All posts tagged Trinity

  • The Comforts and Commands of Christ

    Jesus rose from the dead. We believe it, but now what?

    We are now in the second week of Easter. The celebration known as Easter is not just one day, but it is a season, a seven-week celebration of living life in light of the resurrection. We celebrated on Easter Sunday. We got dressed up. We went to church. We sang songs about the empty tomb. We reflected on resurrection Scriptures. We met the living Jesus through communion. We went home, ate our chocolate bunnies and marshmallow peeps (my personal favorite). We rightly celebrated on that one day, but where do we go from here?

    In Matthew’s account of the resurrection of Jesus, the two Marys met the resurrected Jesus after they saw the empty tomb. Jesus instructs them to go tell his disciples to meet him in Galilee. When Jesus appeared to his disciples there, they worshiped him and he said:

    All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:18-20)

    After his resurrection, Jesus tells his followers to go. This command answers the “now what?” question for us, his followers some 2,000 years removed from his resurrection. Once we have celebrated, it is time for us to go and do.

    Jesus intended there to be movement in the new community he was building. He has declared to us that he has received all authority in heaven and on earth. This authority is not spiritual power, but civic power, not religious power, but political power. In raising Jesus from the dead, God has made him Lord and King. Jesus is now the planet’s new reigning ruler. The first bill he signed into law in his new government was one to get his citizens up and moving and “back to work.” And the work we are called to do is to make disciples. This call and command to make disciples is not for a select few ministerial professional; it is for all of us who are following Jesus. It is for all of us basking in the light of the resurrection. We have entered into the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus through baptism. We have experienced (and are experiencing) forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, healing, and all the other benefits received from this resurrection life, but we cannot receive the comforts of Christ without following the commands of Christ.

    Jesus commands us to make disciples, but he doesn’t stop there.He even helps us with how we are we do carry out this disciple-making mission. We go and make disciples by baptizing them and teaching them. Baptizing and teaching become the two pedals propelling our disciple-making mission forward. We baptize people into the Jesus story of death, burial, and resurrection. We baptize people not just IN the trifold name of God, but we baptize people INTO the life of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God himself is a holy community of persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. When we baptize people, we are immersing them into a community of self-giving love, which is why we celebrate at every baptism. We are celebrating and welcoming people into the life of God (Trinitarian community) and the life of the church (humanitarian community).

    Following baptism we teach. Certainly, we do more in church life than teaching, but the ministry of teaching is foundational to making disciples. We are to teach the newly baptized to observe everything Jesus has commanded. We do not teach in such a way to help people “apply things to their lives.” Jesus did not ever say that he was giving us “biblical principles” that we are to teach so people can apply them to their lives. He gave us commands; he gave us proclamations; he gave us descriptions of the kingdom of God, and then he told us to go and do. His teaching does not have application, but it does have motivation. We are not to try to figure out how we can fit his teachings into our lives, but we are called to adjust our lives and orient ourselves around his teaching. This uncomfortable re-adjustment we call repentance is not merely an intellectual exercise, but it implies action, rethinking things in order to live differently.

    In the end, Jesus gives us a promise. He does not just give commands, but he gives commands with a promise. He promised to be with us, to help us, to guide us. Every Sunday we gather to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. He is present as we gather in his name. He is present as his word is proclaimed. He is present at the table in the bread and in the cup. He promises to be with us by his Spirit, so we have power to carry out his command. So we as the community of faith living in the light of the resurrection carry out his instructions by make disciples. We do this by his empowering presence in the light of his resurrection.

  • Discussion on the Trinity: Video Clips

    The following clips are from a live discussion I had with Pastor Brian Zahnd at his church, Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri, on Sunday morning, March 22, 2009. I do mention my book Shape Shifters a few times. The book uses the doctrine of the Trinity as a foundation for understanding spiritual transformation. In the book, I also describe why I am a Trinitiarian Christian. [More on the book here]

    Here are the clips:

    Question: What is the Trinity?

    Question: How was the the doctrine of the Trinity developed?

    Question: Why is the word “Trinity” helpful? And how important was the doctrine of the Trinity to the early church?

    Question: Why are modern Americans uninterested in theology and doctrine?

    Question: What are some of the wrong ways people think about the Trinity?

    Question: What about The Shack?

    Question: What does the Trinity say to us about community?

    Question: So how does the Trinity as a doctrine affect our daily lives?

  • Talking About the Trinity

    Last weekend, I had the privilege of speaking at Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri in a pretty unique format. WOLC’s pastor, Brian Zahnd, set up a “kitchen table” interview with me, where he asked me questions about the Trinity. This was a part of his “Engaging Orthodoxy” series, a teaching series geared towards equipping people to engage in culture by being rooted and grounded in Christian orthodoxy, i.e. right believing regarding the Christian faith.

    So we literally sat at a table on the stage and talked about the Trinity with coffee and Bibles in hand. We talked about theology, church history, baptism, creeds, heresy, orthodoxy, Jerry Seinfeld, and Bob Dylan…all in a 35 minute time slot. You can listen to the audio here. [You can also listen to the audio on the WOLC website. Click here to go to their archive audio and scroll down to “Engaging Orthodoxy – Part 4: The Trinity.”]

    Brian gave me the list of questions and like some middle school over-achiever, I diligently wrote out answers to each question so that I would be prepared. As it worked out, I didn’t get to all this material. I spent some time working on some of these answers in order to make the very complicated doctrine of the Trinity easy to understand. So here are the notes in their entirety:

    What is the Trinity?

    “Trinity” is the word that Christians use to describe who God is.

    In the Old Testament, God has revealed himself as one God.
    In the New Testament, God has revealed himself as Father, Son, & Holy Spirit.
    This is a bit of a mystery.

    “Trinity” is the Church’s way of preserving this mystery, that there is one God, one divine substance, revealed in three persons—the Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. This was the language of the early church when speaking about God, “one substance” (Latin: substatia) and “three persons” (Latin: persona).

    The doctrine of the Trinity is a gift from the historic Church to the modern Church.

    How was the doctrine of the Trinity developed?

    The doctrine of the Trinity grew out of worship and a devotion to Scripture.
    Historically, it began with BAPTISM as you read in Matthew 28:19…baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

    In the early church, baptism was by immersion, often dipping the head three times while the person being baptized stood naked in the water. (I hope that was some murky water.) If there was not enough water for immersion, pouring water over the head was permissible. The water would be poured over the head three times. (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol 2, pg. 248-249)

    It was baptism, not just in God’s name, but into the name. There is a footnote in the ESV regarding this difference in translating Matthew 28:19. From a Jewish perspective, a name relates to a person character. And so we are not just baptizing people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but into that name, into this mysterious community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

    From there, the Church began to use CREEDS in order to teach Christians basics…like the Apostle’s Creed.
    Candidates for baptism would recite (or repeat) the Apostle’s Creed. The Creed was “the baptismal symbol.”
    (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol 2, pg. 248)

    The ancient creeds used a Trinitarian structure for the Christian faith.
    I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth…
    And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord…
    I believe in the Holy Ghost…
    (Apostle’s Creed)

    Then the doctrine of the Trinity really began to take form in response to HERESIES. It has been said that, “heresy is the mother of all orthodoxy.” This was particularly true in relation to the formation of the doctrine of the Trinity. There were hundreds of years of debates asking, “How is God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Christian pastors wrote books and the church held Church-wide counsels and they ended up with this language: One substance, three persons, one divine essence revealed in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

    How important was the doctrine of the Trinity to the early church?

    It was absolutely critical.

    The early Jesus movement was but one of dozens of new religions and it was important for the Church to clearly communicate who their God is. They were spread out through the Roman Empire who had a pantheon of gods. At first, they were considered a radical Jewish and so they had to separate themselves from Judaism. And they had a number of schisms among those who called themselves “Christians,” but disagreed on who God was.

    So it was critical that they establish the uniqueness of the Christian God, who they believed (and we believe) is the one true living God. And God as a Trinity is unique. The media will talk about the three great monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as if they are essential the same. God as Trinity is totally unique and unlike any other religious system.

    Why do you think modern Christians aren’t so interested in the Trinity?

    I think it is because many Christians in the United States are more interested in seeking God’s hand than seeking his face. They want to know, “What can God do for me?” Instead of “Who is this God?”

    Michael Horton in Christless Christianity calls this “moralistic, therapeutic deism.”
    Moralistic: people want to be better people, better husbands, fathers, employees.
    Therapeutic: We want to feel better; we want God to give us goose bumps on Sunday morning
    Deism: God is the maker of heaven and earth, but he has no contact or interaction with his creation

    Many who claim to be followers of Christ don’t want to take the time to seek God’s face in a serious way.

    And for churches like yours and mine…we are hip, young, cool, and contemporary…we want to know what God is doing now…we don’t have much interest in knowing what God has done in the first couple hundred years of the church.

    Are there dangers in our unwillingness to think seriously about doctrine?

    Yeah I think so. Look at the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the late middle ages.
    The Reformation of the 16th century was necessary, because the church had gotten so far away from biblical Christianity; it was a mess.

    It is easy for Christians living at anytime to absorb the values of the dominate culture.

    Thinking seriously about doctrine helps you discern biblical truth from cultural error. It is so easy to replace biblical values with cultural values.

    We are living in a consumer culture. It is easy to baptize American consumerism and make it sound Christian.
    I am not selfish and greed; I just want God to do whatever I say when I say.

    What are some of the wrong ways people think about the Trinity?

    There are essential two wrong ways of thinking about the Trinity and it is to err on one side or the other…to either see God and a monad….one in his person or to see the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three Gods.

    Historically, these heresies are called modalism and tri-theism.

    Modalism sees to God as taking on three modes…wearing three masks.
    You see this presently in the United Pentecostal Church–“Oneness Pentecostals” or “Jesus Only Pentecostals”.

    Tri-theism is a polytheistic view of God. That there are three Gods.
    A polytheistic view of God is found among Jehovah Witnesses and in Mormonism.

    Both of these are heresies that have been condemned by the Church.

    Why do we call wrong thinking about the Trinity heresy?

    Ultimately we call it heresy because it is inconsistent with the teaching of the apostles, which we know as the New Testament.

    Building any kind of theological framework like the doctrine of the Trinity requires that we build it big enough to hold all of what the Scripture says about God. There is no doubt that the Scripture reveals God to be one. There is only one God. But was we look at the teachings of Jesus, he himself claims to be God. And they way Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit indicates he is God too.

    Either heresy requires us to ignore certain Scriptures are simply force them to say something that the biblical author’s did not intend.

    What are some analogies of the Trinity?

    The early church used analogies to try to describe the Trinity. Tertullian of Carthage actually coined the term “Trinity” used two in particular.

    Tree as trunk, branches, leaves
    Moving water as a river, stream, and creek.

    Some modern analogies include: Water in three forms: solid, liquid, vapor.
    Football team: offensive, defense, and special teams
    A person as husband, father, & pastor
    A hot, cherry pie cut into three large pieces

    My favorite may be an analogy from music. In a 2007 Rolling Stone interview, Bono was describing his appreciation for the Beatles. He described their music as “an intoxicating mix of melody, harmony and rhythm.” (As quoted by Roderick T. Leupp, The Renewal of Trinitarian Theology, 2008, pg. 9)

    Do analogies accurately explain the Trinity?

    No. All human metaphors fail at some point.
    Consider the music analogy. This is a good one. Melody, harmony, and rhythm are a distinct, but together they make up a song. They are three distinct faces to the one song.

    As good as this analogy is, it does have its problems when relating back to the Trinity. The orthodox position is that the Father is fully God, the Son is fully God, and the Spirit is fully God. The melody is not fully the song and harmony and rhythm alone, are not “the song.”

    There is really nothing in creation that is like the Trinity, which is consistent with what the Bible says about God. He is holy, i.e. separate, different, other.

    There is nothing in creation like the Trinity, because if there was then it would be the Trinity.

    Is the doctrine of the Trinity easy to understand?

    No, but it isn’t supposed to be. The early church began to speak of God as a Trinity not to explain the mystery, but to preserve the mystery.

    The Church confidently believes this is who God has revealed himself to be…this mysterious community of persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

    It is a mystery that we embrace.
    It is a mystery that we explore.

    I grew up in Myrna Manor North, just a few miles from this building. In the back of our neighborhood there is a creek and large wooded area. The woods were mysterious…beckoned us to go exploring.

    One early church father expressed his worshipful exploration of the mystery like this:
    “No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illuminated by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. When I think of any one of the three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that one so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.”
    Gregory of Nazianzus, (330-390 AD)
    Orations (40.41)

    Should we be suspicious of doctrines which are difficult to comprehend?

    Not when it comes to God.

    A God who is easy to understand is a popular god, because it is a god we can control, a God we can master.

    But if God is the holy, infinite, eternal God as declared in the Scripture than shouldn’t he be difficult to comprehend? A God who is easy to understand isn’t a God who demands my worship. The kind of God is a god who demands my boredom. I seriously believe this is why some Christians become shipwrecked in their faith. Their god is too small.

    A difficult and demanding doctrine like the Trinity humbles us and demands our worship.

    “In the presence of this mystery, we are no longer in a position of control where we can manage or master the subject. Before this Subject, worship is more appropriate than problem solving, awe is preferable to answers. So the mystery of the Trinity ought to evoke in us humility and worship—the very attitudes necessary for entering the circle of triune fellowship.”
    —Steve Seamands, Ministry in the Image of God, pg. 103

    What does the Trinity say to us about community?

    “At the center of the universe there is a relationship.” (Darrell Johnson, Experiencing the Trinity, pg. 37)

    We know that God is love.
    (1 John 4:8)
    There is no biblical understanding of love without other people.

    You can love your car, your cat, your dog and even your goldfish, but that is not the biblical definition of love.

    It is not love without other people.

    God is love, because for eternity there has been love between the Father, Son and Spirit. These three persons have been loving each other since before there was time.

    “It is common when speaking of the Divine happiness to say that God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of Himself, in perfectly beholding and infinitely loving, and rejoicing in, His own essence and perfection…”
    –Jonathan Edwards, Unpublished Essay on the Trinity

    And this love draws me in. The Father sent his Son to build a community.
    The Father, through the Son sends the Spirit in invite us into this community, where we will never be alone.

    What about the Shack?

    The best thing that happened to The Shack, outside of an endorsement from Eugene Peterson, was all of the criticism and negative backslash it received. I am still waiting for some friends to create an Anti-Shape Shifters website to help promote my book!

    I think The Shack is a wonderful introduction to Trinitarian life. Some say The Shack has an anti-authority vibe and a very low view of the church…and I can see that. But remember The Shack is a work of fiction and not systematic theology. It has its flaws, but it is a good way to see the love between the Father, Son, and Spirit.

    Why does it matter? What does the Trinity have to do with our everyday lives?

    In Shape Shifters, I give seven reasons why I am a Trinitarian Christian. But here is one: For me, it goes back to relationships.

    I have had to confess a sin to my church. I have had a habit of running away from church members when I see them at Wal-Mart. When I go shopping at Wal-Mart, I am a man on a mission. I want to go in. Get my carefully selected items and then get out. And so I developed a habit of running from church members when I would see them at Wal-Mart. When I saw them coming one way, I would dart down an isle in order to avoid them.

    This is a sin, because I was running from the very thing I was created for…relationships, right relationships with other people.

    Why did Jesus say that the greatest command is to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves?

    Because this is a reflection of who God is. When we love one another, we are living out our “created-in-the-image-of-Godness.”

    Paul’s Trinitarian Prayer:
    I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, [17] so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, [18] may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, [19] and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19 NIV)

    :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

    For more information about the Trinity, I recommend the following books:

    Shape Shifters by Derek Vreeland

    Experiencing God by Darrell Johnson

    Ministry in the Image of Godby Steve Seamands

    Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace by James Torrance

    The Renewal of Trinitarian Theology by Roderick Leupp

    I also found Dr. Michael Williams’ lectures on the Trinity to be helpful. Williams is a professor at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis. I listened to four lectures on the Trinity from his “God and His Word” series. I listened to lessons 17-20 in preparation for this talk on the Trinity.

  • Concomitant Individualism

    Concomitant.

    Now that is a good word.

    Don’t worry, I didn’t know what this word meant either until I looked it up today, but it is a good word. Worth adding to your vocabulary.

    Con-com-itant: (adj.) accompanying especially in a subordinate or incidental way [Dictionary]

    The phrase “concomitant individualism” came from a quote from a book I was re-reading today– Worship, Community, & The Triune God of Grace by J.B. Torrance (1996). JBT taught systematic theology at Aberdeen Scotland and he has done a lot of work on the Trinity. In this book he discusses the practical implications of the doctrine of the Trinity in our view of worship. I blogged on this book last year (click here).

    Torrance uses the phrase “concomitant individualism” (go ahead and say “concomitant” out loud….it will be good practice for when you use it in a sentence and show off your intelligence to all your friends) when wrestling with shifting values in American culture and how the church should respond.

    Individualism and concomitant individualism (go ahead and say it out loud again) is the unavoidable byproduct a over obsession with reason in Western culture. What so wrong with individualism you ask? Read JBT below:

    But what happens in a secular culture where belief in the objectivity of God and of moral law recedes? Then, as Allan Bloom has argued so powerfully in The Closing of the American Mind, everything goes into flux (Heraclitus), and we witness a closing of the (American) mind, with a resultant collapse into narcissism, a preoccupation with the self—my rights, my life, my liberty, my pursuit of happiness. Religion then becomes a means toward self-realization. All the interest is in self-esteem, self-fulfillment, self-identity, the human potential movement and possibility thinking, leading either to nihilism of post-modernism or to the neo-gnosticism of the New Age movement which identifies the self with God. Know yourself. Realize your own identity. Then you will know God in the depths of your own spirituality…”

    “What is the Christian answer? Is it to go back to Plato’s Republic, as Allan Bloom suggests, to recover the objectivity of truth, beauty, goodness, justice. Is it to revive the older notions of natural law and moral law discerned by the kindly light of reason, with their concomitant individualism? Or is it not rather to return to “the forgotten Trinity”—to an understanding of the Holy Spirit, who delivers us from a narcissistic preoccupation with the self to find our true being in loving communion with God and one another – to hear God’s call to us, in our day, to participate through the Spirit in Christ’s communion with God and one another—to hear God’s call to us, in our day, to participate through the Spirit in Christ’s communion with the Father and his mission from the Father to the world—to create in our day A NEW HUMANITY of persons who find true fulfillment in other centered communion and service in the kingdom of God?”

    J.B. Torrance, Worship, Community, & The Triune God of Grace, pg. 41


    Concomitant individualism drives the consumerism that is eating away the soul of the Church in North America. I know that may sound like a pit of an overstatement, but I am NOT trying to exaggerate here. The “Me Church” is absolutely killing us. Check out this parody video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9dvVp0Nxjo

    The idea that church exists to meet “my” needs distorts the church Jesus is working to build. Christians are good at dressing up their concomitant individualism in God-talk and Scripture verses ripped out of context. Think of how we often view worship in Christian community. We so often hear people talk about how worship made THEM feel. We hear about THEIR favorite songs and how the preacher gave THEM such wonderful insight on how to live THEIR life.

    I am not becoming a cynic. I have my favorite worship songs. There are musical styles in church music that I like and some I don’t like. I don’t like old songs. And in our church we define old as anything written before 1991. Nothing from the 80s please! It isn’t really old lyrics that bother me as much as old music. So I have things that fit my tastes when it comes to worship. There are certain Christian pastors and teachers that I like to listen to and there some I don’t. The point is we cannot let these thoughts dominate our view of worship.

    I found Torrance helpful in connecting the experiential significance of the Trinity to corporate worship. He describes the Trinity as a self-contained, self-sufficient, self-giving community of persons. God was intimately happy with the enjoyment of himself (Jonathan Edwards). He did not need anything to make him more God or more glorious.

    We are standing on the outside like children in a crowded room of adults who are chatting passionately. We are jumping up to try to get a view into their conversation, but we are too little. Trinity community is just like that. God is a self-sufficient community. He does need anything. He certainly doesn’t need us to add to him in any way. But because of this grace, he has opened himself up by the Son and the Spirit and invited us into to participate in this divine community. Now that will stick a dagger into the heart of consumer Christianity!

    The new humanity (referred to by Torrance) is made up of persons wrapped up in Trinitarian life. We do not live for self like the old humanity. We do not live for self in any of its forms: self-actualization, self-ish pleasure, self promotion, etc. We live in Trinitarian community, a community focused on God himself and not us.

  • Who is the God of the Sermon?

    I finished reading Christian Preaching: A Trinitarian Theology of Proclamation by Michael Pasquarello and he has got me thinking about the nature of preaching.

    Pasquarello is a professor at Asbury and I took a doctor of ministry class with him called “The Trinity and Preaching.” This book grew out of some of the material he presented in the class. The class was one of the best that I took at Asbury. One of our assignments in class was to look through our last six months of sermons and list the title, the text and the “god of the sermon.” In doing that I realized that the “god” I was preaching was not always the God of the Scriptures. I even preaching one entire message and never talked about God. I was convicted.

    That class was a few years ago, so I was happy to revisit Pasquarello again. I find his book stirring and at times he left me uncomfortable. I questioned some of his conclusions, but felt over all, that his message is clear and timely. Preachers of the Church are called to speak within the context of the Trinity. That is to say, our purpose is not so much to be relevant and practical, but faithful and worshipful.

    If you could create a “theology of preaching” spectrum and mark “relevance” on one side and “faithfulness” on the other, you would find Pasquarello on the far side of “faithfulness.” By contrast, I would say you would put Ed Young Jr on the side of relevance.

    [relevance] ———————————————————[faithfulness]
    By “faithfulness,” Pasquarello would say not just faithful to biblical truth, but to doxological ends and Trinitarian grammar. Don’t get lost in all this theological jargon…there is good stuff here!

    According to Pasquarello, the end purpose of preaching is doxological, which means it should lead people to worship the Triune God. The Scripture is our text, but the words of Scripture have to be used in the context or grammar of the Trinity. The life of the Triune God forms the rules that keeps us from using the Scripture to serve humanistic and consumer-driven goals. The point is that we can use the Scripture to meet the needs of consumers and cut God out all together. This is the danger that Pasquarello sees in getting carried away with trying to be relevant and practical in our preaching.

    I agree with him, but I think he takes his point too far.

    I am thankful for Pasquarello for helping me to see the importance of preaching as worship and the Trinity as the rule of faith guiding my preaching of the text. These concepts have really changed who I am as a communicator of the Scriptures. Nevertheless, I see two distinct areas that are missing in his book.

    1) A desire for “relevance” is necessary in the transmission of the message we preach.
    2) The goal of preaching is both worship and helping people.

    Let me explain:

    1) Relevance does play a role in preaching. It just has to be factored in at the right place. It seems to me that Pasquarello is only interested in faithfulness to the text and the God of the text. This is the “why” of preaching. He does little to talk about the “how.” The why has been neglected in popular discussions of Chrisitan preaching, but you cannot seperate the two in my mind. Preaching is something that you do; it has an inbreed methodology to it.

    I agree that relevance in the wrong place can lead us away from the Triune God. We begin with the truth of Scripture within the rule of faith (the Trinity), but we have to transmit that message using some kind of language. We want to use language that is culturally-conditioned so that the receiver can understand. The expected interpretation of that message by the receiver is (hopefully) orthodoxy: right thinking and right living and right praise.

    If we begin with relevance. If we approach the text with “Where can I find something in the Bible that will be relevant?” – I think we give into to consumer mindset and leave the receiver with “personal satisfaction” that has little to do with the triune God.

    2) Worship is not the only goal of preaching. We also do want to help people. This is where I struggled with Pasquarello a lot. I felt that he was right in where he was going in the book. I kept thinking….yeah all of our preaching should lead to worship….we don’t need to give people any practical advice for living….just lead them to God… I have heard (and read) similar ideas from a lot of the Reformed guys like Ware and Piper. The is true, but it is a classic case of reductionism. Yes we should lead people to worship in our preaching, but that is not all…we also need to help people where they are.

    We are called to love God with heart/soul/mind and strength and so yes we preach in order to lead people into worship, into communion with God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but we are also called to love our neighbors – and therefore we are to preach in a way that is human, that does help people with the issues of life.

    God is holy. Therefore we preach in a way that leads people to marvel and stand in awe as they worship the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

    But God is also love. Therefore we preach in a way that leads people to receive the numerous blessing that God desires to bestow.

    Bottom line…
    Pasquarello’s work is needed and helpful. It helps communicators in the church to counter-balance the opposite extreme as evidenced in the consumer-driven, technique-guided, “worship of relevance” in popular evangelicalism. I am a different communicator because of Pasquarello and for that I am thankful. His work is a bit on the academic side. He does include sermon manuscripts as examples, but there is little in terms of personal anecdotes. If you have the time to plow through this book, I would say go for it!

  • The Holy Spirit as a divine person

    In my previous post I expressed my dislike for the age-old theological position that the Father and Son have this great relationship and the Spirit is merely the bond of love between them. I think this depersonalizes who the Holy Spirit is.

    Both the Scripture and tradition hold to the full personhood of the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is not like Yoda’s force. He is not a divine energy. He is not merely the power of God. He is not the bond of love between the Father and the Son (even though I have great respect for Augustine, who made the point orginally).

    The Holy Spirit is God.

    “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (2 Cor. 3:17 ESV)

    “We believe…in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified.” (Nicene Creed 381AD)

    The Holy Spirit is a mystery….a sacred mystery….

    Below is my half of an email conversation with a friend on this subject.

    Most of the theological world lacks in developing a solid, historical
    biblical pneumatology that lays out the true personhood of the Holy Spirit.

    And I agree that persona (person) cannot be defined in modern
    terms. We need to step back and let the Church Father translate that word for
    us. It seems from my limited review on the subject that the Western Fathers
    including our friend Augustine – focused more on the Spirit as the love. The
    Eastern (Greek) Fathers have written more on the personhood other
    Spirit.

    While I have not looked at this book, Colin Guton’s The Promise of Trinitarian Theology is supposed to deal with that subject. I have yet to tackle Gunton.

    The best book I have read on the Holy Spirit / pneumatology is Come Creator Spirit by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa.

    http://www.amazon.com/Come-Creator-Spirit-Meditations-Veni/dp/0814628710/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6694551-4086467?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184249074&sr=1-1

    RC was the preacher of the papal household and theology professor. He has also been apart of the Catholic charismatic renewal for years. He is still writing
    in the area of charismatic theology. “Come Creator Spirit” is the only hymn sung by both Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Christians. It is a hymn sung to the
    Holy Spirit.

    RC took the hymn and used it as a guideline to lay out his pneumatology. The reason I like the book is that it is not only theological but it has a liturgical (worshipful) rhythm to it. I was re-reading parts of it last night. Here are some excerpts…I would add commentary, but I got to get back to sermon prep.

    Liturgical rhythm…sacred mysteries…

    ________________________________________________________

    Come Creator Spirit
    by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa
    (Translated by Denis and Marlene Barrett)
    Pgs. 69-73

    “Paraclete” is the title that most clearly expresses the personal character of the Holy Spirit. Using that title, the author of the hymn (“Come Creator Spirit”) takes us a decisive step forward in contemplating the Holy Spirit. If by the term “Creator” he affirmed that the Spirit was by nature divine, now by the term “Paraclete” he affirms that the Spirit is also a divine person.

    In John, the relationship of the Spirti to Jesus is modeled on the relationship of Jesus to the Father. The Father is the one who testifies to the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the one who testifies to Jesus (John 15:26)… On this point Paul is in total agreement with John, and we cannot afford not to listen to his testimony as well. For him too, the Spirit is nor merely an action but also an agent, that is, a principle endowed with intellect and will, who knows what he is doing and chooses freely
    to do it.

    These terms (“person” or “hypostatsis”) mean something distinct from “substance,” they did not exist in any culture until Christian thinkers began reflecting on what Jesus had revealed of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and discovering what this revelation implied….The Greek Fathers would later give expression to this discovery of faith, saying that the Holy Spirit was not merely a “divine energy,” but an “active substance” or a “substantial agent” possessing will and intellect.

    When we use the term “person” of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we have to be careful to free the word of the meaning we commonly give it. Applied to the Holy Spirit, the term “person” does not mean a center of action complete in itself, an agent independently conscious of self, in the modern sense; it signifies only the relationships-of-origin that “contrast” or distinguish the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as among themselves….if a person in the Trinity is not simply an autonomous center of action and of will, he does participate nevertheless in that unique center common to the Three Persons, and in that sense is capable of acting and willing.

    What a wonderful mystery, a sacred mystery…in a world where “not much is really sacred.”

    Disillusioned words like bullets bark
    As human gods aim for their mark
    Made everything from toy guns that spark
    To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
    It’s easy to see without looking too far
    That not much
    Is really sacred.

    Bob Dylan 1965

  • 10,000 Hits and Trinitarian Worship

    Today I officially recorded 10,000 hits on my blog. I have had the blog up since March 2006. Thanks to all of those who have stopped by. I know that hits are not the best measure of web exposure. (Many of those hits are made by me reloading the page!) The number of hits is the largest number as I look at the stats on my page — so it something to celebrate. I have had nearly 4,400 unique visitors this year alone and 942 returning visitors. That is amazing.

    I have been doing some writing, reading, reflecting on the Trinity today and I came across this idea of the impact of Trinitarian theology on worship. The thought is from J.B. Torrance in Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace. (A good little book on the trinity. Why are so many books about the Trinity so small?!?)

    Here is the quote:

    By his Spirit he (Jesus) draws men and women to participate both in his life of worship and communion with the Father and in his mission from the Father to the world.

    The concept is that the Father and Son have had an eternal relationship and by the Spirit we get to enter in.

    I dislike the concept that the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son, which is a part of JBT’s thinking here. The idea goes back to Augustine who said in On the Trinity that God is the lover (the Father), the loved (the Son) and the love itself (the Holy Spirit). I see why this is attractive presentation of the Trinity. It is Christ centered. It is biblically verifiable. It formed a theological launching pad for others to build upon. Barth used similar categories to describe the Triune God as Revealer, Revelation, and the means of revelation (i.e. God himself reveals himself through himself). Nevertheless, it depersonalizes the Spirit who is “the Lord and Giver of Life.”

    JBT’s idea has some merit. I would just say that the Triune God has had an eternal relationship among all three persons. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have all been existing (subsisting) in an heavenly relationship for all eternity. And now God the Father, who is the head, opens up his two hands (the Son and the Holy Spirit) and through the Son’s death and resurrection and the Spirit’s outpouring, we have been invited to participant in this eternal relationship.

    The triune God lived in self-existent harmony with himself. Jonathan Edwards says “God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of Himself.” BUT because God is love he opens up his infinitely happy community and invites us in. We were living our lives isolated from God. Away from the enjoyment that God has in relationship with himself. We were as C.S. Lewis says, “fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” (from The Weight of Glory).

    And then the Father sent his Son and through his Son he sent his Spirit to whisper in our ear…
    “there is more”….
    “there is redemption” …
    “there is a kingdom” ….
    “there is a community of One.”
    As we turn by faith to the sound of the voice, we are whisked away into a relationship of knowing, praising and serving the Triune God.

    This is worship.

  • Experiencing the Trinity

    For a couple of months, I felt like I was hocking Peter Scazerro’s Emotionally Healthy Spirituality wherever I was going. Through last fall and into the New Year, I was telling everyone to read his book. I preached three sermons that were inspired by it. I sold copies of it at church. I should have received some kind of commission!

    Now I am on to a new book. This is the book you’ve got to read.

    Experiencing the Trinity by Darrell Johnson

    It is about 100 pages. You can read it in three sittings. I would consider it a must read. It is a wonderful little primer on the doctrine of the Trinity. If you have never explored the Trinity, this book is the book that I would start with.

    As noted by the title, it is written as more of a “popular” book. It is not written for academic theologians, but for the everyday follower of Jesus. He makes passionate and compelling pleas to pursue the Trinity in your spiritual walk, as well as in your attempts to love the Lord with all of your mind. He opens with the age old question/complaint: “Why do I need all of this theological talk about the Trinity, why can’t I just simply follow Jesus?” His resounding answer is what I have found to be true and that is that following Jesus leads you to the Trinity. Following Jesus leads you to see the Son of God empowered by the Spirit of God in obedience to Father God. The Bible clearly talks about the divinity of the Father, Son and the Spirit—the question is how to we make sense of the three and their claims to divinity, when we believe in one God.

    Johnson does not try to solve the mystery of the threeness and the oneness of God, instead he invites us in. He brings in insight from various theologians like the Torrance brothers – who have gone before us on the journey of exploring the Trinity. Reading T.F. Torrance’s Trinitarian Perspectives was a watershed event. In it Torrance states, “God draws near to us in such a way as to draw us near to himself within the circle of his knowing of himself.” In other words, God comes to us in order to draw us into the community of himself.

    Johnson’s writing is filled with signposts like this on his own journey, which has inspired me on my journey of exploring the Trinity. God is not singular; he is plural. He exist in a community of persons, in an eternal relationship with love. As Johnson notes, “At the center of the universe is relationship.” At the core of all reality is a love relationship that we are invited into. The doctrine of the Trinity is not man’s attempt to intellectualize the faith. It is certainly a mystery, but it is “God’s way of being God.” It is his self-disclosure. It is his way of showing us himself and the way of life, which is experienced through loving relationship. When we are baptized in the name, the singular name, of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – we are being immersed not only in the water, but into this loving divine relationship of persons.

    Join us on this journey.

  • Rescue, the Trinity & Christ our Example

    On the iPod this morning: Battle Cry by Michael Gungor.

    He was the worship leader at the church Jenni and I attended in Tulsa in the late 90s. He is a phenomenal guitar player and he has developed into a great worship leader. He is currently at Resurrection Life Church in Grand Rapids, MI and travel a lot, so it seems. Battle Cry was the 2006 Aquire the Fire youth conference album. I am happy to see that God is using Michael in a variety of ways. Check him out at http://www.michaelgungor.com/.

    Track 5 on Battle Cry is the song “Rescue.” As I was listening to it this morning, it got me thinking a bit about Jesus, his work and our response. For over two years I have been consumed with this trinitarian vision of spiritual transformation. It has become the theological backbone of my dissertation (which is nearly completed). In this trinitarian vision, spiritual transformation is viewed as the WORK OF THE SPIRIT to transform us into the IMAGE OF THE SON for the JOY OF GOD, THE FATHER.

    Forgive me as I dive into a bit of the historical background of the doctrine of the Trinity.

    I am reading Stan Grenz’s Rediscovering the Triune God. He does a good job of providing an overview of contemporary theologies of the Trinity. I have finished the chapter on the “Karls” (Barth and Rahner) and I am moving on to Pannenberg, Moltmann and Jenson. Both of the Karls were interested in moving away from the speculative nature of trinitarian theology. It is speculative discussions of the Trinity that causes the average church goer to cry: “BORING!” The Karls wanted to look closer at the doctrine of the trinity through God’s revelation (Barth) and God-in-salvation (Rahner), that is the centrality of the incarnation “God with us.” Rahner’s contribution known as “Rahner’s Rule” is that God as he exists in eternity is the God who reveals himself in salvation. The importance of this is that is makes the study of the trinity both biblical and practical. The unknowable, immutable eternal God (the immanent Trinity) makes himself known in his activity (the economic Trinity). This move takes discussions of the trinity to the church, to worship, to discipliship and for me, spiritual transformation.

    It is upon this theological foundation that I have built my trinitarian vision of spiritual formation. God is revealing himself in his work of spiritual transformation, because it is God’s work through the Spirit to transform us into the image of God through Jesus for the pleasure of God himself. We see him in what he does.

    Now back to Gungor’s song “Rescue.”

    As I was listening to “Rescue,” I was reminded of an important point of clarification when I talk about Jesus our example. Jesus is our example of spiritual transformation. He is what we are being conformed into. He is the model for ethical behavior and moral character, but he can only be our example AFTER he has become our savior. The danger of emphasizing the role of Jesus as our example can lead us down the road of pelagianism, a heresy that was condemned by the Church in the fifth century and taught that you can be forgiven of your sins and justified with God by patterning your life after Christ’s moral example. If this was true, then the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus (the central piece of the Christian story) is not necessary.

    Jesus our example (Christus exemplar) is a part of the work of God the Son, but it is subsequent to Jesus our savior, our rescuer. We need Jesus to come and rescue us from our sin and spiritual poverty, before we can follow him and allow the Spirit to transform us into his image. Living a life patterned after Jesus’ example is simply not enough. Beyond that it will leave you frustrated and disillusioned. You cannot try out the Christian life. You have to dive in headlong and allow Jesus to rescue you through faith and repentance. Only then can he become your example.

    “Rescue” has some further trinitarian imagery. As I have been meditating on the trinity, I have been thinking about how God makes himself known through salvation. He becomes “God with us” which encapsulates the wholeness of substance of the three persons, but it can also represent the distinct personhood of the Son. From here we can see God the Father as “God created us” (creation); Jesus the Son as “God with us” (incarnation); and God the Holy Spirit as “God in us” (sanctification). I heard this imagery in “Rescue.” Here are some lines from the song:

    You are the source of the life
    I can’t be left behind
    No one else will do
    I will take hold of You

    … “God created us” (the Father)

    I need You Jesus
    To come to my rescue
    Where else can I go

    … “God with us” (the Son)

    Capture me with grace
    … “God in us” (the Spirit)

    Click here for more on the song “Rescue”

  • Why I am a Trinitarian Christian

    The Trinity is one of the unifying doctrines between the various branches of the Christian faith. We may disagree on minor points of theology, but for the most part the Christian God has been proclaimed by Christian people as one God revealed in three persons—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. There are a few viable denominations that reject the Trinity such as the United Pentecostal Church (www.upci.org). The UPC denies the doctrine of the Trinity, noting that it is “inadequate” in describing the biblical revelation of the oneness of God. I do find it interesting that while they deny the triune nature of God, they do accept the divinity of the Holy Spirit. It seems to be more inadequate to explain the divinity of the Holy Spirit from their idea of the oneness of God. How can the Holy Spirit be God and Jesus be God and yet Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit at his baptism. There either has to be two gods here or one God in multiple persons. Nevertheless, here are at least eight reasons why I am a Trinitarian Christian:

    1. God is triune.
    2. The Bible reveals God as three in one.
    3. Historical, orthodox Christian faith confesses a triune God.
    4. The Trinity is the grammar of the Christian faith.
    5. The Triune nature of God underscores the value of relationships.
    6. The love expressed in the Trinity draws me into a community.
    7. The mystery revealed in the non-rational nature of the Trinity demands my worship.
    8. The three most influential Christian traditions in my life correspond to the persons of the Trinity.

    Let me elaborate on the last reason. When people ask me if I am a “charismatic” Christian, I always hesitate. I do not know how to answer that question. If by “charismatic” they mean that I embrace the present-day work of the Spirit including the miraculous gifts recorded in I Corinthians 12, then I would say “yes”. But if by “charismatic” they mean that I embrace some kind of TBN-spirituality of biblically-sounding rhetoric, an anti-intellectual faith, emotionally demonstrative expressions of worship with crying, laughing and falling down on the floor, then no, I guess I am not a “charismatic” in those terms.

    I much prefer to describe myself as a Trinitarian Christian, because the image of the Trinity has become a lens by which I see God, myself, the Church, worship, ministry….life. And as I look at my growth as a Christian over these last sixteen years, I can see that I have been influenced steadily by three different, but inter-related Christian traditions. I can look back and see times in my life when one of these streams has been more predominate than the others, but I can certainly see the influence of each three. What is interesting to me is that each tradition seems to correspond somewhat to the trinity. I would title the three streams as reformed, evangelical and charismatic. Let me explain…

    reformed: This stream would most correlate with God the Father. This tradition emphasizes the sovereignty and providential work of God in ruling and reigning over his creation. The chief influencers for me have been John Piper and Mark Driscoll.

    evangelical: This stream would most correlate with God the Son. This tradition emphasizes the authority of Bible, the centrality of Jesus, the work of salvation and the necessity of evangelism and missions. The chief influencers for me have been Bill Hybels and Andy Stanley.

    charismatic: This stream would most correlate with God the Holy Spirit. This tradition emphasizes the gifts of the Holy Spirit, a whole-person spirituality and the necessity of experience in the Christian life. The chief influences for me have been Oral Roberts and Jack Hayford.

    I have been influenced my many other streams within the Christian community, but these are the groups that have played the most significant influence on my faith and theology. Here is a wonderful statement from Gregory of Nazianzus (330-394 AD):

    “No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illuminated by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carrried back to the one. When I think of any one of the three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that one so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.” Gregory of Nazianzus Orations (40.41)