I just began reading a book that has long been on my shelf. Little did I understand or predict its importance. A book on the trinity; how radical can that be? I have believed in the trinity as long as I can remember. Only into the second chapter, I am finding my thinking challenged, my paradigm stretched!
To better solidify what I am reading, I need to write. I don’t yet know if I shall share these thoughts, or keep them to myself. But if I do share them, they find origin in the book edited by Miraslav Volf and Michael Welker; an anthology of writings by various authors brought together in tribute to Jurgen Moltmann, a theologian who explored the trinity (whose writings I must soon explore!) and inspired the thinking of the authors to consider the trinity, and its implications for the church and theology. The book is entitled, God’s Life in the Trinity.
The essay / chapter entitled The Social Trinity and Property, by M. Douglas Meeks has left me thinking, meditating, wondering about how important the concept of the trinity is in our practice of faith. In the West, our theology has focused on the unity, the singleness of “one God”. This one God is the creator of all, and therefore the owner of all. He owes no one anything. He gives, not of compulsion, but out of love and benevolence. He lacks nothing, needs nothing.
So, the thinking goes, which has not been so obvious to me until I saw it in print, man (at least in the West), created in the image of God, must emulate God. Since God owns all and owes nothing, man too should seek to own and not owe, the “American Dream” in a nutshell! Perfect! It is based in theology! In our striving to own, we too should be benevolent, condescending to those in need, who have not yet reached the level of ownership and lack of debt(?) that we have acquired.
One big problem with this thinking is that it has turned everything into a commodity, property, to be sought after and acquired. The individual and personal ownership have been taken to the extreme. Justice, the experience of learning, and the maintenance of health have become commodities available to those who can pay. Those who can’t, suffer their lack, and must wait for the beneficence of those who are higher or further along on the social ladder.
Is this really what God intended as an outworking of theology, of an understanding of “The Lord your God is One”?
But let us now consider the trinity. God is three equals, living in harmony, without need, but giving to each other continually in love, a society of joy and satisfaction beyond anything we can compare in our fallen world. God’s fullness of love is so great that it spills over into creation, and into his image, man. We the image bearer of God, are to imitate our Creator.
How should that imitation take form? Should we be seeking property? Ownership?Or should we be seeking the benefit and joy of all through sharing in common? Should we be interested in true equality of justice, unhindered and even assisted opportunity to learn, and the ability to have physical needs met within the possibilities of our fallen world?
How should our outworking of the image of God appear?
Lest you think I am speaking politically, let me dispel the thought. I have no hope in “the sword” to solve the world’s problems. “The sword” is a representation of the problem, man’s attempt to live apart from God’s rule. God has ordained government but does not promise that world government will produce his Kingdom. Whether we vote or not, and how we vote is a decision we must each make before God, with our consciences bare before his probing Spirit. But let us not consider government as the source of our spiritual salvation or demise. Remember that the cruel and oppressive Roman Empire was in power during the time of Christ and the early Church! Yet the church grew!
Our job, the church’s job, regardless of the political climate or the governmental powers in control, is to reflect the love of Christ to one another within the body (that’s how we will be recognized!), and to let that love flow out in grace to those in need around us, not as a tool of power or coercion, but as a demonstration of the type of love that God shares in the trinity.
Therefore, our focus / goal as image bearers of God should not be to obtain more property and to be free from obligation to others, but to share freely with others what God has given to us, and to sense an obligation, or better, a compulsion, born out of love, to serve those in need around us. That is what the trinity is teaching me!
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