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United Dioceses of Dublin & Glendalough

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29.05.2018

Archbishop Looks at the Persons of The Trinity and its Doctrine in St Patrick’s Sermons

Archbishop Michael Jackson was the preacher in St Patrick’s Cathedral on Trinity Sunday (May 27) at both the Service of Holy Communion in the morning and at Choral Evensong in the afternoon.

In both sermons he looked at The Trinity.

In the morning the Archbishop looked at our inherited understandings of the Persons of The Trinity and offered the following:

“We might say that The Father as the creator is also the re–creator of relationship; we might also say that the responsibility for right implementation of this continuing creation and re–creation of relationship on earth lies with those whom God calls his children; this takes us not only into politics but also into ecology. The Son is the human–born expression of the love itself that is the irreducible character of God; and the work of the Son is enfleshment, sacrifice, servant–leadership and the inspiration of followership. We might also say that the responsibility for right implementation of this continuing giving and leading lies again with us as children of God; this takes us into the imperative of identification with others, community cohesion, altruism and dialogue. The Spirit might be described as the gatherer and disposer of the children of God into the world; this takes us into mission, truth and love along with reconciliation and compromise. I speak of a world that today’s church both sees as hostile and also has made hostile by its dogmatism and its abuse, by its failure with any consistency to resolve the tensions between its own power and authority; the responsibility for engagement with The Other in such implementation again lies with those whom the Spirit teaches to pray and entitles, empowers and equips to call God: Abba.”

You can read the full sermon here.

In the afternoon Archbishop Jackson looked at the doctrine of The Trinity saying:

“It is fair indeed to say that the doctrine of The Trinity is a political decision about doctrine. It is also fair to say that the adoption of the doctrine of The Trinity was through a process of trial and error and took over three hundred years. The key issue that propelled the need for a doctrinal formulation was the question: How divine is Jesus Christ? And once that question has been hammered out there is the question: How divine is The Holy Spirit? At the Council of Nicaea in 325, the matter focused on The Son; it took until the Council of Constantinople in 381 for the view that God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Comforter the Holy Spirit were co–equal and together in one being, yet also distinct from one another. It might not surprize you that the picture given to describe this was: perichoresis which literally means: dancing around. It is a joyful picture.”

You can read the full sermon here.

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