Trinity Sunday

The Feast of the Most Holy Trinity

The first Sunday after Pentecost, in May or June (Orthodox churches keep no separate feast)

It holds prayers and a Preface of the Trinity, for use on ordinary Sundays. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that in the early church no special Office or day was set aside for the Trinity; when Arianism spread, the Fathers prepared an Office for Sundays in general. This is worship of the Trinity, not a feast of it.

Composes an Office of the Holy Trinity. The Micrologus, written under Gregory VII, reports it recited in some places, while others said it on the Sunday before Advent. It calls the Sunday after Pentecost a Dominica vacans, a Sunday with no Office of its own. This is the first sure record of a day given to the Trinity, about nine hundred years after the church began.

Refuses a petition for a special feast of the Trinity. He says such a feast is not the custom of the Roman church, which honors the Trinity every day in the Gloria Patri. He does not forbid it where it is already kept.

Becket was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the Sunday after Pentecost. An Anglican clergyman writing online, Thomas Harbold, says Becket then obtained for all England the privilege of keeping that Sunday as Trinity Sunday. He names no source, and the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on the feast does not mention Becket. The link to the English feast is a tradition, not a record.

A Franciscan, he writes a new Office for the feast before his death in 1292. The feast was not yet law for the whole church (H6).

Orders the feast for the whole Western church on the first Sunday after Pentecost. The Catholic Encyclopedia gives his reign, 1316 to 1334, and not the year of the order; later sources usually say 1334.

Its Directory for the Publick Worship of God says festival days, commonly called holy days, have no warrant in the word of God and are not to be continued. This includes Trinity Sunday.

Orders the Athanasian Creed to be said at Morning Prayer on Trinity Sunday and on certain other feasts, in place of the Apostles’ Creed. The Sundays that follow are counted “after Trinity”.

Raises the feast to the first class of the Roman calendar. It had ranked as a double of the second class.

The church confessed the Father, the Son and the Spirit from the first, in baptism and in blessing (S3, S4), and defended it against Arius in the 300s. It did not give the doctrine a day (H1). A day came slowly, from one bishop’s Office in the 900s (H2) to a papal order in the 1300s (H6), and Rome resisted at first (H3).

In the Orthodox churches there is still no separate feast: Pentecost itself is called Trinity Day, because the Spirit’s coming completes the revelation of the three.

A practical reason

A theological reason

Roman Catholics

Anglicans and Episcopalians

Lutherans

Methodists and other liturgical Protestants

The Eastern Orthodox churches

Strict confessional Presbyterians

The Churches of Christ

The United Pentecostal Church International

Jehovah’s Witnesses

The Athanasian Creed

The 1662 Prayer Book orders it at Morning Prayer on Trinity Sunday (H8). Lutherans may say it at Matins or in place of the Nicene Creed. Today it is used mostly in confessional and high-church congregations.

Trinitytide

Anglicans and Lutherans count the long summer and autumn season as Sundays after Trinity. Rome and most modern lectionaries count Ordinary Time instead.

Hymns and prayers

A proper collect and Preface, with hymns such as “Holy, Holy, Holy” and St. Patrick’s Breastplate. The first draws on Revelation 4:8.

Sermons on the doctrine

In many churches this is the one Sunday given to preaching the Trinity.

Ordinations at the Ember Days

Ordinations and consecrations were traditionally held at the Ember Days near Trinity, as Becket’s was.

Trinity term and church names

Trinity term in English law and in the universities takes its name from the feast, and many churches and colleges are named Holy Trinity or Trinity. The day has no trade of its own.

The church’s remembrance is weekly, and it looks to the cross

The New Testament gives the church one day and one memorial: the first day, and the Supper that proclaims His death (S1, S2).

The church gathered “upon the first day of the week” to break bread (S1). The Lord gave the memorial Himself, and Paul says what it proclaims: “the Lord’s death till he come” (S2). That is the remembrance God appointed, on the day the apostles kept it. Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a yearly feast to its worship.

The record bears this out. For nine hundred years the church held the doctrine and kept no such feast (H1, H2), and when a pope was asked for one he declined (H3). A feast that began that late is not part of the worship the apostles delivered.

The New Testament teaches the Father, the Son and the Spirit, and gives no feast for them

The text names all three together in baptism and in blessing, and sets no day to honor them (S3, S4, S5).

Jesus sends His disciples to baptize “into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (S3). Paul closes a letter with a blessing from the three (S4). At Jesus’ baptism the Son is in the water, the Spirit descends and the Father speaks (S5). This page does not question what these texts teach, and the church does well to teach it every Lord’s Day.

The question is a different one: does the text give a day? It does not. Scripture teaches the doctrine in baptisms, blessings and sermons, not in a yearly feast. Pope Alexander II said much the same when he declined a feast of the Trinity because Rome honored the Trinity daily (H3).

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer, not a law for the church

Romans 14 leaves a believer free to regard a day, and Colossians 2 says no one may judge another by a feast day (S6, S7).

Paul writes of believers who differed over days: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S6). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so the passage does not set out to approve a Christian feast. It does give the rule for a Christian’s own regard for a day: it is between the believer and the Lord.

Colossians 2:16-17 adds that no one may judge a believer “in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day”, which are “a shadow of the things to come” (S7). Scholars differ over which days Paul meant there, so the text is not cited here against a Christian feast. It does show that days are not the test of a believer.

So a Christian may keep a day for the Trinity privately. What they may not do is make it binding on others, or bring it into the church’s worship as a holy day (A1).

Paul rebukes those who “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years”. A church calendar is such a thing.

The Galatians were Gentiles who had once served “no gods”, and teachers were pressing the law on them (verses 4:21 and 5:4). Paul fears his labor was in vain because they were taking up the calendar as part of standing right with God. Read in context, the text strikes at any day made necessary for God’s favor, which fits a feast imposed as a duty on the church. It does not by itself forbid a believer’s private regard for a day, which Romans 14 allows (S6). The research behind this page asks that Galatians 4:10 not be cited against a Christian feast without that context, and it is given here.

A feast the Lord never gave, taught as a duty, is worship by the precepts of men.

This is a right use where a church binds the feast. Jesus condemns teaching human rules as God’s doctrine, and a church that makes Trinity Sunday a day of obligation does just that. It weighs against the feast in the church’s worship (A1). It does not reach what the feast honors, which is taught in the text (A2), and it does not reach a believer who gives thanks for the Trinity at home (A3).

Unitarians, Christadelphians and Jehovah’s Witnesses read “Jehovah our God is one Jehovah” as one Person and reject both the doctrine and the day. Oneness Pentecostals read it as one God with no distinction of Persons.

The verse says God is one, and the New Testament says the same: Jesus Himself quotes it as the first commandment (Mark 12:29). The same New Testament joins the Son and the Spirit with the Father in one name in baptism (S3), in one blessing (S4) and at the Jordan (S5). God’s oneness does not set aside what the New Testament says of the Son and the Spirit, and this page does not set it aside either. The verse is aimed at the doctrine, not the day, so it is no argument against the feast. The case against the feast rests on what the New Testament gives the church’s worship (A1).

Heaven’s own worship never rests in praising the thrice-holy God. A day for the Trinity gives the church a share in it.

Heaven’s praise is a reason for the church to praise God for who He is, and the church may, in its worship on any Lord’s Day. But the passage describes continual praise, “day and night”, and not a yearly feast. It gives no calendar for the church (A2).

Paul builds the church’s unity on one Spirit, one Lord and one God and Father. A feast that teaches this does what the apostle does.

Paul teaches the church this by letter, to be taught in every assembly. He does not set a yearly day for it. The text supports teaching the doctrine; it gives no feast (A2).

Study

• Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 name the three together. Do they, or any verse near them, call for a day to honor the Trinity?
• For nine hundred years the church confessed the Trinity without a feast (H1, H2). What does that say about whether a doctrine needs a day?
• Pope Alexander II declined a feast because Rome honored the Trinity daily (H3). Is that a reason a Christian church might give today?
• Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 11:26 give a weekly remembrance of Christ’s death. Why might God have set a memorial of the death rather than a day for the Persons?
• Romans 14:5 says “Let each man be fully assured in his own mind.” How should a congregation treat a member who keeps Trinity Sunday at home, and one who does not?

Pentecost

Corpus Christi

The Transfiguration

Christmas

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