American Pie, Three-in-One Oil, and the Mystery of the Trinity

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Philippians 4:8-9

In a thought provoking blog post which he provocatively titled, “There Is No Such Thing as the Trinity (Some Dudes Made It Up),” Richard Lowell Bryant argues (And if you were paying attention, you could see this coming . . .) that there is no such thing as the Trinity.

He’s wrong, of course.

If there were no such thing as the Trinity, then Don McLean wouldn’t have given it such an important place in his immortal song, “American Pie.”

After all, McLean tells us that he “went down to the sacred store” and I’m sure they would not have sold him a bogus doctrine.

Apparently Rev. Bryant did not research this a thoroughly as he should have.

In his opening paragraph he writes:

“There is no such thing as the Holy Trinity. There is a means of referring to the relationship between God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy the Spirit which Christians call the ‘Holy Trinity’. We don’t know if that’s what God calls God’s relationships or if the Trinity exists anything at all as we describe. My inclination is to believe God functions beyond language terms and classifications. It’s our word. No one’s gotten a message back from God as to whether God agrees with our system or choice of terms. Yet we, the church, live and die by three in one, one in three.”

The first sentence says that there is no such thing as the Holy Trinity. And then the second sentence tells us what the Holy Trinity is.

In other words, this is about the words. That’s not a bad thing. Theology is about finding the right words and defining the words, and using the words to understand the reality.

What is perhaps even more amusing than Rev. Bryant’s clever sleight of hand was the reaction to it among United Methodist Clergy colleagues. More than a few called for his dismissal from the covenant. “Send him packing,” said one.

Suddenly it was as if being a United Methodist pastor was all about following the rules of doctrine. Never mind thinking for yourself. Never mind searching for new ways to understand something. Forget about how we can understand ancient doctrines in a twenty-first century context. If you can’t stand up and salute a literal reading of the Nicene Creed, then you need to leave. And the sooner the better.

Monty Python said, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

I certainly didn’t expect it in a United Methodist Clergy discussion.

In the great debate about United Methodist schism, this is an issue that looms in the background. The literalism that stunts our understanding of LGBTQ issues is not limited to those issues. It threatens to turn us into medieval Roman Catholics, hunting for heretics lurking behind every attempt at theological inquiry. This is the same narrowmindedness that generated attacks on Bishops Oliveto and Sprague among others, for their intellectual creativity.

The point that Bryant is making (I think) is that the Trinity is not is not a biblical doctrine.

He notes that the word “Trinity” never appears in the Bible. It is “a (semantic, logical, cosmological, theological, psychological, and philosophical) construct, a theological conjecture; created by flawed and fallible Homo sapiens who want to understand something no one really understands: the way God relates to God’s self.”

And that is true.

But it is true of all theology.

Theology, all theology, is a human construct. It is an attempt by fallible human beings to think systematically (philosophically and/or biblically) about God.

And what is true of theology is also true of the Bible. Regardless of your beliefs about inspiration, the actual writing was done by human beings.

In his memoir, “Soul on Ice,” the late political activist and early Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver told of his experience with theological reflection while he was a guest of the California Youth Authority.

“It all ended one day when, at a catechism class, the priest asked if anyone present understood the mystery of the Holy Trinity. I had been studying my lessons diligently and knew by heart what I'd been taught. Up shot my hand, my heart throbbing with piety (pride) for this chance to demonstrate my knowledge of the Word.

“To my great shock and embarrassment, the Father announced, and it sounded like a thunderclap, that I was lying, that no one, not even the Pope, understood the Godhead, and why else did I think they called it the mystery of the Holy Trinity?

“I saw in a flash, stung to the quick by the jeers of my fellow catechumens, that I had been used, that the Father had been lying in wait for the chance to drop that thunderbolt, in order to drive home the point that the Holy Trinity was not to be taken lightly.

“I had intended to explain the Trinity with an analogy to 3-in-1 oil, so it was probably just as well.”

Three-in-One Oil is not a bad analogy. Just don’t tell your clergy friends.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Doctrine Is Not Our Saving Grace

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

William Willimon, the most widely published United Methodist Bishop, retired from his episcopal responsibilities and returned to teaching at Duke Divinity School in 2012. The Christian Century marked his retirement with a wide ranging interview covering a wide spectrum of topics relating to the work of a bishop and the ministry of the United Methodist Church.

He was asked whether in his role as Bishop he would have removed a pastor who had “recanted doctrinal vows he or she had solemnly pledged to honor.” “Absolutely,” said Willimon, “tell me you have misgivings about the Trinity or trouble believing in the bodily resurrection and I’ll help you find less intellectually challenging work—like being a Republican candidate for president.”

Throughout his career, Willimon has been known more for his wit than his wisdom, and if one assumes that he was trying to be funny about the Republican candidates, then maybe he was just kidding in his doctrinal illustration.

If he wasn’t kidding, then it’s troubling to think that having “misgivings about the Trinity or trouble believing in the bodily resurrection” would be grounds for dismissing a pastor. (Didn’t he read Paul Tillich’s “Dynamics of Faith,” or does he think the greatest theologian of the twentieth century was wrong about doubt being a necessary part of faith?)

But setting Tillich aside, Methodists have never been greatly concerned about doctrine. We are united in a general affirmation that Jesus is the Christ, but widely divided about precisely what that means.

And more seriously, if “misgivings” can be grounds for dismissal, then it will be difficult to have really honest conversation with one’s bishop, who is supposed to be a “pastor to the pastors.”

But there’s more.

This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday. I’m guessing that the average United Methodist lay person doesn’t know that and doesn’t care. The Trinity has a strong tradition as church doctrine, but it is connected to the biblical witness of the early church by the thinnest threads of biblical evidence.

The Trinity does represent an important truth: we experience God in different ways. The traditional formulation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reminds us that we experience God as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.

And if we don’t understand the Trinity, how will we ever make sense of Don McLean’s “American Pie” reference to “the three men I admire most”?

But to the average person, the doctrine of the Trinity often sounds like a belief in three gods, rather than three experiences of the One.

Willimon’s second example of denying a doctrine is described as “having trouble believing in the bodily resurrection.” Nothing is more central to Christian faith than the resurrection of Jesus. The Gospels are written by people who are convinced that they have met the risen Christ. That encounter vindicates everything that Jesus taught. They are clear that they are not just talking about a memory, and they have not encountered a ghost. His presence is real.

Expressing that reality in a way that it can be understood is not easy.

Clearly, we are not talking about a resuscitated corpse, but the Gospel descriptions never confront the issue head on. We see an empty tomb and we hear a voice. He approaches two of them on the road to Emmaus, and they talk for hours before they recognize him in the breaking of bread. When Paul describes his encounter on the road to Damascus, he claims that the appearance to him is just the same as previous appearances to other disciples. There are no words to describe the experience which has turned their world upside down.

More than half a century ago, Paul Tillich published a sermon called, “The Yoke of Religion,” using the text from Matthew cited above. He argued that Jesus had come to free us from that “yoke.” And he described the predicament of modern “man” this way:

“The religious law demands that he accept ideas and dogmas, that he believe in doctrines and traditions, the acceptance of which is the condition of his salvation from anxiety, despair and death. So he tries to accept them, although they may have become strange or doubtful to him. He labors and toils under the religious demand to believe things he cannot believe.”

In Tillich’s time, there were many church goers who labored and toiled under the religious demand to believe things they could not believe. In our time some of those people are searching desperately for a way to reconcile their faith with ancient doctrines, while many others simply leave the church. For such people, a pastor with “misgivings” about those doctrines may be exactly what they need.

When Jesus called his disciples, he did not demand that they believe something, only that they follow him. That is still our invitation.

*This is revised from a post first published on June 1, 2012.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

Mark Tooley, Bishop Sprague, the IRD and False Doctrine

Bishop C. Joseph Sprague addressing the Caretakers of God's Creation Conference

"Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”

Matthew 7:3-5

Jesus’ admonition to “judge not” and the companion illustration of the speck and the log first caught my youthful attention when I was an early teenager.

I thought it was brilliant. And I thought that it perfectly explained the wrongness of my parents’ propensity to point out my faults, while ignoring their own. How could they be so blind, I wondered, to the logs that so obviously obscured their vision of me?

It took at least a decade before I understood the irony of my judgment.

In a recent blogpost on “Methodist Bishops and False Doctrine,” Mark Tooley, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and ardent critic of most of what I love about the United Methodist Church, took aim at retired Bishop Joseph Sprague for preaching what Tooley calls “False Doctrine.”

Tooley plays a theological game of “gotcha” that is no more helpful in the church than it is in secular politics. In both cases it distracts from deeper issues and questions that might move us farther along toward new understandings.

Of course, in Jesus' terms, I am judging Tooley for judging Sprague. 

It is no excuse, but I just can’t help myself.

According to Tooley, Sprague has denied the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, the atoning death of Christ, as well as Christ’s eternal existence. And in a recent sermon at the United Methodist Women’s environmental conference he told a story about giving what Tooley sees as a very vague and doctrinally suspect answer to a question about his “ultimate hope.”

Historically, one of the great strengths of our Wesleyan tradition in United Methodism is that we are not a doctrinal church. We do not insist that everyone should believe the same thing. We do not have anything like a doctrinal catechism. Part of our heritage has been a valuing of the individual faith journey, and the recognition that our journeys are not all the same. We have a lot in common, but we also have a great diversity.

If we take more than a glance at these “false doctrines” we can see that the label is highly problematic. 

The thoroughly orthodox biblical scholar William Barclay, writing in the middle of the last century, observed in his commentary on the birth narrative in Luke’s Gospel that the church has never insisted that everyone should believe in the virgin birth. He gives some biblical reasons in favor of believing it and other biblical reasons against it. And then he suggests that the wording in Luke and Matthew may reflect the common Jewish understanding of the time that every child had three parents, a father, a mother, and the Spirit of God.

When it comes to bodily resurrection, atonement, and the eternal nature of Christ, those are not simple concepts. People believe them very differently.

The resurrection narratives speak of a “bodily” resurrection because they want to insist that something really happened. They are not talking about a ghost or a spirit. This is not an illusion or a memory. But it is also not a story about a resuscitated corpse or a flying body. One of the consistent details in the resurrection stories is that the disciples do not recognize him. If he had appeared post Easter in his earthly body they would surely have known who he was. And Paul would not have claimed that the appearance to him was the same as the appearance to the original disciples. It is after all a mystery.

We  will fast-forward to the issue at the heart of Tooley’s critique: a supposedly vague and non-traditional answer that Sprague remembers giving to a woman in prison. According to Tooley, the woman had asked the bishop for “his ultimate hope.”

But that was not the question at all.

This is the story as Bishop Sprague actually told it in his sermon:

“On Fat Tuesday, I met with 80 participants in the multi-faith Horizon Prison Initiative at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. . . .

“As the participants delved into their personal religious traditions, experiences and values, while learning to better understand and respect the differences among them, they expressed growing interest in learning more about the intersection of faith and practice in the public arena. Truth be told, they wanted chapter and verse regarding the social justice involvements of the president of Horizon.

“To honor their invitation, I presented a litany of a lifetime of social justice involvements in church, nation and world. At the conclusion of this narrative, an insightful young participant responded, “You’re an old man, who has done a bunch of things. When you look around at today’s mess, was it worth it?”

“With this, the blunt young woman opened the trapdoor to the dark night of my soul. And, I suspect to that of many activists in today’s church. Was it worth it? Has my life counted for much of lasting value, given the increasingly reactionary state of the church and the tragic folly of a Trump-led nation? I am not sure. I admitted to the young woman and her other Horizon participants that sometimes despair and situational depression creep up the back stairway of my soul.”

And then later, as Sprague worked his way toward the conclusion of his sermon, he said:

Let us return to that brutally candid, young Appalachian inmate at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, “OK,” she said in response to my confession, “but when you are down, and believe me, we here in prison know down, what do you do?” 

Pensively, I responded, “I try to immerse myself in beloved community; to push my too proud self back into the care and company of intimate friends and fellow travelers that I/we might be helped to remember potent empowering stories and ponder anew the Eternal Yes in the heart of the Great Mystery made normatively visible in Jesus.”

The question was not about “ultimate hope,” it was about the hope that gets you through the day and the week. It was about the hope that keeps you going. And Sprague answered with deep faith.

Then he went on to give several illustrations of what he say as the “Eternal Yes in the heart of the Great Mystery made normatively visible in Jesus.” It was, in spite of Tooley’s attempt to belittle it, a great sermon. It was challenging and inspiring and uplifting.

He closed with some familiar lines from Emily Dickinson.

Hope is the thing with feathers,

That perches in the soul, 

And sings the tune without the words 

And never stops at all . . .

Tooley makes a rather revealing observation when he writes that, “Sprague’s open defiance of core Methodist and Christian doctrine nearly twenty years ago illustrates that Methodism’s divisions and theological confusion are not new. . . . Liberal theology governed Methodism for most of the 20th century.”

So his point is that Methodism has ignored its own core doctrines for something  like 40% of its denominational life in the United States. Of course, I would give a much earlier start time to progressive theology in Methodism, dating back at least to the beginnings of the Social Gospel, when progressives and evangelicals were the same people. A strong argument can be made for going back to the Civil War, or maybe to the 1844 split over slavery. I’m sure I have many colleagues who would argue that it goes all the way back to old John Wesley himself. And still others would insist, not without reason, that it started with Jesus.

But even if we take Tooley’s assessment as correct, it is hard to see something that has been around that long as a passing phase.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

Unarmed Truth and Unconditional Love

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." I still believe that We Shall overcome!
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1964

Near the conclusion of his State of the Union speech, President Obama spoke about his hopes for our country and he talked about how he was “inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far. . . .  Voices Dr. King believed would have the final word — voices of unarmed truth and unconditional love.”

He talked about how he sees those voices “everywhere I travel in this incredible country of ours.” 

“I see you,” he said. “I know you’re there. You’re the reason why I have such incredible confidence in our future. Because I see your quiet, sturdy citizenship all the time.”

And then he listed the places and the ways and the people in whom he sees these voices of unarmed truth and unconditional love:

“I see it in the Dreamer who stays up late to finish her science project, and the teacher who comes in early because he knows she might someday cure a disease.

“I see it in the American who served his time, and dreams of starting over — and the business owner who gives him that second chance. The protester determined to prove that justice matters, and the young cop walking the beat, treating everybody with respect, doing the brave, quiet work of keeping us safe.

“I see it in the soldier who gives almost everything to save his brothers, the nurse who tends to him ’til he can run a marathon, and the community that lines up to cheer him on.

“It’s the son who finds the courage to come out as who he is, and the father whose love for that son overrides everything he’s been taught.

“I see it in the elderly woman who will wait in line to cast her vote as long as she has to; the new citizen who casts his for the first time; the volunteers at the polls who believe every vote should count, because each of them in different ways know how much that precious right is worth.”

It was a moving moment.

As a pastor, and specifically as a United Methodist pastor, I found my attention focused on that vignette of the son “who finds the courage to come out,” and the father “whose love for that son overrides everything he has been taught.”

Sadly, the Christian church generally and United Methodists specifically, have too often been responsible for teaching fathers and mothers to reject their gay sons and daughters. 

There is language in our United Methodist Book of Discipline which is supposed to mitigate that rejection, but when we tell people that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching,” some amount of rejection is inevitable. 

Bill Ziegler was a great United Methodist preacher, whom I was blessed to have as a mentor and friend. He was a tireless advocate for social justice and for the inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the church and in the culture. Whenever we debated an issue like this, he would always caution us to remember, “this is a human being you’re talking about.” 

For Bill, it was always personal.

In our debates about how we deal with the “issue” of sexual orientation in the United Methodist Church, we often talk as if we have forgotten that this is about human beings. We are debating the inclusion or exclusion of human beings.

In the end, it’s not about polity, or doctrine, or the Book of Discipline. In the end, it’s not about the authority of scripture (though on that score we can be reasonably certain that love wins), it’s about human beings.

Over the centuries the church has often fallen short of what it ought to be as the Body of Christ in the world. That’s not because the church is more fallible than other institutions or communities, it’s because our expectations are so much higher. But this is a mistake we need to correct.

Unarmed truth and unconditional love need to have the final word.

We need to be the community that gives the son “the courage to come out,” not the institution that teaches the father that he cannot accept who his son is.

This is about human beings and we need to get it right.