The Mystery of the Trinity: The Spirit and the Flesh
Trinity Sunday, year B 2024; Rom 8:12-14, John 3: 1-17
On Trinity Sunday this year we read no trinitarian “proof texts” listing the three persons. Instead we have biblical passages that illustrate the human experience of God that leads Christians to speak of God as Trinity.
The reading from John 3 is familiar, part of it having featured quite recently this year (Lent 4). Anglicans also used to read this passage as the Gospel every Trinity Sunday for centuries before the three-year lectionaries appeared, and while it was apt then as now, the reason was a bit oblique.
Before this day was Trinity Sunday in the western Church (a feast only generally ratified in the 14th century) it was the “octave” of Pentecost, the Sunday after that great feast, and reflected the same themes of the previous Sunday. So it was the account of the work of the Holy Spirit in John 3 that first caused the text to be placed here. The authors of the three-year lectionary reached a similar conclusion for what might be slightly different reasons. Now the motive is obviously trinitarian; and while the passage does mention all three persons of the Trinity,1 this is less important in itself than what it says about their actions and relations with us. The key idea may still be the work of the Spirit.
Jesus’ famous assertion that entering the kingdom of God requires birth “from water and the Spirit” (v.5) is followed by noting the origins or orientations of persons or things in either “flesh” or “Spirit” (v.6). Then he states, intriguingly:
Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. (vv.7-8, NRSV).
Yet “wind” and “spirit” (and “breath” for that matter) are not different words in Greek. So while most of our translations render this passage just as shown above, this gives the impression that Jesus is using a metaphor: “the Spirit is a bit like the wind, blowing who knows where.” This does not do justice to a characteristic piece of Johannine ambiguity. The alternative translations have their own problems but the passage could, for the sake of argument, be rendered more like this:
The Spirit blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. Everyone born of the Spirit is just the same.
Those born of the Spirit themselves live as a kind of mystery to the world of the flesh, as the Spirit does. This is a version of John’s consistent presentation of the work of Jesus as the presence and action of another realm, another world, another authority, in the life of this one. In this passage “flesh” means what “the world” sometimes means elsewhere in John, not bodies or matter in themselves but a way of being that centers on them rather than on God, hence materialism, chauvinism, and selfishness. “Spirit” here likewise refers not to whatever is invisible or immaterial, “spiritual” matters as such (and no, not generic “spirituality” either), but rather to the way of life oriented to and grounded in “the Spirit,” where God’s will prevails.
Jesus’ discourse with Nicodemus is not just stating that this is the truth, but the consequences of that truth for human life. While the speech of Jesus through this reading is complex—it is not hard to be sympathetic to Nicodemus’ confusion—or seems to jump, we should assume continuity even when the thread is hard to follow. Those born again/from above/of the Spirit are those who believe, or will believe, in Jesus, whose being “lifted up” is the source of their salvation—and source of the gift of the Spirit.
The point of the famous birth metaphor is not about conversion experiences. These can often be of great importance, but the evidence from much contemporary evangelicalism, which took the language of this passage to refer to a ritual of decision-making embedded in its own piety, is a sad and salutary witness to what this passage is not about. When we align ourselves with economic and political forces of racism and nationalism, we are indeed “of the flesh.” To be born of the Spirit is first and foremost a statement not about personal religious experience, but about God’s own action in redeeming a people, in loving and saving the forlorn world (cf. v.16).
Jesus’ being lifted up (14-15) is also deeply connected to the mysterious movement of the Spirit, although here this is not explained. We might have to glance ahead (or back, in our liturgical year) to the actual scene of Jesus’ “lifting up,” where (not coincidentally) the same translational problem of Spirit, wind, and breath appears. On the cross (19:30) Jesus proclaimed “it is finished!” and then “gave up the ghost” (in the KJV) or “gave up his spirit” (NSRV). This could, given what else we know from this Gospel, also be rendered “handed over the Spirit.” Just as back here in chapter 3, the possibility of reading that text either way, allowing the Spirit to be the subject, may be quite important. So is the ambiguity though; as Nicodemus’ presence and flat-footed responses indicate, it is quite possible in John’s Gospel for the truth to be presented, yet not understood.
The epistle today also gives a strikingly similar picture of “flesh” and “spirit,” not as material versus spiritual, but as a contrast between ways of life oriented to ourselves (or to some chosen sub-group, as Christian nationalism does) and life lived to God. Paul also describes this life as a trinitarian process, and uses the imagery of family, so the Spirit effects our adoption (rather than birth, as in John), and we call God “Father” (Rom 8:15) not because we have decided he is, but because the Spirit actually works to make us God’s children, and enables us to live in Christ.
Back to John: the Spirit is not merely an invisible dimension of reality waiting for those who meditate sufficiently to discover it; the Spirit is God’s presence enabling the alternate way of thinking and believing that centers on Jesus, that way of life that is a mystery to the world. While on the cross Jesus arguably “gives up” the Spirit, we also find the Spirit given more explicitly and directly to the disciples when the risen Jesus appears to them (20:22). Now they are not merely followers of Jesus, but actually part of that divine life—God’s children, as Paul puts it— which is given by faith in him.
The doctrine of the Trinity is often referred to as a mystery because of its complexity; the mystery to which John points us is not one of intellectual complexity, but of relationships. The Father has sent the Son into the world to save the world (3:17), and the Spirit is the effective ongoing presence of God, breathed into the world or into his followers by Jesus. The Trinity is how the Church has come to talk about the God who fosters this life by the Spirit for those who believe in Jesus, and who thus join in the divine work of love for the world. Those who are born of the Spirit practice a mysterious (to the world) and confronting witness to the God who is revealed not as expected, not in a bigger and better version of what the world thinks of as power, but in the one who is lifted up, that the world might be saved through him.
Here as in 2 Corinthians 13 (“the grace”) the Father is clearly the referent of “God,” at least in v. 16.
As a Presbyterian preacher's kid, who married an Episcopalian and therefore became one, I became disenchanted with doctrine. On my journey to understand my Christian faith as well as that of others, I turned to the faith of Native Americans and the Great Spirit, aka, for me, the Holy Spirit.
Later on, I embraced the faith of the early Quakers who waited in Silence for the presence of Christ's Spirit within giving rise to speak truth. When Quakers became less affiliated with Chrisianity, i moved on in my journey to study other religions. I found that mystics of different religions pretty much end up in the same place-longing for union with "God" who is Conscious Love whose "Spirit" works in and through us, as well as the rest of creation!!! So, to get back to John 3 and your version..YES,YES, and YES!! Works for me!