P: The book explores the use of Trinitarian language in our church worship, in songs (doxologies, hymns), liturgy (prayers), preaching, Baptism, and visual arts. The authors draw from Scriptures, church traditions and contemporary new songs/liturgy to explore how our worship has incorporated languages that represent the Trinity--not just saying "Trinity" as a concept, but as a mystery and truth about our God in relation to His work related to us believers.
The problem: "so often speaks about the Trinity in the language of formal academic theology, and not the language of praise, faith, and piety, may contribute to the perception that the Trinity is peripheral to Christian life and worship." p.3
-"The main liturgiacl alternative to academic explanations of the Trinity has been the formula "Fahter, Son, and Holy Spirit," which, without further elaboration, may become a matter of rote recitation without room for wonder and growth in devotion and praise." p.3
-"...concern for correct theological formulation in the church's liturgy came to overshadow the search for vital praise." p.3
-"theologians such as Karl Rahner, Catherine LaCugna, Ted Peters, and Gail Ramshaw have also expressed the concern that the Trinity is not central to Christian faith and life." p.4
Why trinitarian worship is important:-"When Christian preaching and worship do not point to the possibility of new life in Christ, when the church does not witness to the power of the Holy Spirit, when Christians do not express their dependence on the holy Source of life, the faith experience of congregations is impoverished." p.4-5
-"The triune God, fount of all blessing, comes to us with gifts of abundant life, joy, and 'courage in the struggle for justice and peace.' Fully trinitarian worship lays out before the congregation the gifts of God and invites Christians to new life." p.5
On worship:
-"worship shapes the faith of Christians, over time inadequate language of praise will distort a church's understanding and experience of faith." p.4
-"One aspect of doing our best to glorify God is to consider how adequately the words of our worship express our faith." p.5
Language: -"Because our language can shape and motivate our actions, which contribute to creating the consequent nature of God, language is important." p.13
-"The criteria for their God-language grow from a determination to be faithful to the encounter between God and the world to which the scriptures testify and also to this encounter in contemporary language that is given birth, and shaped, by a feminist perspective." p.17
-"First, our language cannot be a projection about a deity that is the same reality as we are. Second, we do not believe the deity to be totally removed from us and unlike us. Those of us who speak of a divine reality not comprehended in this world, but in some way present in and to this world, must speak in metaphor and analogy." p.17
"Metaphor, analogy, symbol, and imagery are interrelated in classical and modern theologies. They assume a relatedness of the divine and the created order; they reject a useful adequacy of literal discourse to express the interrelationship of the divine and human realities; they also allow that once can and must speak about and to the deity." p.19
-"Language used to speak of the Trinity should reflect love, justice, and equality, which are the marks of ethical life based in trinitarian faith. ... Fully trinitarian liturgical language is emancipatory, showing the Holy One at work bringing justice and communion among humanity in the continuing mission of Jesus the Christ through the power of the Spirit." p.31
How do we speak to and about the trinitarian God in worship?
-"The trinitarian God is not a product of theology or philosophy, but is the God experienced and spoken about by the Christian community." p.19
-"the Trinity is the vast sea in which our small boats sail, intimately known to us, yet still mysterious." p.25 "The Trinity as mystery is not an unknowable abyss nor an unsolvable puzzle, but a living reality far beyond our experiences, our traditions, and our reason.
e.g. Brian Wren's Praising a Mystery hymns: "God is not one-dimensional, but a multi-dimensional mystery, decisively known in Jesus, active now as the Holy Spirit. The living God is a mystery, not a secret: secrets puzzle us, but lose their fascination when they are revealed. A mystery deepens the more it is pondered and known. At their best, worship, thinking and action are attempts to praise that mystery, to know God, and be known." p.25
-"Like the intratrinitarian relationship, this relationship between God and worshipers is not a closed system, but one which opens out in care for the world." p.26
-Guidelines about what we can say (or cannot say) about the Trinity:
1. should reflect coequality among the three partners, rather than a subordination of one to another. The triune reality is eternal; though the Word is begotten and the Spirit proceeds, this does not refer to a time sequence, but to the distinctive relationship of Word and Spirit to Source.
2. The unity of the trinitarian persons
3. The distinctiveness of each partner should not be blurred but recognised in Christian worship. p.27
the immanent Trinity: the relationality of God within God's self
the economic Trinity: the relationality of God with creation
[Source, Word, and Spirit], the Living/Eternal One/God
Outline/topics in the book:
1. in liturgical language the church speaks through metaphor and analogy of a God who is not simply a projection or creation of humanity, but a reality with whom we are in relationship.
2. how in worship we can and do give witness to the triune God through varied language for the Trinity (not exclusively male language for God) and the trinitarian dimensions of particular aspects of worship
3. preaching as trinitarian proclamation
4. the riches of Christian hymnody as a means of praising and testifying to the Trinity
5. the use of Wisdom (Sophia) imagery in worship, a contemporary issue
6. the connection between the Trinity, its representation in art and liturgy, and human life
Doxologies: are "words of praise to God, usually with trinitarian content and structure. They play an important part in worship, as a way of focusing on the triune God as the center of worship." p.49 e.g. Thomas Ken 1674 sung to the OLD HUNDREDTH.
Liturgy is "a drama of the development of our communion in God and also a pattern of how we are called to live and to act in God." p.120 How is the Trinity incorporated into our life of worship? in liturgical art, in images adorning the church walls, windows, statues, books for worship. In the words (rites, repeated words of community prayer) of liturgical prayer, we find in a different medium specific images of the Trinity, which also directly or indirectly interconnect the Trinity with human moral behaviour and ethics. p.120
-"Visual art and the repeated words of community prayer affect the whole of our personhood, not just our reason, aesthetic sense, or physical enjoyment of what we see and hear. Our minds and hearts are drawn into these forms of expression, and the whole human responds to and reflects on liturgical expression in visual and aural form." p.121
3 images of the Trinity in Salvation History: Gen 18 OT type of the Trinity: the appearance of the three angels to Abraham and Sarah under the tree at Mamre.; the baptism of Jesus; the crucifixion.
30 Jan-24 Mar 2018
Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999
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