At the end of a recent e-mail to Paul Spain, I quipped that my current theological reading was leaving me “still unsure about whether I am a Christian; but more and more convinced that I might be a Trinitarian.” Paul and Bridget got back to me in short order and asked what ‘that Oxford-place’ was doing to me, and suggested that maybe I should pack my bags and get myself back to the relative sanity of Dublin! And so, as Hilary Term (see how ‘that Oxford-place’ lingo is getting to me) has drawn – screaming and swearing – to a close, I thought I might share a few of my reflections on the subject of Christianity and Trinitarian-ism with the readers of Oscailt.
One of my courses is entitled “The Christian Doctrines of God, Christ and Salvation” and part of the teaching this term involved a series of eight classes looking at the topic in the context of Liberation Theology and Feminist Theology. As is often the case, the other students seemed to be largely of an orthodox turn of mind and a lot of the discussion centred on whether ideas put forward, in the texts we were studying, were doctrinally acceptable or heretical. I was getting frustrated and stuck my oar in a few times but to little reaction. As also inevitably happens over these courses, the numbers dwindled from about thirty at the first class to a hardy eight or ten in the final week, giving us more opportunity for useful debate.
In the final class of the term, a Church of England ministry student and I, who had been squaring up to each other over the weeks, took the opportunity to have an excellent old barney over an article entitled “Trinity and feminism” by Janet Martin Soskice. We agreed on the fact that the use of the term Father was down to historical convention rather than the supposition that God has a gender, also on the principle that character traits, sometimes labelled as female or male, are more usefully seen along a continuum and can be found in different combinations in both men and women.
However, he was not so agreeable when I posited that, particularly for women, the use of a feminine title for the Divine is valuable, in conjunction with the use of a masculine title, so long as it is acknowledged that they are both simply methods by which we can attempt, with language, to approach what is actually beyond the capacity of language to express. He concurred to a certain extent, but argued that, although it is possibly a useful way to conduct one’s own personal worship, for congregational worship it would just be confusing. He accepted that, as a Unitarian minister, I would often find myself speaking to people who had made a conscious decision to leave one of the mainstream churches for the very reason that they could not find a minister who was willing openly discuss such things. He reckoned that he and I probably preached very different sermons – I have no doubt that we do – but we agreed that it was good to talk, vive la differance!!
So, on to the Trinity. Soskice, in her writing, comes across as pretty orthodox in her views of Christ, Salvation etc. so far, so chalk and cheese; I’m sticking with my position of agnosticism on that one.
On the Trinity she asserts “if you do not wish to say ‘Jesus is God incarnate’, you do not need the Trinity; if you do wish to say this you can scarcely avoid it.”
Fair enough, I’m not really looking to reconcile the Trinity with my religious position, But then, she writes about how she attempts to make sense of the Trinity, and suddenly she seems to be speaking my language. I could be a Trinitarian if this is what being a Trinitarian is!

For Soskice the doctrine of the Trinity: -
1) “preserves the otherness of God…it frees us from the gross anthropocentrism which is ever a threat in religion” certainly a construct which move us away from conceiving of God as a ‘superior model of human being’ seems valuable to . . . me.
2) “defeats…the lonely, spectral father-god, aloof, above and indifferent...it brings out the Christian conviction that God, the eternal creator is fully present to our human history – even to the point of taking on human flesh…and fully present to us now in the Spirit.” in my experience, God is actively present in the world, and so this could work for me, as a metaphorical way of reflecting on this active presence
3) “endorses the fundamental goodness and beauty of the human being…From a current feminist’s perspective it may be unfortunate that God should become incarnate as a male, but it is a glory of this teaching that God became fully and truly a sexed human being…this endorsement of physicality should be prized.” embracing and celebrating the fact that we are physical as well as spiritual beings is, I think, a hugely important part of the religious life
4) “moves us beyond a binarism in which one can only have the one and the other, the higher and the lower, the male and the female…Three…is the first in the cardinal series where one gets genuine difference. There is difference in the Trinity, but no hierarchy.” difference without hierarchy, isn’t this what so many of us are striving towards and what we fail in being able to achieve so often
Soskice goes on to discuss the tradition of regarding the Spirit as the maternal aspect of God, which she rejects as “both providing warrant for a particular stereotype of the feminine and…feeding the unorthodox suggestion that there is sexual difference in the Trinity.” She speaks of the conception of the Trinity by second century Syriac Christians thus: - “While the Spirit was styled as feminine…the feminisation was drawn across to all three person of the Trinity.” Quoting another theologian she goes on “Roles are reversed, fused, inverted: no one is simply who they seem to be. More accurately, everyone is more than they seem to be – Mary is more than a woman in what she does; the Father and the Spirit are more than one gender can convey…Gender is thus shown to be important, even crucial, to identity – but not one specific gender.” Amen, I say to this; it may be a long way off – acceptance of the sexes as different but equal – but certainly it’s what I would aspire to in an ideal world.
Finally she speaks of God as Love saying “This three-ness serves not to replace gendered imagery of love, but to exceed it” and of the Trinitarian image in sexual love she quotes Sarah Coakley who writes “of attending on the other’s desire as distinct, as other…sexual love at its best is transcendence of two selves toward the other, we are at least three…you, me, and our creation of that ecstasy of ourself in us…prior to any child.” surely this is a finer way of approaching sexual love than many of the abusive and self-serving ways of thinking which pervade our society.
So I restate my original assertion – I’m not sure if I’m a Christian, but this reflection on the concept of the Trinity has been helpful for me, not in coming to conclusions but in turning over some ideas in my head. And from my point of view, this is the most valuable intellectual approach to spiritual practice.
But in the end – always – one must just “Be still and know that I am God.” Or, in the words of a woman I’ve met, who spends her time sitting in the gardens of the Oxford colleges drawing trees to make into story-books and greeting cards, “Stillness is effectively a thankfulness for the gift of life” And this is much more important than all the intellectual gymnastics we can engage in.
Maud Robinson
Harris-Manchester College Oxford