Doctrine that heals the whole world

Trinity Sunday + Becoming the Church for Pentecost

Blessed Trinity Sunday, friends!

Today marks the final Sunday before Ordinary Time (also known as "Proper Sundays," "Sundays After Pentecost," or "Sundays After Trinity Sunday!").

If I were in charge, I'd call the coming weeks of the calendar the Trinity Season. The Trinity exists more than as an essential part of Christian doctrine (which it assuredly is); it is the living, loving ultimate reality in which we live, move, and have our being.

Today’s letter is available to everyone and includes:

• Community practices and prayers for Trinity Sunday

• Today’s art and music pairing

• The conclusion to my weeklong Substack series, Becoming the Church — Pentecost Reflections on the Rise of Christianity in the Restful Way of Jesus

Now, let’s begin our meditation for Trinity Sunday

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Communion

Read today’s lectionary passages from the Book of Common Prayer (Year C)

Isaiah 6:1-7; Psalm 29; Revelation 4:1-11; John 16:5-15

Pray out loud the Collect for Pentecost Sunday from the Book of Common Prayer.

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.Amen.

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Contemplation

Begin with a simple breath prayer from today’s lectionary:

Inhale: Spirit of Truth, come

Exhale: and guide us into all truth.

Repeat gently until you sense you are ready to move forward.

Prayerfully contemplate and respond to today’s art and music pairing.

The Great Commission, 2017, He Qi - HT with poignant commentary | purchase giclée print]

The Church’s One Foundation, Indelible Grace (S.J. Stone) - Text | Spotify | YouTube | Listen to my Pentecost playlist

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Conclusion: How Did Love Grow? Doctrine That Heals the World

“Christians effectively promulgated a moral vision utterly incompatible with the casual cruelty of pagan custom.” — Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity

In our final reflection, we return to where we began: not just how the Church grew, but why its growth mattered.

Much of Stark’s argument is rooted in sociological observation—networks, epidemics, class structures, and slow, relational growth. But in his final chapter, he does something unexpected: he defends doctrine. Not as a sterile academic add-on or rigid institutional gatekeeping, but as the very soul of the Church’s vitality.

Stark’s bold claim is that it wasn’t just the kindness of Christians that changed the world—it was the theological substance behind their love.

“Surely,” he writes, “doctrine was central to nursing the sick during times of plague, to the rejection of abortion and infanticide, to fertility, and to organizational vigor... Central doctrines of Christianity prompted and sustained attractive, liberating, and effective social and religious organizations.”

Love wasn’t a campaign to win converts. It was the overflow of the eternal love shared within the Trinity, now dwelling among us.

Stark mentions doctrines like the Incarnation, resurrection, the dignity of the human body, and the hope of life beyond death—not just as theological concepts, but as catalysts for a new way of being human. These beliefs didn’t stay on paper. They were practiced at the table, in the sickroom, and in the street. They reoriented daily life. They gave people not only faith, but family.

This idea restored in me a joyful gratitude for the Church. I grew up in an environment where doctrine was often presented as a test of orthodoxy—something you had to say correctly. But Stark reminded me that in the early church, doctrine was something you lived. It shaped how you suffered. How you welcomed strangers. How you honored life. Doctrine made the difference between philanthropy and Christian love.

And this is where I was reminded that the doctrine of the Trinity—so often dismissed as abstract or inaccessible—is, in fact, the heart of the Church’s story of love.

Jaroslav Pelikan called the Trinity “the culmination of all doctrinal development” in the early Church. He writes, “Christianity drew the line that separated it from pagan supernaturalism, and it reaffirmed its character as a religion of salvation.” The Trinity is the ultimate assurance that salvation is full, not fragmented. That the God who creates also redeems and sustains. That we are, as Athanasius said, “knitted into the Godhead” by the Son and the Spirit.

Gregory Nazianzus reminds us that even if the Trinity is incomprehensible, its mystery elevates our vision. It invites us to “ascend with the Godhead and not linger on things visible.” Basil invites us to ask reverent questions, seeking truth not as trivia, but as “medicine for our ignorance.” This posture matters more than ever.

If we cannot imagine the Trinity as good news, we will fail to imagine Christianity as good news. Without the loving communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our faith risks becoming either a system of rules or a vague spirituality. But with it, we see that God’s love is not just a sentiment—it’s the very structure of reality. A structure into which we are invited.

“The simple phrase, ‘For God so loved the world…’ would have puzzled an educated pagan,” Stark writes. “The notion that the gods care how we treat one another would have been dismissed as patently absurd.”

This doctrine—of a loving God who calls his people to mirror his mercy—transformed Greco-Roman society. In a world where mercy was seen as weakness and compassion as irrational, Christianity introduced a new moral vision. One where, as Stark describes, “Christians may not please God unless they love one another.”

This wasn’t limited to family or tribe. It extended to “all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:2). And it even stretched beyond the Church. Stark recalls Cyprian’s exhortation that Christians must love even their enemies: “There is nothing remarkable in cherishing merely our own... one becomes perfect who overcomes evil with good, and practices merciful kindness like that of God.”

This was revolutionary stuff. “More important,” Stark writes, “Christians effectively promulgated a moral vision utterly incompatible with the casual cruelty of pagan custom.”

Stark closes his book with a challenge to modern historians. Too often, he says, they explore how social forces shape religion—but they refuse to ask how religious doctrines might shape society.

“Let me state my thesis,” Stark concludes. “The particular doctrines of Christianity permitted it to be among the most sweeping and successful revitalization movements in history. And it was the way these doctrines took on actual flesh... that led to the rise of Christianity.”

As Pentecost gives way to Trinity Sunday, we recognize that the Spirit’s outpouring wasn’t the end of the story. It was the beginning of a Church called to embody its doctrine—to love with the shape of the cross, to witness with the power of the resurrection, to welcome with the generosity of the Triune God.

The early Church didn’t grow because it chased cultural relevance or political power. It grew because it lived its beliefs. And those beliefs—especially the mystery of the Trinity—called people into a way of life more beautiful and more just than anything else the ancient world had seen.

This, too, is our call.

The restful way of Jesus is doctrinal. But it’s also social, ethical, and practical. It insists that love is not a sentiment but a cruciform posture that becomes a practice of resurrection—shaped by the cross and animated by the Spirit. A way of life we are called to assume, dwell in, and extend to others.

And that pattern still speaks. What if the future of Christian influence isn’t found in reclaiming political or cultural dominance—but in recovering the central doctrines of our faith and letting them shape us into a people marked by death-defying love? What if we offered a new arithmetic for influence—not through spectacle or slogans, but through the patient and visible witness of Christian love?

That love still heals the world.

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🕊️ Reflection Question
Where in your life might doctrine become more than something you believe—and something you live?

📚 Further Reading

• Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, Chapter 10

• Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos?

• Gregory Nazianzus, Theological Orations

• Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit

• Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, Volume 1

• John 3:16 — “For God so loved the world…”

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🔥 With Gratitude

As I close this series, I want to offer a few words of thanks.

First, to Rodney Stark, whose remarkable book The Rise of Christianity offered not only a wealth of insight but a renewed confidence in the Church’s witness of love across the centuries. I’m also grateful to the many authors I’ve quoted throughout this series, whose work continues to shape my understanding of what it means to be the Church today.

A heartfelt thank you to my professors: Dr. Benjamin Grant White, who assigned Stark’s book and taught the foundations of the Nee Testament with clarity and grace, and Dr. Jeff Baily, who immersed our class all semester in the rich and complex history of the early Church as it gave voice to the gospel through its creeds. Their teaching has deeply informed both my theology and this series.

Thank you to Brian, whose words I’ve quoted more than once—always with appreciation and affection.

And to you, dear readers: thank you for following along. Your presence and attention are a gift.

A special thank you to my Sustaining Members, whose faithful support makes all of my writing here at Restful possible. As a small token of my appreciation, I will compile this series into an e-book, available exclusively to you. If you’d like to join them and support future projects like this one, consider becoming a Sustaining Member too.

With gratitude,
Tamara