Augustine and Love

Which will it be?—“Father, Son and Holy Spirit” or “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer”? Without “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” we cannot know love. Yes, this sounds counterintuitive. The mention of “Father” causes many people pain; maybe their own fathers were abusive, indifferent or just plain wrong. At seminary, the use of the word “Son” was discouraged (perhaps it reminds one of “Father”) and “Christa” suggested, instead of “Christ” because, I suppose, Christ might remind us of men in general. All of these ideas were brought forward under the banner of love, to lift up the oppressed and heal the wounded heart. But, really, what do we men and women know of love? When we “love ourselves” don’t we often do so by inhaling ten slices of pizza? Is that love? No, not for the pizza and not for ourselves. Doesn’t Augustine teach us that God (the Father) reveals what love is?—“he sent us his Word, who is his only Son, so that—from the fact that he assumed flesh, was born, and suffered for our sake—we might learn how very much God valued human beings.” (City of God, VII.31) Further, this love bears fruit; we are “purified of all our sins by that one sacrifice.” (City, VII.31) This is a sacrifice given by the Father in love and made by the Son, in love, “the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Sermon #2, 12) And this same love is spread abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. (City, VII.31) What we see here is that the words of Jesus, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”? (Mt 28:19) have opened the Bible to Augustine. He sees the “through-line;” he sees particular stories and prophecies, all of it connecting together to show what love actually is. Compare this to “Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer.” It just dumps us in a morass. How is the Creator related exactly to the Sustainer? Did he (it?) beget the Sustainer? Who is the Sustainer anyway? Is he the “son of David”? The confusions are too many to list and lead only to dead ends no matter how you strain your brain. I get that we want to create our own non-offensive God. We want to live in our own light. (Confessions, IX.22) And yes, this “divine spectacle” of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is scandalous (Sermon #2, 1 ref. I Cor. 4:9) but we have been newly created by the mercy and grace of this God, the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Letters 214:4) And he gives us all things (Letters, 214:3) We go through the waters by the outstretched arm of this God. His words open the Bible to us so that all our ideas, especially our ideas about love die… and are born anew. We say with Peter “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68)