One of the quickest ways of making good news bitter, in my experience, is saying “if you *truly* believe”. That “truly” caused me a lot of problems.

Didnt know about Bobby though….just know he hadnt been blogging. He’s a good soldier….praying for him.

Thanks for your work. I pray for you. No one steps out into the battle without being a target. God bless and keep you.

Craig

The Son is *in* the Father, and the Father is *in* the Son – these mutually indwelling relations are absolutely crucial to trinitarian theology. And it’s why Paul can say that the fullness of deity dwells bodily in Christ. (Col 2:9). Human philosophy (Col 2:8) always pits physicality against divinity, but Paul insists that the incarnate Son is fully God. His deity (which consists in His eternally mutually-indwelling relationships) is not found apart from the flesh – but *in* His physical life He is fully God.

Now your answers to my questions on the incarnate life of Christ are very understandable given your prior commitment to modalism. All modalists must become Nestorians – that is, you must drive a massive wedge between Christ’s humanity and divinity and basically erect two Persons within the one Christ. You have Him talking to Himself as though His Father is another Person – but really His Father is just His divine nature. The Father speaks of His Son as another Person (at baptism, trnasfiguration etc) but really its His divinity talking to His humanity. The Son speaks of His Father as ‘another’ but you would have this mean that His divinity is a distinct and personal ‘other’ besides His humanity. He expresses a will different to His Father’s in Gethsemane but again, you will say that this will belongs to His divine nature and not His flesh.

And so you’ve posited two centres of personal consciousness within the one Christ. At best this is multiple personality disorder, at worst we have a double-headed monster.

Now trinitarians have a name for ‘distinct centres of personal consciousness’. We call them ‘Persons’. And we say there is a Person of the Son who is addressing the Person of the Father. Now *no-one* can deny that this is the plain and obvious meaning of the Gospel narratives! No-one can deny that when John wrote his gospel he meant to communicate that Jesus and the One He called ‘Father’ were two distinct Persons. If you’re worried that we are positing different ‘beings’ I assure you we are not. The Father and the Son do not have separate or separable existences – the Father cannot be Father without the Son and the Son cannot be Son without the Father and they so love and indwell one another that they can be said to be ‘one’ (John 10:30). But – as the Gospel narratives make irrefutably clear – this is a oneness between two Persons with distinct centres of personal consciousness. And the only reason you cannot see this obvious truth is that you have come to the bible with a set of very distorting spectacles. You have a pre-determined philosophy of one-ness. You demand that one-ness means a mathematical singularity and that therefore there can be no distinction whatsoever between ‘Persons’. This is an assumption. The bible does not teach it. The bible teaches a ‘multi-Personal’ one-ness (eg John 17:21). But you come with your pre-determined philosophy and as you read the Scriptures you are dashed on the rocks of absurdity.

Do you see how the gospel events necessitate one thing – distinct centres of personal consciousness – but your philosophical pre-commitments necessitate something else – one divine Person. You simply cannot have both.

If you want to be consistent with your philosophical definition of oneness then you must abandon Jesus – he makes no sense on your assumptions.
If you want to be consistent with Jesus as He is revealed in the gospel then you must abandon your philosophical definition of oneness.

I pray you will take the latter route.

yours in Christ,

Glen

I wrote a post called “so what??” a while back – it might help you with some of the ’shoe leather’ implications.

http://christthetruth.wordpress.com/2008/01/05/so-what/

Essentially the danger is that we let western philosophy define who God is for us – rather than the Spirit anointed Son of the Father. Beginning with Jesus shows us a God who is radically different to anything the philosopher’s have imagined. But I find that people (with the insidious fourth) do trinitarian theology on the one hand and then straight-jacket it immediately with philosophical speculation on the other. Being thoroughly trinitarian is just another way of determining to know God in His eternal Son – it’s about centring our theology in revelation and not reason.

Hiram and Heather – we absolutely must do theology to be humbled. And I think the greatest way to be humbled is to press in very deeply to what God has revealed and be in awe of the profundity of His life.

I think there’s a danger of ’switching off’ from trinity talk in the name of humility – as though it’s more humble not to enquire further about the Father, Son and Spirit. I don’t think that’s right. There are certainly some *major* limits to our knowledge! But we mustn’t decide for ourselves what those limits are in advance.

The trinity is a mystery for sure. But in the bible, mysteries are things that are revealed! (see e.g. Eph 6:19 and many others) They are things you could never have worked out for yourself, but at the same time they are made manifest to us. And the way we honour these mysteries is to investigate them as thoroughly as we can.

The God who gives Himself to us in revelation is honoured when we greedily take as much as we can lay our hands on.

When Jesus defines eternal life as knowing God His Father and Himself – the Sent One (John 17:3) – He is defining our life *as* one of knowing God in His triune relations. This is the nature of our eternal life – knowing the Father through the Son and by the Spirit.

And when we press in to know God – there we are humbled by His awesome and majestic love and self-giving. There we really learn what 1 Cor 13 is all about. The most excellent way is love because the most excellent Being is love!

So I’d encourage you to keep asking, seeking and knocking (as I need to, constantly) to go further into these realities. It is the very stuff of our Christian (and eternal!) life.

Four talks that have really helped me on the trinity are by Mike Reeves and can be found here:

http://www.theologynetwork.org/christian-beliefs/doctrine-of-god/trinity-1–why-we-have-problems-with-trinity.htm

http://www.theologynetwork.org/christian-beliefs/doctrine-of-god/trinity-2–trinity-is-the-answer.htm

http://www.theologynetwork.org/christian-beliefs/doctrine-of-god/trinity-3–trinity-in-revelation-and-creation.htm

http://www.theologynetwork.org/christian-beliefs/doctrine-of-god/trinity-4–trinity-in-salvation.htm

These really are the best introduction to the trinity I’ve ever come across.

Glen

You a dad now? Congrats! What’s that like?

I read pretty much everything you post, but comment only occasionally. I think I had the privilege of you being my Frameworks table leader way back in 2000 – or am I imagining that!?

Welcome.

Hi Marcus,

Do you work with Jacky Lam – is that right? Good to meet you.

Hey John – Good to hear from you. Have you commented before or am I imagining that? Anyway, I pray that in Jesus you will be a light where you are. In Him you can’t fail to be it!

As Will says – Jesus Bless

Glen

I’ve read both of your blogs (I think maybe Milton Stanley’s ‘Transforming Sermons’ might be a common denominator).

Welcome!

Congratulations on two years of blogging!

I’ve been reading your blog lately and find it very encouraging and inspiring. I used to be at All Souls and the Clubhouse and got your link via Dev M. You seem to know Leon S. and Will M. too!

I’m currently living in Sweden and here the situation is rather dire at the moment in the Lutheran Church, as you may have heard. It’s awesome getting inspired with some real Bible Jesus focus – something that this country needs so desperately. Please pray for Sweden! Keep up the good work and be blessed brother!