In order to be vital and relevant, Christianity must be able to demonstrate a metaphysical core for spirituality and holiness—not merely a behavioral, psychological, or moral philosophy. A Trinitarian metaphysic, a philosophy of the nature of being, provides just such a vibrant and inherent foundation. Trinity is and must be our stable, rooted identity that does not come and go, rise and fall. This is the rock of salvation.
.. most Christians reversed the original Trinitarian use of the word person—as one who is a dynamic sounding-through—to an autonomous self that is separate and independent.
.. Most Christians have focused on overcoming the gap between Divine Personhood and human personhood. It largely became a matter of viewing sacraments as magical if you were Catholic or Orthodox or a transactional notion of strong belief or moral behavior if you were Protestant
.. God clearly loves diversity! It is only we who prefer uniformity
.. Unity is diversity embraced, protected, and maintained by an infinitely generous love.
.. Uniformity can be achieved by coercion, shame, and fear. Unfortunately, most churches have confused uniformity with true spiritual unity for centuries. But church formed in this way is by definition not the church. As Catherine LaCugna says, “The nature of the church should manifest the nature of God.”
A Trinitarian Revolution
Unfortunately, for the vast majority, God is still “the man upstairs,” a substantive noun more than an active verb. In my opinion, this misunderstanding is partly responsible for the quick expansion of practical atheism and agnosticism we see in the West today. Rational and sincere people wonder, “If God is almighty and all-loving, then why is there so much suffering in the world?” If God is all-vulnerable, then perhaps God stands in solidarity with all pain and suffering in the universe, allowing us to be participants in our own healing.
Richard Rohr: Trinity
We must begin with Trinity if we are to rebuild Christianity from the bottom up. The Trinity is absolutely foundational to Christianity because it reveals the heart of the nature of God. And yet, as Karl Rahner pointed out, it has made almost no difference in the lives of the vast majority of Christians. [1] That either means it’s not true or that we just have not understood it.
.. Although the Trinity truly is a “practical” doctrine, we cannot come to know this in the mind’s usual, dualistic way. God can only be known by loving God.
.. Part of the reason Christians got off track is that around the time of the Enlightenment we tried to stand apart from and objectify God, as if we could explain God using scholastic philosophy and theology and rational, objective thinking.
The mystics would say whenever you stand apart and objectify anything you stop knowing it. You have to love, respect, and enter into relationship with what you desire to know. Then the mirroring goes back and forth, subject to subject, center to center, love to love. Then the loving becomes its own kind of knowing. This is knowing by participation.
Richard Rohr: Abstract to Personal
At the top of the hourglass are ideas of God too big for the human mind to grasp. We start with the Trinity, with God as
love and relationship. Creation happens in, through, and for the pre-existent Christ, the second person of the Trinity.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth. —Colossians 1:15-16
.. This grew into the notion of the eternal wisdom that was eventually going to leap “down” from heaven, into the human and time-limited realm. The eternal wisdom was personified as Sophia, the divine feminine, as we see in the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Wisdom. It is a compassionate abstraction of Divine Reality, but not yet personable and personal.
.. In the Book of Daniel, the pre-existent Christ moves toward greater personification with the notion of the “son of man,” the phrase Jesus most frequently uses to identify himself.
.. Though so much of life is filled with suffering, disappointment, disillusionment, absurdity, and dying, God will turn all of our crucifixions into resurrections.