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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 9/4/2003 8:13 AM (GMT -6) |   | Hi all-
I’d like to toss this thread out as a sort of dumping grounds for thoughts you might have on a subject I need to write about in the coming couple of months. I’m helping with the publication of the first-ever Study Bible in Arabic for Muslim readers. The translation of the biblical text is new as well. Now we’re working on some 60 plus articles (three to four pages each) covering issues of specific concern to Muslim readers and followers of Christ of Muslim background. Surely one of the most important articles will be the article on the Trinity, of great interest to Muslims. The Arabic title will be something like “Allahu Akbar: Why George Bush is the Great Satan” (just kidding). Actually, it’ll be something like “The One Triune God.”
I’m gonna be calling several jam sessions with a couple of friends locally to discuss what to include, leave out, etc., in the article, and I wanted to invite you all to contribute any thoughts at all regarding the Trinity.
If you have concise arguments, comments, insights, concerns, whatever, that you think ought to be included in an article on the Trinity, I’m all ears. I’m not without ideas myself, but I want hear from others.
We can’t possibly say all that can be said in four single-spaced typed pages, but given those constraints, what would you think ought to be included?
Tom
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Paul5388
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 295
| Posted 9/4/2003 5:45 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom,
I don't know exactly where you are going with your article, so let me just throw out an idea or two. There are many who have difficulty accepting the Trinune nature of the God. There are contested verses dealing with the Trinity, of which I John 5.7 is a notable example. However, even if one chooses not to accept I John 5.7, the Trinity is clearly seen in form and some functions in I Cor. 12.3-6. The Spirit is the giver of gifts, Jesus Christ ("Lord" as defined in verse 3) determines where, when and how the gifts will be used and the Father is the energizer of/power behind the gifts. Gifts, administration and power to edify the body/church and evangelize the world. | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 9/4/2003 6:19 PM (GMT -6) | | | Tom, I am certainly no theologian, but from my own small area of Christ's kingdom, many people I talk to get confused between the persons of the Trinity and the nature of God. I remember someone once said there is one "what" and three "who." I know a lot of people think Christians believe in three gods. It would be good to discuss the nature of God and the personhood of God. | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 9/4/2003 7:13 PM (GMT -6) | | Yo, Tom. I am NOT even trying to be funny. But you have read the Quran, right? I mean, your stuff is going to deal with Quranic texts that deal with the Trinity, right? (I hope that this doesn't sound bad. I'm not trying to be smart-alecky or whatever)
What I would suggest is to do this via the Spirit. Meaning how the Spirit relates to the God the Father and Jesus in the Scriptures. I don't know if the "son of God" route may cut it. From what I understand, the Quran teaches that the Holy Spirit is the angel Gabriel, and it was Gabriel who brought the words of God to Muhummad (pbuh). I think it would be good to hit THAT hard...showing that the Holy Spirit is DISTINCT from just some angel. This is just me...but I think showing how very INTEGRATED the Spirit is to the Father and Jesus provides for a persuasive case for the Trinity.
Just some thoughts. | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 9/7/2003 5:52 AM (GMT -6) | | The One Triune GodRaising our thoughts and bowing our hearts(article in process)
Praise be to the only wise God, glorious in power, infinite in love, trustworthy and wise, and worthy of all worship. Surely they study God best who both “raise their thoughts” and “bow their hearts.” To raise our thoughts is to contemplate God’s existence, nature, and attributes. We can engage our mind in no more worthwhile effort. To bow our hearts is to worship, to acknowledge God’s infinite worth and powerful word spoken to us. We must engage all our mind and heart, beginning and ending with worship, worship that springs from and deepens personal and intimate relationship with the God who is infinite love.
The danger in speaking of God, of course, is the danger we humans face in attempting to define anything, namely, that in having defined a thing we believe we have possessed and controlled it, or that through defining it we are able to control others we have the responsibility to teach. For example, we may define humility accurately but mistakenly believe we are therefore humble. Or we may correctly define loving service and deceive ourselves into believing we lovingly serve others. And in defining God we may assume that because we have correct information about God we are therefore worshipping him, pleasing him, and correctly relating to him. We may also be tempted to see in our responsibility to lead others to the simple truth of God and to experiencing God for themselves an opportunity to control others for ourselves. To define the rules of a game is to exercise a certain control over those who play the game. What else has the history of religion taught us?
Thus, we can make no greater mistake than to approach the question of God for any other purpose than that in having approximated some understanding of God we may come to worship God better, and in worshipping God find ourselves and be defined by him. So the goal of asking or answering questions about God is knowledge that makes us better worshippers, not better scholars, servants of others, not their rulers.
The question of the life and nature of God is not a theological puzzle to be solved by those with too much time on their hands. A person can ask no more important question in life than “Who is God?” For how we answer this one question determines our beliefs about everything else important to life. To answer it is to chart the course of one’s life and destiny, for the answer exercises a profound influence over one's beliefs and choices. A poor answer to this question exercises just as much influence over us as does a good answer. So faith is a life-long journey and care must be taken in the earliest steps, for these determine from the outset the direction we travel.
The unique belief which followers of Christ have made about God is that God is the one triune God. In what sense is God one? In what sense is God three? What is the relationship between God’s oneness and threeness, between his unity and diversity? The Trinity may appear to many a bazaar belief. Indeed, is such a belief even meaningful? If it is, does the Bible warrant embracing it? How are we best to understand and express it today? What is its importance? These questions have occupied the greatest minds for two millennia, so we can hardly hope to offer more than the simplest and briefest of answers here and challenge every reader to search the Scriptures prayerfully and worshipfully.
Limitations of God-talk
There are limits we must acknowledge in talking about God. First, we know nothing of God that God does not choose to reveal to us about himself. Human reasoning and philosophy cannot lead us to independent knowledge of God. God does not sit on a tray under our microscopes as it were. We are entirely dependent upon God revealing Godself to us if we are to have knowledge of him. So the place to begin is with what God has said about himself in the Scriptures through his deeds and prophets. How does Scripture describe God? What does God act like? How is God revealed?
One other limitation we must come to terms with is the limits of human language. No language can contain God. We can speak truthfully of God, but our vocabulary is at best an accurate approximation. As the Apostle Paul expressed, we see in a mirror darkly. We know in part (1Cor 13: ). For this reason we ought to confess that our systematic expressions of the Bible’s truths are more analogous to a journey than to having arrived. Followers of Jesus have constantly sought through the centuries to improve their understanding and articulation of God’s truth through better expressions and analogies wherever possible in light of the Bible's fundamental portrayal of God. No one argument, vocabulary, or analogy can fully express what God has revealed to us about himself. And to this we now turn.
The biblical data from which the doctrine of the Trinity arises
The Bible nowhere uses the word “Trinity” and nowhere offers a precise theological definition of God. What we do see in Scripture is God acting, speaking, and relating to humankind. And this testimony is confirmed to us in our own personal experience of God as Father, Son, and Spirit. And from these we conclude what God is like and attempt to express these truths in our own words. What does the Bible have to say about the triune God?
Old Testament passages
New Testament passages
Expressing the biblical data
The above passages are the biblical data out of which early believers in Christ fashioned the fuller theological statements about God’s triune nature which appeared in the creeds three and four centuries later. Taken together, we can express what these representative biblical passages tell us in five fundamental statements:
- We worship one God: Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the universe.
- The Father is God
- The Son is God
- The Spirit is God
- Father, Son, and Spirit are one, though not one and the same. They are distinct yet together constitute one God.
The essential affirmation has been “one divine essence (or nature), three divine persons.” Father, Son, and Spirit are equally divine, uncreated, infinite, and eternal; equally perfect, great, powerful, glorious, and loving. The Father is true and perfect God, the Son is true and perfect God, and the Spirit is true and perfect God. In prayers we simultaneously glorify the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as one God.
The fundamental challenge is to understand the essence/nature and the divine persons without detriment to either. We must maintain the essential unity of God without dissolving the concept of interpersonal relations, and we must define the relations of the three persons while avoiding the belief in three gods.
Both “essence” and “person” enjoy in popular speech meanings we must be careful to avoid in our understanding of God. Thus, we speak of one divine “essence” or “nature” not in the sense of some impersonal “substance” or “material” out of which God is made. At the same time we do not understand the three persons as amounting to three distinct gods. Each of the persons possesses the same indivisible and one divine nature, but they possess it in varying ways. Each presents it uniquely: as Father, Son, and Spirit. These persons are determined by their unique relationship to one another. It is in these relationships to one another that they are persons.
The Apostle John writes (1John ): “God is love.” From this we may rightly conclude that God is essentially a relational being. And where there is no interpersonal relation in any sense of the word, no mutuality; where God is thought to be an absolute monad, God cannot be understood to be love. Father, Son, and Spirit exist in relation to one another, and by virtue of being and existing in love each penetrates the life of the others. The point is not merely to avoid isolating either unity or diversity to the detriment of the other, the point is to say positively that Father, Son, and Spirit subsist in one divine essence or nature by virtue of their unique interpersonal relations of love. Thus on the one hand the nature of God is essentially relational while on the other hand the personal relations of Father, Son, and Spirit subsist in one indivisible nature. One triune God of infinite love and unsurpassable worth.
“Essence” or “nature” and “person” are the best words we have with which we can express God’s unity and diversity as a personal being. In the end, we must admit that we stand on the outside looking in when we attempt to formulate our systematic statements of belief. We do not have independent access to God’s inner triune life. We have only God revealed in his actions and words through the prophets, and ultimately in the person of Jesus Christ, and our experience of the Triune God.
Experiencing the Triune God
As we said before, we have not truly answered the question about God if we have only raised our thoughts to God. We must also bow our hearts, that is, experience the infinite God through intimate and personal relationship. This is what we are created for. What we have said thus far about the triune nature of God as Father, Son, and Spirit is confirmed in our experience of God.
God wants us to know and experience him as Father, Son, and Spirit. Indeed, the history of our experience and knowledge of God leads us in this direction. We are “adopted” as sons () when we are born again by faith (). God becomes our Father (). Christ becomes an elder brother (Heb. ), with whom we are co-heirs (Rom ). Christ becomes the center of our existence. Our thinking, feeling, and choosing become oriented around Christ and his way of life. The Spirit of God is experienced also, raising us to new life, empowering us to live and serve, opening our understanding and sensitizing us to righteousness, shaping us in the image of God.
We read with wonder the Apostle Peter’s words (2Pet 1.4) declaring that in Christ “…we share in the divine nature” and the Apostle Paul’s words telling us that in Christ “…the fullness of God lives in a human body.” The first passage is best understood as our being transformed by the power of God into what God purposed for us. The second tells us that in Christ we see what God’s purpose for us is, for Christ fulfills God’s intentions for humanity and shows us how we were meant to live in God and God in us. God’s purposes for us are fulfilled in a personal relationship that is best described in terms of the most personal relations known to us, those of a family. To be a son or daughter of God the Father is to bear God’s image through intimate personal knowledge of Jesus the Son through the Spirit who lives in us and transforms us. Thus we experience the Triune God.
Mistakes and extremes to avoid
If thinking rightly about God helps us become better and more intimate worshipers, surely thinking poorly about God can over time hinder us. Throughout history belief in one triune God has been pushed and pulled into error in several ways. One mistake is to view the persons as merely “manifestations” of the one God. This dissolves the three persons of Father, Son, and Spirit into one and the same thing and makes them mere ways that God reveals himself to us. But God is triune with respect to Godself in the absence of his actions toward us. He is triune in eternity irrespective of relating to creation. To understand Father, Son, and Spirit as merely manifestations of one divine substance is to mistake the Bible’s portrayal of God.
Another error to avoid first appeared in the second century. Those who held it denied the preexistence of Christ and, therefore, his deity. They taught that Jesus was tested by God and after passing this test and upon his baptism, he was granted supernatural powers by God and adopted as the Son, thus the name of this heresy as “adoptionism.” As a reward for his great accomplishments and perfect character Jesus was raised from the dead and adopted into the Godhead.
Conclusion
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Still working on this. It’s like swimming across the Pacific.
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
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