"If one speaks of God it is always, for the Eastern Church, in the concrete...It is always the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost." (Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 64)
Once again, I gravitate back to Lossky's works. In the church I attend I occasionally hear mention of the Trinity but it is almost a generic address. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are mentioned but there is no context. All focus is on Jesus. Father, Son, God, Lord and such terms are thrown into the mix of preaching, singing and praise and there is no clarity as to the significance of the terms. Maybe such a setting isn't really the place for this, I don't know. But it is one thing that has always troubled me and I struggled for years to make sense of it all, to find a way to filter these terms thrown about so loosely into a framework through which I could place my mind at ease and move beyond intellect into true worship.
I have finally been able to do so but in doing so I find myself at odds with the aversion to theology in neo-Protestant churches with theology and discussion on the Trinity primarily proof-texting, as if the Trinity is nothing short of obvious.
So I am re-reading Lossky's work and find some quotes that fit, though I'm not sure he was addressing this specifically.
"Likewise, the idea of beatitude has acquired in the West a silghtly intellectual emphasis, presenting itself in the guise of a vision of the essence of God. The personal relationship of man to the living God is no longer a relationship to the Trinity, but rather has as its object the person of Christ, who reveals to use the divine nature." (p. 64)
Now on the surface this seems like no big deal. In fact, I agree with this view of Christ. It is through him we come to know God but in so doing I have found the God we know is the Trinity. But Lossky brings up a good point and it is apparent in the recent arguments about Christ found throughout not just the church but the culture at large:
"Christian life and thought become christocentric, relying primarily on the humanity of the incarnate Word; one might almost that it is this which becomes their anchor of salvation." (pp. 64-5, bold mine)
This is exactly the state of the church today, especially the "evanglecical" variety (keeping in mind all churches are really evangelical in nature, it's just that "evangelical" has become something of a franchise or trademark). It is all about Jesus, the Trinity being spoken of "as a memory" (quoting Th. de Regnon in the footnote on p. 64).
"Indeed, in the doctrinal conditions peculiar to the West all properly theocentric speculation runs the risk of considering the nature before the persons and becoming a mysticism of 'the divine abyss'...; of becoming an impersonal apophaticism of the divine nothingness prior to the Trinity."
According to Lossky, there is no place in Eastern Orthodoxy for "a theology, much less a mysticism, of the divine essence" (p. 65).
"The goal of Orthodox spirituality [is] a participation in the divine life of the Holy Trinity..., possessing by grace all that the Holy Trinity possesses by nature." (p. 65)
As he says elsewhere, theology is not thinking about the Trinity but thinking in the Trinity.
So I'm torn. I appreciate the christocentric view as through coming to know Jesus more and more I've seen a change in my life, Jesus as example, imitation of Jesus. In this sense it is a personal relationship with Christ.
But I have also come to agree with the Trinitarian viewpoint over and above the other theologies (e.g. the Oneness Pentecostal background through which I spent my early years as a "new" Christian). In studying these other views it becomes much more clear as to how and why the Trinity developed as it did.
But as I repeat frequently, it is a hedge, a boundary, something we come to through experience; it is not where we begin. Where we begin is coming to know the cross of Christ and, more significantly, the risen Christ for without the risen Christ the cross becomes a theology of divine abuse.
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