“The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the whole thing incomprehensible.”
Yes, it’s Trinity Sunday again — the only Sunday in the Christian year dedicated not to a story, not to a feast, not to a person, but to a doctrine. And the quote I just gave you is not, of course, a part of the doctrine itself. It’s Dorothy Sayers’ satirical summary of the doctrine as presented in the Athanasian Creed.
The creed itself is far more solemn — and far longer:
“Such as the Father is, such is the Son: and such is the Holy Ghost.
The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate: and the Holy Ghost uncreate.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible: and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible…”
And so it goes on — and on — and on. What I just read is only a small sample. The full creed is more than ten times that length!
Earlier this year at Concord Uniting Church, we recited almost the entire thing on Good Friday. I’m fairly sure most people had never heard of it before, let alone recited it aloud. And the real question, of course, was: did any of us understand it?
Years ago my friend Sheikh Mansour told me that a Christian friend of his in Iran once begged him to explain the Trinity. Mansour said, “It doesn’t make any more sense to me than it does to you”, and then he asked me the question many have asked: Why do we stick with this craziness?
Now, I’m actually a big fan of the doctrine of the Trinity — not because it is simple, but because I see it as the Church’s honest attempt to speak about God as based on our Scriptures. For years, though, I did see the whole debate as largely academic — the domain of philosophers and theologians — but this year something struck me afresh: Athanasius — the man most responsible for formulating the doctrine — was not just an armchair academic. He was a legend!
I’ve been reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which includes a surprisingly detailed biography of Athanasius. I confess: I had no idea. I had pictured Athanasius as a brilliant but bookish old professor — the sort who can explain metaphysics but can’t change a tyre. I couldn’t have been more wrong!
Athanasius was a thinker, yes — but he was also a doer. He was a pastor, a preacher, and a strategist. He could hold his own in the council chamber as well as in the desert. At the Council of Nicaea in 325, he helped hammer out the Church’s confession of the faith. After Nicaea he became the bishop of Alexandria — and a great warrior for truth.
You might have thought that winning the debate at Nicaea, with the emperor’s backing, would have secured him a peaceful and prosperous future. In truth, though, it was after they made him bishop that his troubles really began!
Athanasius had enemies — men he had done battle with in the Trinitarian controversy who didn’t disappear when the council ended. They regrouped. They whispered in the emperor’s ear, and ten years after Nicaea, in 335, Athanasius was deposed by the Council of Tyre and exiled by Constantine — the very emperor who had been his biggest fan!
Two years after that, though, Constantine died, and his sons reversed the decision. Athanasius returned in triumph to Alexandria, but within another two years an enemy bishop was installed in his place, and he had to flee again, this time to Rome!
Athanasius spent ten years in Rome, ministering to the people and winning their love, but in 356, Emperor Constantius II ordered his arrest. Athanasius escaped by night and hid among the monks of the Egyptian desert.
In total, Athanasius was exiled five times, and the charges against him were wild: murder, sorcery, treason, and — wait for it — tax evasion!
The most colourful accusation was his alleged murder of Bishop Arsenius. His enemies claimed that Athanasius had killed Arsenius and cut off his hand for use in magic rituals. The prosecution’s case collapsed spectacularly, though, when Athanasius produced Arsenius alive at the trial — with both hands intact!
“Athanasius contra mundum”, they said of him — ‘Athanasius against the world’.
Interestingly, he was never charged with heresy. No one dared take him on where it mattered. They couldn’t defeat him on the Scriptures, so they attacked his character. They couldn’t silence his theology, so they tried to destroy his reputation.
This all sounds very familiar. As many of you know, Google recently accused me of supporting terrorism and permanently deleted my YouTube account. What was the real issue? Well … I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with me supporting terrorism.
For Athanasius, the real issue was never academic. The doctrine of the Trinity may be complex in its formulation and incomprehensible in its fullness, but for Athanasius it expressed a simple, central truth that he refused to surrender:
We will never get more of God than what we get in Jesus Christ. And when God gives us the Spirit, God gives us God’s self — not simply some spiritual assistant.
This, Athanasius believed, is as faithful to the Scriptures as it is to our experience. It is God who comes to us in Jesus. He is, as Saint Paul says, “the visible image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15)
Athanasius didn’t cling to a doctrine. He clung to God, and the God he clung to was the God he met in Jesus — the God who comes close, who takes flesh, who breathes His Spirit into us.
That is the Trinity: God above us, God with us, God within us – not three gods, not a maths problem, but one God who refuses to stay distant.
And that is something worth standing for, even if the whole world stands against you.
We celebrated another wonderful Sunday Eucharist last weekend, though it didn’t turn out as I had expected. I was late in getting things organised as I was in the middle of moving house. Andrew Logan knew he was scheduled for the Sunday and was good enough to follow me up during the week, checking on the details. I quickly emailed him back with the details, but come Sunday … he was nowhere to be found!
Thankfully, our dear brother, Costandi Bastoli, was there, and the two of us pushed forward, and that worked so well that we didn’t even need to call in AI Saint Paul!
It was Pentecost Sunday, and Costandi took the opportunity to share some of his encounters with the Spirit of God. His testimonies were both personal and powerful, and If you missed the broadcast, you can watch it in full on our Rumble channel. I’ve also created an edited version of our discussion on John 20:19-23 – a passage often referred to as ‘John’s Pentecost’. You’ll find that at the end of today’s newsletter.
I’ve kept up with the practice of publishing the two most popular shorts of the week below. Predictably, they’re both on the topic of how I was suddenly deplatformed by YouTube last week without warning or explanation! They accused me of supporting terrorism but gave me no clues as to how they came to that conclusion, and unlike Athanasius, I don’t expect I’ll ever get my day in court.
You can still see all our short videos on the Sunday Eucharist Instagram Page and please now follow me on Rumble, where more than 600 of my videos have already been uploaded. Yes, there were thousands lost on YouTube, but at least I can rebuild with confidence. Rumble prides itself on being the home of ree speech!
This coming Sunday we will all be at Binacrombi for the broadcast – not only Joy and I, but Diane as well! We’ve also invited Pastor Ceorge Capsis to join us, who is an old friend of Diane’s as well as mine. It should be quite an adventure!
Join us this Sunday at midday (Sydney time). @ www.theSundayEucharist.com or on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia, Streamyard or Rumble
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What’s On?
- Sunday, May 31st – Our Eucharist from noon thesundayeucharist.com, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia Streamyard or Rumble
- Tuesday, June 2nd – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from7 pm.
- Thursday, June 4th – Noon Bible Study @www.thesundayeucharist.com/bible
- Thursday, June 4th – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from7pm
- Saturday, June 6th – Boxing at the Legends Gym in Kensington from 3 pm
It’s been another exhausting week for me, and a large part of that has been trying to remove the YouTube code from all my websites and email messages now that my YouTube videos no longer function. I don’t want to moan too loudly about all that, as I don’t want to give my enemies the opportunity to gloat.
Mind you, I’ve been stunned at the way God has sent His holy angels to me too over the last week – each of whom has encouraged me to keep going. These angels have taken the form of friends I haven’t had contact with in years – a number of whom have called me over the last seven days to express their appreciation for the role I’ve played in their lives.
On Wednesday night I had another divine encounter with the two people you see in the photo above. Tevita and Elizabeth Funa run the Brofit gym in Bankstown. It seems that the Lord has been trying to get us together for a while. They are a devout spiritual couple, both running a gym and working with young people in the juvenile justice system – a combination very close to my own heart. By God’s grace, we will do something special together.
OK. It’s gone 1 am, and I need to get to bed. As mentioned, we are in the bush this weekend – not only Joy and I, but Diane and her friend, Lorraine, and I’m fully expecting Tevita and Elizabeth to join us tomorrow! Tune into the Binacrombi Facebook page Saturday evening if you want to watch my stoush with Tevita!
Your brother in the Good Fight,
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About Father Dave Smith
Preacher, Pugilist, Activist, Father of four
