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.