THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

Qualities of the Triune God

With our puny little minds we can never understand God unless he should choose to make himself known to us. As the saying goes: "By God alone can God be known." Christians believe that he has indeed revealed what he is like through the authors of the books that make up our Bible, and supremely through the coming into the world of Jesus Christ. In the booklet Understanding the Trinity I have spelt out the clear teaching that we have, in the New Testament particularly, that God exists as three Persons, spoken of normally as "Father", "Son" and "Holy Spirit". Though there are distinctions between these persons, they exist in such a unity that we can still speak of the one God. In that booklet I have also explained why I believe this makes perfect sense, so I will not repeat those arguments here.

In the past there has been a lack of thinking about the connection between the nature of God and the nature of the church. Catholic and Orthodox theologians have consistently made the connection, but have tended more to affirm it than carefully reflect on it. In Protestant circles Jurgen Moltmann led the way in his book The Trinity and the Kingdom of God (1981). However, over the last few years the writing about it has been such that theologian Miroslav Volf, in After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity, can say:

Today, the thesis that ecclesial [church] communion should correspond to trinitarian communion enjoys the status of an almost self-evident proposition.

And it is only our understanding of the nature of the Trinity that can provide the philosophical basis for understanding both the true value of the individual and the importance of community. Professor Colin Gunton, in his seminal work, The One, The Three and The Many, points to the secular search for an ideology that can protect the individual while promoting community. Recent history, he suggests, had been ruled by two competing regimes. In the West, we are products of a world driven by the individual. And increasingly privatised worldview has promoted the rights of the indavidual above all else. In the East, communism exalted the many. What mattered most was the common good, the people and the nation. The reslult, Gunton declares, has been two equally oppressive and totalitarian regimes. The answer lies in the discovery of a worldview capable of honouring the one and the many, without either being a the expense of the other. The doctrine of the Trinity presents such an ideology. The God who is Father, Son and Spirit models this unity amidst diversity, and this community of equality. The church, through its relationship with the Triune God, is called to model this for the world.

However, what theologians write about, and what happens at the local church level, are often far removed. The purpose of this booklet is to attempt to address these matters at a level that ordinary members of ordinary churches can cope with. So let's first look at some of the qualities of this amazing God that Christians believe in.

God is personal and exists in relationships

In an article in Christianity Today on the importance of the Old Testament, well-known Christian writer Philip Yancey says, in his usual graphic style:

Out of their tortured history, the Jews demonstrated the most surprising lesson of all: You cannot go wrong personalising God. God is not a blurry power living somewhere in the sky, not an abstraction like the Greeks proposed, not a sensual superhuman like the Romans worshipped, and definitely not the absentee Watchmaker of the Deists. God is "personal." He enters into people's lives, messes with families, shows up in unexpected places, chooses unlikely leaders, calls people to account. Most of all, God loves.

He goes on to quote the great Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel:

To the prophet, God does not reveal Himself in an abstract absoluteness, but in a personal and intimate relation to the world. He does not simply command and expect obedience; He is also moved and affected by what happens in the world, and reacts accordingly. Events and human actions arouse in Him joy or sorrow, pleasure or wrath...man's deeps may move Him, affect Him, grieve Him or, on the other hand, gladden and please Him...

The God of Israel is a God Who loves, a God Who is known to, and concerned with, man. He not only rules the world in the majesty of His might and wisdom, but reacts intimately to the events of history."

In our Western society we have tended to define the meaning of personhood in individual terms. Thus a person is someone with rights and duties (Thomas Jefferson), as the thinking self (Descartes), as endowed with reason (Boethius), as an autonomous ego (Kant), as someone with physical, economic, social, emotional, sexual and cultural needs. However, the personhood of God is something more than that. God's personhood is somehow defined as a community of persons who find their true being in relationships. In other words, it is the relationships that exist between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, just as much as the separate beings in themselves, that truly define who God really is. This may sound strange to our individualistic Western way of thinking, but when we look at the nature of the church as it is presented in the New Testament, we will see that it makes sense. Patricia Wilson-Kastner, in Faith, Feminism, and the Christ, expresses it like this:

The notion of the Trinity is based on the self-revelation of a God who is at heart relational, not a bare unity, or an isolated monarch. A monarchial notion of the deity encourages the idea that relationship is secondary to God: a trinitarian concept asserts relationship as fundamental to the divine. Furthermore, to speak of the interrelationship of the persons of the Trinity as the key to understanding the divine is to establish personal interrelationship as the foundation of God's interaction with the world.

Before moving on, it is worth mentioning an increase of interest, both from theologians and scientists, on relational views, both of how all existence is constituted and of how it is known. The extensive work on relationality within the Trinity since Karl Barth in the mid-20th century has coincided with the exploration of the relational structure of our material universe. If God created all of matter, then we might expect it to reflect something of his own nature, as the Bible declares (Romans 1:19, 20). Dr. Harold Turner, one of our senior New Zealand theologians, gives the following example from the "triple point" in physics:

Water, under certain precise conditions of pressure and temperature, enters a triple state wherein it simultaneously and continuously passes to and from liquid to solid to gaseous forms, each of which is really 'water', and yet has its own identity. The analogy with the simultaneous trinitarian nature of the godhead is obvious. Likewise the two forms of light, wave and particle, suggest analogies with the two natures, divine and human, of Jesus; these are equally real and simultaneously operative, and yet we cannot fully focus on both at the same time.

When you think about it, you see relationality everywhere. You see it at the atomic level where atoms in certain relationships form molecules, and molecules elements. You see it in ecosytems in nature, in the balance between plants and animals. You see it in the formation of galaxies, where intricate balance between physical forces is so crucial. You even see it in our own bodies where arms and legs and everything else has to be in right relationships with the rest of the body to function properly. However, we see it most clearly in the relationships between ourselves as human beings.

Equality within the Trinity

As mentioned above, some have tended to speak of hierarchical relationships within the Trinity. It is true that there is indication of different roles within the Trinity. The Father is usually seen as the "source" of initiative. The Father sent the Son into the world. However, I believe the balance of evidence in the New Testament clearly points to an equality of being. In the booklet Understanding the Trinity I have given some of the evidence in the New Testament that each member of the Trinity is fully God. At different points of the Biblical story, differing members of the Trinity are given prominence. The Father is at the forefront of the work of creation, but both the Word and the Spirit are present and involved. The Son is at the forefront of the work of salvation, but both the Father and the Holy Spirit are involved. The Spirit is at the forefront of the work of our spiritual growth and transformation, and the creating of Christian community, but the Father and the Son are present and involved.

The number of times we are told that members of the Trinity give honour to one another is significant. In Jesus' prayer to his Father in John 17, the number of times that Jesus speaks of either the glory he gives to his Father, or the glory the Father gives to him, is noteworthy. (See verses 1, 4, 5, 22, 24: also John 13:31-32). The Spirit gives glory to Jesus (John 16:14). The Father and the Son send the Spirit (John 15:26). They acknowledge, respect and honour what he does. The Father gives all authority in heaven and on earth to the Son (Matthew 28:18). Jesus delivers the kingdom to God the Father (1 Corinthians 15:24). There is never any competition, feeling of inferiority or insecurity between members of the Trinity. They each know and respect who they are and who the other members are and they honour each other. It is true that, in order to share our full humanity, Jesus, speaking as fully human, can say: "the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28), but this is a position he took voluntarily, as Paul explains in Philippians 2:5-8. He came down to our level in order to lift us up to his level.

I would agree with Miroslav Volf, who says:

Within a community of perfect love between persons who share all the divine attributes, a notion of hierarchy and subordination is inconceivable.

For decades the Evangelical Theological Society in the US had as its doctrinal statement the following sentence: "The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs." In recent years, however, they have felt it necessary to add the following sentence to protect the Society from deviant views on the Trinity:

God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.

A fuller, but equally clear statement, was given by Philip Schaff in his three volume work on The Creeds of Christendom, 1887:

The divine persons are in one another, and form a perpetual intercommunication and motion within the divine essence. Each person has all the divine attributes which are inherent in the divine essence, but each has also a characteristic individuality or property, which is peculiar to the person, and can not be communicated...In this Trinity there is no priority of rank, but the three persons are coeternal and coequal.

These statements well sum up the views thrashed out in the early history of the church in their ecumenical conferences as they wrestled with their understanding of the New Testament teaching, and have been believed by the vast majority of Christians since. Philip Schaff adds to his summary an apt quote from Augustine:

God is greater and truer in our thoughts than in our words; he is greater and truer in reality than in our thoughts.

I suspect that the question of equality is really a matter of irrelevance to God himself, as the the equality of the Trinity is ultimately an equality where each is equally valued and honoured.

The unity of the Trinity

The unity that exists between members of the Trinity is most vividly expressed in the New Testament by the manner in which they cooperate in all that they do. We see this in:

Creation:
Genesis 1:1, 2, 26; John 1:1-3.

The birth of Jesus:
Luke 1:35.

The baptism and anointing of Jesus:
Luke 3:21, 22.

The life of Jesus:
Luke 4:18; John 8:29.

The ministry of Jesus:
Matthew 12:28; John 14:10; Acts 10:38.

The death of Jesus:
2 Corinthians 5:19; Hebrews 9:14. ¥ The resurrection of Jesus: John 10:17, 18; Acts 13:30; 1 Peter 3:18.

The giving of the Holy Spirit:
John 14:16.

Salvation:
Titus 3:5-7.

The believer's experience of grace, love and fellowship:
2 Corinthians 13:14.

The life of the Christian:
Ephesians 3:16-19.

The giving of gifts:
1 Corinthians 12:4-6.

Bringing the church to maturity:
Ephesians 4:4-16.

Evangelism:
Romans 15:15-19.

The breaking down of racial barriers:
Ephesians 2:18.

The blessing of believers in the new heaven and new earth:
Revelation 21, 22.

Indeed, it would be true to say that all the teaching of the Bible, whether about the origin and destiny of creation, the nature and destiny of humans, what the Christian life is all about, the nature of the church, the church's mission in the world, and the present and future kingdom of God, has a trinitarian basis.

The unity of the Trinity I have just described is a unity that exists between three distinct persons because of the complete love and harmony they exhibit in their relationships. However, the unity of the Trinity is something more than that. Jesus talked about the Father being in himself and he being in the Father. "Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me" (John 14:10; see also 10:38; 17:21). Whatever this means, it implies that there is a mutual indwelling of each in the other that goes beyond what we as humans experience in our relationships with one another. Thus we read that God knows the mind of the Spirit (Romans 8:27) and the Spirit knows the mind of God (1 Corinthians 2:11). Moltmann expressed it like this:

By the power of their eternal love, the divine persons exist so intimately with, for, and in one another that they themselves constitute themselves in their unique, incomparable and complete union.

This means that none of them work independently of the others. Perhaps this explains why, in their dealings with us, their roles often appear interchangeable in the New Testament. Though mutual indwelling of the members of the Trinity (which, since Pseudo-Cyril, theologians have called perichoresis - if you like to pretend you know something!) is beyond our human experience, we will see something of its relevance to us later.

The love of the Trinity

God is often spoken of as "holy" in the Bible. The root idea of the Hebrew word quados is that of withdrawal and consecration - withdrawal from what is common or unclean and consecration to what is sacred and pure. Used of God it not only signifies his transcendency over all of his creation - his supremacy, majesty and awesome glory - but also his moral perfection. God is perfect in justice, in love, in faithfulness and all the other "moral" qualities we can think of. However, it is the love of God that is the most striking aspect of his nature as portrayed in the Bible. This is particularly demonstrated in the coming of Jesus into this world to share our humanity, in his life of service and his death for our sins on the cross.

"Love" is a relational term. It describes the relationships that have always existed between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit from all eternity. Such are these relationships that it can be said that "God is love" (1 John 4:8). Moltmann, puts it like this:

God loves the world with the very same love which He Himself is in eternity. God affirms the world with the energy of His self-affirmation. Because He not only loves but is Himself love, He has to be understood as the triune God. Love cannot be communicated by a solitary subject. An individuality cannot communicate itself: individuality is ineffable, unutterable. If God is love He is at once the lover, the beloved and the love itself. Love is the goodness that communicates itself from all eternity.

Or, as George Tavard puts it in his book A Way of Love:

The mystery of God as One-in-Three is a mystery of love. God's essence is to love.

This love is outward looking. It is not something God can keep to himself within his own little family. He created humans in order to have someone with whom he could share that love. When humans rejected that love and turned to their own selfish and independent ways, as described in the first chapters of Genesis, then God did not give up on them. The rest of the Bible could be described as God's pursuit of us in love to bring us back to himself. He will not rest until the bride (the church) is fully reunited with her true lover (Revelation 19:7-9).

The creativity of God

According to the Bible, there is nothing in this vast and amazing universe that did not come into being without the activity of the creative power of God (Genesis 1; Colossians 1:15-17). If his ultimate purpose was to create beings with similar characteristics to himself, whose love he could enjoy, we may well ask why he created such a vast universe and why he seemingly took so long about it. One reason was, no doubt, to enable us to get some little understanding of what a great and powerful God he is and to create within us something of a spirit of awe and worship such as his being warrants."

The forces of nature are often spoken of in the Bible as illustrative of the power of God. "He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit" (Psalm 147:4). However, another reason he did all this is, I believe, simply because he enjoys creating. We will explore the implications of this for ourselves later.

Foreward

Laying foundations

Qualities of the Triune God

The nature of the Church

The community of the church

The New Testament emphasis on relationships

The importance of small groups

The function of leadership

The New Testament foundation for unity

New Testament images of the church

What about denominations

The Mission of the church

The church and creation

Further reading

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