The Creed and the Trinity | Foreword to The Christian Faith: An Essay on the Structure Of the Apostles' Creed | Henri de Lubac
This book does not pretend to impart any information to the learned historians of the creeds, save that, for better or worse, the author has often made use of their works. Nor does it deal in depth with any of the current theological problems, although it does not avoid alluding to them in passing. Nor should one seek in this book a systematic study of trinitarian doctrine or Christology. Its purpose is not even, at least not directly, pastoral. Rather, we have tried to make it a sort of introduction to catechesis, addressed to all those who, either in preparing candidates for baptism or in teaching children or in day-by-day preaching to the Christian people, are entrusted with this most beautiful of all roles: handing on the faith received from the Apostles, always and infinitely fruitful even as it was when they themselves received it from Jesus Christ.
Like everyone else, the believer is able to observe the changes, slow or sudden depending on the times, in people's mentalities and interests, the variations that occur in language. Without becoming enslaved to theories (themselves subject to so many vicissitudes) that seek to account for these changes, he does not necessarily remain insensitive to the repercussions of this historical development of culture or cultures upon theological work and even, on occasion, upon the very expression of his faith. If he himself is not conscious of it, the Magisterium guides him to make him understand that in certain circumstances renewal is necessary and that one would be condemned to wither and die if one did not ever consent to adapt or change anything. But at the same time he sees with great clarity that the treasure he has received as his inheritance is not the fruit of a perishable culture. The Christian tradition, that living force in which he shares, is rooted in the eternal. If he strives to be faithful, the newness that rejuvenates his heart is not exposed to the erosion of time. Consequently he is not in the least tempted to a certain kind of forced advance in which a number of those around him are indulging. He can only see in that, as Pascal would say, a confusion of orders. He knows in advance: in the letter of the Creed which he recites with his brothers, following so many others, there is infinitely more depth in reserve and timeliness in potential than in all the explanations and critical reductions that would affect to "go beyond" it. He knows this in advance, and experience and reflection reveal it to him a little more each day.
Above all, this Creed teaches us the mystery of the divine Trinity. It is in this mystery that our faith consists. It is for us both light and life. Nevertheless, it is very necessary for us to recognize that this is not always easy to understand and is not readily apparent to everyone. For a number of Christians, and not just those who retain only a vague, conventionalized version of their faith, this seems to be a sealed mystery. Is it proper to blame those who have the task of instructing us? It would be more just to take this blame upon ourselves. We do not always know how to embrace the most pregnant truth, which must slowly produce its fruit within us. Impatient as we are, we would like to understand immediately, or rather, in our shortsighted pragmatism, if we are not shown practical applications for it right away, we declare it to be abstract, unassimilable, "unrealistic", an "empty shell", a hollow theory with which there would be no point in burdening ourselves.
This is what Faustus Socinus and his disciples thought, as witnessed by their Catechism of Racow (1605): "The dogma of the Trinity is contrary to reason. It is absurd to think that by the will of God, who is reason and who loves his creatures, men must believe something incomprehensible and useless to moral life and therefore to salvation." This was also the opinion of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, agreeing in this respect with all the Christians of his century seduced by the "lights": the Trinity, in the judgment of the Savoyard Vicar, was a part of those things that "lead to nothing useful or practical". Now we must really be convinced that, when we allow ourselves to indulge in such thoughts, it is we who are thus living superficially, outside of ourselves. The Christian who does not trust the fruitfulness of revealed truth, who consents to interest himself in it only to the degree to which he perceives the benefit in advance, who does not consent to let himself be grasped and modeled by it, such a Christian does not realize of what light and power he has deprived himself. [1] He does not see that in consenting to hear--if it may be called that--only the voices that promise him a response to his immediate questions, he is himself renouncing the opportunity to grow in self-understanding and depth while shutting himself up within the limits of his own narrow experience. Sometimes he even reaches the point of imagining he can no longer find any meaning in a hackneyed, "out-of-date" concept, when in fact he is dealing with a mystery he has not yet glimpsed.
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