So, I was going to write you a Trinity Sunday comic to explore the beautiful mystery of our Three-in-One God. But I started reading John Wesley’s sermon On the Trinity and I just had to give this comic instead. His sermon begins with the scripture verse that most inspires our Trinitarian doctrine, 1 John 5:7, “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: And these three are one.” And then immediately begins this beautiful intro emphasizing the difference between opinion and religion.
Whatsoever the generality of people may think, it is certain that opinion is not religion: No, not right opinion; assent to one, or to ten thousand truths. There is a wide difference between them: Even right opinion is as distant from religion as the east is from the west. Persons may be quite right in their opinions, and yet have no religion at all; and, on the other hand, persons may be truly religious, who hold many wrong opinions. Can any one possibly doubt of this, while there are Romanists in the world? For who can deny, not only that many of them formerly have been truly religious, as Thomas a Kempis, Gregory Lopez, and the Marquis de Renty; but that many of them, even at this day, are real inward Christians? And yet what a heap of erroneous opinions do they hold, delivered by tradition from their fathers! Nay, who can doubt of it while there are Calvinists in the world…
On the one hand, Mr. Wesley is calling for a “think and let think” approach to Christian unity…but he just can’t do it with out crafting sick burns at Catholics and his Calvinist friends. Wesley was Trinitarian in his theology, yet willing to believe that others may know God without needing to comprehend God as Three-in-One. He argued that most Christians in his day didn’t have much of a grasp on God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but you could still tell that they knew God, or rather, had a relationship with God (perhaps what he meant by saying “truly religious”). He concludes his sermon On the Trinity by saying of those people, “And all my hope for them is, not that they will he saved during their unbelief, (unless on the footing of honest Heathens, upon the plea of invincible ignorance,) but that God, before they go hence, “will bring them to the knowledge of the truth.”
I take that as a different attitude than someone who claims to be the sole arbiter of the truth, or of someone who claims that we must think exactly alike in all things if we are both to be saved. Instead, Wesley sees that there is a huge diversity in the way Christians believe and practice, and yet, the same Holy Spirit is connecting us one to the other. When I see someone claim the name of Christ and yet believe, say, or do things contrary to my own beliefs and actions, I tend to get a little up in arms. And I know that a lot of those Christians certainly want to call me out because of how differently I practice my faith from them. As a gay Christian, I know exactly what it feels like to have a deep and strong connection to Christ and yet have a majority of the Christian church (across denominations) boldly say that I cannot actually be a Christian. I believe their opinion is not only incorrect, it is deeply harmful. But I will NOT say that they are not Christians for holding that opinion. I will instead continue to bear witness to my relationship with a Holy Triune God, and join Mr. Wesley’s prayer that God would bring us all to the knowledge of the truth.
I find the Johannine literature (books with the name “John”) in the Bible to be deeply Trinitarian. Perhaps in wanting so desperately to be right about what we believe, we have failed to take to heart why God as Three-in-One actually matters. A Triune God is a God of unity in community. Our relationship with God is intended to build us up for meaningful relationships with each other. Loving each other even when we’re wrong, even when they are wrong.
I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. I’ve given them the glory that you gave me so that they can be one just as we are one. I’m in them and you are in me so that they will be made perfectly one. Then the world will know that you sent me and that you have loved them just as you loved me.
Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21-23, CEB