Thursday, May 30, 2013

Three in One?


John 14:15-21:15 “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be[c] in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”



I am terrible at math. I am forever envious of those like my younger brother that are like human calculators! However, I often tell people that I knew theology was going to be my wheelhouse upon discovering that, in Christian Theology, 1+1+1=1! This past Sunday was Trinity Sunday and I decided to post some musings on the doctrine that Alan Bevere appropriately says is not an appendix to our doctrine of God but IS our doctrine of God (http://www.allanbevere.com/2013/05/the-trinity-is-not-appendix-to.html)!

In this post I will deal with three different aspects of this reveled mystery (get it? Three aspects one post, a Trinitarian blog post about a Trinitarian God! Yeah, I'm about as subtle as a sledge hammer.). I will first deal with the philosophical aspect then the theological aspect and conclude with the practical aspect.

First, the philosophical aspect of the Trinity. 

Before even diving into the Trinity in general I think it is important to acknowledge the fact of God's incomprehensibility. Put differently  we will never be able to completely comprehend God. Anyone who puts very much thought into the concept of God will have to admit this. We are finite, time and space bound, creatures. God is not bound by space and time and is, therefore, beyond our full comprehension. Some of my contemporaries have taken this truth and made the incorrect assumption that God is therefore unknowable. Therefore, they reason, all expressions of God are equally valid.

This is, at it's core, faulty reasoning. I am beyond the comprehension of  my puppies. Does that mean that they cannot 'know' me. Of course not! I have made myself knowable to them. By training them, loving them, and feeding them I have enabled them to know me as their master. In the same way, God loves us enough to reveal Himself to us even though He knows we are unable to fully understand Him. I, for one, think it is an excellent complement God has paid us by revealing Himself to us so much so that we can know Him but not fully comprehend Him. In other words, I like the fact that God, in His very essence, reminds us that He is God and we are not.

So, does this get us off the hook for trying to understand the Trinity to the best of our ability? Because you can tell this is not the end of the blog you have probably already guessed that the answer is no. The technical term for the objection normally raised over this doctrine is that it breaks the law of noncontradiction. This is a classical philosophical law which states that two contradictory things cannot be true. For example I cannot be both married and a bachelor, the terms are mutually exclusive. People use this law every time they cross a busy street. As Ravi Zacharias famously said, "Even in India we look both ways before we cross the street. It is not me and the bus it is me or the bus." The critique against the Christian doctrine of God is that we are stating that is one and three at the same time. If something is one it cannot also be three and visa versa.

This critique would be devastating if Christians were claiming that God is three AND one but we don't we are claiming that God is three IN one. This may seem like a mere semantical difference at first but the difference between "and" and "in" is the difference between heresy and orthodoxy. As Christians we claim that God is one in essence and three in persons. To say that has multiple essences is called Tri-theism and to claim that God is only one distinct person is called Modalism. Put differently, when it comes to God's essence He is always one, never three. Likewise in God's personhood He is always there, never one.

For example it was not the Father or the Spirit that was crucified God the Son was crucified for our sins. In terms of essence the Spirit is not 'lesser' than the Son and Father but co-eternal with them. One way the one essence nature of the Trinity plays out is that all three members of the Trinity always act together for one purpose. For example, the Father, sends the Son to reconcile the world back to Himself through the power of the Spirit. This is not the only aspect of God's oneness. If it were we would slip intro modalism.

Is this just theological jargon designed to talk around the question? Absolutely not, I am simply attempting to frame the discussion properly. In terms of philosophical comprehension I think the best we can do is use analogies. Now, before diving into my favorite analogy I have a disclaimer. No analogy is perfect! I think this one is very helpful in our comprehension, but I am sure, if taken too far, it would commit some form of heresy. As I said before God is beyond our comprehension.

Having said that, this analogy comes from Augustine and I find it helpful. We have one mind in three parts, memory, desire, and will. We do not have three minds and our memory, desires, and will are all distinct. Also, these three aspects of our mind never act alone but as one essence. For example, imagine a child who accidentally puts his or her hand on a hot stove. It the heat would hurt them. The next time the child approaches a hot stove his or her memory will remind the desire of the pain. The desire does not like pain so it tells the will not to touch the burner. So the child pulls his or her hand away instinctively. In the same way just as the Son prays to the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit. One God three persons in communication and relationship.

The second aspect is the theological aspect of the Trinity.

I have often told people that the Trinity solves more problems than it causes. If God is not triune there seems to be at least two other options. There are multiple gods or God is a modatic or singular entity. There are theological problems with both of these.

If God is not one than He can be divided. In other words, in some ways, capricious gods like those of  ancient Greece or Rome. These 'gods' are really not God in the since that the Christian means anyway. What I mean by this is that the Roman and Greek gods are exactly what we would expect if humans made up gods. They are exactly what we would expect because they are merely powerful humans.  There power is great but limited. They can be tricked, so they are not omniscient, they are only in one place so they are not omnipresent, and they defeated by other gods so they are not omnipotent.

The other alternative is a more modatic or unitarian understanding of God. This is the concept that Muslims hold to. The difficulty with this understanding of God is that, before creation, God was not loving because there was no one to be loving toward. Put differently God created us so that He could be loving, so that he could be sovereign, or because he was lonely. I am sure there are other explanations of why a non-triune God would create the universe but it is not the same reason our Trinitarian God has.

A Trinitarian understanding of God gives another reason for creation, and meaning for life. The Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit has always been in loving relationship within Himself, even before the creation. In other words, in Christian theology we have a love preceding creation understanding. The reason God created the universe is not because He was lonely, or needed someone to be sovereign over. Instead, the nature of true love reached out to a beloved outside of itself. This is why husbands and wife, instinctively, desire to have children. The loving relationship between them literally reaches out to a beloved outside of themselves. This is probably the most dramatic example of the image of God within us.

Beyond creation, the Trinitarian God is loving community in essence that invites us in. Thus in 14 Jesus was inviting us into relationship with the ground of all that is real when saying that He "will not leave us as orphans," (18). Our heavenly Father sends His Son on a mission to reconcile a broken and hurting world back to Himself and we have the privilege of becoming apart of this mission and relationship by the power of the Holy Spirit!

The final aspect is the practical aspect of the Trinity.

Now we have finally arrived at the 'so what' portion of the blog. Why do we bother with this doctrine if it causes us to go into so much explanation and confusion? The first answer is because it is how God has reveals Himself to us in scripture and is therefore true. However, there is a practical aspect to this doctrine. An aspect that makes this doctrine not only one that we must hold on to with our heads but also with our hearts!

In Genesis God creates us in His image (see Genesis 1:17). The implications of this go far beyond this post but the one I want to focus on is what does it mean to be made in the image of a God that is Trinity. The Trinity shows us that God is loving relationship, in His very essence. In the same way, we are beings designed for loving relationship. That is why we cannot be Lone Ranger Christians! Our spiritual lives are not meant to be lived out in an individualistic way but in the midst of community. This community is called the church.

Another practical implication of the Trinity is the nature of mission and ministry. We, as Christians, are not on our own mission empowered by our own strength and this mission is not dictated to us by the world. Instead we are continuing Christ's mission the He was sent on from the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit for the sake of the world!

This means that our opinions are irrelevant when it comes to how to run the ministry we have been given. Instead, it is Christ's mission and the way we live it out needs to be consistent with His Lordship. Likewise the many loyalties and wants of the world tearing at us are irrelevant to how we ought to do ministry. Instead, what is critical are the needs of the world as they are given to us by the Father. Finally, our efforts are not mere human efforts but they are empowered by the Holy Spirit. Dr. Steve Semands says that ministry:
demands more than our best, more than anything we have to offer. To participate in the ongoing ministry of Jesus, to do what the Father is doing, we must be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Much more, of course could be said. However I will close this post with a Trinitarian question. How can we allow the Holy Spirit to empower and change us in order that we might engage in Christ's mission from the Father so that we might help to bring a hurting and lost world back to its loving Creator?

2 comments:

  1. Good discussion of a difficult topic.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you very much. I hope you found it helpful!

      Blessings,
      Pastor Bill

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