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The Collect for TRINITY SUNDAY
& the Season of Trinity
The Revd Dr Peter Toon
Whitsun Week 2001
 

 

Trinity Sunday became a festival in the Christian Year in the West in 1334, although it has existed unofficially as such in various parts of the West since the tenth century. Before 1334 this Sunday was the final day of the octave [8 day period] of Whitsun/Pentecost and one of the four appointed days for ordinations.

This festival may be seen as an appropriate ending of the first half of the Christian Year and at the same time an introduction to the second half.

The events commemorated in the Gospel readings from Advent to Pentecost reveal the Father acting through His Son and by His Spirit. The content of the Gospel readings after Trinity Sunday focus on what Jesus taught, and underlying all He taught is the revelation of the Father through the Son and by the Holy Ghost.

Such was the enthusiasm in England for this Feast that the English Missals (see the Sarum Missal) reckoned the Sundays from then on and until Advent as Sundays after Trinity rather than (as in Rome) Sundays after Pentecost. Cranmer in creating The Book of the Common Prayer [1549] simply followed the English usage rather than that of Rome.

Since Cranmer translated the Collect for Trinity Sunday from the Sarum Missal in 1549 it has in its English form undergone various changes. Let us note these via the English and American Prayer books. But first the Latin from the Sarum Missal:

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui dedisti famulis tuis in confessione verae fidei aeternae Trinitatis gloriam agnoscere, et in potentia majestatis adorare Unitatem: quaesumus ut ejusdem fidei firmitate ab omnibus semper muniamur adversis..

Translation by Cranmer in the 1549 BCP is:

Almighty and everlasting God, which hast given unto us thy servants grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the unity: we beseech thee, that through the steadfastness of this faith, we may evermore be defended from all adversity, which liveth and reigneth one God, world without end. Amen.
[This is generally an accurate translation. The word "grace" is not in the original.]

Translation as amended by the revisers in 1661 for the 1662 BCP:

Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity: we beseech thee, that thou wouldest keep us steadfast in this faith and evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.
[This rendering changes the meaning of the original Latin from the beginning of the petition "we beseech thee." In contrast to the original Latin [& 1549 BCP] where the church prays for protection from "all adversities" through steadfastly believing in the vital Reality of the Holy Trinity, the revision creates two petitions, one for steadfastness in the Faith and another for defense from adversities.]

The American 1928 BCP follows precisely the wording of the 1662 BCP.

The American 1979 Prayer Book departs from the tradition from 1549 - 1928:

Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity: we beseech thee that thou wouldest keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see thee in thy one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest one God for ever and ever. Amen.
[Here there are very major changes from "we beseech thee." In The Commentary on the American Prayer Book by M.J. Hatchet, we are told: "The present revision again addresses the prayer to the Father and changes the petition to bring it into parallel relation to the address." Here the claim is that the collect originally existed as addressed to the Father through the Son. However, we are not told where the Latin original is and so this rendering is a reconstruction of what is believed to have been the case or ought to have been the case. Whether it makes theological or grammatical sense is open to debate.]

To whom prayers are addressed

The normal way of Christian prayer is to address the Father through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to do so believing in the presence of the Holy Ghost to make the prayer effectual. However, to address prayer directly to the Lord Jesus Christ is permissible for he is not only "very God of very God" but also our Lord and Saviour. Thus we find that prayer to the Lord Jesus is central to the Litany in the BCP. Rarely but yet within the realms of orthodoxy it is right to pray to the Holy Ghost, especially when He is asked to descend upon God's people (see the Prayer "Come Holy Ghost" BCP 1928 p. 543).

Addressing the One, Holy, Undivided and Blessed Trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost is not common but is appropriate in public prayer when it is the Feast of the Same!

The original Latin prayer and the English translation of 1549 (as well as the amended translation of 1662) are addressed to the Holy Trinity as Three Persons, One God. This is obvious because the prayer does not end - as is normal - "through Jesus Christ our Lord." Further, this is an instance of "worshipping the Unity" as the confession of Three Persons in One God and One God in Three Persons is held clearly in mind.

Further observations

We may observe that the English tradition of Christianity, by naming Sundays after Trinity, has put the emphasis on a Trinitarian Gospel, rather than on a sort of "Jesus Gospel" or "age of the Holy Ghost." These latter are exactly the sort of errors that so many theological approaches enter into when they take the emphasis off the Three-fold Unity. Misplacing the emphasis on the Trinity in favor of a entimentalized "Jesus Gospel" (that can be played against the Old Testament, which is rightly part of the Gospel, summarized, fulfilled, and made active by Christ; or in favor of a Fiorian/Dispensationalist "age of the Holy Spirit," which always ends in relativizing the objective content of revelation in Scripture) always opens the door to leading the members of the Church away from a complete Christianity.

Further we may note that the older versions of the Collect [Latin & 1549 BCP] demonstrate how much more comfortable the Christians of earlier ages were with the Trinity itself. They took the paradoxical plurality and unity of the Blessed Trinity at face value, without trying to rationalize it to some contemporary belief, philosophy, or metaphysic and worshipped the Three-in-One as "him" and "thee." Perhaps the change to the present confusion is the result of centuries of egalitarianism, which leaves people with only the mental furniture to contemplate the Persons one at a time or as so undifferentiated in order that their virtual homogeneity does not threaten the non-hierarchical social order so beloved of egalitarians. One might also contemplate what effect the loss of a working 2nd person singular pronoun (thee, thou, etc.) has had on our ability to think of the Trinity as truly One, rather than as a type of committee (You).

Finally we may comment that the Collect of the American 1979 Book is an attempt to escape from what was important for our forefathers - the confession of Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. In this new Collect the opening words to the "almighty and everlasting God" are understood to be addressed only to the First Person of the Blessed Trinity and thus the "thee" which follows is only the Father and then the whole ending has to be changed to fit into this scheme. By these changes the whole point of the Feast of the Trinity and of the Collect as an address to the Trinity as One God are eclipsed or lost.

If we are to celebrate the Feast of the Trinity then perhaps we should go back to the 1549 Collect!

Reflections for Trinity Sunday and the Trinity Season