The Interchangeability of the Trinity
As I was praying this morning the Trinity Prayer I messed up and put the
second clause of each verse out of order.
Instead of Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, set up
your kingdom in our midst it I prayed Father Almighty, Creator
of Heaven and Earth, have mercy on me, a sinner. A mashup of
the opening stanza with the Jesus prayer, if you will. I rolled with it,
and so prayed that the Son would renew me and all the earth and the Spirit
would help set up the Kingdom in our midst (instead of the usual petition to
the Father to do so).
What piqued my interest was that there is an interchangeability amongst the
Godhead that I grasped through my out of order prayer. The Godhead work
together and accomplish the Kingdom, Atonement, and New Creation all in
different ways and capacities, but they work together in perichoresis (the intimate
and divine dance of the Trinity in relationship with one another) nonetheless.
During this long weekend, let us pray that we see the Trinity at work.
Yes, in many ways this is exactly right. Sometimes we get too attached to certain ways of saying things when others would be perfectly good too, and God in all three persons is involved in all of what God does.
I do think there are some things that it wouldn’t seem right to say, e.g. thanking Jesus for sending his Son to save the world from its sins or thanking the Holy Spirit for dying for our sins. So it’s not complete interchangeability. But that doesn’t minimize your observation.