“Christian men, vote as you pray, that the legalized traffic in ardent spirits may be abolished, and God grant that capital punishment may be banished from our land.”- Julia J. A. Foote
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becoming tri-unity OR CAN TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY COME FROM A BLACK WOMAN?
I have been contemplating a few posts on women preachers/theologians in the Wesleyan tradition, and I think that this is the best way I could do this: to use journal entries and sermons of these women as theological texts. I know that there are those of you out there who believe that systematic theology is the only way, and that’s fine, but that is not all there is to theology. I wanted to continue to articulate my proposal of Trinitarian ethics, a 21st century update to Clement’s doctrine of Theosis and John Wesley’s views on holiness, even though I am more familiar with the former (Clement) and know Wesley only through the faithful witness of my Methodist friends as well as my maternal grandmother, who was at one time a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church.
T.C. Robinson’s post on the Trinity has stirred quite the conversation. I don’t mind the debate at all; it is just my hope that Christians who are Trinitarian, as I profess recognize a few things: 1) non-trinitarians ARE our sisters and brothers in the faith; they just have a different understanding of the relationships between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 2), The doctrine of the Trinity is a teaching in development and is a product of interpretation passed down by tradition, and that is why the early Church mothers and father proclaimed it as a MYSTERY not an additional revelation. Rather, it is a doctrine founded upon the revelation of Christ as God’s self-disclosure, a key difference and 3), I really do hope a new generation of Christian thinkers from the left and right begin to reject Rahner’s Rule (that the immenent trinity is the economic trinity, and vice versa). I have major issues with the latter, and both progressive and conservative evangelical theologians adhere to the Rahner Rule for various reasons. I think there are inner workings within the Godhead that God chooses not to tell us (the imminent trinity) and that the doctrine of Creation Ex Nihilo (something I affirm– sorry process theology) necessarily means a difference between the Imminent Trinity and the Economic Trinity (but that is for another day, alas).
Who was Julia J. A. Foote? Julia Foote was one of many (unknown in most parts of U.S. American Christianity) evangelists in the 19th century who was of African descent and a woman. What we know about her life is found in her biographical sketch, with a title inspired by the passage in Zechariah 3, A BRAND PLUCKED FROM THE FIRE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY MRS. JULIA J.A. FOOTE. While there are some who would categorize Foote’s text as just another journal entry with references to God here or there, and others may maintain she may have written a proto- black feminist or proto- womanist theology, I beg to differ on both accounts. Foote recorded a work of theology, about how the “Three-in-One God” (as she referred God as), and Trinitarian theology at that. She was born into African enslavement in New York in 1823, raised by Christian parents who were members of the Methodist Episcopal church. Black people were treated, though fellow believers, as “poor lepers” and there were rules that no black person could take the EUCHARIST MASSA’S SUPPER until the last white person consumed Jesus’s body and blood at the table.
At the age of 15 years, Julia was converted to Christianity as a quarterly revival meeting after hearing a sermon on Revelation 14:3, “and they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the one hundred forty-four thousand who have been redeemed from the earth” (NRSV). She was “filled with rapture too deep for words” as she heard God’s voice, “it is not the altar or the minister who save souls, but faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.” Solo Christo!
Soon, Mrs. Foote began to believe that the doctrine of holiness transcends even the art of preaching because that’s how powerful the Holy Spirit was–the Spirit is someone who touches us, yet we cannot hold on to it, lay claim to it, for the Spirit goes where it wills much like the wind, the ruach of YHWH. Foote would visit the elderly who had been sanctified (again, the doctrine of Holiness), and Foote praises God, “Glory to the Father! Glory to the Son! and Glory to the Holy Ghost!,” for giving her what she called “Paul-like faith.” Can you imagine that? A woman, a black woman, claiming to have as much faith as the great apostle Paul? Somebody find 1st Corinthians!
Later on in life, her husband would accuse her of being holier than thou. Julia did not believe in drinking the toxicity of alcohol or dancing, but at the same time, her stand against the death penalty and lynching are impressive in that she connects Christ’s Holiness to her politics. Hearing a small still voice one day, Julia Foote encountered a small still voice, urging her to preach the gospel. She was already a Sunday school teacher. You would think that would be enough, right? Wrong! In a dream, Foote met the Holy Trinity, Father Son, and Holy Ghost. In her dream, the Holy Spirit transformed her into a celestial being as they were all marching to music (the dance of the Trinity, no less!).
Foote’s story sounds quite familiar. She was excommunicated from her church for claiming that the Triune God had called a mere woman to be a preacher. On the position of women preaching in the church, Julia looks to Joel 2:28 & 29, and she understands Paul in 1st Corinthians as recognizing women who prophesy. She is what I would call an continuationist, that the work of the Holy Spirit is continually at work at all time, and has never ceased. This begins with the Breathe of YHWH concept in the Hebrew bible and in the continuing story of God’s redeeming of creation, the Holy Spirit anoints women and men to share the Gospel, God’s Victory Speech that God’s Son overcame sin. Foote did not need ordination credentials from an institution (like the one headed by Richard Allen– the African Methodist Episcopal church) since God had chosen her. Remember, it’s is God who elects, and who can accuse God’s elect (Romans 8)?
Julia Foote’s Perfection/holiness/what Clement called divinization/theosis is not about God turning human beings into celestial messengers from the divine realm or going backwards toward the state of Adam (after the Fall, everything changes), but “the extinction of every temper contrary to love.” Perfect loves casts out fear; Jesus, the Son of God of Love casted out daemons, rebuked the marginalization of IRS agents and prostitutes. This is what perfect love does; it is unconditional, driving out the fear of the Other, the Black, the Jew, the angry Feminist. As I understand Julia Foote, only the Savior’s Holiness is absolute, while human responses to that holiness may differ in each era.
“Our work is not to make the truths of the Bible fit into the crooks and crevices of the lives and beliefs of men. We are to stamp, not overlay; to coin, not gild. There are peculiarities of the times that will require special methods of delivering the truth and special truth. We may be debarred entrance to many pulpits (as some of us now are) and stand at the door or on the street corner in order to preach to men and women. No difference where, we must preach the whole gospel”
As I am understanding this quote, the Gospel as God’s Victory speech– my term, is universal, but our methods, our traditions of reaching culture will vary with each given era. Here, I believe that she is ringing of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, that it is not our concepts of good and evil, or law and order that should drive ethical action, but the presence of Christ.
Shall we ask, what would the Trinity Do, as my friend Greg does? Or rather is it, who is it that the Trinity is calling me to become?
FOR FURTHER READING:
Baker-Fletcher, Karen. Dancing With God:The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2006.
Andrew of Memoria Dei’s Notes On The Trinity. (Please especially read his last point): “The Trinitarian validation of the abstract ideal of sociality is not something to be taken for granted. But the significance which the Trinity has for our concrete relationships depends, it seems to me, much more on the particular ways in which the triune God is encountered in the midst of these relationships than it does on the mere fact that God is a unity of persons.”
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Rod,
This is good. I’ve got to thank you for introducing to these “living” voices. This is powerful. It actually goes along with a lot of rethinking I’ve been doing recently. Yes, “The Gospel as God’s Victory Speech.” I like it. It works for me too.
Thanks you T.C.!
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I don’t see how you defer and subscribe so much to the early Church if you say things like:
1) non-trinitarians ARE our sisters and brothers in the faith; they just have a different understanding of the relationships between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 2), The doctrine of the Trinity is a teaching in development and is a product of interpretation passed down by tradition,
The early Church would disagree with both of those statements.
early Church = orthodox early Church for which you and your buddy Joel are always favoring…
Nopers on all accounts Rob.
Not all early christians speak for the early church, and plus, i would not call Clement of Alexandria that early of church. Perhaps 2nd century. 3rd, I see the Trinity as a mystery that can never be fully grasped, and there is not one person who got it completely right. Our knowledge of it is limited, and as such, i accept fellowship with non-trinitarians and even quadrinitarians like You!
Early church is the first four centuries. Chalcedonian trinitarianism is evidenced all throughout these centuries. To be outside of Chalcedon is to be outside of Orthodox Christianity. This is not a debatable fact. You can argue the Church was wrong in what they deemed orthodox, but they certainly would not make the two aforementioned assertions you made.
“To be outside of Chalcedon is to be outside of Orthodox Christianity. This is not a debatable fact.”
Okay, but I am not Eastern Orthodox. I am baptist, I enjoy Eastern orthodox theology, but I am proudly free will baptist and more wesleyan leaning.
I believe it is debatable, and that what you are trying to set up is a churchly form of hegemony, something that i reject on all counts. i dont believe that the early black Christians in America had Chalcedonian views and I do believe them to be orthodox. There are many Christians without access to Greek platonic thinking, and there have been for centuries. I disagree with you in no uncertain terms. I’ll defend chalcedon for many other reasons: http://politicaljesus.com/2011/03/09/poconicenechalcedon/
but it is not the absolute starting point of the Christian faith, the presence of Christ, and the scriptures passed down by the prophets are. anything outside of this is LEGALISM, bare bones hegemony at its worst.
I’m not so sure your grasping the term Orthodox. This has nothing to do with Eastern Orthodox and everything to do with the essentials of the Christian faith.
“i dont believe that the early black Christians in America had Chalcedonian views and I do believe them to be orthodox.”
that’s fine. but again, i just don’t follow how you are in such accord with Joel with a high view of the early Church. B/c they would disagree with what you’ve written on almost all counts.
“that’s fine. but again, i just don’t follow how you are in such accord with Joel with a high view of the early Church. B/c they would disagree with what you’ve written on almost all counts.”
Which they?
And there is only one essential to the faith of Christ, and that is Christ’s ressurection, confessing our sins, confessing Jesus’s Lordship. Outside of that, I see no “essentials.”
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