For me, a singularly unique wisdom of the biblical Christian tradition is the revelatory insight into God as Triune—ThreeOne union and communion of three Persons in one Being.
This apparently contradictory teaching is simply such—an apparent, not real, contradiction. The Triune God confounds our binary brain and linear logic but makes perfect sense when seen paralogically, contemplatively, insightfully, intuitively, and intimately in the mutuality of love (agape) inseparable from emptiness (sunyata). That it baffles the conditioned and contracted human mind is a hint of its immeasurable and trans-conceptual divine origin.
I’m delighted that Pastor Kong Hee has chosen to expound on the Triune God, in terms of the circle of love and divine embrace, into whose space we are all invited to enter and occupy in faithful love. Our church fathers coined a beautiful Latin term “perichoresis” to describe the interior relations of God—Father-Son-Spirit—, a term that has been translated into English as “circumincession.”
Now, because of Christianity’s western historical context and the influence of Hellenistic thought (Greek philosophy), mainline Christianity has interpreted the Triune God in substantialist terms. This move is neither inevitable nor irrevocable. In my essay published in the Journal of Reformed Theology in 2018, I offered a non-substantialist paradigm of emptiness (sunyata) from a svatantrika madhyamika (middle way autonomy) perspective, as a gateless gate and wayless way to re-understand the Trinitarian mystery and doctrine.
This is my lifelong theological, intellectual, contemplative, and spiritual endeavour that will inform and sculpt my writings in the days and years to come. The essence and ramifications of a de-ontological and non-realist Trinitarianism wil take a lifetime (maybe eternity) to unpack.
Soli Deo Gloria.
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Watch the recorded service and sermon of the 10th of Dec 2022, 5pm, here. Be blessed and illumined: https://youtu.be/aSYZVavVi6s
