'Participating in God' by Paul Fiddes, a book overview

An overview of Paul S. Fiddes: Participating in God – a Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity

Musings for joint Ponsonby and Cityside Baptist Church service Trinity Sunday 2012.

The theological idea – God as verb not (just?) noun

Fiddes is proposing a way of engaging with the Trinity not as three persons/entities in some mysterious unity, but as an event of loving that is made up of movements of relationships, where the idea of 'persons' is not in the 'points' of the triangle but in a dynamic understanding of the links between them (the 'sides' of the triangle.) 'God happens' rather than 'God is'. Verbs not nouns.

“Three movements of relationship...in one event', not 'three individual subjects who 'have' relationship”

These movements of relation are always a reaching of love, a self-offering, moving beyond and towards. And they are 'personal' in the sense that they have qualities or characteristics that we recognise as the love of parent to child (the Father), child to parent (the Son) and the deepening and opening of that love to new intimacy and new futures (the Spirit.) When we participate in movements in our own life that have these qualities we are leaning into, or relying on, these eternal and all-embracing movements within God. When we pray, we don't so much pray 'to' the persons of God, but 'in' the relations of God.

Knowing by way of participation, not spectator/observation

This kind of engagement can only be realised through participation, not as an object of our conceptualisation or observation. We participate in the movements of love, the steps of the dance, as we are drawn into them and follow along with them, and know ourselves held and 'pulled along' by the love that already exists in the relations of the Trinity.

'Enlightenment' forms of 'knowing'= “subjecting objects to the control of our consciousness, as things that can either literally be seen with the eyes or 'seen' in the mind. A doctrine of the Trinity in which persons are relations makes it clear it is impossible to know or speak about God in this way.” Instead when we participate in God as movements of relationship we fulfil the prayer of Christ in the Gospel of John 'as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.' 

Movements that make room – openness within the dance

God is continually 'making room' within these loving movements of relationship, for the whole universe of creation to not only participate, but also to alter outcomes and affect God. Including our human 'otherness' within the movements of the Trinity is God's humble, self-limiting willingness to include our freedom in the life of God, which means being God being genuinely changed by what we bring to the dance – both our loving co-operation and also our hostility and violent rejection. “The Trinity is a movement of relations which is as wide as the universe, as God, in an act of self-limitation, opens the divine communion of life to enable all created beings to dwell within it.”

God “freely desires to be dependent on us for the completeness of fellowship, for the joy of the dance,” even when that means that some of the steps of the dance distort or pull against the flow of love.

Thus our life in God, our being led by the Spirit, is not just about being 'full' or 'empty', as though God were a mysterious substance that is poured into us, or leaks out of us. It's also about 'joining in' – co-operating, attending to, and doing the movements of the dance as they present themselves to us.

How do we participate?

Broadly speaking, we participate in the 'Father' movement of the Trinity when we create, when we commission and send, when we provide for, guide, love, nurture and protect. We participate in the 'Son' movement of the Trinity when we respond, act in loving obedience, trust, openness, and when we absorb into our own selves the suffering that comes from being 'sent' – going into places physically or mentally where we accept a will that is not our own, for a good that is greater than our individual life. We participate in the 'Spirit' movement of the Trinity when we open, disturb, question, and bridge, communicate, reconcile and re-unite that which has been disturbed, when we love in ways that lead to new depths of intimacy beyond strangeness and disturbance, and when we create space for the interactions that happen between persons at a level too deep for words.

More specifically, we participate in the Trinity when we:

Pray

When we say 'Our Father' in the 'name' of Jesus, we are stepping into the movement of the trusting openness of the child, 'being enticed into a movement of speech that is already there before us.' We 'place ourselves into the flow or, rather, in co-operation we allow ourselves to be drawn in [to the flow of relationships that constitute God.]'

'In praying for others we are expressing our love and concern for them, and God takes that desire into the divine desire for their well-being...' 

Engage in acts of Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Practising forgiveness involves the movement of empathy, the willingness to see life and choices through the eyes and experience of the one who has wounded us. And it also involves being willing to endure and absorb the hostility of the 'forgiven', as they react to having their offence named and pardoned. Ideally it involves the dance of re-engaging with the forgiven one to draw them back into relationship again. This is the movement or journey that God made into our mortal human experience: empathising with humanity to the point of incarnating into our reality, and then absorbing the hatred of those who found their lives called into question by the loving, reconciling acts of Jesus, and the ongoing working to transform and woo humanity back into union with God. When we move beyond self for the sake of the other and in desire for the other we act in participation with the Trinity who is a continual event of such moving and reaching and loving and desiring and forgiving. 

Continue the acts of Jesus, sent by the Father, in the Spirit of Jesus.

Jesus sends the disciples to go and do as he did by breathing on them and saying 'as the Father has sent me, so I send you.' There are eternal “currents of mission in the eternal sending and breathing of Son and Spirit from the Father” and as the disciples join in on those actions Jesus did they do not merely imitate what they remember of Jesus' actions but they go on expressing the presence and activity of God in their acts in the world. As Jesus present day disciples we continue the reconciling and redemptive activity of Jesus. Which includes healing, welcoming, truth-telling, raising up, setting free, and enacting a path of transformed and transforming love. And ultimately, also suffering – either within ourselves, in the movement of loss and grief that is the rupture of the Father and Son at Golgotha, or when we walk alongside another's suffering, with costly presence, or in protest and advocacy. 

Express our specific gifts within the body of community, and make room for each other's gifts rather than drawing attention to ourselves.

The personal God is known to us and by us as we participate with others in community. The relations that make up God as 'Trinity' have a distinct personal quality – steps of the dance that are particular to the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Likewise in the body that is the flesh community of Christ in the world we have particular responsibilities, particular gifts, and it's the way these are honoured and given space that will determine the extent to which a given community will reflect the triune nature of God.

So, on Trinity Sunday, let's invite each other not just to ponder these mysteries of God, but also to join in the dance, to get 'in step' with these movements of relationship that sustain the whole of creation.

Futurechurch Conference - Musings for Citysiders

The Futurechurch conference was a gathering in Auckland of people from throughout NZ who were concerned to explore what the church might look like, and what it might concern itself with, in the coming years. The demographic of those who attended was interesting – significant numbers of ‘clergy’ or people in staff roles in institutional churches, probably at least half of the participants were Presbyterian, and I was the youngest person there (!) This demographic had to do with the timing of the conference…during the week...which was a deliberate but difficult decision on behalf of the planning team, and also the particular networks of those involved in planning and publicity.

A great deal of the value of the conference for me was the opportunity to prepare and offer material in the form of workshops, facilitated conversations and brief key-note input. Also, it was great being part of the planning of something like this…seeing what goes into organising a conference, and also working to generate an occasion where all participants would be fully involved, rather than passive listeners to a series of academic addresses. And, as usual with these kinds of things, the ongoing value will be in the form of contacts, conversations, relationships with people with some shared values and interests.

Most significantly for me, the conference has created a bond between Cityside and St Lukes that should result in some collaborative worship and other activities down the track. Including finding out how a formerly declining Presbyterian parish now supports two flourishing youth groups and Sunday school.

We gathered on the first day to meet and hear where we were all from, to weave fabric into our ‘loom’ to invite the Spirit into our midst, and to consider where/who we were voyaging from, with, and to. The following days began with coffee supplied by the Cityside Coffee Project (a greatly appreciated dimension of the conference!), some worship and some storytelling – brief snapshots of things people were doing or producing in their own corner of the world. Then there were workshops and facilitated conversations on topics ranging from ‘the role of the institutional church in futurechurch’ to ‘believing and belonging nowhere’ for those who travel outside the church… and a whole lot of ideas in between. After lunch, there was ‘hub exchange’ – a chance for the whole group to get together and nut out issues around the concept of the future of the church, and then more workshops and conversations. The evening sessions, open to the public and well attended, began with short addresses by the ‘animators’, and then became an ongoing conversation into which anyone could offer input. The topics covered were: ‘disconnected? our relationship to the tradition’, ‘nz metaphors in theology’, and ‘strange bedfellows…evangelicals and progressive Christians.’ On the Friday night, Antony from St Lukes and I (together with new friend Cheryl, who works down the road from Mark in Melbourne) offered some stations-based worship with Cam and Andrew creating a great soundscape. This was a highlight for many.

So, those were the nuts and bolts. What did I get out of it? What do I have to pass on to Citysiders? In one respect, the conference as it panned out didn’t really feel like it was ‘for us’ in the sense that the issues and the questions being raised didn’t always seem to fit Cityside’s identity, ethos, or phase of life. Like I said, I was the youngest person there. Also, there seemed to be a specific group of people missing from the discussion…that is, the ‘emerging church’ element…small independent groups, intentional community practitioners, people who are into reforming or emerging from the non-traditional wing of the church, or whose interests are in ‘incarnational mission’. I have felt that this group have been better represented in the events that Servants have organised with visiting speakers such as Dave Andrews and Charles Ringma.

Having said that, the discussions and conversations have yielded the following reflections:

• The institutional, traditional church is in decline. But, I don’t think it’s going to lay down and die. I think the seeds of reform are well and truly planted, and many of these churches are beginning to see how their content and structure and assumptions need to adapt to the present climate. At the same time, many people have left the church and formed communities, small groups, clusters, gatherings. My feeling is that the future of the church lies in there being a more positive interface between these smaller groups and the institutional church. I think there is a role for the church in being visible within society, offering opportunities for gathering and worship, pooling resources to fund a variety of initiatives, and being a voice and agent for social transformation. It can hold the tradition, drawing on hundreds of years of insight and learning and practice, and offering people engagement with something that is not fragile and transitory, but has a history (albeit mixed), and some sense of transcendence. However, I see the role of this church to be to free people up to engage fully in the world around them, and to resource and encourage people to form smaller, creative, experimental groups who explore, connect with the world, and who are able to inform, critique and change both the church and the society of which they’re a part.

• I don’t think it’s for the institutional church to seek to be ‘relevant’ so that more people will come in. I think that it should be authentic, and engaged and releasing of people to follow their gifts. If people connect with God by means of it, great. If people engage with God in the context of a small group and never hook into the institution, fine. But I think that the church continues to have a role in enabling and resourcing (financially, educationally, and with buildings etc.) the initiatives of those who are already a part of it, in collaboration with all sorts of groups and people in the wider community. I’m not really sure where Cityside fits in here…are we the institutional church, or one of those creative smaller groups? Sometimes I feel like we’re a mixture of both…there are many small groups and initiatives that Citysiders are involved in that I’d like to see us supporting and releasing to ‘do their thing’ under the Cityside umbrella…so in that sense maybe we’re more like ‘trad church’. But if you compare us to any of the mainline churches, and their infrastructure and hierarchy, we’re much more like an experimental group on the edge. It’s a good tension to hold.

• There are two shifts that I see taking place in relation to the Church, and some groups are making one shift without the other, while some are doing both. These are ecclesiology (the form, structure, identity, and activities of the church) and theology (understandings of who/what God is, and the related issues of salvation and what it means to be ‘Christian.’) Many within the emerging church movement have embraced creative ideas to do with reforming ecclesiology, but haven’t really begun to address the theological questions. And at the same time the progressive wing of the traditional church has done a lot of work on wrestling with the theology, but the ecclesiology hasn’t shifted. There are some conversations still to be had around these questions. An interesting experiment for Citysiders: go to www.tcpc.org, click on ‘the 8 points’ under the ‘about us’ tab and see the extent to which these points represent your own theological views. I’d be interested to hear your responses.

• In a consumer world that tends towards niche markets, it is easy to choose one dimension of Christianity and make it the thing against which all utterances are measured. It was an eye-opener for me to come from within the (largely conservative) Baptist stable, into an environment of marked ‘theological correctness’ with respect to certain specific issues (race/treaty, social justice, gender and sexual identity, for example). As it happens, I agree with the perspectives upheld by most at the conference. It was nice going from being a theological alien within the Baptist environment to a sense of like mindedness with this other church grouping. However, I did come away with the nagging feeling that some social trends had replaced the gospel, or Jesus Christ, as the measure of what it’s important to agree on, or conform to. For myself, one of the important things about the diversity of the church is that we don’t all ‘think with one mind’ on issues, but that we learn to differ graciously and respectfully with one another.

• There’s an energy that comes from being a ‘sect’ that’s different from the energy in being a ‘church.’ This was the distinction made by Kevin Ward from his research on the future of mainline Protestantism in the West. He calls churches like the Presys, the Anglicans, and the Catholics ‘Church’ because they are sustained by birth…you’re affiliated to them by birth and infant baptism, and in theory, you stay there till you die. Independent churches, including Baptists, are ‘sects’…that is, they are sustained by conversion, people choose to be part of them, and enter membership as adults. I have resisted being Baptist for a long time. But in the context of the conference, I found myself feeling strangely warm towards the particular kind of energy, a kind of ‘outward energy’, and an autonomy, a creative freedom, that is part of the Baptist tradition. What a pity it seems to revert so often as conformity, and ghetto mentality. But the potential is there for something good…

• Cityside has a great deal to offer, and as we enter into another phase in our life—that of being more suburban than urban, and increasing numbers of children—if we can work out ways of making this shift and still embracing the questions, the explorations, and still come up with creative ways of connecting to our world, the culture of which we’re a part, then we will have a story to inspire others. Most emerging church initiatives have been ‘single generation’ – they last for a while, and then fizzle when the energy of their founder/s fades, or there’s a change to the social dynamics, or burn out hits as a result of the attempt to reinvent the wheel every week/month in an attempt to avoid institutionalising. This isn’t the end of the world…many have made valuable contributions while they lasted. But on Sunday, after being at the Futurechurch conference, and then coming to be part of our congregation, with all its beautiful children, I felt strongly that it is our task to keep building something authentic, positive, courageous, creative and truthful – for ourselves, and to pass on to these young people, so that they might meet God in their own ways, in an environment that nurtures them as whole persons – body, mind, spirit.