GOD, THE TRINITY AND LATIN AMERICA, TODAY Leopoldo Cervantes-Ortiz Translation: Rubén Arjona Mejía November 2008 Introduction: ¿God or The Trinity? Trinitarian faith within a popular religious context

We have begun the XXI century with an enormous amount of challenges for Christian faith. After accumulated centuries of religious and theological tradition, the results of Christianization among cultures are diverse. On one hand, many of the institutionalized churches try to sustain their ideological monuments like if the so called post modernity did not have any effect upon its religious solidity. On the other hand, millions of people move from one place to another, literally and symbolically, in an attempt to reconstruct their faith and adapt it to new circumstances. The religious faces of post modernity, varied and sometimes bizarre, keep on the contents of Christianity in unprecedented situations in other times. So, it is

possible to see how the most “archaic” expressions of faith, like faith in highly venerated saints, such as Saint Jude Thadeus, coexist with the most recent technological resources. The bearers of both realities are the new generations of young men and women. This coexistence, seen by some observers as an anomaly, is nothing else, but another face of the simultaneity of pre-modern, modern and post modern experiences present in our societies. Likewise, the emergence of secular cults related to delinquency or drug traffic, obligates the Catholic Church to defend its beliefs as contrary to such diversification unknown in other times. Recently, the Archdiocese of Mexico had to react to such association in the case of a popular festivity in downtown Mexico City. Especially complex has been, for some years, the belief and cult to “Holy Death”, associated with groups of drug dealers and other criminals.1 This is the case of a peculiar form of cult developed in northern and western Mexico to worship Jesús Malverde, a drug dealer who has reached the status of a saint, despite catholic orthodoxy.2

These, and other phenomena, manifest the so called “religious mutation”, also called “religious deregulation”, lived in Latin America more in a festive and enjoyable way

1 “Niegan que San Judas Tadeo sea santo de delincuentes” (“Saint Jude Thadeus isn’t a saint for delinquents”), in El Universal, Mexico City, October 28th, 2008, www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/550888.html; Sandra Alejandra Araujo Peña et al., “El culto a la Santa Muerte: un estudio descriptivo” (The cult to the Holy Death: a descriptive study), in Revista de Psicología, Universidad de Londres, Mexico City, 1, August-January, 2005-2006, www.udlondres.com/revista_psicologia/articulos/stamuerte.htm; and Bernardo Barranco, “La Santa Muerte” (The Holy Death), in La Jornada, June 1st, 2005, www.jornada.unam.mx/2005/06/01/024a1eco.php. 2 “Crece devoción por el santo de los narcos (It’s raising the devotion for the saint of narcotraphic), in El Heraldo de Chihuahua , October 27th, 2008, www.oem.com.mx/elheraldodechihuahua/notas/n907593.htm.

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(chaotic for others), than in a dramatic, or life-limiting situation. These phenomena provide evidence of the forms in which the religious is reinvented cyclically.3 In this context, the Holy Trinity is not at all unknown in Mexico and Latin America. It would be enough to visit a popular market to find it at every step: one will find reproductions of a naïve, kitsch painting that show the three members of Christian Trinity. This religiosity that carries centuries of accumulation of cultural elements incorporates creatively that which the diverse Christian traditions transmit as an immutable and orthodox faith. The truth is that the practical implications of a doctrine pretended abstract must be visualized in order to understand the popular derivations of a faith that, historically, was constructed through a series of interpretative conflicts whose echoes have completely vanished in our times. The kitsch elements of popular imaginary point to the transformation of ideology into motives worthy of appearing in calendars and other publications whose religious efficacy was lost because secularization has moved from ideas and beliefs to

practical concerns. The dechristianization of Latin American societies has been strengthened with the growing proof that rejection of institutionalized religions conducts millions of people to the hands of “practical atheism”, that is, a systematic unbelief in the official truths of Catholicism in particular; this rejection, however, has been attenuated by the unceasing search of purpose that often ends up in a series of psychological-religious syncretism of suspicious superficiality.

When believers, both men and women, coming from this general context become migrants (particularly in search of better economic conditions in the United States, but also in Spain and other countries), the possibility of transferring the religious vitality of this continent to new geographic and cultural spaces. In Mexico, particularly, the dominant belief that “accompanies” the outsiders is the devotion towards the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose image, nowadays, is carried in a pilgrimage to New York in order to make clear its presence. She has even been recognized as the “mother of migrants”, in addition to its traditional titles.4 In a somehow biblical exodus, the company of the Guadalupana in the midst of the difficult situations that migrants live is promoted. Within this background, it is almost unthinkable that devout Catholics might entrust themselves to the Trinity in times of conflict. At the most, in relation to a member of Trinity, the Holy Heart of Jesus might be invoked. Within Protestantism, the situation is not that different. Even when officially, the belief in the Trinity is the first article of faith, in practice there is a kind of selectivity in relation to the persons that integrate it; in this “competition” the “loser” is the Father, since the figures of the Son and the Spirit have a notorious advantage in the piety of people.

Perhaps the missionary past of both sides of Latin American Christianity still places a great influence when its time to define and redefine beliefs because the Catholic and Protestant imposition of a faith disconnected of concrete historical experiences provokes the existential

3 Cf. Jean-Pierre Bastian, La mutación religiosa de América Latina. Para una sociología del cambio social en la modernidad periférica (The religious change of Latin America. Towards a sociology of social change in peripheric modernity). México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997. 4 Rafael Ramírez Lira, “La Virgen de Guadalupe, madre de los migrantes” (The Virgin of Guadalupe, mother of immigrants), in Vida Nueva, publication of Archidiocesis of Los Angeles, California, www.vida-nueva.com/news.php?nid=1078.

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connection only among those elements of the sacred that show unconditional solidarity with its people. Therefore, the belief in the predominantly masculine image of the Trinity cannot compete with the maternity of Virgin Mary (in its various expressions), mainly because she has contributed to conform the identity of a good part of Latin American peoples since this faith has been associated with the situation of marginalization of communities that had to suffer, first, the Spanish conquest and then the periodic aggressions of the United States, paradoxically the country that introduced some of the expressions of Protestantism.

1. The teaching of the Trinity from the missionary inheritance 1.1 The relation among the persons of the Trinity If we review the handbooks of dogmatics used in theological education institutions to transmit Trinitarian faith, we will note that, along time, there has been no significant variance or actualization in an apparently well-known topic both among catholic and protestant believers. The noncritical acceptance of the biblical teachings regarding this doctrine is a kind of ideological justification of the bureaucratic structure of religious institutions. Furthermore, the long debate that led to its classic formulation has been buried in the dusty archives of memory because it proceeds from an ambit that is irrelevant to contemporary needs and problems. In fact, we would have to say that this matter was never linked to the particularity of Latin America. The metaphysic discussions concerning the role or function of each person in salvation always started, on one hand, from the point of view that harmony in their relations had to be a model to what should occur in human life, and, on the other hand, perhaps due to the Tomist emphasis with which Christian truths were exposed, that reason should not intermingle with such problems. As a result, the matter was concluded since it was only an excuse to transmit further teachings, that is, those that really put to risk the faith of new believers. The first evangelization, the Catholic one, opened the road to fill believers with images of a community of divinities that understood each other perfectly in their eternal colloquium, unworried almost completely and very much far from the problems that their relations could produce in the conscience of the expanding Christianity.

Perhaps it was only with the advent of Latin American theology of liberation that the sociopolitical and ideological implications of such an established doctrine came to be discussed. This implies the affirmation that reiterative schemes, worrying only about relations among people in a completely essentialist manner, were repeated over and over. In this sense, a critique of the classic Trinitarian theology is necessary, especially regarding its affirmations of the relations between Trinitarian economy, history and immanence of God, which reflect the political background of the formulation of this doctrine. As Antonio González Fernández suggests:

The idea of God as a universal King was made compatible with the Trinity and won its citizenship letter among Christians. So Eusebius of Caesarea, after the defeat of Licinius by Constantine and the consequent unification of the empire, would say that “to the only king on earth corresponds the only God, the only king in heaven and the only royal law and Logos”, since “with the start of the preaching of Jesus Christ regarding the only God of all things, the human genre was liberated from both the multiplicity of divine forces and the plurality of governments from distinct peoples”.

With the imposition of Christianity in the empire, what was an apologetic doctrine within a context of persecution, became a useful legitimization of the political power of the only universal governor. Also, dialogue with philosophy and combat within polytheism demanded the unity of the divine reality. The biblical revelation of a true Trinity of persons, in such a context, had to face the necessity of clarification in the face of diverse heresies that, in one way or another, tended to eliminate the plurality of persons and emphasize the unicity of God as supreme substance. Both, arrianism and sabelianism, can be interpreted from this point of view as two attempts of affirming the unicity of God in detriment of the divinity of Jesus Christ in the first case and of the reality of persons in the second. While for Peterson Christian theology was able to resist in the fundamentals the danger of monotheism by maintain the Trinitarian dogma, Moltmann prefers to think that in fact the idea of the universal and monotheistic divine monarchy as a means for the

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legitimization of political power survived surreptisiously in practically all subsequent Christian theology. The substance of supreme entity would become in this way in the summit of the static medieval ordo.5

These aspects, so frequently left aside in the theological formation of pastors and ecclesiastical leaders and practically rare to the believers with no access to theology, that deform to a great degree the comprehension of the Trinitarian mystery, have contributed to the lack of interest to revise it. Likewise, the way in which the theology of the Reformation dealt with the topic has also contributed to this situation. As González Fernández, following Wolfhart Pannenberg, says:

According to Pannenberg, the theology of the Reformation confined in the fundamental to the scholastic concepts regarding the unicity of God, and so the revealed doctrine of the Trinity, despite the revalorization of Scripture, was not formulated in true systematic coherence with the idea of one and only divine essence. Now, within Theology, a new idea of what this essence is started its way: it is no longer the classic one of the supreme being or substance, but that of a essential spiritualis. It will be precisely the idea of spirit the one which will be used to think in a new way what the Trinity is. G.E. Lessing, following a method that had been used by Anselm of Canterbury, in turn inspired by the psychological analogies of Agustine, will base the Trinitarian character of God in the auto-conscience that he has of himself, so establishing a bridge between the concept (modern) of God as spirit and the Christian revelation of the Trinitarian God.6

The speculative point of view, dominated by a somehow conscious dealing of philosophical concepts, is completely alien to the Latin American mentality because such doctrinal teaching in the various churches is not accompanied by a sane experimentation or living of such affirmations. With all this in mind, it is not surprising that theological handbooks like that of Louis Berkhof (1873-1957), of wide use in protestant seminaries, have transmitted during decades a limited mentality to the acceptance of the most traditional notions. Berkhof summarizes the matter in this way:

The Bible teaches that even though God is one, he exists in three persons called the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These are not three persons in the common sense of the word, nor three individuals, but three modes or forms of existence of the Divine Being. At the same time, their nature is such that it allows them to establish personal relations. The Father can talk to the Son and vice versa and both can send the Holy Spirit. The true mystery of the Trinity consists in the fact that each of the three persons possesses the total divine essence, and that this does not exist apart, or outside of such Persons. None of them is subordinated regarding its being to another, although in order of existence the Father is first, the Son is second and the Holy Spirit third. An identical order is reflected in their deeds.7

Even when assuming the idea of mystery, the positivist interest in demonstrating its affirmation, prevents Berkhof from dealing with the theological implications of the “mysteric” view of this doctrine. As it can be seen, the confusion generated by the use of the words “essence” and “existence”, whose historical context is that of the theological disputes of the first centuries, generates a great distance because such debates responded to semantic issues and linguistic nuances that have been completely surpassed. Indeed, the affirmations of some of the Church Fathers in relation to this matter, and the passion with

5 A. González Fernández, Trinidad y liberación. La doctrina de la trinidad considerada desde la perspectiva de la teología de la liberación (Trinity and liberation. The doctrine of Trinity from the perspective of theology of liberation), in Universidad Centro Americana “José Simeón Cañas”, www.uca.edu.sv/facultad/chn/c1170/agtydind.html. González was a member of Jesuitic Company and recently entered to a Mennonite community, where he is now a pastor. 6 Idem. 7 L. Berkhof, Sumario de doctrina cristiana (Summary of Christian doctrine). Trad. de D. Vila. Grand Rapids, TELL, 1966, p. 54.

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which assumed the discussion, is mostly unknown. The only thing that can be redeemed from these affirmations is the emphasis in the inexistence of superiority among the three persons, which in turn, confuses many people due to the generalized acceptance of the authority and power of the Father. The so-called “biblical proofs” of the existence of the Trinity have left many opened flanks to the criticism of many religious groups and other observers. As a sign of this last statement, I will cite a recent and wide paper. Its affirmations, even though they repeat some popular ideas, are noteworthy:

The truth is that neither Christ nor his disciples, as to the fourth century, believed in the Trinity. For them “God was not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Co 14.33). The Trine God is a confusing God who brings discord and disputes. The word Trinity does not exist in the Bible, and neither is there a canonic text that affirms that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one only God. The only text that could prove the Trinitarian belief is 1 Jn 5.7, text that was interpolated after centuries, and thus is recognized as spurious by many biblical scholars.8

1.2 Doctrine or practice?: some problems in the comprehension of the Trinity It is evident that the assimilation of faith in the Trinity has occurred through an ideological inertia that reproduces, without specifying it, the predominant political and social dynamics because, as Jürgen Moltmann suggests, this aspect is inseparable from the formulation of this doctrine, for such is precisely the biblical tendency:

In opposition to the Trinity of substance and the Trinity of subject, we will attempt a social doctrine of the Trinity. The Bible is for us the witness of the history of the communitarian relations of the Trinity in its revelation to man and to the world. This Trinitarian hermeneutics leads to a way of thinking based on the relations and the communitarian element, and leaves aside the subjective thought that can only work by disassociating and isolating its objects.9

A consequence of this “subjective thought” is that the “history of the Trinity” becomes something alien and invisible from the biblical texts, perhaps due to the way of reading it, tele-directed to find Trinitarian faith everywhere and producing a sort of social immobilism and a strong abstractionism regarding the image of the Christian divinity. It is idle to remember the way in the conventional hermeneutics invokes the presence of the Trinity in countless texts of the Old Testament (the angels visiting Abraham, Gn 18.1-15, is perhaps the most cited). Unfortunately, the implementation of this belief, due to its noncritical and non-historical transmission, has led to believe that there is not an “intra-Trinitarian history” behind the teachings with which some orthodox scholars support it. And so, the transmission of the belief becomes a dogmatic exercise that blocks the comprehension of the Trinitarian God as a community of equals, even when this might sound rare to the purist ears of the traditional defenders of the so called “pure doctrine”. In this context, How can those relations be reconstructed in a way that will be coherent with the biblical message, centered in the incarnation of one of the persons of the Trinity? Because this biblical evidence, the entrance of the Trinitarian God to the history and the physical humanity, can and should be the fundament of any ethics that receives the name of Christian, since only from the experience of God himself in the world is it possible to elaborate an ethics that might truly respond to the demands of transforming the world. It then might be possible to interrogate the Christian faith on its everyday efficacy to generate real transformations not only in thought but in everyday issues.

The image of the Trinity, constituted by an authoritarian Father, so significant to the groups that have always dominated the social scenario (and that is still part of the antidemocratic ideological

8 Mario A Olcese, “La Trinidad: ¿verdad bíblica o invención humana?” (The Trinity: biblical true or human invention?), in Canasanta.com, review on Latin American art and literature), www.canasanta.com/ensayo/la-trinidad-verdad-biblica-o-invencion-humana-00001.html 9 J. Moltmann, Trinidad y Reino de Dios. La doctrina sobre Dios. 2ª ed. Trad. de M. Olasagasti. Salamanca, Sígueme, 1986 (Verdad e imagen, 80), p. 33. (English: The Trinity and the Kingdom. San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1981.)

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complex of our Latin American societies with a Hispanic-Arab background); a humiliated, subjected Son who didn’t react to the vilest offenses (in the same manner in which the indigenous masses were subjected during the Spanish conquest); and the Spirit, a meek presence apparently worried only in distributing his gifts in the Church (farther from human conflict; thus interested only in generating “highly spiritual persons”, but disconnected from their concrete problems, as it has been promoted by the evangelicalism brought about by the missionaries); all these was articulated around a conception that, finally, does not produce too many differences in relation to the catholic dogma, since the iconographic image of the Trinity was never the object of the anti-idolatrous diatribes of missionary Protestantism in contrast with what occurred with the saints. This tacit acceptance of the Trinitarian image equaled the protestant and catholic consciences in one same imaginarium, unified by the orientations and religious practices that distinguish popular culture. The failure to identify the Trinitarian iconography (which is also the case of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) as an idolatrous element is connected to the fact that that faith lost its challenging and mobilizing character, especially before the evangelizing practice that rejected as Christian the presence of the Catholic Church.

Consequently, a question that reaches the level of theological, doctrinal and ecclesial urgency can be raised: How has the belief in the Trinity been translated that the ethical influence in the believers cannot be seen? And furthermore, How can we start a new “translation” of this doctrine so that its ideological, social, political and spiritual pertinence might feed the new generations of Christians, especially in the light of change? And, particularly: Which face should this belief in posmodernity have, understood as a cultural process of reconstruction and deconstruction of traditional faith? We would have to recall that dialogue with the ideas and tendencies of each epoch is a fundamental trait of reformed tradition, which in turn calls us to revise the whole of Christian doctrine to respond to the new necessities of the moment. Being practically the portal of complete doctrine, the analysis of Trinitarian beliefs is indispensable and urgent, specially from a continent full of the cult to Mary, the Virgin, strongly integrated to the popular religiosity.10

2. A comparison between Reformed Theology and Theology of Liberation regarding the Trinity 2.1 Power and relations in the reformed affirmations regarding the Trinity The missionary heritage is still present in the conscience and beliefs of the protestants, since the churches and evangelical communities of today are paying the price of being bred and taught by missioners with scarce theology formation, since most of the missioners in charge of funding congregations worked upon the common legacy of the Catholic Church, what derived in the traditional passivity of the parishioners in this and other ideological themes. The ideological and religious power represented by the supposed superiority of American missioners was established as a ecclesiastical model that did not seriously considered the presence and impact of the Trinity other than from a dogmatic point of view, since even when in the pastoral tasks the “attributes” of the Christian divinity were enhanced, it was precisely in this insistence what left aside the historical aspects of this doctrine. Aspects such as passion or solidarity of God accompanying his suffering son at the cross were substituted for a supposed divine apathy (lack of compassion and solidarity) in front of the scandal of the cross, since by following the stereological scheme of the need of a sacrificial death and the satisfaction of justice of God through Jesus, it was permanently affirmed that God turned his face away from the

10 Cf. Gabriel Zaid, “La Santísima Cuaternidad” (The Holy Cuaternity), in Letras Libres, Mexico City, June 2005, pp. 16-17. Zaid follows the ideas of Carl Gustav Jung, specially about his reaction to the Catholic dogma about the Assumption of Mary, the Virgin (1950). Zaid develops the interest of Jung on the management of the colective unconscious about cuaternarian symbols. Mary would represent the feminine element to add to Trinity, Zaid writes.

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cross to avoid seeing his Son, since he was concentrating at the moment all the sin, and therefore he was the object of wrath. This tragic break up between the Father, source of love and mercy and the Son, the propitiatory victim was never again explained, except for a Trinitarian need in the framework of the “pact of grace” that both, Father and Son, with the neutrality of the Spirit, undertook to guarantee salvation of the elected in spite of the separation between them. Then, the power of the Father could be protected even against his own premises of mercy and goodwill.

This is partly explained because the conception of the Father as the first person of the Trinity has been considered as such in a hierarchical scheme that obeys more to the prevailing political design. This way, the conception of an ultra-authoritarian from ancient Hebrew and Christian has been followed by the almost unmovable idea that God, being the “king of the universe”, can use and destroy the lives of human beings, given he made it with his own Son, any creature can be object of such sadism. The most curious consequence of this widely spread teaching is that aiming to present a message without shatters or contradictions in the divine plan to execute it, it was never mentioned that it justified and explained human suffering, as a repeated image, from the acceptance without criticism of a violence imposed from the closest person, similar as what happens with familiar violence, since there are spaces where victims ought to “thank” the administered suffering by his beloved ones.

This unconscious promotion of violence that comes from the divine scale, has only assumed as law the fact that God the Father pre-orders the suffering of the weak, since this has a rationale that only he understands.

Theologically speaking, soteriology is abusively imposed, as a teleological factor, above the explanations of a healthy anthropology. The political variable, as such is presented as one of the greatest hindrance to elucidate the way that the Trinitarian belief must be conceived. As Moltmann writes following the track of the political steadiness of the Trinitarian faith based upon the idea of monarchy.

The Trinitarian doctrine based on the concept of God can only avoid this step from religious monotheism to absolutism if it overcomes the idea of universal monarchy of the one God (…). If the unity of Trinitarian God is understood, not Trinitarianly, but monarchically and subjectively, it still stands the legitimating base of political power. Only when Trinitarian doctrine overcomes the monotheist idea of the great celestial monarch and the divine patriarch of the universe, the dominating dictators and tyrants of the earth will be deprived from all religious archetype of justification.11

In few words, the doctrine of the Trinity must be read, interpreted and lived in political key in all its dimensions of radical criticism to power abuse, coming from wherever it might come. This critic possibility in the Trinitarian faith opens the road to enhance truly democratic relations in every aspect of life, as product of a intra-Trinitarian political theology since, as Moltmann argues:

A political theology that is consciously Christian, and therefore, contrary to political monotheism, should study the correspondences of God in earth, especially in the political statute of a community (…). We must seek political option that respond to the Christian faith convictions and that are not in contradiction with themselves. As we have said, the monarchy of a sovereign does not correspond with a Trinitarian God, but to the community of men without privileges or subjugation […]. It corresponds to the Trinity then, a community where people are defined by their mutual relations and their reciprocal meanings, not by power or possession.12

Therefore, the existent respect of the people of the Trinity should be the foundation of new relationship among people.

11 J. Moltmann, op. cit., pp. 213-214. 12 Ibid., p. 215.

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2.2 Between Moltmann and Leonardo Boff: reflection upon the sociopolitical implications of Trinitarian faith These theological intuitions, supported by a liberating reading of biblical texts, and free from the obsession of finding the Trinity all around, makes justice to the New Testament affirmations that do enable us to find the divine community. If Jesus promoted a new look of God’s paternity and announced the coming of a Spirit co-participant of the divine nature, it was because of a profound faith experience that was counteracting the powers of his time. This is, indeed, one of the great lessons for today. And so, Jesus’ faith could also be defined as Trinitarian so long as he processed the ancient experience of Israel from its roots, and, as a result, he found that the Law, the priesthood, and specially those who subjected the people, had hidden the closest and most familiar image of God. Jesus makes possible the experiencing of the Trinitarian family as one’s own family due to God’s humanity in Jesus Christ. But this perception of divine community and its potential influence upon human communities is mediated by ideologies and power. By disassociating these aspects, and based on the belief that the Trinity is very far, locked in his metaphysic eternity, those who have the power in all its forms use this perception to impose their criteria for comprehending the divine presence, usually understood as omniscient and omnipresent power. As a result, Christian faith and practice are modeled upon elements that are alien to incarnation and lowering, which are the divine route for manifestation and revelation. The maximum manifestation, the imaged presence of God in the world is the human being and, in Jesus of Nazaret, this comprehension reached a paradigmatic degree, useful to refresh permanently God’s action in the world.

The methodological separation of history, and respect to the political and sociocultural context of power, should be exceeded from Trinitarian faith in order to reach, not so much a better comprehension of divine economy, or as Rubem Alves has said, of divine “fisiology and anatomy”, something absolutely unthinkable and unachievable, but in order reach a sound comprehension of how God’s communitarian image influences and models human relations and self-understanding of human beings in the midst of the multiple possibilities of realization and collective relating, all which is meant to reach successive liberation. In other words, to what point may the classic doctrine of imago Dei may be applied from a Trinitarian concept to the search of a greater historic humanization.

In this sense, it is worthy to mention the contribution of two theologians: Moltmann, the Reformed theologian already cited here, and Leonardo Boff, from the catholic arena, since both express the will that today’s theological thought may refresh and update the analysis of the development of Trinitarian faith, based upon an adequate methodology coming from “theology of liberation”. Chronologically, Moltmann did it before Boff. One of his first affirmations is highly clarifies his platform of analysis:

Acting and meditation are related among each other. The intersection point comes from the situation of each individual. But in any case there is a deep connection between each other. Christian meditation cannot conduct us to flee from the necessary Christian praxis because it is the meditation of Christ’s passion and death. Christian praxis cannot derive in fleeing from meditation since it is linked to following the Crucified. For this reason, theology of action and theology of doxology are mutually implicated. There is no theology of liberation without the glorification of God; nor is there glorification of God without the liberation of the oppressed.13

As it can be seen, it is a situated, localized reflection, placed in the arena of those who, without willing to penetrate the divine mysteries, are willing to find the point of contact between the reality of the truths of Christ preached by the churches and its more immediate reality. And so, the encountering with the Christian, Trinitarian God is indispensable. And that is precisely what Moltmann doses: take the pulse of

13 Ibid., p. 22.

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this faith in the midst of history in order to look for the effectiveness of those points of contact between the “Trinitarian history of God” and human need. In this way, he finds that the doctrine of God will never be able to affirm God’s impassivity as a premise in dealing with human pain. A suffering father experiences what humans live in the most algid and dramatic biblical space: the cross of Jesus, upon which God-Father could not remain indifferent; that is the “history of the Father”. The “history of the Son” demands, to begin with, a “Trinitarian hermeneutics” in accordance with biblical dynamics: “Jesus appears in the New Testament witnessing a ‘the Son’. His story comes from the collaboration of God, the Son and the Spirit. This is the history of the reciprocal relations, changing and dynamical, of the Son and the Spirit. […] The New Testament speaks of God by telling and announcing the communitarian relations of the Father, the Son and the Spirit before the face of the world”.14 The static and non-historical look concerning the being of God is completely out of place: Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of post-resurrection faith, is a momentum of Trinitarian history. The previous references related to the political implications of Trinitarian belief were taken from the chapter “The Kingdom of Liberty”. Moltmann sees these implications as pernicious if they remain in the context of Christian monotheism, dogmatic attitude which is dominant in most churches. His thinking is, one more time, eschatological; even though he emphasizes that in human present power relations should be affected by Trinitarian faith. In this area of reflection, he places particular attention to the ideas of the medieval mystic Joachim of Fiore of the Trinitarian perspective of history. For him the Kingdom of God is expressed in diverse times according to the dominium of each person of the Trinity. So, the kingdom of the Father (creation and conservation of the world) ends with prophet Zechariah; the Son’s (redemption through servitude), during the life of Jesus of Nazareth; the Spirit’s is “the rebirth of man by the force of the Spirit”.15

Leonardo Boff, in The Trinity, Society and Liberation observes in a very critical way the Trinitarian behavior of the Church and finds that in the history of the Church, three well determined religions have lived together, one for each person of the Trinity:

A deeply Father-centered Christianity, without communion with the Son and the interiorization of the Holy Spirit can give birth to an oppressive image of God, a terrifying mystery whose decrees seem unpredictable and completely hidden. A Christianity centered in the Son without reference to the Father, and without union with the Holy Spirit, may cause the self-sufficiency and authoritarianism of leaders and pastors. Finally, a Christianity rooted excessively in the Holy Spirit, without connection with the Son and without its ultimate reference to the Father, favors anarchy and anomy.16

In the “popular version” of this book, the “disintegrated experience of the three divine persons” is described by using an even clearer scheme that specifies the problem created and sometimes increased by this Trinitarian over-simplification:

1. The religion of the Father alone: patriarchalism The figure of the father is central in traditional families and societies. He conducts, decides and knows. So, some represent God as an almighty father, judge of the life and death of sons and daughters. All depend upon him and, for this reason, are considered minors. This comprehension can lead Christians to accept their misery and feed a spirit of submission toward their bosses, the Pope and the bishops, without any creativity. God is certainly Father, but Father of the Son, who, along with the Holy Spirit, lives in communion and equality. 2. La religion of the Son alone: vanguardism

14 Ibid., p. 80. 15 Ibid., p. 222-223. Cf. Delno C. West and Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, Joachim of Fiore: A study in spiritual perception and history. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1983. Specially the fourth chapter: “Trinity and history”. 16 L. Boff, La Trinidad, la sociedad y la liberación. 2ª ed. Trad. de A. Ortiz García. Madrid, Paulinas, 1987 (Cristianismo y sociedad, 5), p. 24. (English: Trinity and society. Maryknoll, Orbis, 1988.)

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Others keep only the figure of the Son, Jesus Christ. He is the “companion”, the “teacher”, “our boss”. An enthusiastic and young image of Christ, brother of all and leader who excites men, has been developed, especially among young people and in those cheap courses of Christendom. This Jesus is related only to the sides, without a vertical dimension in direction to the Father. This religion produces vanguardistic Christians who lose contact with the people and the walking of communities. 3. The religion of the Holy Spirit alone: spiritualism There are Christian groups that concentrate only in the figure of the Holy Spirit. They cultivate the spirit of prayer, speak in tongues, impose hands and conduct their interior and personal emotions. These Christians forget that the Spirit is always the Spirit of the Son, sent by the Father to continue the liberating work of Jesus. The interior relation is not enough (Holy Spirit), nor is it to the sides (Son), or only the vertical one (Father).17

Authoritarianism, non-communitarian vanguardism, deinstitutionalization, anarchy, charismatic excesses… These manifestations, so extreme, may occur precisely due to the disconnection and inadequate integration of the perception of unity in diversity of the Trinity itself; they also reveal the scarce comprehension of the concept of communion which is not properly valued in the interior of the Trinity. For this reason, in other spaces, starting with the churches, that use and overuse the word, the lack of practice of fair and equalitarian relations is evident. Families, communities of all kinds, in this horizon of thought, should be filled with the streams of communion-communication that flow in the interior of the Christian Trinity, in something that, in great contradiction, has no been sufficiently transmitted in a little more than two millenniums of Christianity. Boff’s combat against any kind of authoritarianism or oppression, in a time in which theology of liberation lived it years of consolidation, appropriated the doctrine of the Trinity as a weapon that had never before been used in such a way. This allowed him to start the dismantling of the ideological elements of a belief that had petrified, and therefore, had lost its subversive capacity to bring to judgment the false fidelities generated by the idolatry of power. The traditional patriarchalism of Hispanic-Arab societies, inherited by the cultures of Latin America has only and hardly been modified due to the promotion of laws that seek to protect the weakest groups, specially children and women, victims of ancestral machismo. Churches may regain parte of the authentic Christian heritage if they discover these aspects that might seem new, but actually, have deep roots in the biblical spirituality.

In the same order of ideas, other affirmations, as those of Diego Irarrázaval or Enrique Cambón, find that the “rescue” of the Trinitarian doctrine might help wide social groups to rebuild and even give a new direction to many of their endeavors. Irarrázaval, in a volume concerning interreligious dialogue observes that this doctrine might help to fundament pluralism.18 Cambón, on his side, insists that the Trinity is a true social model if its truly related in the life of communities and peoples.19 The Argentinian Lutheran theologian Guillermo Hansen has spoken of the topic of the Trinity from a postmodern perspective. In his doctoral dissertation and later on in a series of essays,20 has generated dialogue between the Trinitarian tradition and the most present problems. For example, in seeking “the functioning” of the Trinity, that is, its influence upon concrete daily life, he points to issues such as death,

17 L. Boff, La Santísima Trinidad es la mejor comunidad. Bogotá, Paulinas, 1988. Full text in Spanish: www.mercaba.org/FICHAS/TRINIDAD/Boff/indice_boff_trinidad.htm. (English: Holy Trinity, perfect community. Maryknoll. Orbis, 2000.) 18 D. Irarrázaval, “Epílogo” (Epilogue), en Los muchos caminos de Dios. (The multiple ways of God) http://latinoamericana.org/tiempoaxial/textos/ASETT2epilogo.htm 19 Enrique Cambón, La Trinidad, modelo social. (The Trinity, a social model) Madrid, Ciudad Nueva, 2000. 20 G. Hansen, The Doctrine of the Trinity and Liberation Theology: A Study of the Trinitarian Doctrine and its Place in Latin American Liberation Theology. Doctoral dissertation, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1995. Cf. G. Hansen, “La concepción trinitaria de Dios en los orígenes de la teología de la liberación: el aporte de Juan Luis Segundo” (The trinitarian conception of God in the origins of theology of liberation: the contribution of Juan Luis Segundo), en Cuadernos de Teología, Buenos Aires, ISEDET, XVI/1-2, 1997, pp. 43-67.

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environment and gender. About environment, he states: “I believe that Trinitarian thought is an important resource to understand God as our true environment (or setting), and our environment (ecological and social) as the means by which God anticipates his future abode”.21

All these contributions and many others that flow in many parts of Latin America, discuss, outline, and propose the new way in which faith in the Trinity may me experienced, not any longer from a doctrinal profile, but from a Christian practice that tries to take to its ultimate consequences the sense of communion and community. Specially during the last years, when many Latin American societies have finally reached more democratic conditions, the perception that such an established doctrine has still so much to tell in front of challenges of these times, than reclaim an constant actualization of Christian doctrines and faith. Conclusion: living and believing in the Trinity here and now If we analyze the religious ideas and religious practices concerning the Trinity, and if we take them to a theological and ethical debate, the conflict in assessing them will sprout immediately because the gap that has always existed between theology and popular faith, far from being reconciled, has complicated the transmission of the spiritual possibilities of this kind of faith that was able to transform the Semitic monotheism, with all its ideological and political charge, into a way of thinking and living God as a chain of intuitions that may privilege communion and permanent dialogue, face to face. The diverse faces of the Trinity can still be reinterpreted and lived in new ways according to present change.

The loving paternity of God-Father, the historic company of the Son, and the renewing presence of the Spirit will be a reality as long as Christians, men and women, open their eyes to the always dynamic newness of the one, live, and true God, manifested in a series of concrete human stories that make plain his call to salvation and to the reach of dignity.

21 G. Hansen, “La trinidad en ‘funcionamiento’: algunos temas actuales” (The Trinity “functioning”: some recent themes), en Cuadernos de Teología, Buenos Aires, ISEDET, XIX, 2000, p. 162; cf. Idem, “Cuando queremos hablar del misterio: Una modesta introducción al tema trinitario” (When we want to talk about Mystery: a humble introduction to the trinitarian theme), en Cuadernos de Teología, XIX, 2000, pp. 127-145.