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Tag: trinity

Published on Leave a comment on Self-giving is absolute reality

[I]n self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm of all creation and of all being. For the Eternal Word gives Himself in mortal sacrifice; and that not only on Calvary. For when He was crucified on Calvary He did that in the wild weather of His outlying provinces what He had done at home in glory and gladness. From before the foundation of the world, Christ surrenders begotten Deity back to begetting Deity, in obedience. And as the Son glorifies the Father, so also the Father glorifies the Son. ...From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes the more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so forever. This is not a... law which we can escape... What is outside the system of self-giving is... simply and solely Hell... that fierce imprisonment in the self... Self-giving is absolute reality.

C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, ch 10, p157
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Read it and weep.
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Published on Leave a comment on Great links

I know I still have a couple of posts on the Piper quote to write.  I'll get to that...

Have you noticed the recent addition to my sidebar?  You can read some recommended posts I've found helpful or at least provocative.

They all seem to be by Peter Leithart.  How did that happen?  Simple.  He writes far and away the most interesting stuff.  And it makes me wonder what the rest of us are playing at...

Anyway - of particular interest to me recently has been his blogging on Athanasius and especially how we must conceive of the divine attributes in thoroughly Trinitarian ways. (e.g. here or here on 'the dependent God')

Athanasius argued that the Son was and is the Wisdom of the Father eternally so, such that the Father without the Son would not be wise.  Athanasius is so sure of this logic that he uses it as an argument against the Arians.  The argument goes like this - The Son is the Wisdom of the Father, the Father has never been without wisdom, therefore the Son is eternal.  Good argument huh?

But do you see the assumptions?  It does not assume that each Person has each attribute 'in Himself' considered apart from the Others.  Rather they possess each attribute because they possess each other.

Leithart puts it like this:

Does the Father have wisdom “in Himself”? Yes, because the Wisdom that is the Son dwells in Him  by the Spirit.  Does the Father possess His being “in Himself”?  Yes, because the Son is the fullness of His deity, and the Son indwells Him through the Spirit.  Vice versa: Does the Son have wisdom considered in Himself?  Yes, because what is “in Himself” is the fact that the Father dwells in Him in the Spirit, so that His existence “in Himself” is His existence as the Son indwelt by the Father.

And so on.

This allows us to speak of Father and Son distinctly; it also makes it clear that the Father is not Himself except as He has and is indwelt by His Son, nor is the Son Himself except as He has and is indwelt the Father.

Halden picks up on these thoughts in this stimulating post on Trinity and attributes.

It's stuff I tried to argue a while back in these two diagrams

Another brilliant Leithart post is here on Gethsemane - Christ crushed that the oil of His anointing Spirit might spread to the world.

And you can't beat the Old Adam doing what he does best here - offering the gospel in all its beautiful and stark freedom.

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Published on Leave a comment on Avoiding a fourth [Thawed out Thursday]

No (good) trinitarian theologian wants to have a fourth thing - a divine substance considered apart from the Three Persons.  But it's important to be aware that this error (effectively having a quaternity) has two versions.  There is a vulgar quaternity and a more insidious one.

The vulgar one looks like this:

Oneness and Threeness 1

Here is the "shamrock" trinity - three bits growing out of an underlying stuff.  In practice this is, roughly, how many unthinkingly view the trinity.  Such a vulgar quaternity is rightly rejected by theologians.  It can be seen immediately that the 'Godness of God' is considered at a completely different level to the three Persons in their roles and relations.  What makes God God is fundamentally impersonal attributes that may be expressed in the Persons but not constituted by their mutual inter-play.  So we can safely reject this version of things.

But I find that many theologians, having rejected the vulgar quaternity, congratulate themselves prematurely.  There is also the insidious quaternity to be dealt with.  There is another way of having a fourth...

Oneness and Threeness 2

Fundamentally this error consists in conceiving of the one God separately to a consideration of the three Persons in communion.  Recently I read a theologian say "God is both one and three - both a person and a community."  This is an example of the insidious quaternity.  One-ness and Three-ness are laid side by side to uphold a belief in the equal ultimacy of one and three.  Yet the one-ness of God is conceived of as a uni-personal one-ness - that is, it is separately considered to the multi-personal three-ness.  One and Three were not mutually interpreting truths but instead the 'one God' is thought of in non-communal (that is, non trinitarian) terms.

This is the approach taken by by so many doctrine of God text books where De Deo Uno (on the One God) is addressed prior to De Deo Trino (on the Trinity).   Yet, unless the two section are integrated at the deepest levels then there is grave danger of a fourth thing - i.e. "God plus Trinity" or "God apart from Trinity."

When this theological method is followed, often (not always but most times) section one unfolds such that the Three Person'd interplay takes no meaningful part in the discussions of the attributes.  Yet, typically, these attributes are asserted to be the virtue by which God is God.  On this view it is still possible to discuss the 'Godness of God' without reference to the perichoretic life of the Three.  Here One-ness and Three-ness are considered to be non-competing perspectives on the same God.  This effectively means that it is possible to speak in non-triune terms about the living God.  'God', then, is not the same thing as 'the Three Persons united in love'.

This is also a quaternity.  Just a more insidious one.

And the only way I can see to avoid this fourth thing is to side with the Cappodocians: God's being consists without remainder in the Three Person'd perichoresis .

Oneness Threeness 3b

The one-ness of God is not a simple divine essence but the very unity of the Three.  The being of God is not an underlying substance (contra the vulgar quaternity).  But nor is it a separately conceived essence (contra the insidious quaternity). Rather God's being is the very communion by which the Three are One.

Trinity is not a perspective on the one God.  Rather the only God there is is trinity.  And the only way to conceive of Him is in triune terms.  'God' is 'Trinity'.  Unless this strict identity is maintained a fourth enters in.

Thus we must never conceive of the one God in any other terms than trinitarian ones.  (Re-write the text-books!).  God's being is in His communion (to use Zizioulas's phrase).  His One-ness is in His communion.  And (let's not forget) His Three-ness is in His communion - the Three are only who they are in this eternal perichoresis.   To put it another way: God is love.

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This is a re-working of an older post on One-ness and Three-ness.

Published on Leave a comment on Irenaeus on the Old Testament

Leon Sim (sometime commenter here) has written a cracker of an essay on Irenaeus's understanding of the Old Testament.  Of course that understanding is explicitly christocentric and Trinitarian.

Here are a couple of great quotes from the essay:

Not only does Irenaeus see Christ and the Trinitarian God to be the object of revelation, but he also sees Christ to be the subject or agent of God’s revelation. For Irenaeus, it is not merely incidental, but crucial, that it is the Word who spoke to the patriarchs and prophets, and “preach[ed] both Himself and the Father alike,” (Against Heresies 4.6.6.)...

...In one sense, Irenaeus reads the Old Testament Christologically and Trinitarianly because He sees that the Father does everything through the Son by the Holy Spirit. In another sense, he also does so because he holds creation, salvation and revelation together, that is, it is the Father’s purpose in creation to save and bring men to Himself through the revelation of His Word by the Spirit. Hence if there is to be salvation for humanity in the Old Testament, it must be through the revelation of the Spirit-anointed Son...

...According to Irenaeus, therefore, anyone who follows in the non-Christological interpretation of the Old Testament – assuming that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were unknown or unrecognisable through the Old Testament itself – have followed unbelieving Jews in departing from the true God and any knowledge of Him: "Therefore have the Jews departed from God in not receiving His Word, but imagining that they could know the Father [apart] by Himself, without the Word, that is, without the Son; they being ignorant of that God who spake in human shape to Abraham, and again to Moses." (Against Heresies 4.7.4.)

Read the whole thing here.

Download an easier to read format here.

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Published on Leave a comment on Nicene Trinitarianism (a re-post, slightly reworked)

The trinity is a very old doctrine. See The Trinitarian Old Testament for just how old.

But the council of Nicea gave us certain terminology that is accepted by both East and West.  The creed that came from it (and here I refer to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381) is basic to all Christian churches.  Yet its doctrine of God is a particular one - one that is sometimes unwittingly (sometimes wittingly) side-lined, ignored or opposed.

The first thing to notice is Nicea's doctrine of 'the one God.'  To the untrained eye, it looks like it doesn't have one.  It simply says 'We believe in one God' and then immediately goes on to speak of 'the Father Almighty', 'one Lord Jesus Christ' and 'the Holy Spirit'.  In this it follows Paul in 1 Corinthians 8:6

"For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live."

The one God and the one Lord are the Father and the Son.  It is not the case that the one God is the omni-being of philosophical theism and the Persons are sub-species of this divine stuff.  No.  Nicea gives absolutely no definition of the one God except to unfold His being in the description of the Three.

No doubt many later theologians would have loved to have travelled back in time to Nicea and inserted a lengthy treatise on the 'omnis' somewhere between "I believe in God..." and "...the Father Almighty". But Nicea doesn't go there.  There's not even a footnote between the two.  The one God is the Father Almighty, to Whom is joined the Lord Jesus Christ in the unity of the Spirit who is the Lord, the Giver of life.  Athanasius and co. will not let you force a breach between a description of the One and the Three.  To describe the One is to unfold the Three.

And what does Nicea tell us about the ousia (being) of this triune God?  Again a typical western theologian may be disappointed.  The only reference in the creed to this 'ousia' is that controversial phrase 'homo-ousios'.  Jesus, the Son, is 'homo-ousion tw patri' (of one being with the Father).  Please note, the creed does not give us a prior definition of 'ousia' which is then mapped onto the three Persons.  (See these diagrams).  Instead we infer what the 'ousia' is from the fact that Father and Son are 'homo-ousios'.

Jesus, in all His difference from the Father - i.e. born of a virgin, crucified, buried, raised, ascended - is still homo-ousios with the Father. In His difference He is divine.  And in His divinity He is 'God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made." Even in His divinity He is 'ek tes ousia tw patri' (out of the being of the Father). There are important differences between Father and Son that are not papered over but rather affirmed by, and included in, the homo-ousios.

The homo-ousios does not denote three-fold repetition but rather, in TF Torrance's words:

"The Father/Son relationship falls within the one being of God.” (Trinitarian Faith, p119).

Homoousios “meant that the Son and the Father are equally God within the one being of God.” (ibid, p122)

The homo-ousios upholds the distinction (as well as unity) of Father and Son. Remember that you can't be 'homo' with yourself.  And it points us to the fact that the Father is Begettor, the Son Begotten.  The Father from Himself, the Son from the Father (even according as He is God, contra Calvin but with Nicea!).

There are genuine differences in Persons that in no way compromise their equality of divinity. There is never a time when the Son is not homo-ousios with the Father nor is there a time when the Son is not begotten of His Father. Therefore there is not an ousia of the Father that could ever be separately conceived and then assigned in equal measure to Father, Son and Spirit. Instead the ousia of God is a mutually constituting communion in which Father, Son and Spirit share.  The ousia of the trinity consists in three Persons who are 'homo' with one another.  While Nicea does not say explicitly that the 'ousia' is the communion of Persons, it points decidedly in this direction. (See Torrance's 'Trinitarian Faith' for more).

All this is to say that distinctions between Father, Son and Spirit are upheld within the divine nature. The divine nature is not a set of pre-determined attributes which are identically mapped onto the Three. The divine nature is constituted by difference, distinction, mutuality, reciprocity - it is a divine life (a dance even!) not a divine stuff.

Compare this with so much doctrine of God in the west.  First an ousia of 'omnis' is determined.  The one God is discussed for 600 pages in terms of 'uncreated Creator'.  And then we face the Three.  What do we then do?  Simply give to each Person this CV of attributes and insist that this is what the Nicene homo-ousios demanded!  On this understanding all difference, distinction, mutuality and reciprocity is banished from the status of deity.  In preference to the lively interplay of Father, Son and Spirit, a 'simple' doctrine of the One is forwarded.  And God's own being is conceived of as a stuff not a life.

Think I prefer Nicea!

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Published on Leave a comment on Glorifying the Other – the heart-beat of God's own life

From Halden:

“I do not seek my own glory” (John 8:5). With these words Jesus set a precedent for all those who claim to follow him. Fundamental to the call to discipleship is the renunciation of seeking to glorify, to magnify, to enhance and promote oneself.

It is often thought that this calling is based on the distinction between God and humanity. God should be glorified, not us. Therefore we refuse to glorify ourselves and instead glorify God. Indeed, aspects of the Reformed tradition insist that God’s whole aim in being involved with the world is to glorify God’s own self. Thus, we glorify God rather than ourselves because God wants to glorify God’s self rather than humanity.

However, this is all entirely wrong. Jesus, according to the Christian confession is God’s very self come among us. Thus, when Jesus reveals that he does not seek his own glory, he is stating something that is not only to be true about us, but preeminently about God’s own life. God’s life consists in the refusal to seek self-glorification. Rather, the life of the Godhead itself consists in the loving mutuality of the trinitarian persons who only seek the glory of one another. Thus, Jesus seeks the glory of the Father rather than his own, and so also the Father seeks to glorify Jesus (John 7:18). Finally, God also fundamentally desires to glorify humanity: “those he justified he also glorified” (Rom 8:30).

So, we do not reject the quest of self-glorfication to somehow “make room” for God’s desire to self-glorify. Rather we reject self-glorification because that’s precisely what God is like. To reject the quest for self-exaltation is, counterintuitively, the very epitome of what it means to be God-like. We don’t reject self-glorification because self-glorification is reserved for God alone. We reject it because self-glorification in any form is demonic.

Published on Leave a comment on Glorifying the Other – the heart-beat of God’s own life

From Halden:

“I do not seek my own glory” (John 8:5). With these words Jesus set a precedent for all those who claim to follow him. Fundamental to the call to discipleship is the renunciation of seeking to glorify, to magnify, to enhance and promote oneself.

It is often thought that this calling is based on the distinction between God and humanity. God should be glorified, not us. Therefore we refuse to glorify ourselves and instead glorify God. Indeed, aspects of the Reformed tradition insist that God’s whole aim in being involved with the world is to glorify God’s own self. Thus, we glorify God rather than ourselves because God wants to glorify God’s self rather than humanity.

However, this is all entirely wrong. Jesus, according to the Christian confession is God’s very self come among us. Thus, when Jesus reveals that he does not seek his own glory, he is stating something that is not only to be true about us, but preeminently about God’s own life. God’s life consists in the refusal to seek self-glorification. Rather, the life of the Godhead itself consists in the loving mutuality of the trinitarian persons who only seek the glory of one another. Thus, Jesus seeks the glory of the Father rather than his own, and so also the Father seeks to glorify Jesus (John 7:18). Finally, God also fundamentally desires to glorify humanity: “those he justified he also glorified” (Rom 8:30).

So, we do not reject the quest of self-glorfication to somehow “make room” for God’s desire to self-glorify. Rather we reject self-glorification because that’s precisely what God is like. To reject the quest for self-exaltation is, counterintuitively, the very epitome of what it means to be God-like. We don’t reject self-glorification because self-glorification is reserved for God alone. We reject it because self-glorification in any form is demonic.

Published on Leave a comment on Thawed out Thursday – The God who is…

Here's the first thing I ever published on the internet.  It's the heart of my website began about 5 years ago.  It's a decent summary of where I'm coming from theologically. This is the introduction to 5 Doctrine of God papers.

 

The God who is...

Revealed in Jesus

We meet the Living God only in Jesus. He is the sole point of contact between God and the creation. Theology cannot begin without Him nor continue outside of Him. We must be radically and self-consciously Christ-obsessed. This is the mark of Christian theology, distinguishing it from all human philosophy and theistic supposition. Taking every thought captive to Christ is the means by which we will defend true knowledge of God against the countless philosophical accretions which threaten the Church. click here for more

 

Three Persons United  

Our Christian life begins when we meet the Father in the Son and by the Spirit. The Christian life is, from first to last, a life lived in and by the Three. The Trinity is not special information for the advanced believer. The God we know is the Three Persons united in love. There is no 'more basic' truth to God than the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is no real God beneath or beyond the Persons. All talk of the Living God must therefore be about the Persons. Understanding them and deepening our fellowship with them in their relations and roles will be the very stuff of our Christian lives. click here for more

 

Bigger than you think 

Since God is the Three Persons united, we must not imagine some fourth 'substance' that is somehow more foundational than the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We must not enquire into impersonal 'attributes' or 'essences' as though they are the bedrock realities upon which the Persons are founded. We understand God's attributes only when we understand His Triune ways and works as revealed in Jesus. We must not come to the Word of God with our philosophical notions of God's attributes and then fit the Persons into these idolatrous moulds. As the Father reveals His character in the Son and by the Spirit then we can see the power, love, wisdom etc of the Living God. Allowing our doctrine of God to be shaped in this way will open our eyes to a God who is bigger than we could ever conceive. click here for more

 

Love

The Living God is Persons in loving, committed relationship. His will for our life is to be swept up into this eternal love affair and to be agents of His love for the creation. If our doctrine of God is fundamentally impersonal, our Christian lives will consist of duty-bound Pharisaism. If we understand the Passionate God then our lives will begin to conform to the total love of heart, soul, mind and strength which Jesus models and commands. click here for more

 

Proclaimed by Moses

The Scriptures do not introduce us to God and then to the LORD and then to Christ and the Trinity. Revelation does not progress towards Christ - it begins with Him. Moses and the Prophets proclaim the same Triune God as Jesus and the Apostles. From Genesis 1, the Trinitarian Gospel of the LORD-Messiah is front-and-centre as the focus of all Biblical revelation. In this paper we will briefly run through Genesis and Exodus to see how Christ is proclaimed as the One and Only revelation of the Unseen LORD. click here for more

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Published on Leave a comment on Better trinity diagrams

Richard's done some better trinity diagrams here.  They pick out the economic action much better than a neat triangle.

Though independently done, they're pretty similar to a diagram I use in a trinity powerpoint presentation.  Here's the final slide:

 

trinity

By the way - if anyone's downloaded my Men's Breakfast talk on the Trinity and prayer and you still have the audio file, could you email it to me, I seem to have lost it. 

Cheers.

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