Archive: Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier
by Alvin F Kimel Jr.
To replace or alter the triune formula is to repudiate the creed, church, God of our baptism. We may examine two recent proposals. First, “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.” This formula does not and cannot function as a proper name: it does not identify; it does not specify which God we are talking about. All putative deities presumably create, redeem, and sanctify, as well as do numerous other things. Furthermore, within classical Trinitarian theory these ad extra activities are understood as contingent cooperative works of the Godhead. The Father creates, redeems, and sanctifies through the Son by the Spirit. Each person of the Trinity is fully involved in the functional activities of deity. Or, to put it slightly differently, God was not always creator, redeemer, sanctifier; he has become such by his free decision. Within the divine life of the Godhead, however, the deity is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is his name before time and forever.
Second, there is “Mother, Lover, Friend.” This truly feminist alternative raises serious difficulties of another sort. Speak “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” and immediately we know we are speaking of the God of the New Testament. But to what deity does “Mother, Lover, Friend” refer? What story are we telling when we name divinity thus? And if we are telling a different story, are we not creating a new religion? This and all similar formulas sunder the church from the evangelical narrative by which we identify our God as well as ourselves.
Alvin F. Kimel Jr. is the rector of St. Mark’s Church in Highland, Maryland, and is the editor of Speaking the Christian God (Eerdmans). This is excerpted from an essay that first appeared in Interpretation 45 (April 1991): 147-58.
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