First Thoughts on Spirit & Trinity

Perhaps the Holy Spirit needs to be rescued from the Trinity.

Christian theology historically claims that the Trinity is co-equal. Yet it's language describes anything else. Father/Son relationships of begetter/begotten imply that God the Father is superior. And indeed, whenever the Trinity combines into one, it is as God the Father, never "the Son" nor "the Holy Spirit". Furthermore, so often the language we hear/read around the Spirit is a language of servitude. The Spirit is ordered around by the Father and the Son. It is given over as if an object or a possession without its own agency. The Spirit uniquely gets elided by the other two persons of the Trinity. If you bring up God the Father, then the Holy Spirit only becomes a symbol of the will of the Father. If you bring up the Son, then the Spirit becomes a lingering presence that fills the void left by the Son.

Utlimately, the Holy Spirit becomes replaceable. You can put always replace "Spirit" with "God the Father", and often with "Christ". Yet such replacement is not possible with "Christ" or "God the Father/Creator". They both retain an independence not imagined for the Holy Spirit.

The Trinity could be an amazing metaphor of community. But instead it becomes the symbol of patriarchy, literally the rule of the father- in this case: God the Father.

Can the Trinity be reformed in such a way that fixes these problems? I'm not sure, and I'm starting to doubt it. For all the good that Trinitarian thought provides, perhaps we need to take that good...and then put a sledgehammer to the rest. Smash the patriarchy!