Sunday by Sunday, the hymns we sing reflect our faith; they are explicit expressions of what we believe.  Over time, the words of these songs sink into our consciousness, forming our hearts and minds.  What is true of Don Imus, R. Kelly, and Twista is also true of us:  the words we sing truly matter, for better or for worse.

Two Forms of Trinitarian Prayer
In essence, this article emphasizes only one element in our understanding of God, one aspect of our faith.   As everyone knows, the Trinity represents a core element of our tradition.  There are, however, two ways of praying, with regard to the Trinity; we can, perhaps, speak of two doctrines, two different perspectives on the same reality. The doctrine of the static Trinity is often more or less abstract, often marked by definitions and distinctions, often making the three persons equal objects of adoration.  In this idiom, we speak of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, giving emphasis to the single divine nature. We use this static doctrine in the baptismal liturgy, following the Gospel of Matthew and words attributed to Jesus himself (Mt 28:19).  Similarly, in the Nicene Creed, we speak of Father, Son, and Spirit, with special emphasis on their divinity.  Finally, the version most familiar to us of the Glory Be is that directed to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.  There is nothing wrong with this static expression of belief; indeed, it is natural in baptism and in professions of faith, such as creeds.  In part, it is a statement of fact, of logic, of reason.

Another doctrine is that of the dynamic Trinity. In this idiom, we pray to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.   Overwhelmingly, this is the language of Scripture, in both Old and New Testaments, as well as the earliest documents of the Christian tradition.  It is also the doctrine of all the Prefaces and Eucharistic Prayers of the Roman Rite, as well as all but two of the collects of each Sunday Mass.  These two collects (for the feast of Corpus Christi) are not ancient or traditional; they date from the thirteenth century.  By the same token, the Nicene Creed, with its static doctrine of the Trinity, was not part of the Roman Mass for the first thousand years of its history. Neither was the Apostles’ Creed.  Roman as it was, it was used primarily in the baptismal liturgy.  As opposed to the creed, the Prefaces and the Roman Canon express our faith in the Trinity extensively, again and again, but always from a dynamic perspective.

 The thesis of this article is that the hymns we sing should reflect the idiom of both the Scripture and the liturgy; our songs about the Trinity, used in the liturgy, should be directed to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.  A wholesale revision is called for.

Development of Doctrine: a Matter of Faith
First of all, we have to consider what “doctrine” is.  The word simply means “teaching,” in this case, the understanding and expression of what is believed.  A particular scholar can have a “doctrine,” as can an entire school of thinkers.  Churches at one and the same time profess many doctrines. Sometimes, the truth is held in tension, until apparent contradictions are resolved.  Sometimes, doctrines are complementary; one should not be used to the exclusion of the other.  The Christology of the Gospel of John is different from that of the Synoptic Gospels, for example.

As Cardinal John Newman and Karl Rahner, S.J., pointed out clearly, Church doctrine can and must develop.  As Newman put it, in his work, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, “to grow is to change; and to be perfect is to have changed often.”   Similarly, in his article, “Development of Dogma,” in vol. I of Theological Investigations, Rahner said that there is not only a development of theology but also a development of dogma, not only a history of ideas but also a history of belief.  So, there is no challenge to Catholic faith in acknowledging that doctrine develops over time.   It is not just a question of emphasis; sometimes, it is a question of genuine correction, of reform. 

During the first half of the twentieth century, many authors, from Charles Davis to Pope Pius XII, stressed that the liturgical movement then in progress was a matter of doctrine, of faith, of the core of our belief, of what matters most to Catholics.  From Liturgy and Doctrine to Mediator Dei, the same idea is expressed. The liturgical movement was not primarily a question of historical archaism (archeology), esthetics (music), or law (rubrics).  With the Second Vatican Council, the Constitution on the Liturgy said much the same thing.  With regard to hymns, the bishops of the Council directed that the texts be in accord with Catholic doctrine and that they reflect the idiom of Scripture and the Fathers of the Church.   What, then, is “Catholic doctrine”?  There are any number of Lutheran, Mormon, and Unitarian hymns whose texts in no way contradict Church teaching or faith.   Of what, then, are the bishops speaking?  It is surely the emphasis of the liturgical renewal itself, expressed in many Church documents.  We are not progressing from error to truth, from heresy to orthodoxy, from something wrong to something right.  As in his Motu Proprio of 2007, Summorum Pontificum, permitting wider use of the Tridentine Mass,  Pope Benedict has repeatedly emphasized that there is a continuity with the past in all the Vatican II reforms of the Roman Rite.  In many ways, we are simply restoring what is best in our own tradition.  In several cases, for example, in restoring the Oratio Fidelium, the General Intercessions, we have to go back a long time.  But in doing so, we are recovering what is valuable and important, perhaps long forgotten or de-emphasized.

 So, let no one ask, “But what’s wrong with the Trinitarian hymns I know?”  Nothing is wrong with them.  But it is important that they be directed to the Father through the Son in the Spirit.   In some cases, we will have to look for new Trinitarian hymns; in other cases, if possible, we have to revise the texts we have.  That’s a matter for pastoral discernment.

History of Trinitarian Prayer
In a certain sense, our renewed liturgy of today owes its reform to the work of outstanding scholars, such as Joseph Jungmann, S.J.  In many well researched studies, for example, in Pastoral Liturgy, The Early Liturgy, and The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer, Jungmann demonstrated beyond any doubt that the violent anti-Arian struggle of the fourth century left a permanent mark on the doctrine, piety, and liturgy of the Christian East.  With its denial of the full divinity of Christ, Arianism divided the Church tragically.  This heresy was what motivated the Emperor Constantine to gather the first Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 325.  It was there that a baptismal creed, perhaps that of Jerusalem, became a means of expressing the Orthodox and Catholic faith, to the exclusion of Arianism.  During the fourth and fifth centuries, the Church was convulsed by the ongoing struggle against this heresy.  For example, when St. Gregory Nazianzen arrived at Constantinople in 381, to take up leadership of the diocese as its bishop, he found only one parish church that was Orthodox in its profession of faith.

 Jungmann showed how profoundly Christian culture shifted, in the course of this conflict.  Christ was seen especially in his divinity, which was stressed again and again.  The liturgy itself, in its wording, was directed to him.  Now, the mediator with God was no longer Jesus Christ, as in the Roman Rite; it was Mary, ever-virgin.   Grace was understood, not so much as the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as a means to holiness (actual grace or sanctifying grace, as the West called it) or as something indeterminate, such as electricity.   The Eucharist became not so much a communal rite of thanksgiving to the Father through Christ as an occasion for adoration of Christ our God, a time of fear and trembling.   Frequency of Communion began to decline, until eventually only the priest would normally receive Communion during the Divine Liturgy.  The priest was no longer understood in terms of the Epistle to the Hebrews, as a mediator, an intercessor, bringing us upwards to heaven.  Instead, the priest became a consecrator, a bringer of blessings, downward from heaven. Now, the doxology to the Father through the Son in the Spirit was understood as Arian.  In its place, an equally ancient doxology, to the Father and to the Son and to the Spirit (or with the Son and Spirit), took its place. 

In the West, the Roman Rite was more or less permanently settled in the wording of its prayers by the time Arianism arrived, in the person of the German tribes who invaded from the north.  These were the Visigoths in Spain, the Franks in Gaul, and the Lombards in Italy.  Eventually, these Teutonic newcomers accepted the Orthodox faith, expressed in terms of the familiar doxology “and to the Son and to the Spirit.”  In fact, that wording was considered the keystone to professing the true faith.  This was so, for example, because the Arian Lombards required for their own profession of faith only the doxology “through the Son in the Spirit.” 

As Jungmann pointed out, such a reaction was understandable for its time; it was, no doubt, necessary.  But now that the battle is over, now that the violence has ended, it is time, says Jungmann, to return to the more authentic and more traditional manner of prayer, with its richer meaning for our life of faith.   We don’t have to fight the Arians any more.  For the past thousand years, they are dead and gone.

Trinitarian Prayer in Scripture and Tradition
Scripture itself, again and again, bears witness to the richness of meaning, found in the biblical revelation of the Trinity.   Without ever using the word, “Trinity,” St. Paul, for example, speaks of the Spirit as poured out in our hearts (Rom 5:5), as helping us to pray (Rom 8:26), as the source of our unity (12:13), the giver of the many charisms evident in the Church (1 Cor 12:4), the pledge of eternal life (2 Cor 5:5), the way we have access to the Father (Eph 2:18), and the source of our unity (Eph 4:3).  At every opportunity, says St. Paul, we should pray in the Spirit (Eph 6:18). Especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus is quoted as saying that we are to enter into union with the Father through him, by the power of the Spirit (Jn 6:63).  By knowing Christ, even as divine, we also know the Father.

Above all in the New Testament, we share the life of the Trinity, precisely by directing our prayer to the Father through the Son, within the Church.  As Jungmann showed, to speak of our prayer as rising “in the unity of the Church” is synonymous with praying “in the Holy Spirit.”  This is the idiom of the Didache’, the Eucharist of Hippolytus, the Apostolic Constitutions, and the broad context of our ancient tradition.   Noteworthy is the New Testament statement that because Jesus had not yet risen, “there was as yet no Holy Spirit” (Jn 7:39).  Here, the author of the Gospel of John is not denying the eternal divinity of the Spirit.  Rather, he is speaking in the idiom of the New Testament:  We think of the Son and Spirit inasmuch as they are part of our lives, inasmuch as they inspire our prayer to the Father, inasmuch as the Son is known to us as risen, present with us, and inasmuch as the Spirit is experienced in the community and the sacraments of the Church.  In this way, in general, the sacred author is not concerned with the static doctrine of the Trinity, just with the dynamic relationship of faith, experienced by those who worship the Father in Spirit and in truth (Jn 4:23).

In one of his most appreciated essays, “Theos [God] in the New Testament,” Rahner showed how, throughout, prayer is directed, not to the Spirit or to the Son but to the Father.   This essay was in the first volume in the series, Theological Investigations; it remains valuable in showing how the Christian understanding of God is opposed to that of the pagans and that of the philosophers.  For example, it is not a question, says Rahner, of rational formulations but of relationships.   God comes to us in person, not as the product of our own imagination or reason; he comes to us in a specific time and place, in a moment of human history, in fact, in Jesus Christ.   In the doctrine of the New Testament, metaphysics does not bring us to God.  No, it is rather the historical acts of God, revealing himself in the foolishness of the cross and the Resurrection of the Lord. 

In the New Testament, Rahner points out, Theos is said of Christ only rarely and only in a predicate sense, without the definite article, “the.”   Rahner argues, therefore, that we are sons and daughters of the Father, not of the Trinity as such.  The Son and the Spirit are ours, inasmuch as they bring us to the Father. 

In his more extensive work, The Trinity, Rahner continues this line of argument.  He says that Christians have a specific relationship to each person of the Trinity, by their new life in Christ. The economic Trinity is the same as the immanent Trinity, the same, one God.  Each person of the Trinity, from this perspective, has a distinct relationship to us.  To be sure, in this respect, Rahner represents a minority tradition.  By far, from the earliest theologians to the unanimous doctrine of the Scholastics, God (who is three persons in one nature) always relates to us as one.  In other words, the Father has no relationship to us, apart from the Son and the Spirit.  All three persons are one in their relationships ad extra (outside their nature, with regard to us).    As St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Gregory of Nyssa put it, the Trinity’s threefold relationship to us is like “three rays of the sun.”  In our experience, we know God as one.   Otherwise, says the mainstream Christian tradition, the unity of God would be broken.

Trinitarian Prayer in Theology
In the late twentieth century, one of the most outstanding theologians of the liturgy was Edward Kilmartin, S.J. In Christian Liturgy and The Eucharist in the West, Kilmartin drew special attention to the Trinitarian nature of the liturgy, with its orientation to the Father through the Son in the Spirit. Kilmartin, like Rahner, in depth, shows how the best theology of the current generation is opposed to that of neo-scholasticism. What Jungmann established through historical study, Rahner and Kilmartin now achieve through dogmatic reflection. Theologians, for example, are challenged to see more clearly the relationship between faith and sacraments, to see grace as an interpersonal relationship, realized in community, and the Church as a sacramental reality, with a newly perceived relationship to the sacraments. The Spirit inspires the Church through set forms (prayers, hymns, rites) to express its life of faith; these forms themselves correspond to the �very content� of the life of faith: the self-communication of the Father through the Son in the Spirit. This is the theology, says Kilmartin, that is expressed in the constitutions of the Second Vatican Council, especially those on the liturgy and on the Church.

In summarizing this new appreciation of the twentieth century, Kilmartin says that the restoration of the theology of the Trinity is not only possible; it must, he says, be the goal of any theology of Christian worship. Part of the task at hand is to recognize the Trinitarian dimension of all aspects of the economy of salvation: creation, history, humankind, grace, incarnation, mission of the Spirit, and the Church. All aspects of our salvation are the work of the Trinity and must be understood in terms of this mystery. In reviewing Christian Theology, Hans Bernard Meyer, S.J., entitled his essay, Eine trinitarische Theologie der Liturgie und der Sakramente. That is the leitmotiv of Kilmartin�s dogmatic endeavor.

As Kilmartin explains it, this theology is important not only in our prayers, especially our hymns, but also in the very way in which we experience God�s grace. To us, God�s love is made known through the Son, through the mediation of Word that itself is a personal experience of divinity and transcendence. That love is made known in the Spirit, in the community of the Church, the gathered congregation. Implicitly and experientially, we share the life of God within the family, within the household of the faith, within the unity of the Spirit.

When the Church is understood in terms of the mission of the Word and the mission of the Spirit, a truly Trinitarian ecclesiology can take form. The Second Vatican Council, says Kilmartin, restored the patristic concept of the Church as a community of baptized persons (rather than a juridical entity). This is a communion ecclesiology, in which the Church is understood as a family of Churches which are in communion. The Second Vatican Council identified the Spirit as the source of that communion. Full membership in the Church implies possession of the Spirit.

This Trinitarian ecclesiology has many critical implications for the daily life of the Church. For example, the rich liturgical traditions of different Churches can be significant for the unity of the whole Church. The charisms of the particular Churches, given by the Spirit, contribute to the communion of the entire Church.

By the same token, we can now understand better what grace is. The Christian mystery of grace is God�s gift of himself, through Christ in the Spirit. This is primary and fundamental: Ultimately, God�s plan is not to give us created gifts, great as they might be, but to give us himself. He wants to share his own being with humanity, to share his own life, his happiness. In the order of nature, God gives what is distinct from him, that is, our own existence and other created gifts. In the order of grace, however, God gives himself.

Here, then, is a major shift in understanding. For most Catholics, living in the �state of grace� means the possession of sanctifying grace. If asked for more detail, people might speak of actual graces, that is, the ability to do good, to be patient, or something similar. By and large, Catholics would not first of all speak of the presence of the Holy Spirit within them or of a new relationship with God. In fact, however, what comes first in the state of grace is not sanctifying grace but the indwelling within us of God himself, the Father through the Son, in the Spirit. Theologians call this �uncreated grace�; it is the foundation for all other grace.

The primary focus of both Scripture and liturgy, then, is not on what is changed in us (sanctifying grace) but what never changes: the personal presence of God himself. God�s love, God�s grace, is the source of all good, the foundation of our life, the basis of the whole Christian mystery. The self-giving that is part of God�s being is expressed when we are incorporated in Christ, when we are gathered in the Spirit; that is the indwelling of the Trinity. This is why our hymns should not be directed to the Spirit but rather should sing of the gift of the Spirit, coming from the Father and dwelling in the Church, which herself is the unity of the Spirit. There is a long-recognized exception to the doctrine that all the actions of the triune God are one with regard to us (ad extra). As everyone knows, that is the Incarnation. In other words, it is the Word of God, from all eternity, that is joined to the human nature of Jesus Christ. This is said to be a �mission� of the Son. Similarly, proposes Kilmartin, there is a mission of the Spirit to the Church. To be sure, this is no more than what the Greeks call a theologumenon, an opinion. But the idea does illustrate the importance of seeing the Spirit as intimately related to the Church herself. The gathered congregation on Sunday morning is not a collection of individuals who have made a personal commitment to Jesus, a meeting of those whose faith precedes the assembly, a gathering that is the result of human decision or personal preference. No, the Church is the �unity of the Spirit,� as the early liturgical sources put it, gathered by God, not by us. Indeed, from age to age, from the rising to the setting of the sun, God gathers his people to himself and forms them for his own. That is the very nature of the Sunday assembly, week after week.

Now, one need not accept the opinions of Rahner and Kilmartin to see the relevance of their insights. In a powerful way, they show us how we should think of the Trinity and how we should pray in the liturgy, with a clear consciousness of our orientation to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. As Hugo Rahner, S.J., brother of Karl, put it in The Word, we appreciate the role of the Holy Spirit more effectively precisely if we do not pray to the Spirit. The same could be said of our prayer in hymnody, when we sing of Jesus Christ. The nature of the liturgy is that we pray to God through the man, Jesus Christ; we go to the Father through the risen humanity of Jesus, whom God has made Lord and Christ. When we mention the divinity of Christ, we do so as an aside, as a matter of profession of faith, or especially in terms of the relationship of the Word to us. The latter is the consistent idiom of the Prefaces of the Trinity and Scripture itself, as both Rahner and Kilmartin demonstrate.

Continued on Page 2

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