The Doctrine of the Trinity: Treasure or Embarassment?
Dr. Graham Cole explores the biblical, historical and contemporary perspective of the Trinity with an eye on its value for the Christian life today.
Chapters
The Doctrine of the Trinity: Treasure or Embarassment? Dr. Graham Cole explores the biblical, historical and contemporary perspective of the Trinity with an eye on its value for the Christian life today.
Show Notes
The Doctrine of the Trinity: Treasure or Embarassment?
Dr. Graham Cole explores the biblical, historical and contemporary perspective of the Trinity with an eye on its value for the Christian life today.
What is Sermons from Redeemer Community Church?
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Joel Brooks:
Well, let me introduce to your speaker for tonight. Doctor Graham Cole is the Anglican professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School. He is Australian. So if he talks a little funny, give him some grace. He's learning.
Joel Brooks:
I met doctor Cole, I guess, just about a year ago. He moved into the Crestwood area, and something I've been very impressed about him and his wife, Jules, is how in just a few months, I think they knew more people than I did in Crestwood. They just kinda know everybody. Of course, they're Australian and so, you know, you stand out. But I was just really impressed with how friendly they were and how much they were already pouring their lives into the people in the community here in East Birmingham.
Joel Brooks:
So if y'all would welcome doctor Graham Cole as he comes up here.
Speaker 2:
Well, thank you, Joel. It's, terrific to be with you tonight and, to speak on this subject of the trinity. A treasure or or Christianity's embarrassment. That's what we'll be looking at tonight. And it's interesting I'm in a room full of accents.
Speaker 2:
Oh, that's right. I've got one as well. So I'd like to say I'm from the really deep South. By way of introduction let me say that the great Augustine said that he who denies the Trinity will lose their soul and he who tries to understand the Trinity will lose their mind. So my job tonight is to get us through this, lecture period and q and a without us losing our souls or losing our minds.
Speaker 2:
But positively learning something of the wonder of who the living god really is. And let me say that our understanding of god as trinity, I think, is becoming more and more important in a world where militant Islam is on the rise. Because as far as, Islam is concerned, the doctrine of the trinity is the great stumbling block that they find in Christianity. Because it means that alongside Allah, another is associated, namely Jesus. Although, interestingly, if you read the Quran, you find that the understanding of the trinity that you find in that book is of the father, the son, and the virgin Mary.
Speaker 2:
Because one of the problems that Islam has with the language that Christians use of the son of God is to understand that in a very literalistic way, meaning that Christians somehow think that the father, god, had sexual relations with Mary, hence a son of God, Jesus. So you can see if you think that way what problems you would have with Christians talking about Jesus as the son of God. Now of course, both Islam and Christianity affirm the uncreated creator God. But after that, there are there's a wide divergence in understanding just who god is. But Islam is not the only critic of Christianity's doctrine of god as trinity.
Speaker 2:
So let me look at some of the other critics of this Christian understanding of god. Let's go back into the enlightenment period of 18th century and to, in many ways, the leading thinker of the enlightenment, Immanuel Kant. He died in 1804. In fact, he is the author of a very famous essay entitled, What is Enlightenment? He's also famous for saying, dare to think.
Speaker 2:
Free yourself from the tutelage of an authority outside of yourself, whether it's a church or a book. Well, what did he think of the doctrine of the trinity? Well, he thought that it was basically an incoherent idea. And even if you could understanding understand it which no one can, it's of no practical relevance. But, of course, criticisms of this understanding of god didn't stop there.
Speaker 2:
Even some theologians, contemporary theologians, have problems with this understanding of god. I can think of a Dutch theologian by the name of Hendrikas Berkhof. He only recently passed away. And he said that this doctrine is indigestible to the believing mind. And again, to return to the theme of, Islam's critique of Christianity, probably the most thought out Islamic thinker in the world today teaches at Old Dominion University in in Virginia, a philosopher by the name of Shabir Akhtar.
Speaker 2:
And he says, like Kant, like Birkhoff, that this doctrine is incoherent. It is, in fact, a fantasy. Well, what can be said in response? Well, the first thing we need to try and establish is whether this idea that there is one god in 3 persons, father, son, and holy spirit, is actually grounded in the testimony of scripture. Because for the Christian, that is the ultimate test, the scripture test.
Speaker 2:
Can we find this in the word of God? So I want to turn now to the biblical testimony, and if you have your Bible there, that would be very handy because in my experience, the Bible throws a lot of light on theology. Sadly, not every theologian seems to understand that. And we're gonna start right at the beginning where all theology should start, with God. And so we turn to the opening chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1 and verse 1.
Speaker 2:
In the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth. And this magnificent chapter 1 with the presentation of god as the great worker, 6 days on the job and then one day off at the end, this presentation of god is there really not to tell us how the heavens go so much as to introduce us to the creator of the heavens and the earth. And we find that there is only one god on view, a god without rival. In fact, there may be something in the scholarly idea that Genesis chapter 1 right through to chapter 2 and verse 3, amongst other things, is an attack upon the kind of idols in the ancient world. So things that would have been godlikesun and moon and stars, they're not gods at all.
Speaker 2:
They are just creations of god. But by the time we finish our very first chapter of the bible, we know that there is only one god. Now that was a lesson that god's old testament people had to learn over and over and over again. And it took 100 of years to really establish that as a theological peg in the ground for Israel, God's Old Testament people. And we can see something of that when we turn to the books of Moses, another book of Moses, and that is to the book of Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verses 45.
Speaker 2:
But I'm gonna take the story up in verse 1. I cannot over emphasize the importance of this passage for understanding who the god of the bible is and for understanding how a believing Jew right up until this day understands God. Now this is the commandment as Moses preaches to Israel, it's the nation has gathered on the plains of Moab soon to cross the Jordan into the promised land. Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you're going over to possess it, that you may fear the lord your god, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life, That your days may be long, he writes or says. Hear therefore, oh, Israel, and be careful to do them that it may go well with you and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in the land flowing with milk and honey.
Speaker 2:
And what we find by the time we finish Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and now Deuteronomy is that Israel is like the new Adam, the new corporate Adam with the job of exercising dominion over a new Eden, this land alluded to here flowing with milk and honey? And what are they to believe as they go into this land of promise? Hear, oh, Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is 1. The Hebrew opening to this statement is Shema, hear.
Speaker 2:
And indeed, if you're a believing Jew, this is at the heart of your faith right until this day. Hear, oh Israel, the lord our god, the lord is 1. In fact, you will have that on your doorpost as you enter into the front door of your house. And you shall love the lord your god with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
Speaker 2:
They're to be at the very core of who you are. You shall teach them diligently to your children and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise. Now it's classic ancient Near Eastern hyperbole. Now the ancient Near East wasn't British. It wasn't a place of understatement.
Speaker 2:
So if you want to make a point, you really make it powerfully. So when you walk, when you sit down, whatever you do, this is what you're to teach. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on the gates. Now one of the reasons we know that this is such an important statement is not only because of its historical influence from this point on, but because this is something you teach your children.
Speaker 2:
The Bible is not a children centered book, which I think is quite a a counter cultural shock in modern America. Children get mentioned from time to time in scripture, but it's adults that are largely on view. So when you have what you're to pass on to the next generation of your children, that underlines the fact that this is really important. And what you pass on to your children is something about who god is. What you pass on to your children is a doctrine about god, that there is only one god.
Speaker 2:
And the notion of 1 here, hard, is not sort of mathematical oneness. It could be translated uniqueness. It's a statement about the uniqueness of god. It's a statement about this god is without rival. Because here again, if you read the book of Deuteronomy, in place after place, you find that idols don't cut it.
Speaker 2:
In fact, there is only one god without rival, and this is the god worthy of your worship. This is the God to whom you're to give your loyalty. Now the idea of loving God here, as in so many places in scripture, I don't think is about your affections. I don't think it's about your feelings, although feelings can be involved, of course, depending upon your temperament. I think fundamentally it's about your loyalty in life.
Speaker 2:
Your loyalty is to this god and not to any rival that the ancient Near East might produce. So there's one god, a god without rival, and this is to be at the heart of what you confess to be your faith. We now move to the New Testament. We move to Jesus himself and Mark chapter 12 and verse 29. It's the story of Jesus' encounter with a scribe, a teacher of the law, someone who would know this passage so very, very well.
Speaker 2:
And we read that, one of the scribes in verse 28, hearing Jesus disputing, comes with a question. Which commandment is the most important of all? And that seems to be a question that the rabbis were batting and bolding were, as it were, mulling over at the time and in the generation before. Now Jesus' answer is this, The most important is, hear, oh Israel. The Lord our God is 1 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.
Speaker 2:
And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. What we see Jesus doing here is we see so often in the gospels, he's what we could call the supreme hermeneutist. He's the person who so creatively brings old testament scripture into conversation with other old testament scripture in ways that had not have been thought of before. And so what he brings is this Shema of Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 45 about loving your god, the one god there is, and Leviticus 19 verse 2, loving your neighbor as yourself, puts the 2 together to sum up what indeed our response should be in relation to this god and in relation to one another. But notice he reaffirms the faith of Israel.
Speaker 2:
There is only one god. But then we turn to Matthew 28 and a very famous passage that has come to be known in the last couple of 100 years as the Great Commission. And here we find the risen Christ commissioning his disciples to go into all the world. With him is all authority, we read, in heaven and on earth in verse 18, And as he goes go as you go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and behold, I'm with you to the end of the age. Now what's so fascinating about this is that Jesus left 2 practices for the church, the practice of baptism and, as we know, the practice of the Lord's Supper.
Speaker 2:
So they're very important. They're identifying and defining practices of god's people in this new age. And one of them, the one that's about entry into this new community and into this new life, means to be baptized in the one name. It's singular. The one onomah, one name of god.
Speaker 2:
But now that one name is understood to be, as it were, complex on the inside of father, son and holy spirit. So entry into this new community that Jesus has brought into existence through his death and resurrection and the giving of his spirit, as we read in Acts chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost, entry into this new community is through the gateway of confessing this one god who is father, son and holy spirit. There is distinction. There is inseparability, but we're talking about the one god. So it's no accident then that when we move into the world of the letters written to Christian communities here and there, Whether it's Peter writing in 1 Peter or whether it's the letters of Paul or the letters of John, over and over again, we find that there is not only the oneness affirmed, but also the freeness of this god.
Speaker 2:
I'll just give you one, further example of this. And that's the famous benediction that ends 2 Corinthians chapter 13 and verse 14, if you'd like to turn to it. This is how Paul ends his letter to these Corinthians, his second letter. I take up the story in verse 11. Finally, brothers, rejoice.
Speaker 2:
Aim for restoration. Comfort one another. Agree with one another. Live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.
Speaker 2:
All the saints greet you. And then comes the benediction that is still used in many a church, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. So once again, we find that this threeness is now on view in a new testament that not only affirms the oneness of god, the faith of Israel, but now in the light of the coming of Jesus Christ and the donation of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, a freeness must also be ascribed to this one God. Now as I say, this is only a sampling of biblical testimonies, But of course, that word trinity is not in our bible, is it? It's not in your concordance.
Speaker 2:
In fact, it was a term coined in Latin by the first, great Latin writing theologian, Tertullian, late second, early third century AD. There in North Africa, in Carthage. Trinitas. The idea that there is one god in 3 persons. But how can that be actually a biblical idea when the term itself is not?
Speaker 2:
Well, here I've been helped by one of the great, Presbyterian theologians of last century who taught at Princeton, a theologian by the name of BB Warfield. He wrote a very, very, important essay, a very long essay on the biblical doctrine of the trinity. And because he had the word biblical in the title, he had to explain how it could be a biblical doctrine and the word is it even in the Bible. His answer was, sometimes you need a word outside the bible to capture the sense of the bible. Words like incarnation, words like trinity do just that.
Speaker 2:
And what they do, conceptually speaking, they become a master concept, a master concept which covers all these other concepts that you find in the biblical testimony. Concepts like there is only one god as we saw in Deuteronomy chapter 6. Concepts like the one name of god is father, son and holy spirit as we saw in Matthew 28. I like what the new testament scholar N t Wright had to say about this idea of these master concepts. He's a very, fine communicator so he picked, I think, a really
Speaker 3:
good illustration to capture the point. He says, think of these big
Speaker 2:
like incarnation, like a suitcase. And packed in this suitcase are all the biblical testimonies that are relevant to that concept. And that's what I tried to give you a sampling of with those texts starting at Genesis 1 and then moving to 2 Corinthians chapter 13. As it were, I opened that suitcase and just took out some of the packing. And so, friends, in a church like the one I belong to, an Anglican church that confesses the ancient creed every week, it's good to know that those early church leaders who, as it were, brought together a whole range of the biblical testimonies in the face of, alternatives that seem to be dead ends, that these early church figures were intending to be faithful to the biblical testimony that they found in our old and new testament.
Speaker 2:
I think that's what we see in the famous Nicene Creed. I don't know if you know of that particular creed, but that creed, which is, to be technically accurate, is actually the Niceno Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. But it's called the Nicene Creed because it incorporates a creed that was earlier that was actually at Nicaea, which is in modern Turkey, from 325 and then added some bits to address some contemporary theological wrong choices. And that's what the word heresy means. It's a choice, but it's come to be understood to be a wrong choice, a harmful choice in thinking about god or Christ or salvation, this, nice inquiry, which I will read in a moment, was attempting to be faithful to the scriptures, to the kind of testimonies that I paraded before you just a moment ago, and in so doing, reject some false understandings of who this god is and who his son is.
Speaker 2:
One of those false, senses goes by the historical name of Arianism. It's, named after Arius who was a church leader in ancient Alexandria in the 1st part of 4th century and a bit of a rapper. Well, I don't know if he was actually a rapper, but he was a pioneer in using music to communicate theology. And what he did was he took the thalia, the drinking songs from the docks of Alexandria, and put his theology of god to music. And what he was arguing in his, songs was that there is only one god and Jesus is the highest of his creatures.
Speaker 2:
And it's through the highest of his creatures, Jesus, that he made everything else. And that particular view, of course, has this modern expression in the Jehovah's Witnesses. If you've ever talked to some of them and if you talk to one of their supervisors, you'll as I have, you'll find that they quite consciously draw upon that tradition going all the way back to the 4th century. But these, bishops and church leaders that met in Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381 rejected that as unfaithful to the scriptural testimony, unfaithful to the kind of scriptures that we were looking at. But they also rejected in 381 another view, and it was the view of the new.
Speaker 2:
These are great words to drop on a Friday night at a dinner party. Now new madamakoi literally means fighters against the spirit Because there were some people who said, yes. You're right. Jesus is as much God as the father is God. Those Arians are wrong.
Speaker 2:
But by 3/81, there were some people saying, oh, but as for the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit's not a person at all. The Holy Spirit is simply an influence or a force. And so these were labeled as fighters against the spirit. And so the creed that I'm about to read out to you addresses both those concerns amongst others. Those who want to give Jesus a lesser status than that of god and those who want to give the spirit a lesser status than that of god.
Speaker 2:
At the same time, the framers of this creed were seeking to affirm that there is still only one god. Well, it's in 3 articles. The first article of this creed runs, we believe in one god, the father, the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. So that is addressing God the Father. Then Article 2 moves to Jesus.
Speaker 2:
We believe in 1 Lord Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the father. Through him, all things were made. What they're saying is that this son of God is as much God as the father is God, yet distinct, And that takes care of Arianism. All this within the framework of belief in the one God. It goes on to say, for us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became fully human.
Speaker 2:
Article 2 has to do with Jesus. Then there's one more article that has to do with the spirit in particular. Article 3, We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son and the son was added a little bit later in the Western church in 589 AD, but that's another story. Who with the father and the son is worshipped and glorified. That is how these, church leaders of the 8th 4th century were trying to do justice to scripture, trying to make it impossible for what they saw as harmful views for the church to get a foothold in the churches that affirms both the father is God, the son is God, the spirit is God.
Speaker 2:
There's one God, but these persons are inseparable yet distinct. You see, if you say that the spirit along with the father and the son is worshiped and glorified, You cannot worship less than god, otherwise you're in idolatry. I think they put it that way so that people wouldn't confuse what they were saying about the sun and the spirit. So they use slightly different language to make the same point. Well, that's as it were a quick tour of the biblical testimonies, what the early church made of them in a famous creed that is basic to the great churches of today, whether it's the Roman Catholic church or the Orthodox church, just so many protestant churches too.
Speaker 2:
But what about what Kant said, that this has no practical relevance as a doctrine. So I wanna talk about the value of this doctrine or what the Puritans of the 16th century 17th century would say is the use, the uses, the use of this doctrine. Well, I I'm gonna get excited in that because what this means is that if god is really one god who is, as it were, eternally, internally, self differentiated as father, son and holy spirit, distinct yet inseparable persons, then it means that love has always been at the heart of reality. Because when you think about it, love is a relational value. Love involves the other.
Speaker 2:
Love involves the lover and the beloved and the bond that binds them together. A god who is a simple monad, technically speaking, quite frankly the god of Unitarianism or the god of Islam is a god without another to love. It's hard to understand how there could be love until such a god actually made something in order to have an object to relate to. But if god is really trinity, then love has always been at the heart of reality. And what creation is is a free act of a gracious and loving god who did what he didn't have to do in terms of love and that is create another, a creature.
Speaker 2:
Well, I find that really exciting, especially when I read someone like Shabir Akhtar, whom I mentioned earlier, this, I think, really outstanding Islamic thinker who says that the God of Islam is too great too great to be like the father that the Christians talk about in the prodigal son story of Luke chapter 15. Too great to be that kind of sympathetic king that the Christians claim God is like. Well, I want to thank god that god is not like that, that god is like that waiting father waiting for the prodigal child to come back. Heart of reality is love. Realizing that that is what reality is, is one of the great values of the doctrine of the trinity.
Speaker 2:
Love is not an accident in the universe. Also, understanding the biblical narrative. Otherwise, they were just puzzle. Puzzle after puzzle. I take the baptism of Jesus that we read about in Mark chapter 1.
Speaker 2:
This is just one of the episodes in the life of Christ. Jesus is baptized by John at the river Jordan, John the Baptist, that snappy dresser of the 1st century, you know, with that rather strange but organic food diet. In those days, we read in verse 9, Jesus came from Nazareth ago and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opening and the spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son.
Speaker 2:
With you, I am well pleased. We could spend an entire couple of hours just trying to unpack what that that narrative is about. But I just draw your attention that like so often in the story of Jesus, the father is involved, the voice from heaven, the spirit is involved, and Jesus, the son, is involved. Over and over again, we find there are there are these 3 actors involved in what Jesus was on about. The doctrine of the trinity helps us understand why that is so.
Speaker 2:
It also helps us understand to whom Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. There's a Peter O'Toole movie, which I rather like, called The Ruling Class. It's a satire on the British aristocracy. And for the first half of the movement, movie, Peter O'Toole, who's an aristocrat, is a really lovely Jesus like figure, and then he gets therapy. And in the second half of the movie, he's an absolute rotter.
Speaker 2:
So it's a as I say, it's a real satire. But in the first half of the movie, he actually thinks he's god. And, a journalist asks him on one occasion during this period, but how do you know that you are God? And Peter O'Toole says, well, it's easy, my dear. Whenever I find I'm praying, I find I'm talking to myself, he says.
Speaker 2:
Jesus in the garden wasn't talking to himself. The doctrine of the trinity helps us understand that Luke 22 narrative. It helps us understand why on the cross, as our representative and substitute, bearing the sin of the world, Jesus can cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The doctrine of the trinity of the one god who is father, son, and holy spirit helps us make sense of the biblical narrative, in particular, the story of Jesus. As Emil Brunner says, that way it becomes a protective doctrine.
Speaker 2:
When you start to ask questions about the gospel, when you learn the gospel, like I've just started to read the story of Jesus and it says in in Matthew 27 that he said, my god, my god, why have you forsaken me? But I thought you were telling me he was god incarnate. So how can that be? Well, that's when you need to talk in trinitarian terms to make sense of that story. Also, I think the doctrine of the trinity helps us understand that preeminent blessing of the gospel, as Jim Packer puts it.
Speaker 2:
Jim Packer, a well known theologian to many, says that the foundational blessing of the gospel is that we are justified people. We're not condemned in the divine court. We are forgiven people. We are acquitted people, but the preeminent blessing of the gospel is that we are the sons and daughters of the living God. We are adopted into the family of God.
Speaker 2:
And in Galatians chapter 4 and Romans 8, Paul tells us what that looks like. It means that through the spirit of Jesus now in our lives, when we call upon God as our father, we, as it were, join in his communion with the father. So we cry cry out, Abba, father, when we do so. Dear father. Because as it were, we're caught up in the very life and relationship of Jesus to his heavenly father because we are the adopted children of God.
Speaker 2:
The father is the one who orchestrated this. The spirit The the son is the one who achieved this and the spirit is the one who applies this to our lives. So in understanding our very salvation, we need to tell a story of the father, a story of the son, and a story of the holy spirit. In other words, to understand the benefits and privileges of being a child of god, you need to tell a trinitarian story. Well, let me suggest to you one further practical value of this, doctrine.
Speaker 2:
And this one well, maybe 2, actually. The first of these is more of an apologetic idea. I know I've gone, well, we started a bit later, didn't we? So I can keep raving on. One of the criticisms of religion is that, really, our view of god is simply a projection of ourselves on the blank canvas of the universe, in a universe that has no thought of us, in which we are simply products of blind chance, we're just the flotsam and jetsam of an irrational or non rational process.
Speaker 2:
But to comfort ourselves, we, as it were, like to think that there is a god who is just like us but beefed up on, as it were, celestial steroids. Now someone who argued that that is really what religion was about is a BC powered by the name of Xenophanes. He lived in the 6th 5th century BC in ancient Greece, and he said that if an ox could draw a god, it would draw an ox. He said the Thracians the Thracians have gods who are blue eyed and blonde haired. The Ethiopians have gods who are snub nosed and curly haired.
Speaker 2:
In other words, the gods are simply ourselves, writ large. That projection thesis these days got a new life or recently got a new life, if you look back from ex exonopoly's time to now. In the writings of a 19th century philosopher called Ludwig Feuerbach, who was actually a very major German philosopher, except he's really only known for one of his, aphorisms that you are what you eat. Imagine you're this major philosopher, but that's what you're known for. And he wrote a very important seminal work, as it were, developing what Exinoffini said.
Speaker 2:
That namely, all theology is really anthropology. We're just talking about ourselves writ large. And 2 major thinkers who took up this idea with debts to Feuerbach were Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. And that idea is around to this day. Just read your Richard Dawkins and your Christopher Hitchens and so on.
Speaker 2:
The gods the gods are just projections of ourselves because we can't be heroic enough to face the consequences of being in a natural natural order that has no concern or thought of ourselves. I think that's a very powerful critique. There are versions of Christianity that can't survive that critique, in my view. I think it's a critique, quite frankly, that Islam can't survive. As Ian Whitehead said, really, when you look at Allah, you're really looking at, as it were, a great sheik shake, just as it were writ large.
Speaker 2:
But trinity, what kind of projection is trinity? Because trinity is unique without any analogy. It seems to me that in the light of that sort of critique of religion, the doctrine of the trinity is particularly important. No human invention. And there's one further practical point I want to make, and this really is a practical point.
Speaker 2:
This is really an important point. The first thing to do in discipleship we would probably see these days, is to help people read their Bibles.
Speaker 3:
Now, of
Speaker 2:
course, that was only possible after the printing press was invented in 15th century. It's interesting that the first move that Jesus is asked to make is to teach disciples how to pray. So in Luke chapter 11 verses 1 to 4, the disciples come to Jesus and they say, teach us to pray. Now, here's the interesting thing. Just as John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray, the first move in discipleship is to help people relate to the God of the bible.
Speaker 2:
Of course, to read the bible, we're privileged because we have the printing press and we have bibles everywhere, even on your phones these days. But we can neglect, I think, the priority that in discipling that we see
Speaker 3:
in the gospels themselves, which is
Speaker 2:
to help people relate son, in reliance upon the spirit, just like we read in Romans 8 and and Galatians chapter 4. In other words, Christian praying is trinitarian in shape. And that shape is a crucial shape, because if we pray to the father in the name of the son through the spirit, what it does is encapsulate the gospel itself. Because at the heart of that practice of prayer is the mediatorship of Christ. What I'm afraid of in our churches is that we're actually teaching people a Unitarian way of relating to God.
Speaker 2:
Dear God, thank you. There's an ancient saying, lex arandi lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing. Your real theology shows in how you actually intentionally relate to god. And my question to you is whether you actually relate to god as though god is really trinity because that's what I find in my New Testament. Well, in sum then, I don't think this doctrine of the trinity is an embarrassment at all.
Speaker 2:
I think it's a great treasure, a great treasure for us. But I think there is one last thing that needs to be said. And what I wanna close with before we have our break is to give you some tools for thought. I want us to conduct a thought experiment. It's a rough time of night to conduct a thought experiment.
Speaker 2:
I'm I appreciate that. But I want to draw a distinction, this is one of the tools, between what is conceivable and what is imaginable, what is inconceivable, and what is unimaginable. I think a square circle is inconceivable. If you know what square means and circle means, it's nonsense. Can't draw a square circle on any whiteboard I know of.
Speaker 2:
A neutrino, as far as I understand, is a is a reality, but it's unimaginable. I have no picture in my head of a neutrino that's a subatomic particle. It's not nonsense, though. It's just unpicturable, unimaginable. I wanna suggest to you that our understanding of god as trinity is conceivable, but unimaginable, unpixurable.
Speaker 2:
Now let me illustrate. I can ask you to, with your mind's eye, as it were, imagine a four sided figure made out of matches. I think that's pretty easy to do. But then if I ask you to imagine a 3,000 and 7 sided figure made out of matches, I don't even know where to begin. But in actual fact, I could get that many matches and make it.
Speaker 2:
It's certainly conceivable. It's not nonsense, but it's unimaginable. I think many a Christian confuses the unimaginable with the inconceivable. I think Birkhoff did. I think Kant did.
Speaker 2:
I think Acthar did. Because you can't form a mental picture of God as Trinity, the one God in 3 persons, it's an easy jump to think that it's really incoherent and inconceivable. But it's not talking nonsense, logically speaking. We're not talking about 1 person in 3 persons or 1 god in 3 gods, but 1 god in 3 persons. The problem is a failure of imagination, not a failure in logic.
Speaker 2:
But people, I think, confuse the 2, and there's many a Christian, I think, who think secretly they're being asked to believe something that's nonsense when they hear people talk about the trinity. But not so. You're asked to believe something that is simply unpicturable, which means that I know of no illustration of the trinity that it's not a heresy. The trinity is like, water. It can be ice.
Speaker 2:
It can be liquid. It can be a gas. Well, that's the ancient heresy of modalistic monarchianism, another great term for your Friday night dinner party. Because liquid, gas, and ice, at the same time, eternally, No. You moved from one state to the other.
Speaker 2:
I heard of another one recently, and that is the trinity. Well, think of the oneness as as it were the source of the river and then it branches off into 3 streams of father, son, and holy spirit. Well, that's the ancient heresy of Marcellianism from Marcellus of Ancyra. Because the simple fact of the matter, friends, is the only god there is is unpicturable. No wonder we're to make no idols of this god.
Speaker 2:
But this god is conceivable. Yes. The trinity is a mystery. But as such not inconceivable, but simply and profoundly and importantly unimaginable. Otherwise, why not think we just made it up ourselves?
Speaker 2:
And with that, I'll end.
Joel Brooks:
Alright. We're gonna take a 10 minute break. We have a sign up sheet outside.
Speaker 2:
Is there a question from the floor? Thank you. Thank you. The question is, I was heard to say that to try and come up with any analogy, illustration of the holy spirit will lead to heresy. So, where does that, in effect, leave us?
Speaker 2:
Can we say nothing? Actually, I wasn't talking about the Holy Spirit. I was actually talking about the trinity. The trinity. Myself, I would say what we need to stress is that the only god there is is unique and without analogy because that's where we do see the greatness of god.
Speaker 2:
And then we can add, but to communicate with us, god the trinity did the unimaginable. And that is the second person of the trinity, as it were, became the visibility of god. So that as one archbishop of Canterbury, AM Ramsey, put it, in god, there is no unchristlikeness at all. So if I wanna know what god is like in character, I study Jesus, for example. But when it comes to the doctrine of god as trinity, I think it's important to stress the uniqueness of the god we believe in.
Speaker 2:
That god is no invention of ours, no projection of ours. We're dealing with someone who's really there. Is that addressing your question? Thank you. Okay.
Speaker 2:
The question is about, Islam. There is a way of trying to reach, Muslim folk, especially in Muslim lands called the insider movement that tries to embrace as much of the cultural expression of Islam in a particular setting as one can without betraying the Christian faith. And one of the stumbling blocks in many a Muslim country is when Bible translations, use the language of Son of God which you find obviously in the Greek New Testament but rings all the wrong sort of bells in a Muslim's mind because of this very crass, literalistic way of understanding father language and son language, which to them means that Jesus must be, as far as Christians are concerned, the biological offspring of god and an actual woman, which is blasphemous and unthinkable. What is the way forward here? That's a very deep question and I may have to think further on it to really give a a a better answer than one just off the top of my head.
Speaker 2:
But here's the one off the top of my head. That is to say, when you're trying to introduce, people with very little background to say the bible, sometimes we put, a paraphrase into their hands. That's not the sort of Bible you'd really want to study and become a teacher of the church on the basis of it. The message by Eugene Peterson would be a good example. An earlier generation, it was JB Phillips' paraphrase of the New Testament.
Speaker 2:
The original living Bible would be yet another one, for example. As a jumping in place, helpful. But to go on to maturity, you've gotta go into the scriptures that are, as it were, better translated and more rigorously translated. Now it may be in those, cultures you use a different expression than son of God as the entry point until you've had enough time to teach people what it really means in the New Testament so that those misunderstandings have dropped away. Does that address your question?
Speaker 2:
That would be my practical strategy there. Thank you. The question is, do you think that the Islamic understanding of the trinity, especially father, son and the Virgin Mary, for example, comes out of the kind of Christianity that Mohammed met in the Arabian Peninsula in the first part of 7th century. I think so indeed. He came across, rather debased kinds of Christian expression And in fact, he seems to have lived at a time when the cult of the Virgin Mary was very strong, Statues of Mary, etcetera etcetera.
Speaker 2:
And to all intents and purposes, what you would see in Christians was talk about father and son but statues of the Virgin Mary, etcetera. It would be easily then, easy to make the jump that Christians were in effect tri theists and idolaters. So I think the kind of Christianity that Mohammed, rejected is the kind of Christianity I would reject myself. But I must say I'm not too keen on the alternative that he presents. Does that come to grips with your question?
Collin Hansen:
Do you find or do you believe that in scripture there's a hierarchy to the trainer himself?
Speaker 2:
Do I believe that there is a hierarchy in the trinity itself? I would not use the language of hierarchy, within the trinity. Although, there are some theologians who talk these days about the father has more honor and majesty than the son and the son has more honor and majesty than the spirit. I I think that language, lends itself to great misunderstanding. That is to say, if I was an ancient Aryan that would be language that I'd be very comfortable with.
Speaker 2:
So I would rather talk, and I know it's pretty abstract talk, I would rather talk about the asymmetries in the trinity, and that is the way the father relates to the son and the way the son relates to the father is, technically speaking, an asymmetrical, relationship. What would be a a contrast? The way 2 brothers are brothers is a symmetrical relationship. 1 is the brother of the other or the sister of the other, etcetera. But father and son can't be reversed.
Speaker 2:
Otherwise, the words lose their meaning. But that doesn't bring in questions of hierarchy. It's a it's a way of making a distinction. It's interesting that the early Christians who wrestled with the doctrine of the trinity right up until well, right quite frankly, right up until the, Middle Ages up to Aquinas, they didn't try to understand the differences between father, son and spirit in in terms of differences in function and role but differences in origin and relation. So I just think we have to be careful these days to avoid the language of hierarchy because I think it'll ring the wrong bells.
Speaker 2:
Does that address your question? The question is that, I accented, the oneness of, of God. Indeed, I did because what I was actually doing was following the biblical plot line. The first thing that god establishes through revelation is his oneness uniqueness. It's only when a people understands that that the threeness comes into the story.
Speaker 2:
First things first. But if there is only one god, how come his people seem to be so, as it were, conflicted and fragmented, which I think is the heart of your question. Especially as in John 17, Jesus prayed for the oneness of the church. Well, let me just say that as far as I know, unity is an apostolic value. It's not only in Jesus' prayer in John 17.
Speaker 2:
It's in 1 Corinthians 12 and the body life that Paul wanted at Corinth. It's in Ephesians chapter 4 and what, Paul wants to see in the church. But oneness doesn't necessarily mean uniformity. Especially a practice and cultural expression. One reason I know that is that if you look carefully at the way Jerusalem Christianity developed as far as the testimony of the new testament is concerned and the way the churches of Paul in the non Jewish world developed, they actually developed very differently as far as their practices were concerned, but they embraced the same gospel.
Speaker 2:
And Paul had a wonderful way of capturing it. In Galatians, he talks about the right hand of fellowship. What I think we should be seeking is the right hand of fellowship with those who love the Lord and believe his gospel. Even though the way we practice the faith may be expressed culturally in different ways. Does this make some kind of sense?
Speaker 2:
I like what John Chrysostom, that bishop of Constantinople, the so called golden mouth he died in 409. I just really remember when people die, it's easier because they usually are born in 1 century and die in another. It's easy just to say they died in 409. Well, this great creature said, in the essentials unity, in the non essentials liberty, and in all things charity. I think if we simply embrace that, it would make a huge difference on the ground.
Speaker 2:
Thank you. The question is that, it's about the the nature, if you like, of the personalities of the father, son and spirit. Especially looking at the father and son, The thoughts of the son, they simply, as it were, mirroring the thoughts of the father. This is a very deep question and here, I think we need to bring in, a notion that I like to call dogmatic rank. That is to say, there are some things that are so clear in the scripture that they should be convictions of ours.
Speaker 2:
Jesus is lord. He's risen from the dead. Without that, it's hard to understand how I can be any kind of Christian. But there are other theological claims that are are more at the level of theological opinion. Like some of my friends are comfortable with the language of hierarchy and the trinity and I'm not.
Speaker 2:
I prefer asymmetrical. Neither word is in the Bible. And I would argue my case, but I see it as another level. And there are still other ideas that are very speculative theological ideas. When it comes to your very good question, I run out of revelatory data very quickly.
Speaker 2:
That is I run out of bible. So I'd have to float a theological speculation at this point. I do find that scripture talks about the mind of God, the mind of Christ and the mind of the spirit interestingly enough. We do know that, Christ has his own will, for example. Look at the prayer in the garden.
Speaker 2:
But to try and reconstruct as it were the psychology of trinity, I think only the trinity can actually do it. So I don't even have a theological theory as a speculation to offer at this point. So, I'm afraid I can't help you beyond that except to say that that idea of dogmatic rank is really important because I I think it's very hard to think theologically without some such idea. The question is, we give up our projections. Yes.
Speaker 2:
I think we should. We should let the biblical testimony discipline our understanding of who god is. And when we run out of scriptural testimony, then we need to say of something that's being paraded before us. It may be a candidate for reality. It may be true, but I don't know how from scripture to decide that it is true.
Speaker 2:
Okay. The question is that if you look back over a couple of 1000 years of church history, some as it were, one person of the trinity seems to be at the forefront, rather than another person of the trinity, rather than another person of the trinity, say, in evangelical bible believing circles on that? Well, that's a very good question. Has anyone got an answer? But it's an empirical question.
Speaker 2:
That is to say, I would actually have to do a survey of churches to see what what was the emphasis, in that particular denomination or church at this time. Now obviously, the Pentecostal charismatic churches and fellowships have an accent on the Holy Spirit, by definition. But having said that, there are some churches that I know of, in reaction to the Charismatics and Pentecostals, that in effect have a binitarianism. Then he talk about the father and the son. In fact, as one Pentecostal friend of mine said to me when I was lecturing at Moore Theological College in Sydney, are you people at Moore, you've changed that benediction at the end of 2 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 14.
Speaker 2:
Remember I read it out as one of the scriptures? The grace of our lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. It says, you've changed it to the grace of our lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the holy scriptures, as though we've left the spirit out altogether. What I think happens contextually is that, we do need to see what may be missing in our congregation and understanding. And contextually, that may mean bringing our doctrine of Christ, our Christology to the fore, our doctrine of the spirit, our new metrology to the fore, but always within the framework of a solid Trinitarian understanding of God.
Speaker 2:
One thing I will say is I think the practice of just praying to God, amen, or to Jesus, amen, or to the spirit, amen, lends itself to a Unitarianism of the father or a Unitarianism of the son or a Unitarianism of the spirit. And I think that is spiritually, dangerous. Does that there's that. Thank you.
Speaker 3:
You talked about the the beauty of the trinity is the fact that there's not just one God that exists. Like, there's, like, inherently a relationship love between the 3 of them, why was there a need for a creation if there was that relationship there with love? The
Speaker 2:
question is if there was this love within the divine trinity, it always has been, why a creation? I think it's an excellent question. Scripture doesn't address it. So what I'm going to give you is a theological opinion at this point. So I'm going to employ this notion of dogmatic rank.
Speaker 2:
My theological opinion is that god did not god the trinity did not have to create. We need not be. As, one theologian put it, TF Torrance, the bible presents a contingent dualism. The creator needed didn't have had a creation and therefore not had to be creator as trinity. The very fact that there is a creation is a grace.
Speaker 2:
It means that god in freedom has done something that god did not have to do. The theological way of capturing that is to say that god has created ex nihilo. He's created from nothing as an act of divine freedom and grace as opposed to ex materia, that god has always existed as a kind of semi demigod whose fashions some kind of material reality that has always existed too. Plato seems to have had that idea of god, and technically, a god becomes what's called a demiurge, not the grand god of the bible. And that's to be distinguished from ex deo, That what creation is is some overflow from the very being of God so that everything as it were is divine in some sense.
Speaker 2:
Emanationism. Over against that, the biblical presentation is of creatio ex nihilo, a god who creates out of nothing. He didn't have to do it. The way that's pictured in Genesis 1 is surprising. We'd miss it unless we knew ancient Near Eastern literature.
Speaker 2:
Genesis 1 would read like other ancient Near Eastern literature if in Genesis 1 2, it says the spirit of god touched the waters. If it says the spirit of god touched the waters rather than hover over the waters, you would have emanationism. It would be Babylonian, Sumerian, Egyptian, Assyrian. But the very fact that by the time you finish Genesis 1, the creator and the creature are quite distinct is a revolutionary understanding of God and God's related relation to creation. Okay.
Speaker 2:
The question is, I've said not how not to pray. So how to pray? Well, being an Anglican, I use a prayer book. Not exclusively. But if you're shaped by a liturgical church, you cannot help but pray in trinitarian terms because it's there from the beginning of a service to the end as well as in the creed.
Speaker 2:
So what happens in a liturgical church if you're actually a believer? Many people in liturgical churches don't have to be, of course. But if you're actually a believer, you actually pick up the practice of praying from what's been shaping you week in week out. And so for me, it's a natural thing to pray to the father, to pray in the name of Jesus, which simply may mean in the character of Jesus or in a way that, honors, Jesus, and to know that you're relying on the spirit to do so. I just find that comes that language comes very naturally.
Speaker 2:
And so, in fact, I didn't know whether it would be appropriate tonight or not, but I was gonna start with the, prayer for Trinity Sunday. So it actually start with a Trinitarian prayer, But I didn't know whether that would go with the caffeine tonight. So I left that out. So in other words, your church is gonna have a shaping influence. Now if you're in a church that's not liturgical, it means that the pastor in the pastoral prayer has a particular responsibility to pray in a trinitarian fashion because that's where people will pick up how to engage with God.
Speaker 2:
Is that making some kind of, sense? So I'm privileged in a way. It's just You're pretty thick, are you? You must be an Australian too. Thick as a brick.
Speaker 2:
Okay. That's a good one. If I'm praying for if I'm praying for a friend who's not a Christian, how might you pray?
Joel Brooks:
How would you pray?
Speaker 2:
I'd say, father Joe Blow, as far as I know, he doesn't know you. He doesn't prize Jesus as he should, as his lord. I ask that by your spirit, you may give him such a hunger and a thirst that only Christ can satisfy. And so I'm talking about the father, son and spirit in the narrative of my prayer.
Speaker 3:
Do you ever pray directly to Jesus and to the spirit?
Speaker 2:
Do I ever pray directly to Jesus and to the spirit is the question. The overwhelming testimony of, the New Testament is prayer to the father. But there are prayers to Jesus. Stephen prayed to Jesus in Acts 7, In 1 Corinthians 12, when it talks about all who call on the name of the Lord, the churches seems to be the Lord Jesus. There's a prayer at the end of 1 Corinthians 16, Matanatha in Aramaic, which is our lord come.
Speaker 2:
At the end of, Revelation 22, the spirit and the church are praying, come, lord Jesus. So we also have examples of prayer to Jesus. There are no examples of prayer to the spirit in scripture. Origin recognized that in the 2nd 3rd century. But we know from first principles that prayer can be rightly addressed to god.
Speaker 2:
So, clearly, you can pray to the father and the son and the spirit. But having said that, if we really observe scripture, not just as our message book but as our method book, then the overwhelming way we should pray, it seems to me, is to the father as I've suggested. That doesn't mean there aren't occasions when prayer to the spirit of the son may be quite contextually appropriate. But I think if prayer to Jesus was our main way of praying or prayer to the spirit was our main way of praying, I think we would distort the way the gospel is structured into praying in the New Testament. Does that address your question?
Speaker 3:
So you talked about praying to each one, and, you also talked about What about the roles of the father's unclean spirit? That's kind of an interesting topic. Could you talk about that for just a minute? About when you when you are praying, what are the roles of those
Speaker 2:
I say the the question is, when I'm praying, what are the roles of father, son and spirit? I think that's your the essence of your question. Okay. Well, we pray to the father in heaven, knowing that in heaven we have the son praying for us as we pray as our great high priest as far as Hebrews is concerned and knowing that on earth the spirit is praying in us to the father. So when you put that together, say Matthew 6 in the Lord's prayer, our father in heaven.
Speaker 2:
When you put together Hebrews chapter 4 and Jesus is our great high priest who and it goes on to say in Hebrews, whoever lives to intercede for us And you put together Romans chapter 8 and the spirit is within us, as it were articulating the things that we just we just can't put into words. That is how I think I'd approach it in terms of bringing those 3 biblical testimonies into conversation with one another. And that brings me to another point. One reason why I think scripture doesn't doesn't have us examples of praying to the spirit. If the spirit is praying within us to God, to the father, then to direct our prayers to the spirit is to turn our gaze inside ourselves.
Speaker 2:
As GK Chesterton said, if Jones starts praying to the guardian Jones, it won't be long before Jones is praying to Jones. So maybe that's one reason why we don't see that practice in the New Testament. The question is the problems that Jehovah's Witnesses have with Christians talking about Jesus as God, Mary as the mother of God, how on the cross God died. How could we put that in a way that would, communicate, to anyone or to the Jehovah's Witness? Well, let's start with the Jehovah's Witness and then move to anyone.
Speaker 2:
With the Jehovah's Witness, I think the line of of questioning ought to be different. And that is I would I would turn to 1 John 5 which where John says, I've written this that you may know that you have eternal life. And I would say to a Jehovah's Witness, do you know you have eternal life? Because that's what the scripture says. There's a whole letter written that you might know that.
Speaker 2:
A Jehovah's Witness, in terms of Jehovah's Witness theology, cannot say that. That's why you gotta work so hard as a Jehovah's Witness, to make sure you really get into that heavenly reality. So I think the key with a cultist like that is the question of assurance. Once you if you're just talking about the technicalities of bible translation, they're schooled in that. Some of it is so unconvincing, you've got to keep a straight face.
Speaker 2:
Like in John chapter 2028, Thomas, before the risen Christ says, my Lord and my God. Well, in terms of the whole argument of, John, that's climactic. That's the confession that John's gospel is written to elicit from the reader. But a Jehovah's Witness says, oh, he just says he sees the risen Christ and says, my Lord, my God. Like it's, yeah, stone the crows, is a good Australian expression.
Speaker 2:
And interestingly enough, that's how that's how a a Muslim would understand, but it misses the whole point of the of the document. So you get caught up in those arcane, discussions. I think my father-in-law did it brilliantly. A Jehovah's Witness came to his door. I was converted through my father in law's preaching of the cross.
Speaker 2:
So, he was a lay preacher of the gospel. Anyway, the Jehovah's Witness was trying to convince my father-in-law to become a Jehovah's Witness and do all the works that a Jehovah's Witness does to please Jehovah. And my father-in-law said, well, what about the thief on the cross? What what could he do? He only could say is, Lord, remember me when I you come into my kingdom.
Speaker 2:
The Jehovah's Witness thought for a moment and said, but he only got as far as paradise, to which dad said, that'll do me. Now people in general people in general again, Christian love is person specific. You start where that person is. And therefore, I can't really give you a formula at this point. I think what we do is what Aquila and Priscilla does do in Acts chapter 18, and they find Apollos who has some things right but not enough.
Speaker 2:
He just understands John the Baptist's theology. So they take him aside and try to explain the way of Christ more carefully. So I think that's what we do with faith, and try to find fresh ways of, putting the same idea. That's the biblical idea. How should discipleship look today in light of what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:
I think we should be, helping people engage with God in prayer that's trinitarian in shape. And then after a while, you can say, you know how we pray in this way? When you think about it, the theology that we're assuming here is the the classic theology of the church, that there's one god who's father, son, and holy spirit. In other words, our practices makes our theology makes sense of our practices at this point. So that may be one way into it.
Speaker 2:
But also we'd seek to ground people in the scriptural testimony, starting, I would hope, with one of the gospels. So we're actually encountering Jesus as he comes before us in the gospel testimony. But I do think that we need to recover the practice of teaching people to pray as part and parcel of that discipling. See, it's interesting in Acts chapter 6 when those apostles were saying, look, we need some people to wait on tables because we are being diverted from our apostolic ministry. You know how they summed that ministry up?
Speaker 2:
It was a ministry of prayer and the word. Post printing press, we've just made it a ministry of the word, it seems to me. It's interesting in 1 Timothy, when Paul writes to, Timothy, the first thing he wants to see at Ephesus is in chapter 2, which is prayer. It's in chapter 4 he says to Timothy, give attention to the public reading of scripture and your exhortation of preaching. It's not an either or, by the way.
Speaker 2:
But I think we need to retrieve something here.
Speaker 3:
So along with their parents, we've got a room full of people who kind of understand the Trinity, kind of don't understand the Trinity. When you're teaching the children, do you have any advice about how to go about, you know, people that don't have abstract thinking yet, to fairly handle the
Speaker 2:
Okay. The question is about our children. What do we do with our children, especially, say, teaching them to relate to God in prayer? Well, it's a very deep question. I think that first because it's so existentially freighted, because we all want so much for our kids, don't we, as Christian parents.
Speaker 2:
I think the first thing is, actually, you pray Christianly, and have your children hear you pray Christianly. Some people think that what we should be and look, I'm prepared for people to take issue with this. What we should have in our homes is that as it were a mini seminary. And so what we do is we teach an understanding of God that would be suitable for a 5 year old, then a 7 year old, then a 9 year old, then a 12 year old, then a 15 year old, then an 18 year old, and so on. I've never seen it work.
Speaker 2:
As I say, the Bible is actually not a child centered book, interestingly enough. They are addressed in Ephesians 6. Children obey your parents. So they are part of congregational life. There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 2:
But, they're not, as it were, front and center. Now I puzzled over this as a parent with young children and quite frankly, I was stumped because, Jules and I, we had devotions at one stage and they were terrible. Because so often the books you used were simplistic rather than simple. And what's the difference? If something's simple, the more you learn, the more you see that what you read or was taught stands up.
Speaker 2:
The structure and the content, you can elaborate, you can expand, but it stands up. If it's simplistic, it breaks down the more you know. And so teaching some of the stuff that, we tried to use was simplistic. It would break down over time. And then I read a book by John Westerhoff the 3rd, a very little book called, Will Our Children Have Faith?
Speaker 2:
He's an educator, Christian educator. And he made the point is that the key is that you have faith. You demonstrate faith. You practice faith. And that is you're the person you're the persons praying in your house and your children are part of of that.
Speaker 2:
And as for their own relating to God, I would probably start with God as father. At times, it would be dear Jesus, but it's in the context of my being a prayerful person. Does that make some kind of sense? That's where I think it's really got to start. That book is still available.
Speaker 2:
Will Our Children Have Faith? John Westerhoff the 3rd. Okay. The question being asked is, it's really about the Christian life. Is the Christian life the, imitation of the trinity because that who is who God is?
Speaker 2:
Or is the Christian life about the imitation of, Christ as such? That's a really interesting, question because the idea of imitating the way the father, son, and spirit relate to one another has become quite popular in evangelical circles. And it's applied to, you know, some applied to society, some applied to the church, some applied to marriage, raising children, and so on. Let me say this. And, again, I've got good friends who'd, disagree with me on this.
Speaker 2:
My observation is that at the heart of a Christian ethic is not the imitation of the internal life of the trinity. The heart of the Christian ethic is the imitation of Christ. And so, for example, in Philippians 2:5 to 11, when Paul is trying to motivate the Philippians to be other person centered, he doesn't write about be like Christ has always been in relation to the father. Instead, he tells the story of the gospel, of how Christ's other person centered us meant that he didn't, as it were, get fixated on his own interests, but for our interests, humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on the cross. John chapter 13, Jesus taught the imitation of himself in the foot washing.
Speaker 2:
1 John 2 tells us we should walk as he, that is Jesus, walked. When Peter is talking to slaves facing unjust masters, he talks about how Jesus handled himself in his suffering. So over and over again, we find that it's the imitation of Christ. Paul says forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven you. My point is there's a a current trend of trying to reconstruct the inner life of the trinity and apply it to today's, social questions they can leave the evangel or gospel behind.
Speaker 2:
Whereas the way the New Testament writers actually motivated Christians is by telling the story of the gospel imitation of Christ is the heart of a Christian ethic. In fact, I cannot think of one New Testament verse that is an imperative, a commandment that's based on the inner life of the trinity. Not one. I remember I had a debate with one of my friends, Don Carson, on this and I asked him to show me such a verse. I'm still waiting.
Speaker 2:
These are really good questions. Okay. How would you articulate the trinity in, say, presenting the gospel to people since we talk so much about the gospel? Is that really what you're Yeah. So that it's not just Unitarian.
Speaker 2:
I I have an answer, but it's in Russian. We've gotta make a distinction between the autoacendi and the auto cognoskendi, the order of being and the order of knowing. The only god there is is the trinity. But that's not how Genesis 1 1 starts. In the beginning, god the father, son, and Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:
No. The order of cog order of cognizant, the order of getting to know something could be different to what's logically the order. And so we find that in the Old Testament, God's people had to learn there's only one God before they could learn about the threeness in the New Testament. So the order of sending and the order of cognizantee don't need to be the same. Likewise, in presenting the gospel, we will present the gospel of Jesus as Lord.
Speaker 2:
But the logical order is we'd go into the world and preach the trinity and what the trinity has done in Christ, father, son, and spirit. But that's a good example of where the order of knowing and the logical order aren't necessarily the same. So, where I would start with preaching the gospel is I would learn from the book of Acts. So in, Peter's preaching to Jews, he could start way down the track on the expectation of the Messiah and the Messiah's coming and the hope of the spirit in the end times. But when Paul is talking to those, pagan idolaters and intellectuals on Mars Hill, he has to give them a lesson in 101 Old Testament, God as creator, before he eventually gets to Jesus as the one raised from the dead.
Speaker 2:
So the orde cognoskendi is person specific because that's the nature of Christian love. We need to start where they are in terms of what part of the gospel we articulate. Is that, is that a helpful way forward? And we can't do it in a in a in a formulaic way that is not person sensitive and context sensitive, it seems to me. Because that's what we read in the book of Acts, for example.
