TOWARDS A TRINITARIAN ANTHROPOLOGY OF SOCIALITY

SimonMary Asese Aihiokhai.

What relevance does a theology or doctrine of the Trinity have in human life as beings oriented towards sociality? This is the question for today’s Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. In other words, why does it matter that Christianity upholds this doctrine? Let me state the question in all its vulgarity; does it matter that one upholds this belief that in God there are three persons who are equal in dignity and substance but different in personhood?

The doctrine, like all faith statements, points to something inherent in creation as it attempts to unpack the apophatic nature of God as a God who is beyond comprehension while also being a God that is oriented towards proximity with creation. The doctrine states that in God there is a grounding of fullness in divinity which originates from the God head as Father (Mother). And then it is shared in its fullness with otherness in an eternal relationship of sonship (daughterhood) described as begottenness and never as a created process. Then the fullness of divinity goes further and rests in a witness of love that proceeds spirally in abundance from the Father (Mother) to the Spirit (Orthodox Tradition) or from the Father (Mother) and (here, ‘and’ is understood as through) the Son (Daughter) to the Spirit (Latin Church Tradition). Do any of these sophisticated ways of thinking of God have any relevance for our times or for our existence as social beings?

The answer lies in the question. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity reveals an inherent marker of existence – all that exist embody sociality as the nature of their beingness. Unfortunately, Western metaphysics have tended to miss the subtle nuance in this mode of thinking of beingness. It begins with a false move by first grounding being in insularity. To be is to be grounded in total isolation. Then it proceeds by articulating a second movement; one that orients the insular being towards sociality. This is where the mistake occurs. A critical turn to a Trinitarian ontology (I am weary always of ontology, just so you know because of the high risk of slipping into the primacy of isolation as the defining contour of being) forces one to ask the question, what is being at its core? The proper response points to the fact that the essence of being is itself sociality. Being always evokes and exudes proximity that comes to realization at its constituent core. This means that in being there opens up a tri-relational turn which allows for being to transcend itself even in its inner core of selfness. What does this mean? This transcendence evokes a longing for encounter with that which is beyond it. That which is beyond it is itself constitutive of transcendence as well. Being goes beyond the horizon of self and always seeks encounter through proximity to otherness. This means that anything that exists is both within its core an orientation towards beyondness and an orientation towards proximity.

The Trinity reveals the multifold relational turns that constitute God as a God-that-is-beyond-Itself. This means that God goes beyond the insularity of that western ontology tends to prefer. God is relationships in abundance. To speak Father or Mother is to instantiate multitudes of relationships. To speak Son or Daughter is to also instantiate multitudes of relationships. To speak Spirit is to instantiate transcendence as a revelation of the possibility of multitudes of horizons where relationships open up as well.

Also, too often, Christian theology tends to present the Spirit as a witness of love that exists between the Father (Mother) and Son (Daughter) as though this plays out in the domain of divine immanence. What if we expand this horizon of thinking by embracing the idea of the Spirit as the instantiation of divine transcendence which makes the love between the Father (Mother) and Son (Daughter) to not be reduced to a closed love. The Spirit, as a witness of transcendence in relationship allows for Fatherhood (Motherhood) and Sonhood (Daughterhood) to evoke a transcendent possibility of infinite encounters. This opening and orientation towards transcendence allows for God to encounter creation within the matrix of divine relationality. In other words, as the God-head opens up Itself towards the Son (Daughter), this opening goes beyond the one present before it into the apophatic domain of absence. It is in the domain of absence that creation arises and experiences God’s love as Father or Mother. The same can be said of the Son or Daughter of God. The Spirit is the one who makes all these to happen.

Now, returning to creation, here, I speak of humans in particular, while also acknowledging other created beings. The human person instantiates these three movements of relational love in God in their own lives. To speak of the human person as a self is to immediately open up the human person to otherness in the proximity of presence and to also instantiate the opening up of the self towards the transcendence in such a manner that what arises at the horizon is the encounter with God in God’s own apophaticness. In other words, the human person as self is always oriented towards the proximity of presence that arises in the encounter with otherness and the possibility of encounter with transcendence with all that is hidden in the horizon of beyondness. The first deals with all encounters in the world of materiality. The second deals with all encounters in the world of apophaticism where God and the spiritual realities abide. Thus, the self is always a multitude of relationships. There can be no insular or linear relationality defining the self.

The Solemnity of the Holy Trinity is itself a reminder to humanity of how to authentically be human. The human person is sociality in its fullness because it is an image of divine sociality. This truth is at the heart of the celebration of this doctrine. However, there are some ethical implications of this belief. To accept the turn to sociality as itself the ontology of being human means that all modes of being must reflect altruistic turns towards otherness even in the so-called privacy of selfhood. Abundant life for all must always be the goal because this is fundamental to the life of God as Trinity. God as Father of Mother exudes abundant life as a gift to the Son (Daughter). The witness of the Spirit is a testament to an opening that allows for the saturation of this love between the Father (Mother) and the Son (Daughter) to escape into the horizon of beyondness where creation is showered in a saturated manner with this abundant life.

Can we really say this of our world today, especially as it pertains to the social structures and institutions we have set up? How do we explain the scarcity of love and aridity of heart that defines how we relate with each other? How do we explain global poverty? How do we explain unending wars? How do we explain racism, tribalism, genderism, sexism, clericalism, xenophobia, and all the other ‘isms’ in our social world?

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity serves as a prophetic reminder to all of us to right all wrongs in our world and in our lives as we relate with other social beings in our social world. The teaching is also a pathway for experiencing the grace of sociality that makes real abundance in all its manifestations in our world and lives.