The Heart of What We Believe as Christians

(This is my "Pastor's Reflection" on Page Two of Good Shepherd Church Bulletin, August 1, 2010.)

After two weeks of tantalizing you with background reflections, I must now answer my own question, What are our "core beliefs" as Christians? If you want to know why I believe this is important, please review the last two weeks' bulletins.

There are only two doctrines or articles of faith that specifically make us Christian and distinguish our faith from all non-Christian religions. In the shorthand of theological jargon, they are the Trinity and the Incarnation. If you believe in the Trinity and the Incarnation, you are a Christian; if you don't, you're not. Well, that's easy enough to say, but what does it mean?

 Basically, the doctrine of the Trinity unites two apparently contradictory statements: there is one God, (not three), but the one God is three distinct persons, (not one). This is such a commonplace teaching, drilled into many of us from early childhood, that we often don't realize just how strange and paradoxical it is. If, as children, we questioned it, we were silenced by some kind of statement as, "It's a mystery, and so we can't understand it; we just have to believe it." That may be enough for a child's faith, although I was never convinced by it; it certainly isn't enough for an adult faith.

If the Bible is the source of our faith, we may want to ask, Where is it in the Bible? It may come as a surprise to find out that the word "trinity" never once appears in the Bible, nor does it anywhere explicitly say that there are three persons in one God. So why do we believe this, and how did we come to express this belief in those words?

First, Jesus was a Jew, and the Jews, unique among all the peoples of the ancient world three thousand years ago, came to understand that there is one God who is Lord of all, rather than many gods, each controlling some aspect of nature or giving special protection to a particular city or nation. Furthermore, the Jews had an awareness throughout their history that this one God had entered into a special relationship with them in a mutual covenant with certain obligations and promises. They saw this as God's revelation of himself to them, and the writings of the Bible were inspired documents of His revelations and the people's living response to it in their history.

The New Testament presents Jesus to us as viewed through the experience of His first disciples and the communities drawn together by them around this faith in Jesus. Throughout the New Testament, Jesus is presented as relating Himself with this one God of the Jewish covenant in two particular ways. Frequently He identifies Himself with God, doing His own things that only God can do, such as forgiving sins. But He also speaks of this one God in distinct but intimate terms, referring to God as Father and Himself as Son. But the New Testament also speaks of another one who is active with the power of God, but who is not the Son, but continues and fulfills the work of the Son -- the Holy Spirit.

Throughout the first seven centuries of the Church, amid much controversy, the Church leaders gradually defined ways of coming to terms with the "raw data" of the New Testament, affirming both that there could be only one God, but that three distinct Divine Persons can be identified, each of whom is not the other, each of whom is fully God, but there is one God alone, not three. The Trinity.

Similarly, during those early centuries, the Church struggled with what Jesus was recorded as saying about Himself. The Councils came to the conclusion that anything short of affirming that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully human, without some kind of lessening or accommodation of one or the other, does not do justice to what the inspired word of Scripture says. This is the Incarnation.

We can't answer the question, Why does God or Jesus have to be this way? Our exploration has to start with accepting the fact that this is the way it is. Then, we can explore, and this is the heart of theology's task, why God might have revealed Himself to us this way, and what it means for us.

I think we can be sure of this: the Trinity and the Incarnation, as the core Christian beliefs, aren't just God "showing off" how wonderful He is. There has to be a vital meaning in it for us. For openers, you might want to ask yourself, So what? What difference does faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation mean to me? Here's a hint, keep that question in mind from now on as you are listening to and participating in the prayers and readings of the Mass.

If the Trinity and Incarnation are the core beliefs of Christians, what makes our faith as Catholics unique and distinct from other Christians? What are our specifically Catholic core beliefs? Again there are two of them. It's important to know and understand them because there are many other ways of being Christian, some of them easier and even,, perhaps, more appealing than the Catholic Church. We need to ask, and try to answer, the question, Why be Catholic? Hand in hand with that question is another: Is it worth it?

Catholic core beliefs . . . next week.

I love you,

Fr. Tom Welbers