Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8 and Psalm 29 • Romans 8:12-17 • John 3:1-17
If St. Augustine confessed that he didn't understand the concept of the Trinity, I don't profess to understand it. But maybe that is the problem. Trying to understand it. Two articles this week have helped me appreciate it, though. Think love in relationship in which we are invited to participate. See The Rev. David Lose's "Trinity:Three-in-One, Plus One!" and Dan Clendenin's "Trinity, Mystery, and Mercy." Particularly poignant in this article are the characterizations of God from the "The Shack" by Paul Young. "What Young has written — and his critics are right about this point — is really a doctrine of God in story form. But it's no Athanasian Creed with technical abstractions. He pictures the trinitarian God who welcomes us back to the shack as El-ousia, "a large beaming African-American woman" (Father), a "small, distinctively Asian woman" named Sarayu who collects tears (the Spirit), and a Middle Eastern man dressed like a laborer (Jesus).The main character Mack discovers that God isn't like he thought. He's not the product of his projections, or the neat formulas of academic theology. He's perfectly good. He intends to heal and not humiliate us. Mack learns to trust him fully and believe that God is near. That's the good news on Trinity Sunday."
A couple of interesting side notes. The term οὐσία is an Ancient Greek noun, formed on the feminine present participle of the verb εἰμί, eimí, i.e., "to be, I am." "I am" is the name of God, and is one of the "I am" sayings of Jesus. In the Nicene Creed, it is said "the Son is of one being with the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son." The Eastern church says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, not the Father and the Son (the filioque clause - meaning "and the Son.") Both the Western and Eastern churches have homoousion, as opposed to homioousion, in their Creeds.
Homoousion (/ˌhɒmoʊˈuːsiən/; Greek: ὁμοούσιον, romanized: homooúsion, lit. 'same in being, same in essence', from ὁμός, homós, "same" and οὐσία, ousía, "being" or "essence")[1][2] is a Christian theological term, most notably used in the Nicene Creed for describing Jesus (God the Son) as "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father (ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί). The same term was later also applied to the Holy Spirit in order to designate him as being "same in essence" with the Father and the Son. Those notions became cornerstones of theology in Nicene Christianity, and also represent one of the most important theological concepts within the Trinitarian doctrinal understanding of God. The extra "i," or "iota," in homioousion, means similar to, not the same, proposed by Arius, and was rejected by Athanasius and is not included in the Nicene Creed.
Sarayu - The name is the feminine derivative of the Sanskrit root सर् sar "to flow"; as a masculine stem, saráyu- means "air, wind", i.e. "that which is streaming."
