Dangerous ground in Parliament Hall

It was like taking part in a Harry Potter episode.    The location was Parliament Hall where the Scots Parliament met in 1645-46.   You enter it by pushing open an unmarked door at 66 South Street,  St Andrews.     Bright panelled walls and enormous portraits look down upon you in a friendly manner.

We were warned by the Divinity Dean,  Ivor Davidson,  that we were on dangerous ground.   What we were embarking on "involves confession,  petition,  doxology and wonder.   We are at the edges of what we can say".      

This was a conference on the Doctrine of the Trinity.

The first to speak,  Tom McCall,   had flown in (by aeroplane) from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School,  Chicago.    Since arriving he had spent a night in a tent on Ben Nevis,  and now he spoke at breakneck speed on the biblical data.

The second speaker looked as if he had flown in on a broom stick.   Your archetypical kindly wizard,   white bearded  Professor Paul Fiddes of Oxford University presented to us a radical perspective.   He compared our experience of the trinity to one of a dance with the Almighty. 

He was followed by traditional views from New York's Catholic Paul Molnar and St Andrews' baptistic Stephen Holmes.

                                                                                   

The trinity matters more than anything else in the world said C S Lewis.    And there are evidently not many places on our globe where so many people would gather to reflect on it.   Thankfully yesterday was no Harry Potter episode.