A Word from Pastor Nathan

Dear Friends:

On Pentecost Sunday, we celebrated the arrival of the Holy Spirit. We have heard the story of God’s creativity and Jesus’ redemptive work, but the Holy Spirit is often the neglected member of the divine union. The Apostle’s Creed has specific words about God and Jesus, but the Holy Spirit only gets a mention. Architects of the creed attribute no action to the Spirit. Sometimes systems of beliefs get in the way of faith.

When we think of the mystical union of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, we recall the word trinity. However, the word trinity never appears in scripture.

The Westminster Confession of Faith was the guiding document for the ordering of ministry in the Reformed Church. Barton Stone, a forebearer of the Stone-Campbell Movement, wrote the following ahead of his scheduled ordination in 1798: “Knowing that … I should be required to adopt the Confession of Faith, as the system of doctrines taught in the Bible, I determined to give it a careful examination once more. This was to me almost the beginning of sorrows. I stumbled at the doctrine of Trinity as taught in the Confession; I labored to believe it, but could not conscientiously subscribe to it.”

Alexander Campbell, the other half of the Stone -Campbell Movement, wrote, “I have not spent, perhaps, an hour in ten years, in thinking about the Trinity. It is no term of mine. It is a word which belongs not to the Bible, in any translation of it I ever saw. I teach nothing, I say nothing, I think nothing about it, save that it is an unscriptural term, and, consequently, can have no scriptural ideas attached to it.”

Given these quotations, what would Stone and Campbell say about our upcoming worship service, which is Trinity Sunday? The doctrine of the trinity is human -made, and yet we see throughout scripture that the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer relate to one another as in a beautifully choreographed dance.

I cannot dance to save my life. However, I do think the circle of the trinity expands to include the church, you, and me. The Divine invites us to dance and move in the Spirit that gives breath and life. The Trinity may confound us, but that which mystifies us also moves us to a more profound alleluia.

Dancing with you,

Nathan