GroshLink

While researching on-line materials for Practicing a Christ Centered Christmas 2.0: The Character, Person, and Story of God, Week 1, I came across two helpful pieces from N.T. Wright which I had not previously read.  The first quote is at the end of a thought provoking Q&A which explores Jesus' self-understanding in relationship to the development of a credal statement regarding the doctrine of the Trinity. The second offers The Prayer of the Trinity.

1.  The justification for formal creedal statements is this: (a) creeds are portable stories (as the form of the Creeds itself indicates) which summarize the narratives in the gospels in particular and highlight elements of them which Christians need to be clear on; (b) the early Christian justification for trinity and incarnation was not 'this was what Jesus said' but 'God raised him from the dead and thereby demonstrated that Israel's purposes had been fulfilled in him, i.e. that he was the Messiah; but Israel's purposes were to rid the world of sin; but that was something only God himself can do; therefore within his messianic son-of-god consciousness we are right to see a deeper meaning, itself interpreted within the Jewish world of God-talk; therefore we can and must not only worship Jesus within our Jewish monotheism but also speak of him in this bewildering new way.'...  In other words, please don't flatten out early Christology into 'Jesus taught it, the church taught it, that settles it'. Grapple with what Paul and the others were actually doing. And with what the gospels actually say.

2.  I therefore suggest that we might use a prayer that, though keeping a similar form to that of the Orthodox Jesus Prayer, expands it into a trinitarian mode:

Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth:

Set up your kingdom in our midst.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God:

Have mercy on me, a sinner.

Holy Spirit, breath of the living God:

Renew me and all the world.