The Invitation Part 3

(continued excerpt from my paper on the Doctrine of the Trinity)

The love of God, the same love shared from eternity between the members of the Trinity, was not just expressed to the world in the giving of God’s Son[1] but his divine nature of love has “been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”[2] All that God has created bears the mark of his infinite divine love. All that is love originated from the one who is Love. All who love do so because of the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in them.[3] In contemplating this mystery Julian of Norwich (1342-1423) writes;

I am he, the light and the grace which is all blessed love; I am he, the Trinity; I am he, the unity; I am he, the great supreme goodness of every kind of thing; I am he who makes you to love; I am he who makes you to long; I am he, the endless fulfilling of all true desire.[4]

This is why the doctrine of the Trinity is not meant to be comprehended as much as it is meant to be apprehended through the experience of the believer. Love can only truly be understood through experiencing it. It is an experience that surpasses cognitive knowing such as Paul prays for the Ephesians;

that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.[5]

It is through this experience of love that we become one with God and become “partakers of the divine nature.”[6]

It is time to dust off the doctrine of the Trinity, not just from our academic libraries, but from our church belief statements. It is not just the scholars for whom the doctrine is important, but the very life of the Body and experience of the believer is dependent on it.  The reality of the Trinity should be a felt presence personally and corporately; “We need to see and feel that we are surrounded by the Trinity, compassed about on all sides by the presence and the work of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”[7] The primary way we do this is by experiencing the love of God, and in turn learning to love each other. Seeking to prove or comprehend the meaning of the Trinity leads to frustration, but continuing to contemplate the mystery of God’s three in oneness, his eternal love, and his invitation to become one with himself leads to an encounter with the living God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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[1] John 3:16.

[2] Romans 1:20, ESV.

[3] I John 4:19.

[4] Kerr, 129.

[5] Ephesians 3:17-19, ESV.

[6] 2 Peter 1:4, ESV.

[7] Sanders, 34.

The Invitation Part 2

(continued excerpt from my paper on the Doctrine of the Trinity)

In Making Sense of the Trinity, Erickson writes, “because one member of the Trinity took human nature without ceasing to be fully divine, he became a divine-human person, not merely a divine person. Certain limitations were involved in this incarnation.”[1]  However, there was one part of Christ’s divinity that was not veiled in the incarnation; his very nature, shared by the Father, Son and Spirit throughout eternity. Christ’s attributes remained as they eternally had been. Referencing Malachi 3:6, “I, the Lord, do not change” Hart writes, “whatever God was or will be, he always has been… God never changes in his essence.”[2] This is why Jesus could accurately claim that “whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”[3] It is the incarnate Christ’s perfect revelation of the Father’s nature, because it is his own nature as well, that is the decisive proof of his divinity. After the resurrection the Apostles would also encounter this nature in the Holy Spirit whom Jesus had promised would be with them forever[4] and who continues the work of revealing the Father as well as the Son.

All three persons of the Godhead share the same nature, which means that what can be said of one can be said of all. God the Father is good, Jesus is good, the Spirit is good. God the Father is holy, Jesus is holy, the Spirit is holy.  At the heart of this shared nature[5] is the divine attribute that encompasses all others[6] as John tells us; “God is love.”[7] Once again, this divine concept of love is hard to comprehend for human beings whose earthly experience of love has been less than perfect. Even though our word ‘love’ may best characterize the relationship between Father, Spirit and Son[8] it still falls short of accurately explaining what it is the members of the Godhead experience between each other, and the taste of divine love we can experience as believers. The Greek word used to describe this experience is Agape which means “self-giving love.”[9] The relationship between the members of the Trinity is one totally devoid of any selfish ambition but is an eternally continuous giving of self between its members. It is a mystery worthy of our contemplation. This is the experience Jesus prays that we would receive when he asks the Father to make us one with himself in John 17.  Christ made this request on the eve of his crucifixion when he would provide the means through which we could access this inner experience of oneness with God. As humanity’s model for what relationship with God is supposed to be like, Jesus did not merely give us an example to imitate, but gave his life to become the door by which we can come to the Father and receive adoption into his family and “entry… into the inner life of God.”[10] Each member of the Trinity has played their part in this act of redemption; the Father by sending his Son, the Son by dying for our sins, and the Spirit as “the vehicle through whom we enter God’s inner life.”[11]

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[1] Millard J. Erickson, Making Sense of the Trinity: Three Crucial Questions. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000). Kindle E-book, page 623.

[2] Hart, 80.

[3] John 14:9, ESV.

[4] John 14:16.

[5] Hart, 100.

[6] Grenz, 1253.

[7] I John 4:8, 16. ESV.

[8] Grenz 1246.

[9] Oden, 70.

[10] Bray, 50.

[11] Bray, 51.

The Invitation Part 1

(An excerpt from my paper on the Doctrine of the Trinity)

No other doctrine is as central and unique to the Christian faith as that of the Trinity. This doctrine is central because the foundation of Christian soteriology, and therefore Christian hope, rests on its truth; unique because no other monotheistic religion ascribes divinity to three persons. However, there is another implication not considered by most. In Theology for the Community of God, Grenz writes about the relational aspect of the Trinity saying that “above all… the Father, Son, and Spirit are the social Trinity. Therefore, community is not merely an aspect of human life, for it lies within the divine essence.”[1] If what Grenz suggest is true than to merely intellectually assent to the doctrine of the Trinity is to diminish it. This doctrine (as all doctrines) should be experiential in nature, especially because it is intimately linked with experiencing the love of God. Agape love is the core of the Trinitarian relationship, as well as the predominate attribute of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. This shared love nature is what permeates the one essence of the three persons of the Trinity and love is the way we participate in the oneness of God as was the expressed desire of Jesus in John 17: 21-26:

that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,  I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.  Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.  I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.[2]

Three persons being one in essence is a difficult concept to describe and comprehend for human beings to whom “person” means individual. Some of humanity’s greatest thinkers have admitted to the minds inability to grasp three in oneness. C.S. Lewis writes regarding the Trinity, “On the human level one person is one being, and any two persons are two separate beings… On the Divine level you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine.”[3] The great theologian Augustine (354-430), the last of the Church Fathers, writes; “In these three then… how inseparable a life there is, yea one life, mind, and one essence, yea lastly how inseparable a distinction there is, and yet a distinction… whether because of these three, there is in God also a Trinity, or whether all three be in Each, so that the three belong to each Each; or whether both ways at once.”[4] Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274), who sought to prove many things about God said that the Trinity could not be “proven” but that it is a matter “of revelation to be received by faith.”[5]   Because of theology’s inability to “prove” the correct understanding of the Trinity most have settled for “a doctrinal formula to be received and believed by a mental act of understanding.”[6] Unfortunately, for many, mystery has turned into misunderstanding and disuse, because rather than continuing to reflect on the mystery, contemplation is “shrugged off”[7] for blind acceptance.  It is a doctrine that all receive by faith yet few understand the implications of, so that while the church is theologically Trinitarian, functionally and experientially it is Unitarian[8].  The doctrine is written into a belief statement and soon assumes the appearance of dry-bones theology, seen as practically irrelevant, neglected by Church teachers and experientially malnourished in congregational life. Yet that is not the way the doctrine came to be formed.  Jesus’ incarnation revealed God in a way not yet seen by mankind. Even more so, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit given after Jesus’ ascension brought the disciples experience of God from external to internal as “The God who appears as One to those who view him on the outside, reveals himself as a Trinity of persons, once his inner life is opened up to our experience.”[9]

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[1] Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994). Kindle E-Book, Location 1324.

[2] ESV.

[3] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: Harper Collins, 1952), Kindle E-book, page 162.

[4] Augustine, The Confession of Saint Augustine, Edward Bouverie Pusey, translator . Kindle E-Book, page 258.

[5] Hart, 45

[6] Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), Kindle E-book, page 34.

[7] Olson, 1583.

[8] Olson, 1588.

[9] Gerald L. Bray, Out of the Box: The Christian Experience of God in Trinity. “God the Holy Trinity: Reflections on Christian Faith and Practice,” Timothy George, ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006). Kindle E-book, page 45.