John Donne (1572-1631) lived in the tumultuous times of the late 16th and early 17th century. He had been fortunate enough to have been educated at both Oxford and Cambridge but unable to take a degree because, as a catholic, he was not able to take the Oath of Allegiance to the Queen. When he was about 21 he obtained employment as secretary and translator to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and lived with Sir Thomas Egerton at York House in London. There he met his wife, Ann More, and they married secretly in 1601. When this became known Donne lost his job and was thrown into prison in the Fleet, a notorious place where one died more easily from the plague than from torture. After he was released and his marriage accepted he was without work for ten years while his family was growing - they had twelve children, of whom seven lived. He had become a protestant before his marriage and eventually became reconciled with the court of James I and was persuaded to be ordained as a priest in the Church of England and finally appointed dean of St Paul's Cathedral in 1621. His poetry is very remarkable and his sermons at St Paul's noted by many of his contemporaries as brilliant, if very sober, long and traditionally protestant! Many know the first line of the sonnet which provides our heading, but perhaps few have read the whole -

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end,
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue,
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy,
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

(John Donne, The Major Works, Holy Sonnet 10, pages 177-178. Edited by John Carey, Oxford, 2008.)

Donne was regarded as avant-garde by his contemporaries, an 'intellectual' poet with vivid language and imagery. None of his poetry was published in his lifetime as he preferred to circulate the poems among friends who might understand his introspective passion and love. Today this sonnet is remembered on account of the first line - 'three-personed God' : a strong witness to the Triune God. But the whole sonnet is really about the need to love and to be loved ('ravished') by God - 'Take me to you ...' It is quite extraordinary and inspiring as a cry from the human heart.

But, as usual, I have another agenda in this article! Donne, as I said was a man of his times in every way. The doctrinal statements of past centuries about God were fiercely defended from all opponents in the early 17th century. It would have never occurred to Donne to challenge the theology of the traditional dogmas of the 'three-personed God'. The creed of Nicea, made in 325 and later revised in 381, expresses the Triune nature of God in this way-

Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father ... and the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified ...

For a whole century, from 325 to 431, there were enormous debates about the sort of language which could safeguard the person of Jesus as truly human but also truly divine. But in the past two hundred years many caveats have been expressed about the language of Nicea and Chalcedon and Pope Leo's Tome on the nature of the Trinity. Can we really understand what it means when we confess that Jesus is 'of one substance' with the Father? The people who drafted the creeds acknowledged that they had to have recourse to non-scriptural language to gain their points against people of opposing views. So 'omoousios, a Greek word translated here, 'substance', was brought into the argument. They were not only concerned to safegard the divinity of Jesus as Lord but also making the point that God, in three 'persons' is not a community of persons as we understand ourselves to be persons. (Donne's appellation of God as three-personed is rather a poetic conceit!) I am not going any further into the ramifications of Trinity - it would not be useful! Instead, here are some 'thoughts' about Jesus and God. (The inclusion of Spirit, personified, came at the conclusion of the debate in the 5th century.)

The traditional language, and even the ideas of God as 'Three', when he is 'One', is very much like a mathematical proof using a version of logic which reduces God to something less than the dynamic author of all life. To 'define' God in static terms such as 'substance, or even 'being', is, eventually, to say nothing. It might be better to leave things much more 'untidy'. The key to the problem lies in who Jesus is. The New Testament does not refer to Jesus as God. But they assume that in Jesus, God's intention that Israel's hopes would be fulfilled, was actually accomplished. But not as they had hoped. Jesus was the pioneer of the new creation when God vindicated him after his death. The kingdom of God - this new creation - is a better context in which to think about who Jesus and God are. But the New Testament also assumes that Jesus was fully human, of the seed of David, born of Mary. John's gospel assumes that this whole strategy was 'planned' by God. The Word, the logos, in Greek, expresses this foreordained plan for the new creation in Jesus.

But, above all, it is the language of 'love' so strongly understood by the New Testament authors, and by Donne, which gives the real clue to who Jesus and God are. Archbishop Michael Ramsey epitomised what God is like in the striking phrase, 'In God there is no un-Christ-likeness at all.' As far as Jesus is concerned, his whole life is, in human and divine terms, the expression of what it means to live out a total love. Humanly this was expressed in his drawing people to him in love and finally by his willing acceptance of death. Divinely, there was, in Jesus, (to turn Michael Ramsey's phrase around), no un-divineness at all. We may also notice, in the late letter of 2 Peter, that there is the idea that we also, in the fullness of God's kingdom, 'become participants in the divine nature.' (2 Peter 1:4) So, while the credal statements remain the orthodox, 5th century understanding of Jesus and God, today we seem to require a more open understanding based on the Jesus who is Lord, to whom we can say, as we can to the Father, 'Batter my heart ...ravish me.'