P. Reinhard Körner, OCD
“The holy year is to be an unceasing hymn to the Trinity...” (bull Incarnationis mysterium, article 3). We believe that R. Körner’s reflections on this can be an excellent aid. We are publishing a translation of only the first part of an extensive article, with further parts published in subsequent issues of the journal Karmel-Impulse. Interested parties are referred to the book edition: R. Körner OCD, “Bleib nicht zurück am Ufer...” – Invitation to Life with the Triune God, Benno – Verlag, Leipzig 1998.
Anyone who today asks about the core of Christianity, about what is distinctive and essential in the Christian faith, will sooner or later encounter the trinity of God, the Trinity, or the trinitarian mystery, as we theologians refer to it. Indeed, liturgical texts and songs continually speak of three divine persons; we begin our prayers: “In the name of,” these three, we add “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit...” to the psalms and oracles, and in the Sunday creed, we declare that we believe “in God the Father, Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, (...) in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, (...) in the Holy Spirit...” The trinity of God is directly omnipresent in the language of the church.
Yet: who can make sense of this? Even theologically trained preachers are eager to dodge into “a more relevant topic” when they have to speak about this “truth of faith,” as on the Sunday of the Trinity.
Moreover: it seems that in practical religious life and in personal interaction with God, the mystery of the Trinity holds little significance. When we pray spontaneously, rooted in life, we turn to God – and one imagines Him as Father, another prefers to think of Jesus Christ; well, and we only consider the Holy Spirit when we need help from above: in situations where we must make a decision, before an exam or an important meeting or negotiation. We do not pray to three; we pray to one – and we alternate the persons according to personal preference or situation. Practically, we pray and live like Jews or Muslims, who, however – neither of whom know the divine Trinity in their faith.
Karel Rahner pointed out years ago not to be misled and not to overlook that many Christians “in all their orthodox confession of the Trinity are more like ‘monotheists’ in their religious practice.” This judgment does not apply only to our time, which increasingly forgets faith. Even in previous Christian centuries, many great figures of prayer and spiritual teachers had to work hard to come to the realization that they were not living with some solitary divine being but with a divine community. The “exile of the Trinity,” as the Italian theologian Bruno Forte termed it, has persisted in Christianity for a good millennium.
But how can we at least somewhat understand faith in the Trinity? How can we come to such a personal relationship with the triune God that has significance for our lives? In our new series of articles, I would like to share what I have found for my spiritual life regarding these questions through the study of the spiritual traditions of the church and theological literature on this subject.
When Bishop Augustine (345–430) – as an old legend, which became very well known, narrates – was writing his great work on the Trinity (De Trinitate), he once walked along the Mediterranean Sea, contemplating and thinking. He came across a boy who was scooping water from the sea and pouring it into a small hole in the sand. To the bishop’s kind question about what he was doing, the boy replied: “I want to empty the sea.” “But that is not possible,” Augustine remarked, “the sea is so vast, so deep, and so wide that the naked eye can only grasp a tiny piece of it.” “Just like you,” the child replied, “will not be able to grasp the triune God with your thoughts.” – The legend speaks for itself; and concerning my intention, it does not turn out to be particularly encouraging. God, the Triune, is and will remain incomprehensible – naturally, also for me.
But let us reflect further on the image from the legend: although the sea remains inexhaustible and elusive, I do not have to resign and leave the shore. I can at least step into the refreshing element, swim against the waves, dive, feel and taste the water... I do not yet know the “sea,” but I have gained an experience of the sea that I would not have if I had stayed on dry land. I have gained an altogether true impression of the sea; I now know something about what the sea is like... And similarly, I do not have to capitulate before the mystery of God; I can “run into” that reality which the Christian faith has in mind when it speaks of “God” and “the Trinity,” I can allow myself to be carried by this reality, to experience it. Thus, I have not comprehended God, I have not grasped Him, but I have “tasted” His being, I have some notion about Him; I then at least know some way to think about Him and where to sense Him.
How then may I understand the Trinity of God as I reflect on it and penetrate into it through intuition?
Let us first be led into the divine “sea” by those who expressed their spiritual swimming experiences in words, namely the early Christian authors of the New Testament writings.
At the beginning of the Christian faith – and this also holds for the faith in the Trinity – stands not doctrine, but experience; not (to stick to the analogy) the doctrine of the sea, but the experience of swimming in the sea. All the writings of the New Testament speak about this experience; its theological reflection, which then becomes the doctrine of the Trinity, begins only two centuries later. In order to grasp and “apply” that doctrine in our lives, we must focus on this experience, on the origin of the faith in the divine Trinity, on the “foundational experience” (Leonardo Boff) in early Christian generations.
The starting point is the faith of the Israelites that behind all that lives and is, there is a “higher power”: God, who is the origin of everything and to whom everything that exists owes its being moment by moment and our life from one heartbeat to the next. This God is the one God, thus Israel was convinced at least since the 5th century B.C. He is “Almighty,” He is the “Power” to which everything that is and happens is subject, there are no other divine powers. And this God is a personal God, that is, a God who can say of Himself “I” and whom we humans can address as “You, God.”
This is also the faith of the first Christians, who were mostly Jews at first. However, they gained a new experience with this God, for which they owed it to Jesus, their “teacher” from Nazareth:
So clearly and unequivocally as no one before Him spoke Jesus about God as a close and loving God. He taught the people around Him to not only worship God and “fear” Him, but to trust in His love and let themselves be carried by it, absolutely regardless of whether they considered themselves among the “righteous” or the “ignorant of the law,” whether they lived in wealth or in poverty, whether they were healthy or sick and disabled, whether they had a clean slate or their past was not without fault. His words were as if spoken by a knowledgeable guide who (to stay with the image used) demystifies the fear of the sea from the pilgrims walking along the shore and runs with them into the refreshing water to allow them to experience the splendor and beauty of the sea, which they had only known from the shore... Or expressed in another image: Jesus opened a window and showed His compatriots the distance that surrounded them, let sunshine and fresh air fill the dark, musty huts of their lives, so that they could breathe, heal, straighten up and become new people... In short: God became for the first Christians, just as He was for Jesus Himself, “Abba,” loving Father, and they could regard themselves – no matter what others thought of them or how they had previously been used to regard themselves – as God-beloved “sons” and “daughters” (Paul will tirelessly remind the Christians of his communities; cf. Romans 8:14 and Galatians 4:6). This was not just a new “doctrine” about God for them, it was a new life experience with God!
This view of God and His “kingdom” became credible and applicable in everyday life for early Christians especially because Jesus not only spoke but also demonstrated that God in His own person. Jesus' attitudes and behavior, the way He thought and lived, became for many people in Israel the most beautiful, purest, and clearest window to that God about whom He spoke to them. In Him was felt the nature of “His” God entirely and completely. With the same affection with which God – Abba approached Jesus, Jesus bent down to His neighbors. In His behavior, those who met Him experienced acceptance, attention, and approval, which healed and liberated them. From Him, it was felt what God is – and that God can only be like Jesus!
Could they interpret this experience differently? Could they think anything other about this man from Nazareth than that he was “sent by God,” indeed that he must be directly identical with God? That Jesus must be in a much closer sense than they themselves the “beloved son,” indeed the “Son of God”?
And when Jesus was sentenced to death and killed – how could they think otherwise than with certainty that such God could not let such Jesus fall into the void of death! “God raised Jesus from the dead!” (Romans 10:9 etc.), proclaims the message that the disciples proclaim to each other and soon spread “to the whole world,” based on their new experience of life with God and with Jesus. He is with God – and He is not “someone” with God: Jesus belongs to God!
As they were accustomed to addressing God, so now the disciples address Jesus: Jewish Christians “Adonai,” Greek speakers “Kyrie,” Latin speakers “Domine.” The German (and Czech) translation has long been “Lord.” And they live with Him, for they perceive that He is as close to them as He taught them that God is close to them – as close as the water of the sea surrounds us when we dared to run into it... Or like the air from the vast landscape that surrounds us and is within us. “In Him,” Paul says in Athens, “we live, move, and are” (Acts 17:28).
The experience that these first Christians could repeatedly live must have been truly thrilling and deeply joyful: the message they proclaimed, the “good news” about such a God and about such a “Son of God” – was received! People from everywhere, Jews and “Gentiles,” slaves and free, Jews from the diaspora, Greeks, Romans, and Arabs understood the “language” of this message! Yes, many of these foreigners shamed them by allowing Jesus's words to penetrate their hearts more deeply than they themselves received them, and the message about Jesus and His God “turned upside down” more than they themselves experienced. Such an effect – they were clear – could not arise merely from their clumsy words, from their inconsequential lives! There was the ruach, “Holy Spirit” – which in the speech of Jesus and Israeli Christians is a feminine noun! – this power from God that Jesus spoke of so often and of which He said that He would send it to them from Abba – the Father, to “teach” them and “remind them of everything...?” (John 14:26.) And did not Jesus speak of this holy ruach, which they experienced as a force that comforts the heart, enlightens the mind, and builds community, as an individual, whom we can address, to whom we can pray? And so they truly prayed to Him just as they prayed to God as Abba – the Father and to Jesus as the “Son” of this Father...
Concepts like “Trinity” and “Triune” were foreign to the early Christian generations. In none of the 27 New Testament writings – the latest of them were written around 120 A.D. – do these words or similar in meaning appear. Yet precisely on every page these writings speak of people’s lives with God – “the Father,” with “Lord Jesus Christ,” and with “the Holy Spirit.” The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, the epistles, and the Book of Revelation present testimonies of the “experience of swimming” that people have made when they left the shore behind and dashed into the divine sea with their “guide.” They, who believed in one and only God, found God as a divine community. They lived with the three in God, and when they admitted new members into their ranks, they entered the water and baptized them, as Matthew's Gospel, which originated around 80 A.D., testifies, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
The question of how three divine persons can be one God did not preoccupy the Christians of the first two centuries. But soon this question will arise more and more and challenge theologians – like Augustine – to ponder it...
I recall a story that also uses an analogy with the sea. It was supposedly related by monks of the first millennium. Personally, it helped me a lot to remain alert to the “foundational experience,” without which the most intelligent theological reflections would remain confusing and meaningless for me as well. – Two fish in the sea engage in conversation. One says: “Have you ever really seen the water about which our scholars speak with so many words?” The other replies: “Since I swim here in the sea back and forth my whole life, I have never seen any water!” They decide to ask the wise fish who lives in the depths of the sea for advice: “Can you tell us, wise brother, where the water is about which the scholars speak?” “Oh, you silly fish,” replies the wise one, “you are in the water, you move in the water, everything you have and are, you are through the water – and you do not notice it?!”
And the monks added: Thus, man lives in God – and does not notice it...
To be alert to the “power” that carries us, to gaze attentively towards the quiet, so obviously present reality that is around us, within us, and among us..., to address it “Abba, Daddy,” to perceive that Jesus is with this Father, and to share ordinary life with Him, to be sensitive and attentive to the quiet, powerful miracles of God’s Spirit in the hearts of others, in our small and large communities, throughout every day and every hour – that is the path by which early Christians came to believe in the divine Trinity.
(Reprinted with the kind permission of the author from the journal Karmel-Impulse,
vol. 8, no. II/1998, pp. 16–21.
Translated by Dr. Vojtěch Pola.)
