Please join us for worship service on Sunday, June 4 at 10 am.

Rev. Marlene Notes:

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” 2 Corinthians 13:11-13

This week’s reading from the lectionary is the closing greeting of Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. In it, he suggests that God extends grace through the Father, love through the Son, and fellowship through the Spirit; so that all humanity can live in love and fellowship with one another.

Theologians, who research the Trinity, distinguish between the “immanent Trinity,” the inner life shared by the Persons of the Godhead, and the “economic Trinity.” Later theologians would see this passage as an example of the activities of the “economic Trinity.” The term comes from the Greek word oikonomikos, which means “pertaining to the management of a household,” in this case, the household of God.

 The Trinity Knot

Nowhere is the dogma of the Trinity explicitly stated in the scriptures in the way that the Church formulated it at the major Councils. However, the nucleus of the doctrine is present indirectly in formulas, greetings, and prayers.

Much of our Trinitarian thought evolved from doctrines introduced by Irenaeus of Lyons at the end of the 2^nd century, and Tertullian in the early 3^rd.  Tertullian introduced the expression “three persons, one essence” meaning by “persons”— “faces or masks.” Augustine of Hippo, in the 4^th century, explained the Trinity in terms of relations within a person or between a person. He pictured the Trinity as “memory,” “intellect” and “will” within a single mind, and to the triad of “the lover,” “the beloved” and “their love.” (The Eerdmans’s Bible Dictionary)

By the 9^th century, a Mass of the Trinity had gained popularity in many monasteries, and it was extended to the Universal Church in 1334. Trinity Sunday reminds us of the doctrinal belief that God, Christ and the Spirit are equally responsible for our salvation.

                                  Rev. Marlene