ANIMALS AND THE TRINITY
PART ONE

 “Human beings are created in the image of the relational God and gradually are being perfected in that image (theōsis), making more and more real the communion of all creatures with one another.”

                         ~ Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us [1]

                        The Trinity!  Yikes!  Like many Christians, for much of my faith journey I had a fairly vague notion of the Trinity and found struggling to come to terms with how three are one to be a fairly esoteric and largely impossible task, without much bearing on the actual practice of my faith.  Then I read Catherine LaCugna and everything changed.  Suddenly, I saw that the practice of my faith was only possible because of how the Three are One. 

            I also saw that God as Trinity has radical implications for Christian ethics – including, yes, the ethics of how we relate to animals.  This post and the next one will seek to explore what our Christian understanding of God as Trinity might have to say about animals.   

Andrej Rublëv

           

         The Trinity is, of course, a difficult topic, and I do not intend to examine LaCugna’s discussion in its fullness, nor to address the criticisms that have been made of her approach or the responses to those criticisms.  Instead, I want to present, in as straightforward a way as I can, LaCugna’s vision and what it has to say specifically about animals.[2]  Even thus narrowed, it is a big topic, so I will address it two posts.  This first one looks at the basics of LaCugna’s vision, and the next will consider its practical implications. This is not an easy topic, but I hope you will stay with me.

        For LaCugna, the fundamental aspect of understanding the Trinity is not to try to understand God's inner life and the relationships among the three Persons.  Instead, we are to focus on how God has interacted with the world, which shows us who God is, and invites us into communion with God, with each of the Persons playing a role in how God relates to us.  It is this communion with God which transforms our lives and our relationships with one another and with the rest of creation.      
        LaCugna opens her essay, God In Communion With Us, with a reflection on the famous icon of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev.  She points out that the three Persons in the icon are “arranged in a circle, but the circle is not closed.”[3]  A closed “divine society,” she notes would not be an appropriate model of hospitality.[4]  She continues: “This icon expresses the fundamental insight of the doctrine of the Trinity, namely that God is not far from us, but lives among us in a communion of persons.”[5]  

            In God For Us, she explains, “The doctrine of the Trinity is ultimately a practical doctrine with radical consequences for Christian life.  That is the thesis of this book.  The doctrine of the Trinity, which is a specifically Christian way of speaking about God, summarizes what it means to participate in the life of God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit.”[6]  Moreover, the doctrine of the Trinity is “par excellence a theology of relationship which explores the mysteries of love, relationship, personhood and communion within the framework of God’s self-revelation in the person of Christ and the activity of the Spirit.”[7] Accordingly, it is the “proper source” for Christian ethics and communal life, as well as spirituality, ecclesiology, and liturgy.[8]  However, the doctrine has become so entangled in metaphysical speculation about God’s “inner life” that is has lost its ability to speak to everyday Christians.  Thus, she argues, we must begin afresh by looking to God’s actions in the economy of salvation (loosely speaking, “economy of salvation” refers to God’s plan for and way of bringing about salvation; “God’s economy” is God’s way of interacting with the world), “to experience God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.”[9]  When we experience the actions of the trinitarian God in our lives rather than trying to understand God’s “inner life,” we can begin to participate in communion with God and to allow our lives to be shaped by that communion - with radical consequences. 

            A central point here is that it is not enough to understand the Trinity as divine persons in communion only with one another.  We must steer clear of the idea of an intra-divine community separate from the human community and instead must understand, as God’s work in the world makes clear, that God is in communion with his creatures in “overflowing love, outreaching desire for communion with all that God has made.  The communion of divine life is God’s communion with us in Christ and as Spirit.”[10]  The proper response to this realization is doxology (praise), directing our worship of God back through Christ by the power of the Spirit.  In this way we participate in the life of God.  The result of this is a re-formed life, cooperating with God to establish a new creation “providentially intended by God to become the dwelling place of all creatures.”[11]  Thus, understanding the Trinity as "God for us," LaCugna argues, transforms what it means to be human and transforms “the political and social forms of life appropriate to God’s economy.”[12]

The Enthroned Trinity as Three Identical Figures, Cuzco School [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

            LaCugna next contrasts the Western idea of “self,” built on the ideas of Augustine and Descartes, as an individualized center of being, with an Eastern view, based on the Cappadocians and John Zizioulas’ ideas of a person who comes into being by interacting with others.  “The actualization of personhood takes place in self-transcendence, the movement of freedom toward communion with other persons.”[13]  With this in view, LaCugna concludes “God’s perfect freedom therefore means not unlimited choices, but perfect conformity to who God is.  God cannot be anything but who God is, namely, the event of communion.”  Likewise, in the event of baptism, Christians put on Christ and are thereby enabled (given the freedom) to become persons in communion. [14]

            LaCugna examines how theologians from the Eastern and Western perspectives have looked to the doctrine of the Trinity to inform their ethics.  She notes that feminists and liberationists have traditionally looked to Augustine’s idea of a divine society of equals as a model for how human societies should be shaped.  They fail to tie this, however, to the economy of salvation, which is what gives humans the ability to transcend their limits and follow that model.  The Eastern perspective ties personal ethics more closely to the economy, noting that doing good is the proper objective of the Christian person, moving toward the fullness of our humanity through union with the Trinity.  Yet these writers look to individual actions and fail to offer any critique of what this might mean for the social order.  This gap, for LaCugna, “undermines the point of a trinitarian doctrine of God.”[15]  Reflecting on various aspects of personhood, LaCugna concludes that “living as persons in communion, in right relationship, is the meaning of salvation and the ideal of Christian faith. . . . Human beings are created in the image of the relational God and gradually are being perfected in that image (theōsis), making more and more real the communion of all creatures with one another.”[16] 

            Such a life, “being perfected in the image of God, entails specific ethical demands.”[17]  Our call is to make present the kingdom of God.  LaCugna argues that doxology is what brings us into right relationship with God and makes it possible for us to fulfill this duty.  LaCugna explains:

We are in right relationship to God when we give God the glory . . .  in the ordinary tasks of daily living.  We are in right relationship to other creatures including the goods of the earth when we acknowledge that everything has its own intrinsic reason for existing (ratio), its own purpose (telos), other than to serve the needs and desires of human beings. . . . Disproportionate use of the goods of the earth, despoiling creation, harming other creatures, abusing other persons, are unnatural ways of being in relationship because God is not glorified by them.[18]

            Addressing what it means to live “a Trinitarian life,” LaCugna begins by observing that “God moves toward us so that we may move toward each other and thereby move toward God.”[19]  Trinitarian theology is not an abstract mathematical puzzle, but a way of living every day in communion with God and creation.  Only by living in this way can we come to know God, and so we must shape our lives by what we see revealed of God in the economy of salvation through the Son and the Spirit.  The doctrine of the Trinity “is the summary of the Christian faith, not its premise.  The life of God with us is the premise, context, horizon of faith.”[20]

            For LaCugna, a Trinitarian faith affects every part of life.  In God For Us, she sketches out very broadly implications in some of these areas.  For the ecclesial life, Trinitarian theology means that leadership should be rooted in service, not lordship.[21]  For the sacramental life, it means that all are invited to partake in communion and all must be included in it.[22]  For the sexual life, it means relationships free of domination and instead characterized “holiness, creativity, fecundity, friendship, inclusiveness, delight, and pleasure.”[23]  For the ethical life, it means “everything that supports and promotes the flourishing of persons.”[24]  Finally, for the spiritual life, it means that active and contemplative spirituality are joined as we contemplate God in the presence of others and in creation.[25]

            Next week, we will explore specifically what LaCugna says – and doesn’t say – about the implications of this understanding of the Trinity for human life in relation to animals and compare it to the implications that might be drawn from the perspectives of Augustine and Acquinas.  

Photo credit: David Wye

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[1] LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. God For Us: The Trinity & Christian Life. Chicago: HarperCollins, 1973, p. 292.

[2] For those who are interested in learning more about her perspective, I strongly recommend her book, God For Us, and her essay entitled “God In Communion With Us” in Freeing Theology.  These are not easy reads, but they are well worth the effort, in my view, bringing the doctrine of the Trinity to life in a practical and refreshing way.

[3] LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. "God In Communion With Us." In Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective, by Catherine Mowry LaCugna, 83-114. New York: HarperCollins, 1993, p. 84. 

[4] Id.

[5] Id. (emphasis added).

[6] LaCugna, God For Us, p. 1.

[7] Id.

[8] Id.

[9] Id., p. 3.

[10] Id. p. 15.

[11] Id., p. 16.

[12] Id.          

[13] Id., p. 260.

[14] Id., p. 262-63, 290.

[15] Id. 267-288; quoted on page 288.

[16] Id., p. 292.

[17] Id., p. 346.

[18] Id., pp. 346-47.

[19] Id., p. 377.

[20] Id., p. 381 (emphasis original).

[21] Id., p. 402.

[22] Id., p. 406.

[23] Id., p. 407.

[24] Id., p. 408.

[25] Id., p. 409.