A couple of images have me wondering about the struggles of God, struggles of tension within God's self, this is partly a trinitarian reflection, and partly a reflection on how God contends with the brokeness of his/her creation, and I think the two are connected. It is probably best explained through the theological explanation of perichoresis, described here for us by St John of Damascus:
"The subsistences [i.e., the three Persons] dwell and are established firmly in one another. For they are inseparable and cannot part from one another, but keep to their separate courses within one another, without coalescing or mingling, but cleaving to each other. For the Son is in the Father and the Spirit: and the Spirit in the Father and the Son: and the Father in the Son and the Spirit, but there is no coalescence or commingling or confusion. And there is one and the same motion: for there is one impulse and one motion of the three subsistences, which is not to be observed in any created nature"
This three in one/one in three must produce a tension, and while this tension is often described as a divine dance or embrace I wonder if that dance/ embrace sometimes takes the form of a divine wrestling where love and wrath meet; now I know that wrath is not a popular attribute of God to be speaking of, for we prefer to keep God nice and acceptable. Writing in Exclusion and Embrace, Miroslav Volf wakes us from our cosseted slumber:
" It takes the quiet of a suburb for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence is a result of a God who refuses to judge. In a scorched land–soaked in the blood of the innocent, the idea will invariably die, like other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind…if God were NOT angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end of violence, that God would not be worthy of our worship. "
Volf again in a World magazine interview:
“Love without wrath on account of harm inflicted on the beloved is mere sentimentality. That’s why God is wrathful in the face of human sin.”
Put simply, because God is love Gods wrath is against all and everything that marrs the image of love. We live in a violent world, that violence is both physical and more subtly mental- words can and do cause violence to out hearts and minds and souls. To God that violence against his beloved creation is intollerable, and he responds in justice or wrath, love and mercy or grace, and love holds both justice and grace, wrath and mercy in tension. The divine dance becomes a divine struggle, a movement of passion and longing that is echoed in a world that groans to be free. Perichoresis becomes then both a thing of beauty and of power, and we are embraced in it and through it. This contemplation of the glory of the Holy Trinity is restorative, and sadly lacking especially in evangelical circles. St Gregory Nazianzus says it best:
“No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One. . . When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.”
The blogger at Ars Theologica says:
The Church is a community defined by this same perichoresis. By the power of the Holy Spirit we are drawn up into the divine life, in which we move and flow and derive life, love, and spiritual power. In the words of the Apostle Paul, in the Triune Lord "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). The Church is only the Church when it is united in love with the Trinity, sharing in its perichoresis. C.S. Lewis perceptively noted that the "whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us" (The Weight of Glory, 153). I find this notion both thrilling and a source of profound peace.
So on to those images first this, a sculpture found at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park: Jonathan Borofsky's Molecule Man 1+1+1, Borofsky seees his role as asking questions of human life, for me Molecule Man provides an interesting alternative picture of the trinity as they embrace and wrestle with the tension of mercy, love and justice, grace, love and wrath none of which can be absent if one is to be present:
The second image is drawn by Tim, and for me picks up the whole theme in a different way:
Tim says:
Nehemiah 2:19-20, 4:1-9 & John 16:25-33
For those of us training at St John’s Richard’s sermon was everything we expect of one of our lecturers, the wisdom of one who teaches on the Bible in Christian Ministry and the Old Testament and delivered with a dry humour rooted in our common experience at St John’s. So not everyone got all the jokes. However, his exegesis of the passage and his critique of traditional christian uses of the Nehemiah passage led him to suggest a very plausible and acceptable understanding of the text.
The story of Nehemiah is essentially one of Jerusalem, the city of such hopes and dreams of the people of Israel. I fear that Nehemiah, with his vengeful prayer, doesn’t get a good review but there must be some good in a man who has vision, passion and determination to be the catalyst for renewal. If nothing else it shows that God has a place for all in building his Church. Essentially the thrust of Richard’s teaching was that Jesus is the fulfilment of all the hopes of God’s people that Jerusalem came to symbolise. For those that labour for God’s Kingdom opposition is inevitable and yet God will win the struggle because it is his fight and his kingdom. Christ says that we will face opposition but we should not be afraid because he has overcome the world. The secret of not missing those things hidden in the text is in the bread and the wine and the word.
The image uses the crown of thorns as an image of a wall. Within it, and on the crown of Christ’s head, three figures dance. The cross forms the facial features of Christ and so recognises that the New Jerusalem is founded on the cross of Christ. The image portrays the death and suffering of Christ indicating the cost Christ paid for his Church. Perhaps our reaction to those who oppose the renewal of God’s Church and the mission of his kingdom is found in the encounter with the crucified Christ, the living Word.
This illustrates that ongoing struggle for me both in and through our struggle to grapple with God we come face to face with the God who struggles on our behalf. We cannot embrace a God of love without finding ourselves caught up in his grace and mercy or his justice and wrath, and although the tension will one day be resolved that day is not yet, but we live in the hope of its arrival...
...when love will remain. I finish with a poem of mine written when I first began thinking about the Trinity in the light of perichoresis:
Can you hear
the unforced
rhythms of grace ?
Do you see
the heavenly
holy dancers?
Are you captivated
by the wonder,
freedom,
movement,
and life
that flows from their
uncreated song?
Can you hear the beating
of their hearts
as they whisper,
and shout;
proclaiming their love
for one another,
and
for you?
Do you yearn
to join the passionate
throng, to be
encircled in their midst?
For you are invited
to this wild, heavenly
ceilidh!
Will you dare to take
the outstretched hand,
kick off your shoes
and dance?
