The Trinity the Synod Needs
It’s often been said that our civilization is based on a kind of historical trinity – Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome – in addition (it needs saying in an age bereft of a historical sense) to the Holy Trinity. While the deepest roots of any culture are religious – and we have seen all around us in recent decades what happens when we human beings are uprooted from our rich Christian cultural soil – there are other elements essential to nourishing a full human life. And this is as true of the life of the Church as it is of the “secular” world in which we move, in and through, every day.
Such considerations shed no little light on the difficulties many people are having about the Synod on Synodality, even those who are confirmed synodistas. One way of understanding the problem is that we seem to want to lean entirely on Jerusalem – the Holy Spirit is often invoked as the guarantor of everything, though who gets to decide what is the voice of the Holy Spirit, and what is not, remains up in the air. Meanwhile, we fail to keep in mind the sacred history that God Himself made clear by His appearance on earth “in the fullness of time.” (Galatians 4:4)
Christianity came into the world at a particular time. It needed, and absorbed, the high rationality of Athens so that the human mind, as well as the human heart, could enter profoundly into relation with Revelation. Much of what we understand about the Incarnation, for example, was worked out using ancient Greek terms. In recent years, even at the highest levels of the Church, we’ve often enough heard philosophy and theology denigrated, almost as if having clear ideas about Faith and morals are an affront to God, who seems instead to be pure, undefined “mercy.”
