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Christian nondualism? Nondual Christianity? The Trinitarian Option for Progressive Christianity.
Nondualism has always been implicit in the Christian tradition.The concept of nondualism, the belief in the inherent connectedness of all things, may be an Eastern import, yet surprisingly, we find a correlate to nondualism (advaita in Hinduism, sunyata in Buddhism) in the Christian tradition. As noted in an earlier post, prior to its encounter with Indian philosophy the West had no explicit concept for nondualism and introduced the word nondual only as a translation of advaita. But prior to this encounter, for centuries Christianity had declared God to be triune (tri-une, “three-one”), both three and one.
From the compound tri-unity we derive the term Trinity. And we find a powerful statement of Trinitarian paradox in the sixth-century Athanasian Creed, the first creed to specifically address relations within the Trinity:
We worship one God in trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being. For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Spirit is still another. But the deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, equal in glory, coeternal in majesty. What the Father is, the Son is, as is the Holy Spirit.
For the author of the Athanasian Creed (who was in all likelihood not Athanasius), the Christian God is fully three and fully one. We can refer to the persons of the Trinity as individuals or as a collective. Either way is accurate, because they are three individuals forming one indivisible society. If nondualism is a fundamental ontology of relation, in which the one and the many are perfectly harmonized, then the Christian Trinity is a form of nondualism. That is, the Trinity is not either three or one. The Trinity is both three and one. The Trinity is triune; they are nondual. In the words of Richard Rohr, “If the mystery of the Trinity is the template of all reality, what we have in the Trinitarian God is the perfect balance between union and differentiation, autonomy and mutuality, identity and community.”
The Trinity is a treasure chest for Christian theology, but for too long Christianity has been embarrassed by its riches, defensively asserting its membership in the club of monotheistic religions, proudly proclaiming the One while insecurely mumbling the Three. The reason for this preference is far from obvious. Historians of religion report tremendously more interreligious violence between monotheistic religions than other forms of religion. In China, Taoists, Confucians, and Buddhists occasionally persecuted each other, but they rarely slaughtered each other. Monotheism also seems to produce higher levels of intra-religious violence, between sects within the same religion. Islam, for example, fought the First Fitna, a struggle between Sunnis and Shi’a, from 656 to 661 CE, and Christianity fought the Thirty Years War between Protestants and Catholics from 1618 to 1638 CE. Certainly, both religious conflicts were complicated by ethnic, political, and economic factors. Nevertheless, historians have made sound arguments that monotheism distorts faith into a motivation for war. Anyone who yearns for a reduction in violence must consider monotheism with a critical eye.
Reflecting its embarrassment, the Christian tradition’s language for the Trinity has never fit its theology of the Trinity. The Athanasian Creed continues: “So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but one God. . . . For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by himself to be both God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say there be three Gods, or three Lords.”
In conversation, when referring to three persons, we say “they.” But in theology, when referring to God the Trinity, we usually say “he.” How can three persons as one God take a singular pronoun? If a vocal trio performs a beautiful song in three-part harmony, so perfectly that they sing as both three and one, we still don’t refer to them as “he”; we refer to them as “they.”
Likewise, trust of Trinitarian revelation must express itself grammatically: God the Trinity takes they/them pronouns. Anything less risks Arianism, which rejects the divinity of Jesus (and, by implication, the Holy Spirit). Therefore, for the rest of this book, we shall refer to God the Trinity as “they.” This pluralistic reference does not assert any division within God but does proclaim differentiation within God. (Pronouns for each person of the Trinity will be applied as the book unfolds.)
The three-in-one nature of the Trinitarian God parallels the three-in-one nature of a musical chord.
By way of analogy, the Trinity is three persons who interanimate one another. Interanimation is an excellent term for the Trinity and, ideally, for human communal becoming. In the Latin language, the animus was that part of the person that lent them vitality, energy, and life. The animus was associated with spirit and courage. So, to interanimate one another is to grant one another more vitality, spirit, and courage. We have more life through relationship than we can alone, and the deeper the relationships the greater the life. For this reason, the Trinitarian God declares, “Seek me and live” (Amos 5:4).
Nevertheless, the eternal threeness and oneness of the Trinity remain, at first glance, mathematically and logically problematic. From an objectivist or materialist perspective, it is impossible to be both three and one. Rocks can’t be both three and one; you pick them up, and count them, and you either have one rock or three, not both one and three. According to some logicians, if rocks can’t do it, then humans can’t do it—not to mention God.
But, on closer examination, it is possible to be three and one in human experience. Above, we considered the effect that its harmonic surroundings have on the musical note E, which can provide definitive character to either a C major chord, making it happy, or a C# minor chord, making it sad. Now we can consider if a musical chord, consisting of the notes C–E–G, is one thing or three things. We can label it as either: one C major chord, or three notes: C–E–G. Most of us will experience it as one thing, but a trained ear can distinguish the three notes within the chord. So a musical chord, one of the most common, shared experiences we have, is both one and three.
The notes in a chord are played simultaneously, but the same analysis applies to melody, in that the notes played before and after any particular note will determine our experience of that note. If the note E is followed by F# and G#, we recognize it as the beginning of a major scale, which feels happy. If the note E is followed by F# and G, we recognize it as the beginning of a minor scale, which feels sad. From the perspective of nonduality, E lacks any self-sufficient, independent reality.
For a tone to become a melody, it must be contextualized within relationships of becoming, mediated by the passage of time. Tones interanimate each other, both vertically (in harmony) and horizontally (in melody), transforming the other tones played before them, with them, and after them. Moreover, the beauty of this harmony, its experiential power, is predicated upon the tones’ difference. The symphonic abundance of the C chord, or any melody in the key of C, is not experienced despite the tonal differences between C, E, and G; it is experienced due to their differences.
Agape unites the three persons into one God: the Trinity.
The tones within a chord are united by their underlying mathematics. Each tone has a frequency, and those frequencies will create different effects depending on how they overlap. The tones flow through one another, so that their uniqueness can be discerned but not separated.
Similarly, the persons within the Trinity are united by their shared love, a love so perfect that the three persons become one God. In Greek, the word for this divine love is agape (ah-GAHP-ay). Agape refers to the love between the persons of God, the love that God has for humankind, and the love that humans are called to share with one another. Agape is a perfect love, unconditional and universal. As such, we must distinguish it from all the transactional loves that characterize human life: from the familial and tribal love (Greek: storgē
that grants us security and protection, from the brotherly love (Greek: philos) that is of benefit to both parties, and from the erotic love (Greek: eros) that brings pleasure to both parties. Agape is not against these other loves, but agape completes them by divinizing them, by bringing them plumb with the grain of the universe.
Christianity, as an outgrowth of Judaism, has always identified itself as a monotheistic religion, worshiping one God and one God alone. Although the tradition has been soundly Trinitarian for a millennium and a half, some Christians deny that three unique persons can comprise one God. They argue that such a belief would constitute tritheism—the worship of three different gods. In their view, tritheism is a form of polytheism that rejects worship of the one God and is, therefore, heretical.
However, Christianity has also taught that the love of God is infinitely more perfect than the love of human for human. Therefore, if humans can achieve a love that erases the boundaries between persons, God should be able to as well.
Richard and Mary were two parishioners in a former church, married for sixty years. They had an extremely loving relationship, one of those rare near-perfect marriages—unfailing kindness toward one another, patience with each other’s foibles, continual gratitude and mutual praise. In his mid-eighties, Richard got sick and, after a three month fight, died. Mary was devastated. I was having lunch with Mary a few months later. When I asked her about life without Richard, she smiled gently, looked slightly befuddled, and said that she felt like “half a person.” She wasn’t whole once separated from Richard. She no longer felt complete. Her self was lacking.
Mary’s statement was both tragic and wonderful; tragic because she was in such pain, wonderful because she had known such love. She was saying that the two of them had become one, so that when one of the two was lost, the one who was left felt like only a half. They had a nondual relationship, being both two and one. They had a Trinitarian relationship, being united by agapic love, which had completed their familial, friendly, and erotic love.
Crucially, this union was predicated upon their difference, not their sameness. Mary and Richard did not fall in love or continually deepen their love because they saw themselves in each other. They loved one another because they saw someone different in each other. They were attracted to one another’s uniqueness, not sameness. Certainly, they shared values, ideals, and goals that made their marriage work. But neither saw the other as an extension or reflection of the self. They saw each other as free selves, deeply united.
Mary and Richard’s relationship achieved divine unity because neither sought to protect any aspect of themselves from the other. Using Buddhist language, they practiced openness, and found their greatest joy in that openness. Conversely, Mary and Richard denied their svabhava, a Buddhist term that we can here translate as “separate-being” or “self-sufficiency.” In this telling, svabhava refers to a withdrawn portion of the soul, an invulnerable hardness in the psyche that shallows our relationships. Buddhism asserts that it does not exist in truth, but that our craving for it—our fear of vulnerability—conjures its illusion. And that illusion causes our self-assertion, self-obsession, and ultimately our self-suffering, all of which spread like a disease.
If Richard and Mary can achieve unity through love, if two humans can become one couple, then certainly the Trinitarian God—Parent, Child, and Spirit—should be able to do the same. To deny God a beautiful human capacity would be bad theology. For this reason, accusations of tritheism against Trinitarians do not hold water. God is three persons united through agapic love into one nondual community. God is agapic nonduality. Recognizing love as the basis for all Christian thought, Catherine Mowry LaCugna concludes, “The doctrine of the Trinity, in one form or another, is the sine qua non for preserving the essentially relational character of God, the relational nature of human existence, and the interdependent quality of the entire universe.”
The persons of the Trinity relate to one another in a divine dance.
When they were younger, Mary and Richard loved to dance. Interestingly, the teachers of the Trinity have illustrated this concept through the metaphor of dance. When a skilled couple dances you cannot detect who is leading. There is no compulsion. Their movements appear spontaneously generated. Each defers to the other to produce perfectly synchronized action, action so spontaneous that it embodies freedom.
So it is with the Trinity. They dance freely, spontaneously, always in relation to one another but never determined by one another, co-originating one another in joyful mutuality. Dance creates beauty out of motion and grace out of time. Dance renders impermanence playful. The unique motions of the dancers unite to form the one harmony, so that the sum is greater than the parts. Interactions are spontaneous, the product of trust, attentiveness, and communion.
We, being made in the image of God, are made to dance—with God, with one another, and with the cosmos. In other words, our being is invited into God’s dance, and God’s dance is invited into our being. Just as importantly, we are called to share God’s dance with one another, to relate to one another freely and joyfully, spontaneously effecting one another.
The energy of this love feels inexhaustible. Without the hindrance of obstinate self-assertion, energy multiplies itself exponentially. An unexpected quantity of joy arises, which is the experience of grace.
But all of this can occur only if we first empty ourselves of any grasping self. Once the open dance begins there is no coercion. Autonomy is not lost, but it is surpassed as the dancer’s movements become interdependent with their partners’, and vice versa. This interdependence does not involve control since the partners fluidly co-originate each other’s movements, embodying joyful freedom in spontaneous relationship. The dance expresses mutuality; it proves that many can dance together more gracefully, joyfully, and spontaneously than one can dance alone. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 24-30)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Drake, Harold A. "Monotheism and Violence." Journal of Late Antiquity 6, no. 2 (2013) 251–263. DOI: 10.2373/journal/837.78.
Kang, D. C. “Why was there no religious war in premodern East Asia?” European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 4, (2014), 965–986. DOI: 10.1177/1354066113506948.
Lacugna, Catherine Mowery. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993.
McDougall, Joy Ann. Pilgrimage of Love: Moltmann on the Trinity and Christian Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Moltmann, Jurgen. “God is Unselfish Love.” In The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation, edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and Christopher Ives, 116–24. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994.
Rohr, Richard. Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation. New York: Crossroad, 2004.
Strathern, Alan. “Religion and War: A Synthesis.” History and Anthropology 34, no. 1 (2023) 145–74. DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2022.2060212
Streng, Frederick J., Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning, New York: Abingdon, 1967.
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