Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday always has a special place in my devotion as it is the anniversary of my Confirmation. I was confirmed by +Simon Barrington-Ward, then bishop of Coventry. A very English bishop with a charismatic twist, he would give each confirmand a word of knowledge as he laid hands on them. It could well be renamed 'How to avoid heresy Sunday' because God-talk and the Trinity is just a little fraught. I remember this well known but still useful story about Augustine of Hippo: "The story is told of St Augustine of Hippo, a great philosopher and theologian who wanted so much to understand the doctrine of the Trinity and to be able to explain it logically. One day as he was walking along the sea shore and reflecting on this, he suddenly saw a little child all alone on the shore. The child made a hole in the sand, ran to the sea with a little cup, filled her cup, came and poured it into the hole she had made in the sand. Back and forth she went to the sea, filled her cup and came and poured it into the hole. Augustine went up to her and said, "Little child, what are doing?" and she replied, "I am trying to empty the sea into this hole." "How do you think," Augustine asked her, "that you can empty this immense sea into this tiny hole and with this tiny cup?" To which she replied, " And you, how do you suppose that with this your small head you can comprehend the immensity of God?" With that the child disappeared." Indeed. The Anglican theologian, Austen Farrer has this to say: "If God might be comprehended, he would not be God. An over-confident dogmatism is as fatal to theistic belief as scepticism itself; it pretends to prove and to define, only to discover that what it has defined and proved is not its Lord and God. You can no more catch God’s infinity in a net of words than...you can fish out the sea the glories of the dying day." Suffice to say it is good to stick with the tried and tested, the so-called Athanasian Creed, not really a creed as such and certainly not by the hand of Athanasius but still the gold standard as a balanced explanation of the Trinity. "And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence." Amen.

Lent

Today we begin our Lenten journey, so here is the collect for Ash Wednesday to get us thinking. "Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent: create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen." BCP 1662 The language of 1662 is much earthier and less tactful than most contemporary liturgy and so it has a tendency to make us sit up and think about who we are and what we are about as we begin this holy season.

Reading the Bible - it's a matter of interpretation.

Recent conversations and some online discussion has brought me back to this old note from 2008 and my continued thinking about how we use and misuse the texts of the Bible. Finding a way that keeps clear of fundamentalism on the one hand and a completely skeptical view (or a completely poetic view) on the other whilst treating Scripture seriously and fully recognising it's central place in the Great Tradition. Bishop Tom Wright when he was bishop of Durham, spoke in 2008 to the (Roman) Synod of Bishops about reading the Scriptures and the necessity of a fourfold understanding of the sacred texts. He suggested the following approach: "To get the balance right, I propose a fourfold reading of scripture. We are to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength. 1. The heart: Lectio Divina, private meditation and prayer, and above all the readings in the eucharist. 2. The mind: historical study of the text and its original contextual meaning. 3. The soul: the ongoing life of the church, its tradition and teaching office. 4. The strength: the mission of the church, the work of God’s kingdom." If only we could keep the The Fourfold Amor, the four loves, before us when we read Scripture then we may avoid the errors of both a fundamentalist reading or of concentrating just on the historical-critical method both of which on their own limit our readings of sacred Scripture and our understanding of what God has to say to us in our given situation.

Another year, another blog...

Based on my blogging activity (2009 & 2011) I should be blogging a bit through 2013. I seem to have a very on/off relationship with the blogosphere but I will be trying once more to share some thoughts as I muse on things homiletical and some other things besides. Here we go once more, I do this to try to help myself but maybe others will find something to ponder as well.