them what happened, what caused the change,	15:25
	they would say the Spirit is in us.	15:28
	If you pressed the matter further and asked, what spirit?	15:32
	They would be inconsistently consistent.	15:38
	Let Paul speak for them	15:43
	In three successive verses, in his letter to the Romans,	15:45
	Paul uses as identical terms,	15:51
	the spirit,	15:55
	the spirit of God,	15:57
	the spirit of Christ,	16:00
	Christ,	16:02
	the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead,	16:04
	he who raised Christ Jesus,	16:07
	his spirit.	16:10
	Seven synonyms in three verses.	16:12
	And all of these, which are the same spirit, dwell in you.	16:18
	The indwelling spirit of God the Father is tested,	16:26
	controlled,	16:31
	made normative	16:33
	by the teaching and life of Jesus of Nazareth.	16:36
	And thus Paul's experience of God was threefold.	16:41
	Trinitarianism began when men made this discovery,	16:47
	that they could not say all they meant by the word "God"	16:53
	until they had said Father, Son, Spirit.	17:00
	But "Son" was the word which controlled the other two.	17:06
	It is because of Jesus	17:14
	that Christianity has been, in its main line,	17:16
	a Trinitarian religion.	17:21
	And if we would understand the doctrine of the Trinity,	17:24
	the place to begin is not with the creeds,	17:27
	but with the experience of the early Christians,	17:31
	as it is recorded in the New Testament,	17:36
	summed up in a baptismal formula	17:40
	and a benediction.	17:43
	And yet we mustn't stop there.	17:47
	And here's where the intellectual difficulties begin.	17:50
	Canon Hodgson, in his book "The Doctrine of the Trinity,"	17:56
	has put his finger on the cause of all the problems	18:00
	which have pestered this doctrine for centuries.	18:06
	And he has done it in one sentence.	18:10
	"Christianity began	18:16
	as a Trinitarian religion	18:19
	with a Unitarian theology."	18:23
	Christianity began as a Trinitarian religion,	18:28
	that was the experience,	18:31
	with a Unitarian theology.	18:33
	The early Christians knew God as creator,	18:37
	as revealed in Jesus,	18:40
	as experienced in the Spirit.	18:41
	But the early Christians were Jews.	18:44
	They believed theologically in one God.	18:47
	And the trouble arose depending where the emphasis was laid	18:52
	on one God or on three persons.	18:58
	And so two parties came into being.	19:04
	Each side believed both emphasis	19:07
	but each was more emphatic about one of the emphasis.	19:11
	And this is how heresy arises,	19:17
	for heresy is never a lie, per se.	19:20
	Heresy is an over-emphasis	19:27
	of one aspect of a double truth.	19:31
	Now do not be upset by this threefold expression of God	19:36
	or by this threefold distinction within the Godhead.	19:40
	It's not peculiar to Christianity.	19:45
	Pitney Van Dusen tells of seeing in India	19:50
	a black ebony head	19:53
	showing three faces,	19:57
	a black ebony head showing three faces.	20:01
	And the Maharaja who owned it explained,	20:06
	"That is a representation of our Hindu deity.	20:10
	But unlike your Christian deity,	20:16
	we do not believe in three gods	20:20
	but in a single God with three faces."	20:23
	The austere face was Brahma,	20:28
	the ultimate reality.	20:31
	The distorted face was Shiva,	20:34
	the destroyer.	20:37
	The gentle face was Vishnu,	20:39
	the restorer.	20:43
	And the question comes up when we decide	20:46
	whether to stress a single head or the three faces,	20:49
	be we Hindu or Christian.	20:55
	If we stress the faces, the persons,	20:59
	then the problem is, how the three persons can be one God?	21:03
	What is the relation of each person to the others?	21:09
	Now we move from the Trinity of experience	21:13
	to the Trinity of speculation,	21:17
	of theology.	21:20
	The persons can be so individualized	21:22
	that we end up with three Gods.	21:26
	A committee of three with the Father in the chair.	21:30
	A kind of theological troika.	21:35
	This has been the stress	21:39
	and it's been the danger of the Greek Orthodox Church,	21:40
	which has been accused of tritheism,	21:44
	the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit	21:48
	being three distinct Gods.	21:50
	If on the other hand, we stressed the unity,	21:53
	the black ebony head, then the personae are masks,	21:57
	faces,	22:03
	parts in a drama,	22:04
	rather than individual entities.	22:06
	And now the problem is,	22:09
	to separate God the Father from Jesus the Son	22:11
	as distinct individualities.	22:16
	We know ourselves in various personae.	22:20
	Let us take an example.	22:24
	Chaplain Wilkinson is somewhere in this congregation.	22:27
	We know him as one entity,	22:32
	one individuality,	22:34
	in at least three personae, three masks,	22:37
	three modes of being.	22:42
	He is the son of his mother,	22:45
	the husband of his wife,	22:47
	and the father of his children.	22:49
	This is Howard in three persons.	22:53
	As a son, he is not a husband.	22:57
	As a husband, he is not a father.	23:00
	As a father, he is not a son.	23:04
	But what is he at a family gathering,	23:09
	where mother, wife, and children are all present?	23:14
	Is he a human chameleon?	23:20
	He is always Howard Wilkinson, but is he the same Howard	23:24
	in his three differing relationships?	23:29
	And the answer is no.	23:33
	And yes.	23:36
	Analogically, this primary emphasis on the unity of God	23:41
	has prevailed in the Western church	23:47
	ever since St. Augustine at the end of the fourth century.	23:50
	The doctrine of the Trinity stresses unity with diversity	23:55
	and diversity within unity,	24:00
	which is true of religious experience	24:04
	but a first-class enigma	24:07
	for theological consistency of thought.	24:11
	Well, what are we going to do with God in three persons?	24:16
	Let us claim neither too much	24:20
	nor too little for the doctrine.	24:22
	It is very anthropomorphic. Of course it is.	24:25
	What do you expect?	24:28
	It is man trying to understand God	24:30
	in terms of what he best knows,	24:35
	which is man.	24:39
	It's very analogical.	24:42
	Of course it is. What do you expect?	24:44
	Theology cannot be interrogated by the methods of the lab.	24:48
	The doctrine of the Trinity	24:54
	is man using relationships he understands	24:56
	to explain relationships which are new to him.	25:01
	Like father and son,	25:06
	which he knows,	25:10
	for the relationship of God and Jesus,	25:12
	at which he guesses.	25:17
	It's very Christocentric. Yes, it is.	25:20
	It is because of Jesus the Christ	25:24
	and/or because of the early Christians' experience of him	25:26
	that our faith is Trinitarian.	25:31
	All I would ask of us on this Trinity Sunday,	25:34
	this rainy festival,	25:38
	is to seek to understand	25:41
	what the church has been trying to say	25:43
	when it affirms God in three persons.	25:47
	And then we may come to the place	25:52
	where we can appreciate its witness,	25:55
	even though we have all kinds of difficulties	26:00
	with its mode of thought.	26:05
	Maybe though we cannot affirm its creeds,	26:08
	we shall be able to sing its hymns	26:13
	with affection,	26:16
	even with joy.	26:18
	Holy, holy, holy,	26:21
	God in three persons,	26:24
	blessed Trinity.	26:26
	And so after an ascription of praise to the Trinity,	26:29
	let us sing one of these hymns.	26:34
	To God the Father,	26:42
	God the Son,	26:43
	and God the Spirit,	26:45
	three in one,	26:47
	hallelujah.	26:49
	Amen.	26:51
	(church organ music)	26:55
	(congregation singing)	27:21
	(church organ music faintly in background)	29:44
	(church organ music faintly in background)	30:14
	(church choir singing)	30:21

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "God in Three Persons?" (May 21, 1967)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4dj5dj1t

Date:

May 21, 1967

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0384
ref5971_fwl
uachapelsermaud
duke:628488
dcrau002378
ark:/87924/r4dj5dj1t
1fda491b-3c77-4648-8857-7420c178e18e

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

See below

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

No Re-Use

In Copyright

Rights Note:

This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

Sponsor:

Sponsor this Digital Collection

James T. Cleland - "God in Three Persons?" (May 21, 1967)

Transcript

Item Info

1. James T. Cleland - "God in Three Persons?" (May 21, 1967)

Duke University Archives

More Info & Options

James T. Cleland - "God in Three Persons?" (May 21, 1967)

Transcript

Item Info

Related Item

Duke University Archives

More Info & Options