Prism of Light, Radiance of Glory
Photo by Raphael Renter on Unsplash
We may not always think of the Trinity at Christmas, but we should. In fact, we need to see the movement from the Annunciation to Epiphany as nothing less than the full revelation of the triune God. Borrowing from Gregory of Nyssa, we might see this sequence of events as a journey through the storm of this world into the marvelous rainbow of divine light. To see the Trinity at Christmas requires that we understand the Incarnation to be the prism of divine light through which the radiance of glory shines.
Rainbows appear as the droplets of water refract the light. The wavelengths hidden in the sun’s white light travel through the water at different speeds that cause them to open up into diverse colors. At the edges of each shade one can detect a blurring, as though the colors are swirling in and out of one another at the speed of light, though each keeps its basic shape. It’s an image of the triune God who appears as a single ray of light but then opens up to reveal the beauty of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person of the Trinity moves in and out of the others, swirling in a dance of mutual love and delight. We call this perichoresis.
From Storm Clouds to the Rainbow
Advent launches believers into storm clouds that end in a prism of light. We travel with Mary and Joseph and a host of characters, all of whom receive God’s revelatory word and must act. Each one must overcome the clouds of doubt to advance toward the final decisive moment when the light of the world utters his first cries. Joseph must move beyond his instinct, born of family honor, to put Mary away because of her child. For her part, Mary must trust God and Joseph to protect her and the promise growing in her womb. These clouds trail the holy family on their journey to Bethlehem and their struggle to find a place of shelter and safety.
And then, it happens: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulders. And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6). What is not immediately apparent at the birth of the Christ child becomes an overwhelming vision at his baptism. The single ray of divinity has burst into the colors of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through the Incarnate Savior. Jesus the Christ is the prism of light through which the world beholds the beauty of the triune God etched upon the sky. This is why Christmas begins with the nativity of Christ and ends in his epiphany. From birth to baptism, we slowly see the triune rainbow emerge.
We need only pay attention to Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus. He opens his record of the good news with numerous references to the Lord (21 times) and to God (16 times). The multitude of references underscores the centrality of God to the story. Gabriel is an angel of the Lord (1:11), who stands in the presence of God (1:19) and proclaims a message from the Lord to Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary (1:13-38).
Zechariah is told that his son John will prepare the way for the Lord (1:17), and when Zechariah sees his son for the first time, he begins to prophesy with the words, “blessed be the name of the Lord God of Israel” (1:68). Elizabeth rejoices that the Lord has given her a child in her old age (1:24) and blesses Mary who has believed what she heard from the Lord (1:42). For her part, Mary sees herself as the handmaiden of the Lord (1:38), and her Magnificat addresses the Lord and God her savior (1:46-47). The presence of God surrounds the central characters so much that God is the key player in this drama.
At the same time, the language of lordship begins to evolve and open up something more mysterious. First, a connection is made between the Spirit and the Lord. The Holy Spirit accomplishes the will of the Lord in the narrative. John will be filled with the Spirit in his mother’s womb so that he can turn Israel toward the Lord (1:15-16). The Spirit overshadows Mary’s womb like the glory cloud over the tabernacle to bring about the miraculous birth (1:35). One finds the same term—“overshadow”—in Luke’s depiction of Jesus’ transfiguration when the glory cloud surrounds Jesus. Peter, James, and John hear, “This is my beloved Son. Hear Him!” (9:34). Elizabeth immediately recognizes the Spirit’s hovering over Mary because she, too, receives the Spirit’s infilling (1:41). Mary thus prophesies in the Spirit just as Zechariah does after the birth of John (1:46-53, 67-79). God’s mission unfolds in the power of the Spirit.
Second, the language of lordship merges with the Christ child. Elizabeth greets Mary as “the mother of my Lord,” which anticipates the grand declaration of the angels that “Christ the Lord” is the savior born in the city of David (1:43; 2:11). As the Son of the Most High, the Son of God, Christ shares in the universal lordship of God. This movement reaches its crescendo with the glory of the Lord shining around the shepherds as the angel declares the good news of the coming of Christ the Lord.
By following Luke’s language, you can see the slow evolution of the language related to God. The theocentric narrative opens up into a trinitarian story as “Lord” becomes a term for the Father and the Son while the Spirit pushes both the mission and the testimony to that mission. The glory of the Lord is the descent of the Spirit upon Mary, which will culminate in the transfigured Lord of glory.
All of this “God-talk” prepares the reader for Jesus’ response to Mary and Joseph that “I must be about my Father’s business” (2:49) and John the Baptist’s declaration that this same Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire (3:16). The counter to Jesus’ claim to be about his Father’s business is the voice of the Father at the baptism proclaiming, “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (3:22). Once again the Spirit descends in glory, only this time the Spirit’s hovering is likened to a dove’s soft landing. Luke tells the reader that the Spirit has taken a “bodily form,” almost as if he wants us to visualize that the glory cloud is thick with the same divine presence that hovered over the waters of creation in Genesis 1:2.
Celebrated as part of epiphany, the baptism of Jesus pulls back the curtain on the divine nature as the single Lord becomes Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The story Luke tells leads the reader inexorably to this revelatory moment. The clouds have given way to glory, the glory shared by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christmas is a Trinitarian event. The unfolding of the rainbow of divine persons through the prism of the Incarnation.
The Triune Name and Nature
Let’s press a little further in our interpretation of this revelatory unfolding of the triune God. First, Luke’s presentation underscores the way in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all work together as one God and Lord. Later Christian writers portrayed this common activity as a divine movement in which each person of the Trinity flowed in and out of one another so that there is a single, fluid motion of the whole. As I noted earlier, the colors of the rainbow merge into one another at the edges without losing their basic form. Gregory of Nyssa invites us to “see the revolving circle of the glory moving round from like to like” between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father, Son, and the Spirit all flow in and out of one another without losing their distinctive identities.
One way Luke gets at this fluid movement is through the language of glory. We should recall that glory is about the radiance of holiness. Holiness involves a wholeness (a perfection or fullness) that breaks forth in splendor and majesty. Hence the glory of the Lord shines around the shepherds as the angel of the Lord proclaims good tidings and the heavenly host sings “glory to God” (2:9, 14). After seeing Jesus in the temple, the Spirit comes upon Simeon who then calls Jesus “the glory of your people Israel” (2:32). Just before his transfiguration, Jesus tells the disciples that he will come in “his own glory and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels” (9:26). It is after this that the glory cloud descends (9:34), which we have already noted is a reference to the Spirit by Luke. The glory flows in and through the Father, Son, and Spirit as each radiates and shares in it.
The triune movement of glory gestures toward how holiness is intrinsic to the mission of God. God aims to share the glory of holiness with humanity through the Incarnate Son who is the embodiment of that glory. We are designed to participate in the beauty of holiness, which informs how we should live together. If the glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a result of their mutual indwelling or their moving in and out of one another, then the glory of the body of Christ is the way we all function together as a single organism with Christ as the head and the Spirit as the presence in the temple. Holiness, unity, and wholeness belong together.
Further, Luke’s gospel narrative moves us toward Father, Son, and Spirit as the divine name, which the Gospel of Matthew explicitly affirms. Jesus refers to “my Father” (2:49) or “our Father” (11:2) in a way that calls forth the response, “this is my beloved Son” (3:22; 9:35). All of this occurs as Jesus operates in the power of the Spirit, casting out demons by the finger of God (4:1, 14; 11:20).
This is more than talk of what God does. Terms like creator or warrior signify divine action. The name of God is talk about God’s own triune identity. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Scripture employs metaphorical descriptions of God regularly (eyes, hands, wings, etc.) to underscore divine action, but baptism occurs “in the name of,” signaling to Christians the divine name of this God who has claimed us. God’s name points toward God’s identity.
We do not choose God’s name nor is it open to us to alter it. We simply proclaim this name in word and deed as the name of the Godhead. All attempts to substitute something else for this divine name—such as creator, redeemer, and sanctifier—must be rejected. Indeed, to use creator, redeemer, and sanctifier as synonyms for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit obfuscates the triune nature because all three create, redeem, and sanctify as the One God. The divine action is the action of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The divine name, however, functions in a way that undermines any association of masculinity or femininity with God. It’s not just that Father and Son are masculine in Greek while Spirit is neuter. It is also that the Son becomes a male while the Spirit is portrayed “in bodily form” as a female dove (the term for dove is feminine), which echoes the Spirit’s hovering over the waters as the divine ruach (another feminine term). These associations of masculine and feminine in the context of the Son becoming Jesus of Nazareth point beyond affirmations of masculinity and femininity.
Let me offer two reasons why scripture does this. The first is to force us to move beyond all material and temporal categories. God is not composed of matter like everything else in creation because God is not a creature. “I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me” (Is. 46:9). Masculinity and femininity are connected to our bodies so that just as God does not possess a right hand, God does not possess gender. Unfortunately, this biblical principle, affirmed by the Patristic witness, is now being challenged on the right and the left.
Second, the triune identity points back toward the image of God as male and female, not in that God is somehow male and female, but that in God there is a fundamental equality, relationality, and complementarity between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The purpose of male and female is to replicate in human form that equality, relationality, and complementarity. All efforts to inscribe masculinity and femininity onto God turn out to be a harkening back to pagan concepts of deities with human forms.
Christmas is the revelation of the glory of God, which is nothing less than the shared glory of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The glory appears like a rainbow as the storm clouds begin to recede and the light pierces the darkness. The single ray of divinity becomes the beauty of the triune Godhead through the prism of the Incarnation. By the same Spirit who hovered over Mary, we are united to the Incarnate Son and so transported into the presence of the Father. We begin to dance with God.
As God begins to flow into our lives, He unites us in his glory so that men and women of God together become his body poured out afresh in the mission to radiate this glory by spreading holiness throughout the land. When we sing with the angels, “Glory to God in the Highest,” we must hear the echo of Isaiah, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is filled with your glory.”
Dr. Dale M. Coulter is Professor of Historical Theology at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. He also serves on the Editorial Board for Firebrand.