The traditional definitions of how God, Jesus and the Spirit are 'one God' were composed at a critical stage in the development of Christian ideas in the 4th to the 5th centuries and also at a time when Christian faith and worship were flourishing under the rule of the Emperor. It is not too much to say that from then, until the 18th century, Christian faith and practice relied upon this monarchical context of life. While there were times when the link with the human rulers failed or was challenged, the influence of the rule of monarchy profoundly influenced Christian theological ideas about God and our relation to him. It has taken another two centuries of the developing life of modern society and critical scholarship of the New Testament to allow us to look at the ideas of God in a different light.

The God of the Kingdom/New Creation

In the history of peoples all aspects of divinity rested to a large extent on centuries of tribal myth, stories and literature such as the Hebrew writings and then the New Testament. Left to ourselves we perhaps naturally envisage the divine as equivalent to some patriarchal ruler who gives orders and commands. The Greek ideas certainly fell into this category with the myths of the gods on Mount Olympus. From there they passed into philosophical categories such as the divine omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence etc. With the crisis of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus the point had been reached that in relation to humanity the tipping point had come in this understanding of God. When Jesus was saying to his fellow Jews that the time had come and what was now needed was to repent and believe in the good news, a perspective was being prepared for a renewed understanding of God. And there is a certain sense that Jesus, with the disciples and the people whom they met on their journeying, were already moving towards a new understanding of divine relationships. There was to be a future for all humanity in sharing in the divine. While God could not be God without being separate from all creation, yet the future for all of us was to share in some way in the divine. It was not what the Greeks called 'people power' -(democracy) - but sharing and living in that love of the divine known in Jesus.

The traditional definitions of God in the fourth and fifth centuries had as their context the ideas of human control and governance through kingship - monarchy. It couldn't have been otherwise. Kingship in Israel - who believed that Yahweh was their king/god - was always ambivalent. At Jesus' trial, when he was asked if he was a king, the people of Jerusalem apparently cried out that they had no king but Caesar! So when Christianity was made the religion of the Roman Empire in the third century, there was the ambivalence of thinking about the divinity of God in the context of monarchy. But if one reverts to the gospel understanding of what God had accomplished in Jesus - kingdom/new creation - real possibilities emerge both for the relationship between the Father and Son and Spirit and also for ourselves.

While the letter to the Hebrews pictures God as seated on a throne and the risen Lord sitting at his right hand - these were images inherited from Israel, particularly in psalm 110: 'The Lord says to my lord/sit at my right hand.' - Jesus' ministry was oriented towards thinking of God as Abba, Father. The parable of the prodigal son has the human father running to welcome the return of the prodigal, which was surely not only a human epic story. So if we re-orientate our thinking around these seminal ideas of God, the divine, in intimate relationship with humanity rather than as a controlling monarch, which in the past often meant 'despot', there is a way forward to an understanding of the 'status' of the risen Lord and Spirit in relation not only to the Father but also to us. Let us see, however briefly, this could work out.

Jesus, Son of Man - the Beloved Son.

Whatever we may feel about the language of the decree of Chalcedon in 451 and it's appeal to a literal idea that Jesus was the God/Man, being possessed of two natures, walking in Palestine, the gospels depict him as a perfectly normal man. Yes, he was a very remarkable person. But that in no way invalidates the conception of him as one who had been chosen by God for this mission. Crucified he was being obedient to that call from God. He was called by God, in the accounts in the gospels, 'My beloved son.' And the raising of this extraordinary man - he called himself Son of man - was the beginning of the New Creation in earnest, Jesus becoming the fore-runner. So at that point the risen Lord was taken into the divine love - 'seated at the right hand of God' was the equivalent conclusion by the early Christians.

Spirit of God

In the opening chapter of Genesis the spirit of God 'brooded over the face of the waters'. Spirit was always active in prophetic sayings and apparent in so many ways in the lives of the people of the Hebrew bible. Jesus ministry is likewise manifested by the Spirit in all that he does and thinks and prays. So perhaps it was quite reasonable for those who sought to bring Spirit into the argument for three persona in the one God. He was said in the Nicene document to have proceeded from the Father (while Jesus had been begotten of the Father). But if we are to escape from the mysterious entanglements of fifth century dogma (because few are able to stake their faith on these very strange formulae today) we need to take a step back from wanting to define how God 'became' three while remaining one! So, as with the risen Lord, we can conceive that Spirit is enveloped in the same divine love in which Jesus shares. The Pauline list of fruits of the Spirit bears this out.

Abba, Father

The God of all creation. according to Christian faith, is the one who 'planned' these foreunners of the new creation to be equal with him in his love. I write always of God as love - for how else are we to give any reasonable description for the disciples of Jesus commitment? Undoubtedly, as Jesus often said, according to the gospel accounts, we are in danger of falling below our true selves and then the divine love is 'felt' as judgement. So it is in this divine love, with the risen Lord and Spirit at its heart, that we also are intended to share when the plan of the new creation, the kingdom of God, is completed. So, finally, with an open view of the depth and breadth of the God who encompasses the beloved Son and the Spirit with himself, we can, allbeit, only as in a mirror, and not with full view, the whole of humanity and creation being joined together in the divine.

The last book of the New Testament is the only place where there is an attempt to 'describe' the denouement, the completion of the plan for the banquet of the nations. But, no one can speculate! Let us admit that the unmentionable idea that we shall all share in the divine love of God as equals with the Son and Spirit, is counter to all that has gone before in the doctrines of Christianity. At least from the Western Church's point of view. It is not so clear in the Eastern Church. The idea of humans being eventually 'divinised' raises spectres of the mediaeval fires which burnt the 'heretics' of the time. Michael Servetus. who wrote against the doctrines of the Trinity, was burned at the stake just outside Geneva on 27 October 1553 on the orders of John Calvin.