God is Not a Noun

The world feels like it's Good Friday, but Trinity Sunday is coming.

With Pentecost now our present everyday reality, this Sunday is the bane of many preachers and those who suffer them in the pews.

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday.

I have long thought the problem with preachers understanding and proclaiming God’s proper name is that seminaries tend to confine the Doctrine of the Trinity to Church History classes. Students thus receive the Nicene Creed etc as bold dates to be memorized for an exam rather than as providing the basic building blocks for speaking Christian.

In order to speak Christian, we must be able to articulate God’s proper name.

That is, the Trinity is not a puzzle to be solved. It is a grammar to be spoken. And as Robert Jenson insists, it is the grammar of God’s own life.

Trinity is the grammar of God’s own life.

God is what happens when the Father sends the Son and breathes the Spirit. The Triune identity is not the sum of a math equation. The Triune identity is the summary of a narrative. The Trinity is thus not an explanation for God. The Trinity is simply the God who encounters us in the scriptures and speaks. In other words, the Triune identity is revelation. You cannot bring to the Doctrine of the Trinity an a priori, pagan conception of deity (“God is one”) and then attempt to shoehorn it into the Name above all names.