Trinitarian Evangelism

Similar to my obsession with divine sovereignty (an upcoming post), I have also been entertaining the idea of Trinitarian evangelism for about a year. I’m sure there are countless specialty books that delve into this topic specifically, but I haven’t read many of them. So, if I’m repeating something some world famous theologian has said, rest assured it was my idea first… 

Theology has shifted its focus to the Trinity in the last few decades. Part of this is to reformulate some Christian understanding of community. We are to imitate the relational aspect of God. Also, the charismatic movement has placed the “step child of the Trinity”(Van Dusen) on center stage. Uh oh. What do we do with the Holy Spirit?! So, Trinitarian models of theology began to show up (Rahner, Pannenberg, Jenson, Gunton, Moltmann, LaCugna, etc. No, I left Barth out on purpose. He wouldn’t like what I’m saying.). God began to be described as a “society of persons,” rather than some monolithic deity either with Christ or the Father at the center and the Holy Spirit as an ancillary member. This idea ran up hard against the hidden subordinationism evangelical theology implicitly subscribed to. But God can still remain one and be complex at the same time. The atom is a single entity, yet has several parts. If anything, the difficulty in describing God’s nature speaks to his greatness and complexity – something worthy of worship. So this “society of persons” relates, gives, supports, and involves all of its parts – defining love and community in the process. Weird, huh? Yeah, but fascinating, too. But there’s a problem.

 A lot of Trinitarian models continue to treat the Holy Spirit as the “social” or “immanent” Trinity (acting within itself and for itself – basically a conceptual model) when really from a practical standpoint what actually matters is the “economic” Trinity. An economic understanding of the Trinity describes how this society of persons relates to the created order. For the majority of everyday Christians living normal lives, that’s the important part. In other words, how does each “part” of God affect us? Hmmm…good question. That’s where my issues with Trinitarian evangelism come in.

Most evangelical models I know approach evangelism in the following way. After a person is brought to a place of conviction, someone leads a sinner to “accept Christ” or ask “Jesus to forgive their sins.” All that is fine, but where are the other two members of the Trinity? The focus is strictly on Jesus with the fringe benefit of getting the wrathful Father off your case. From what I can gather, we have a very linear way of expressing evangelism that most often includes an irregular form of subordinationism. Only, in evangelism, God the Father is not the top dog – Jesus is. That’s not to diminish the role of God the Son at all. However, if we take the Trinity seriously, we must find a place in evangelism on a practical level for God and for the Holy Spirit as well. I think the problem lies in the fact that we relegate all significance of the cross to ontological premise. But the cross has to be functional as well. In other words, the cross has to supply the bridge that not only allows us to pursue God but also for God to pursue us without inhibition. That includes the other two persons within the Trinity. So, rather than a single moment of evangelism that occurs looking back to the cross, the cross created a functional way for all three persons of the Trinity to simultaneously evangelize creation beyond the cross - even in the present moment, all three are engaged in evangelization of the world.

Rather than see Jesus, Father, and Spirit as a rank and file line for salvation (Jesus appeases the Father who, if you’re lucky, sends the Spirit.), maybe God is better explained as spokes in a wheel. That means that at any point all three persons within God’s “society” are free to pursue and attract any sinner based on which aspect of God he/she connects with the most. And I’m not talking about conceptual ideas of prevenient grace here – all of this falls into that category. What I am attempting to describe is how it looks to us as humans seeking God from the other side. For some, the loving Father is the attraction. For others, the Son holds particular significance. For others, the Spirit and the possibility of “feeling” God is attractive. Each person is different and God draws them by what attracts them to him the most – since he knows our hearts.

So, if God is a interweaving circle, a sinner can traverse along any “spoke” within the Trinity until he/she has reached the center. And there, he/she understands the role of all three persons and their joint, cooperative purpose of reaching him. That’s when salvation occurs. But in this model the Father and the Spirit hold the same level of attraction as Jesus does. Otherwise, only one aspect of the Trinity (Jesus) holds evangelical significance – the others are just for show. This doesn’t minimize the sacrifice of Jesus, his death and resurrection make all the “spokes” on the wheel of evangelism a functional reality.