12 June 2006

Trinity Sunday

This is the Sunday when nobody ever wants to preach – the curate always gets that job assigned by the vicar – because talking about the trinity is not easy. Or rather, it is very easy to talk about the trinity, but much more difficult to do so whilst not straying outside the boundaries of orthodoxy, especially when speaking to congregations that tend to be less educated theologically than they once were. I freely admit that I took a bit of an easy way out in this sermon, letting the archbishop of Canterbury speak about the trinity for me with one of my images, but his language is very interesting since it comes from a lecture he gave on Christian belief and practice to a group of Muslims at the Islamic University in Islamabad, Pakistan. The full lecture can be read via the Anglican Communion News Service.

My sermon can be read here: Trinity Sunday 2006.

posted by Jamie in Theology 

This entry was posted on Monday, 12 June 2006 at 09:48 and is filed under Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Trinity Sunday”

  1. Jennifer Dziura says:

    Does your blog ever get you hit on by hot, Anglican chicks? I do check in from time to time to see what you’re up to. You are really raising the bar for blogging! Not one picture of a baby animal in a ridiculous costume, even?

    xo
    Jen

    24 July 2006 at 12:13
  2. Paul Williams says:

    Dear Jamie

    Trinity 2006

    May I make some comments on a few aspects of your sermon on the Trinity?

    I do not wish to appear unduly critical of it especially as I do not share your Christian faith (I am a Muslim).

    Like yourself, I studied theology at university. I learnt various critical tools and studied the nature, structure and composition of the four gospels. I came to the conclusion that the church’s traditional Christology (expressed in the Nicean creed) does not authentically articulate the true nature of the historical Jesus. To briefly cite to one example: the statement that Jesus is the son of God. As you doubtless know, this title meant something fundamentally different in the context of synoptic gospels than it did in later Church teaching. Most Christians do not know this. They have not studied Jimmy Dunn, Tom Wright, Ed Sanders, G Vermes et al.

    I hope you can guess where I am going with all this. The concerns of systematic theology (as articulated in your sermon) have become dehistorisied from the historical Jesus. The Jesus who responded to a question about eternal life, ‘Why do you call me good, there is only One who is good’, and who PRAYED TO God, clearly would have regarded worship of himself as a deity as a great blasphemy. To think otherwise is arguably to become a fellow traveler with the kind of biblical fundamentalism you were not comfortable with.

    The irony is that in your understandable dislike of evangelical fundamentalism, you unwittingly fall into the same trap by quoting John’s Jesus as if that work contained his ipsisima verba rather than a Johnainne reexpression in the evangelist’s portrait of him many decades after Jesus’ ascension. How far the gospel’s Christology and the historical Jesus differ is a subject of scholarly debate, but no scholar anywhere that I am aware of (outside of evangelical fundamentalism) would quote John’s Jesus as simply “the words of Jesus” as you have done. I presume you know this!

    You say that ‘to muslims, the Christian doctrine of the trinity seems like heresy or polytheism’. I can not speak for all Muslims but we do not think the doctrine of the trinity is a Muslim ‘heresy’. We believe the idea of Trinity is a man made belief, not taught by the historical Jesus who was a great prophet of God to the Jewish people. It seems that some people later initiated a process of deification (Paul is an early example) that led to the unacceptable worship of a human being. (The whole development is brilliantly described in Dunn’s book Christology in the making: a New Testament inquiry into the origins of the doctrine of the Incarnation – have you read it?)

    Please reply to my points if you wish

    Salam and best wishes

    Paul Williams
    London

    7 October 2006 at 22:35
  3. Jamie says:

    Apologies first of all for not noticing your comment until just now Paul. I have been busy with starting a new job and have not been checking as often as I should. I am grateful for your thoughts as a Muslim, and will try to address some of them as best as I can.

    With regards to your comment that: “The Jesus who responded to a question about eternal life, ‘Why do you call me good, there is only One who is good’, and who PRAYED TO God, clearly would have regarded worship of himself as a deity as a great blasphemy,” I would want to talk about part of the idea of prayer which I did not touch on in the sermon.

    That is, that this gift of prayer, where we encounter God as creatures made to pray to our divine creator, comes to us out of the very trinatarian nature of God in the Christian understanding. Prayer exists as the expression of love that exists eternally between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and when we pray, we are caught up in that loving prayer between the members of the Trinity. So Jesus praying to the Father is an expression both of his humanity — all humans are called to pray to God — but also his divinity, that course of prayer that exists eternally between the Son and the Father.

    In terms of my quoting John’s gospel as calling it the ‘words of Jesus’, you are correct to assume that I do not take this to mean that I am an hundred percent sure that Jesus himself spoke these exact words. However, what I think a Christian has to believe is that the words of scripture do reflect the words of God and God’s son Jesus Christ (not, I think, in the same way that Muslims understand the words of the Qur’an to be the very words of God - am I correct in that?). I see the text of scripture both as an historical guide to the life and teachings of Jesus as my savior, but also in a more mystical sense as a text of which any part can shine a light on my life to help illuminate my relationship with God, as I encounter God in prayer (especially praying with scripture).

    I am actually reading a very interesting book at the moment called Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman. I have not read the whole book yet, but he makes the argument that it is very difficult for us to get back to the ‘correct’ or ‘original’ words of the Biblical texts since they have been copied and changed so many times over the centuries. Thus, my point is, I think, even more useful, that Christians must understand the words of Jesus in the gospel as best we can, without assuming them to be always necessarily literal. In my own Anglican tradition, we use scripture on a par with church tradition as a guide to faith and practice, both explored through our God-given reason.

    As to my comments about the Muslim understanding of the Christian trinity, I used the word ‘heresy’ as it would be used in a Christian context, so if that is not a helpful description I am happy to use something else.

    Thank you again for your comments, please feel free to leave more at any time.

    16 October 2006 at 22:27

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

12 June 2006

Trinity Sunday

This is the Sunday when nobody ever wants to preach – the curate always gets that job assigned by the vicar – because talking about the trinity is not easy. Or rather, it is very easy to talk about the trinity, but much more difficult to do so whilst not straying outside the boundaries of orthodoxy, especially when speaking to congregations that tend to be less educated theologically than they once were. I freely admit that I took a bit of an easy way out in this sermon, letting the archbishop of Canterbury speak about the trinity for me with one of my images, but his language is very interesting since it comes from a lecture he gave on Christian belief and practice to a group of Muslims at the Islamic University in Islamabad, Pakistan. The full lecture can be read via the Anglican Communion News Service.

My sermon can be read here: Trinity Sunday 2006.

posted by Jamie in Theology 

This entry was posted on Monday, 12 June 2006 at 09:48 and is filed under Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Trinity Sunday”

  1. Jennifer Dziura says:

    Does your blog ever get you hit on by hot, Anglican chicks? I do check in from time to time to see what you’re up to. You are really raising the bar for blogging! Not one picture of a baby animal in a ridiculous costume, even?

    xo
    Jen

    24 July 2006 at 12:13
  2. Paul Williams says:

    Dear Jamie

    Trinity 2006

    May I make some comments on a few aspects of your sermon on the Trinity?

    I do not wish to appear unduly critical of it especially as I do not share your Christian faith (I am a Muslim).

    Like yourself, I studied theology at university. I learnt various critical tools and studied the nature, structure and composition of the four gospels. I came to the conclusion that the church’s traditional Christology (expressed in the Nicean creed) does not authentically articulate the true nature of the historical Jesus. To briefly cite to one example: the statement that Jesus is the son of God. As you doubtless know, this title meant something fundamentally different in the context of synoptic gospels than it did in later Church teaching. Most Christians do not know this. They have not studied Jimmy Dunn, Tom Wright, Ed Sanders, G Vermes et al.

    I hope you can guess where I am going with all this. The concerns of systematic theology (as articulated in your sermon) have become dehistorisied from the historical Jesus. The Jesus who responded to a question about eternal life, ‘Why do you call me good, there is only One who is good’, and who PRAYED TO God, clearly would have regarded worship of himself as a deity as a great blasphemy. To think otherwise is arguably to become a fellow traveler with the kind of biblical fundamentalism you were not comfortable with.

    The irony is that in your understandable dislike of evangelical fundamentalism, you unwittingly fall into the same trap by quoting John’s Jesus as if that work contained his ipsisima verba rather than a Johnainne reexpression in the evangelist’s portrait of him many decades after Jesus’ ascension. How far the gospel’s Christology and the historical Jesus differ is a subject of scholarly debate, but no scholar anywhere that I am aware of (outside of evangelical fundamentalism) would quote John’s Jesus as simply “the words of Jesus” as you have done. I presume you know this!

    You say that ‘to muslims, the Christian doctrine of the trinity seems like heresy or polytheism’. I can not speak for all Muslims but we do not think the doctrine of the trinity is a Muslim ‘heresy’. We believe the idea of Trinity is a man made belief, not taught by the historical Jesus who was a great prophet of God to the Jewish people. It seems that some people later initiated a process of deification (Paul is an early example) that led to the unacceptable worship of a human being. (The whole development is brilliantly described in Dunn’s book Christology in the making: a New Testament inquiry into the origins of the doctrine of the Incarnation – have you read it?)

    Please reply to my points if you wish

    Salam and best wishes

    Paul Williams
    London

    7 October 2006 at 22:35
  3. Jamie says:

    Apologies first of all for not noticing your comment until just now Paul. I have been busy with starting a new job and have not been checking as often as I should. I am grateful for your thoughts as a Muslim, and will try to address some of them as best as I can.

    With regards to your comment that: “The Jesus who responded to a question about eternal life, ‘Why do you call me good, there is only One who is good’, and who PRAYED TO God, clearly would have regarded worship of himself as a deity as a great blasphemy,” I would want to talk about part of the idea of prayer which I did not touch on in the sermon.

    That is, that this gift of prayer, where we encounter God as creatures made to pray to our divine creator, comes to us out of the very trinatarian nature of God in the Christian understanding. Prayer exists as the expression of love that exists eternally between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and when we pray, we are caught up in that loving prayer between the members of the Trinity. So Jesus praying to the Father is an expression both of his humanity — all humans are called to pray to God — but also his divinity, that course of prayer that exists eternally between the Son and the Father.

    In terms of my quoting John’s gospel as calling it the ‘words of Jesus’, you are correct to assume that I do not take this to mean that I am an hundred percent sure that Jesus himself spoke these exact words. However, what I think a Christian has to believe is that the words of scripture do reflect the words of God and God’s son Jesus Christ (not, I think, in the same way that Muslims understand the words of the Qur’an to be the very words of God - am I correct in that?). I see the text of scripture both as an historical guide to the life and teachings of Jesus as my savior, but also in a more mystical sense as a text of which any part can shine a light on my life to help illuminate my relationship with God, as I encounter God in prayer (especially praying with scripture).

    I am actually reading a very interesting book at the moment called Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman. I have not read the whole book yet, but he makes the argument that it is very difficult for us to get back to the ‘correct’ or ‘original’ words of the Biblical texts since they have been copied and changed so many times over the centuries. Thus, my point is, I think, even more useful, that Christians must understand the words of Jesus in the gospel as best we can, without assuming them to be always necessarily literal. In my own Anglican tradition, we use scripture on a par with church tradition as a guide to faith and practice, both explored through our God-given reason.

    As to my comments about the Muslim understanding of the Christian trinity, I used the word ‘heresy’ as it would be used in a Christian context, so if that is not a helpful description I am happy to use something else.

    Thank you again for your comments, please feel free to leave more at any time.

    16 October 2006 at 22:27

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>