The Jesus-centred, Trinitarian gospel of Mark 1:1

"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God"

Mark 1:1 beautifully frames the gospel as both Jesus-centred and Trinitarian. The gospel is about Jesus, but Jesus can only be understood in relationship to the Spirit who he is anointed ('Christed') with, and the Father he is "Son of".

We miss the Trinitarian nature of Mark 1:1, and so many other passages because when we read "God", we don't identify God with a person of the Trinity (usually the Father); and when we read "Christ", we read it as a surname, if we're lucky as a title, if we're really lucky as about being anointed, and very rarely as about who Jesus is anointed with.

"God [the Father] anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 10:38)

Starting points for seeing the Trinity in the Bible

Robert Jenson points out the need to read the Bible as narrative to see the persons of the Trinity as dramatis personae in the Old Testament:

The church has its own way of reading Scripture. There are others. By way of putting the contrast let me say a word or two about the other most important way - Rabbinic Judaism...

Rabbinic Judaism reads the Old Testament fundamentally as Torah - guidance for life. The narrative simply provides the context. Now, this is obviously a perfectly possible way of reading the Old Testament, but it is not the Church's.... The Church's second volume, the New Testament, is fundamentally narrative, with comment on the narrative. The Church then reads the Old Testament from this viewpoint. From the viewpoint of this new volume and accordingly reads the Old Testament basically as narrative, with Torah and Wisdom and Prophecy providing the moral and spiritual context...

The narrative is of God's history with his people from creation to fulfilment...it is an obvious question, but one too often not asked, 'how would a narrative display the reality of God?'

How for example would a narrative show that God is merciful? Not primarily by pronouncing the proposition 'God is merciful', though it can do that too. Rather, by telling and pondering his merciful behaviour. Or by recording prayers uttered by his people on the way, prayers for mercy that are answered. Or by telling stories of heroes of Israel who found mercy with God...

So how would a narrative tell us that God is one God and three persons? It would not do it primarily, or perhaps even at all, by saying 'God is three persons' a proposition that indeed never appears in Scripture, but rather by telling a history of God with us which displays three actors, or as David Scaer put it 'three performers', of that history. Each of which is indeed other than the other two, and yet is at the same time the same God as the other two.

(10:00-14:50, MP3 lecture, Confessions - The Bible and the Trinity)

Richard Bauckham stresses that we should consider the concept of "divine identity" when reading the New Testament to find out the true identity, and not the nature, of Jesus Christ:

The God of Israel had a unique identity...the biblical God has a name and a character, since this God acts, speaks, relates, can be addressed and, in some sense, known...

personal identity [is] a concern with who God is. The value of the concept of divine identity appears partly if we contrast it with a concept of divine essence or nature. Identity concerns who God is; nature concerns what God is or what divinity is...That God is eternal, for example - a claim essential to all Jewish thinking about God - is not so much a statement about what divine nature is, more an element in the unique divine identity, along with claims that God alone created all things and rules all things, that God is gracious and merciful and just, that God brought Israel out of Egypt and made Israel his own people and gave Israel his law at Sinai and so on. If we wish to know in what Second Temple Judaism considered the uniqueness of the one God to consist, what distinguished God as unique from all other reality, including beings worshipped as gods by Gentiles, we must not look for a definition of divine nature but for ways of characterizing the unique divine identity...

Once the category of divine identity replaces those of function and nature as the primary and comprehensive category for understanding both Jewish monotheism and early Christology, we can see that the New Testament's lack of concern with the divine nature of Christ is by no means an indication of a merely functional Christology. We can see that, throughout the New Testament texts, there is a clear and deliberate use of the characteristics of the unique divine identity to include Jesus in that identity. Once we have rid ourselves of the prejudice that high Christology must speak of Christ's divine nature, we can see the obvious fact that the Christology of divine identity common to the whole New Testament is the highest Christology of all. It identifies Jesus as intrinsic to who God is.

(pp.6-31, Richard Bauckham, "God Crucified" in Jesus and the God of Israel)

The Trinity and prayer - part 1 - To the Father...

I'm trying to write a little piece on the difference the doctrine of the Trinity makes to our prayers. This is a rough draft of part one. Part two will look at "through the Son", and part three on "by the Spirit". Any feedback would be gratefully received, whether it is to pick up on heresy, pastoral insensitivity, or even poor writing quality.

"through Christ we have access in one Spirit to the Father" (Ephesians 2:18)

If we don't know who, or what, we are talking to then there is little reason for us to pray. We may pray when things get particularly tough and we think that anything is worth a try, but its always going to feel like a gamble. We would be like the Athenians in Acts 17 who pray to an "unknown god". It wouldn't surprise us that the unknown god never got to have the biggest temple in Athens because worshippers could never love and trust a god.

But Christians are privileged to actually know who God is. We may never have seen God, but Jesus Christ "has made him known" to us (John 1:18). Because of Jesus we know God is not a impersonal force, or the whole material universe, or one of many competing deities. Instead God is "our Father", and that person is the God we are told by Jesus to pray to.

We can be tempted to think that the title "Father" is just a description of God - i.e. that because he acts like a father towards us we call him "our Father". But God has been God the Father from all eternity. Fundamentally, God is not God the Father, because he acts like a father towards us, but because that is who he actually is. He has always been God the Father because he has always had a Son, Jesus Christ. And that is important because it means that when we say that we pray to God the Father we are not saying that we pray to a god who is like a father just like those of many other religions do. Instead it means we are praying to a particular person, to the exclusion of all others. As Paul so often says, we pray to "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ". There is only one god, who is Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just like there is only one Father of Dave Kirkman. By addressing "our Father" in prayer, we don't just know the character of the God we pray to, but we know exactly who it is that we are talking about.

That we pray to "our Father" should shape our prayers in a number of ways. Firstly, we should pray in community because we are told to pray to "our Father". When alone, we should remember it is not just about me before God, but we should pray as part of the church. The Lord's prayer is full of the plural ("our", "us", "we") because we are not saved as individuals but as part of a whole body. We pray as the community and family that we are, concerned for each other's welfare and encouraged by the faith of our brothers and sisters praying with us.

Secondly, we should pray knowing that we have a Father who knows our needs and longs to do us good. After recounting Jesus' teaching of the Lord's prayer Matthew reminds us that God looks after the lilies and the birds and tells us that we have no reason to be anxious about anything because our Father knows all that we need. And after the Lord's prayer in Luke, we are told that even evil people like us give good things to our children so we can be confident that God will give us the Holy Spirit if we ask him. But God does not shower gifts on his children from afar, our relationship is one of intimacy so that we can call him Abba, Father, and approach him without fear.

Thirdly, we should pray respectfully. Fathers in the ancient world were august figures who demanded respect from their children. This should particularly be our attitude towards God because he is not only "our Father", but also "in heaven". He is creator and we are his creatures, but even that should encourage us to pray. Children ask their parents for things not just because they know they love them, but because they know that they can do what they cannot. As a child I asked my parents for bike not only because I thought they loved me enough to buy me one, but because I had no money and they did.

Tom Smail on the Trinity at Easter

Listening to: Seth Lakeman: Freedom Fields

Tom Smail has three theses about the Trinity and the Resurrection of Jesus:

1. "it is the Father who is both the initiating source and the ultimate goal of all that happens in relation to the raising of the Son and the sending of the Spirit. It is from the Father that it all starts and it is to the Father that it is all to return."

"The resurrection is seen [in 1 Pet 1:3] as the distinctive personal act of God the Father, his justifying vindication of Jesus in the face of his crucifiers... Jesus rises because he has been raised up by his Father, he acts because he has first been acted upon by God. He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), not in and by himself but because he has received this from the Father.

What is true of his resurrection is also true of his exaltation. He does not exalt himself - that would be against his whole character - it is his Father who exalts him to his own right hand.... his exaltation remains the distinctive personal act of God the Father, 'God, exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name' (Phil 2:9). The authority in heaven and on earth that has been given to him (Matt 28:18) is to be exercised in a way that glorifies and serves the purposes of the Father who gave it (Phil 2:11). In the end indeed, also according to Paul, that kingly authority has to be surrendered back to the Father who gave it, so that God may be all in all (1 Cor 1:24-28)....

The Holy Spirit did not come on his own, he was poured out by Jesus after and as a result of his resurrection and his exaltation... Yet even Jesus is not the ultimate origin of the newly poured out Spirit. He gives him only because he has first received him from the Father.

2. "the integrated Easter event that proclaims the primacy of the Father equally clearly proclaims what we may call the derived deity of the Son."

When the Father raises his Son from the dead to his own throne, he is telling us something not just about himself, but about that son, namely that he belongs not just with us on the human side of reality, but with God himself on the divine side of reality.... 'What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions?' (Eph 4:9). His exaltation to God is seen to imply that his work and his person have their eternal origination in God's own life...

All this, however, is said on the clear assumption that it does not threaten the primacy of the Father. The Son is Son because on the one hand he is all that the Father is, he is of the very stuff of the Father's deity, but on the other hand all he has he owes not to himself but to the Father (John 5:19)...

The risen son of God shows himself to be not only our brother, but God's eternal Son, who is to us and does for us what only God can do. Yet at the same time he is to be differentiated from God the Father, as the one who is sent is to be differentiated from the one who sends him, the one who obeys from the one whom he obeys, the one who is raised from the one who raised him.

3. "the integrated Easter event that reveals the primacy of the Father and the derived deity of the Son, also reveals the mutual interdependence of the Son and the Holy Spirit"

"On the one hand it is through the activity of the Spirit that Jesus is raised, and on the other hand it is through the risen Jesus that the Spirit is sent to the church at Pentecost...

Acts 2:33, '[Jesus]...has poured out what you now see and hear', and John 16:7, 'Unless I go away the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.' For Paul also the dependence of the work of the Spirit upon the work of Christ is so close that at some points... he seems to identify the one with the other... the Holy Spirit does nothing of his own that is apart from or beyond what Christ has done. He simply takes what is in Christ and so works in us that it becomes ours also...

[on the other hand] the Father raises the Son from the dead through the activity of the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom 1:4; 1 Cor 6:14; 1 Tim 3:16; 1 Pet 3:18). I that is so, then it is the son who is dependent upon the Spirit in his reception of resurrection life from the Father, just as he was dependent upon the Spirit for his human birth from Mary (Luke 1:35)...

The two-sided mutuality of that relationship is classically expressed in the words of John the Baptist in John 1:33, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptise with the holy Spirit.' At his baptism Jesus receives the Spirit and all that he brings from the Father for his own work; at Pentecost he sends that same Spirit from the Father to empower us in our work for him.

All quotes from pp. 63-78, Thomas A. Smail, "The Holy Trinity and the Resurrection of Jesus" in ed Andrew Walker Different Gospels: Christian Orthodoxy and Modern Theologies. Sorry for the extended quotations, but I thought it was all excellent stuff.

A Bible study on prayer and the Trinity

[This a supposed to be a fairly short bible study on a rather big subject. The plan is to split into three or four groups and allocate one set of questions to each, and then get them to join back together to share. Any thoughts on the questions or bible passages would be helpful.]

"Prayer is talking to God" (Goldsworthy)

"through Christ we both have access to the Father by one Spirit" (Ephesians 2:18)

Praying to the Father... (Luke 11:1-13)

• What are we talking about? Using simple language, what does it mean to say that we pray to the Father?
• Is there an alternative? Who/what else do non-Christians, and Christians, pray to?
• Who cares? If we pray to the Father, what difference should that make to our prayers?

...through the Son... (Hebrews 4:14-16; 7:24-25; 10:19-23)

• What are we talking about? Using simple language, what does it mean to say that we pray through the Son?
• Is there an alternative? Who/what else do non-Christians, and Christians, pray through?
• Who cares? If we pray through the Son, what difference should that make to our prayers?

...by (or 'in') the Spirit (Romans 8:11-30; cf. Ephesians 6:17-18, Jude 19-20)

• What are we talking about? Using simple language, what does it mean to say that we pray by/in the Holy Spirit?
• Is there an alternative? Who/what else do non-Christians, and Christians, pray by/in?
• Who cares? If we pray by/in the Holy Spirit, what difference should that make to our prayers?

[ The Trinity talks (John 16:13-14, 17:6-21; cf. Genesis 1:26, Romans 8:26, 34)

• What are we talking about? Using simple language, what does it mean for the three persons of the Trinity to talk to each other?
• Is there an alternative? Who/what do Christians and non-Christians think of as talking, and how else can we think of God?
• Who cares? If the Trinity talks, what difference should that make to our prayers? ]

Praying to the Son?

Listening to: The Unthanks on Myspace

Should you address prayers to the Son, or just the Father?

I'm not entirely sure, but think the best answer is summed up nicely by Tim Chester:

"The unity of the Trinity means we can address prayer to the Son and the Spirit - the Son and the Spirit are truly God and so can truly receive prayer. But the norm in the New Testament is to address prayer to the Father through the Son by, or with the aid of, the Holy Spirit." (p. 39, The Message of Prayer)

In relation to this discussion I found the following references in the Gospel of John, intriguing.

"Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it." (14:13-14)

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser... Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me... If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you...I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you." (15:1-16)

"you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy... So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full." (16:20-24)

Most exciting was to see that the parable of the true vine is so much about prayer.

The Triune God as Speech Event

It's quite fashionable to describe the Trinity as a dance. CS Lewis does in Mere Christianity, and Tim Keller picks up on this in The Reason for God (p.215):

When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two [...] Each person of the Trinity loves, adores, defers to, and rejoices in the others. That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love. the early leaders of the Greek church had a word for this - perichoresis. Notice our word "choreography" within it. It means literally to "dance or flow around"

That's great, I love it. But I'm also slightly disatisfied. Maybe it's because I don't really like dancing, but despite all that is said about other-centredness and movement it feels slightly self-contained and static to me. Perhaps it's because I see the dance as happening somewhere over there, and "Jesus...inviting you into the dance" (p.221, ibid). Instead I should see the dance as "Jesus moving toward us and encircling us with an infinite, self giving love" (ibid) and then it would be better. But usually the "dance of God" is a description of the triune life apart from the salvation of the world, and I'm increasingly convinced that we mustn't talk about the Trinity apart from that.

In Luther's hymn "Dear Christians, one and all rejoice", Luther imagines the triune life of God not as a dance but as a conversation about the salvation of the world. Oswald Bayer comments on this hymn:

If the Trinity is a dialogue, if God, within himself, is communication, relationship, a relational three-ness, then he does not allow himself to be conceptualized in any way as a monad, as a monarchical being or subject. Instead, within himself he is in motion: speaking and hearing, speaking and answering, as Father and Son, to whom the Spirit listens, so that what is heard can be communicated to us [cf. John 16:13]. Thus the entire being of the triune God is a unique communication to me and to all creatures, an event of complete giving and a trustworthy, reliable promise.

(p.341, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation)

I like that more. Although I must make sure it is not my likes and dislikes driving my theology!

The Trinity in Salvation

I think this diagram represents how I think of our salvation.

I want to use it to explain a few things in future posts if I get the time. For example:

• The differnce between how contemporary Evangelicals and the Reformers view the marks of the church/Christian
• How in the 'law' God works in an sub-Trinitarian way (will have to be careful with that one)
• How Stuart Olyott, and not Luther, got it wrong (with all due respect)
• How the cross both is and isn't where Christ is glorified, and why weakness is and isn't where Christians are strong
• Where we should find our assurance
• The dangers of ritualism, and anti-ritualism

But firstly I'll just throw my big-picture out there for you to point out my heresies.

As a bit of clarrification, what I'm trying to communicate in the diagram is a whole range of things, such as:

• How all three persons are at work in our salvation, at every stage
• How Christ and the Holy Spirit are inseperable
• The Father's initiative
• The centrality of the cross and resurrection
• How the humbling of the Son was both going in the opposite way to getting glory, but also the way to glory
• The ultimate end of salvation being the glory of God
• That works come from faith which comes from the external word which comes from Christ's death and resurrection. They are all of an ordered piece.
• and probably a load of other random things I've forgotten

Christ's mediation: pop quiz

Some questions on my mind this evening.

1. Do you think that most people think of Christ as the mediator between us and the Father, and the Holy Spirit as the mediator between us and Christ?
2. What impact would it have on our thinking if we remembered more often that Christ was the mediator of the Spirit?
3. What do we mean by Christ's mediation anyway? Is his cleansing us so we can enter the prescence of God the end of it? If not, what else does it involve?

The doctrine of the Trinity at the end!

Glen Scrivener recently posted a great post on why when doing theology we should start with the Trinity, not with any general teaching about God. I must admit I've been largely sold on this over the last few years, and found that while people may not practice it, nobody ever seems to disagree with the basic idea that the Trinity is where we should begin.... that was up until very recently, when I came across a confident broadside against it in the most surprising place.

Oswald Bayer notes that starting with the doctrine of the Trinity "is the pattern that is followed by an ever-increasing number of dogmatic theologians throughout the world" (p. 335, Martin Luther's Theology; A Contemporary Interpretation). But this is not something which he approves of. He describes as "one of the grandiose blunders of the more recent history of both philosophy and theology" (p. 339)!

He believes that the doctrine of the Trinity is "properly located neither as a bland addition nor in the middle as just one dogmatic theme among many, but correctly in the middle and correctly at the end" (p.334). The reason for this is that "the triune nature of God can only be comprehended only as an unfolding of the pure gospel" (p.335 - reminds me of the title to Tim Chester's Theology Network, "The good news of the Trinity"). He sees a number of problems if we start the doctrine of the Trinity. E.g:

• "if one proceeds in such a way, one will come dangerously close to... a brand of speculation that ignores time and the situation" (p.335)
• it "ignores or minimizes the problem of unfaith" (p.335)
• it has no place for the sufferer's experience of God as his seeming enemy, or take seriously the "reality of evil".

The basic problem though is that those who want to see the Trinity placed at the beginning see what is first in theology as the most fundamental. They are always concerned that we fit what follows to what comes before, and that much theology has fit the Trinity into the procrustean bed of a Unitarian view of God. However, a Lutheran who believes in law and then Gospel believes that what follows is the more fundamental. The Lutheran believes the good news is a surprise.

Bayer believes that we should begin with "'general' teaching about God", but not because he thinks that the Trinity is subsidiary. He has no love for the God who is not Trinity. "The God who comes to us apart from being the triune God, who is purely and completely love, 'looks on,' and has for us the grimace of the devil" (p.338). General teaching about God, even a monotheistic God, is something that belongs to the non-Christian and will be left behind in eternity.

The distinction between what is involved in the teaching about the Trinity and "general" teaching about God [...] is encountered in faith and in the hope that this distinction will be removed, along with the distinction between law and gospel, in the eschaton. The the triune God - he alone - will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). Then we also will no longer be assailed by the oppressive, incomprehensible hiddenness that weighs us down even to the point of our death. It will be consumed by open love which itself cannot be comprehended, which will free us from its power and which comes to us conclusively already now in the gospel.

The end that we believe in and hope for, because of the love that has come to us and has been promised to us - the consummation of the work of creation by the triune God - is misinterpreted with regard to its true character when it is claimed that it exists as a timeless principle of knowledge and existence. Its universality cannot be demonstrated in the abstract, not even with theoretical means linked to the Trinity; one cannot apply its truths to every circumstance one can postulate and treat it as an a priori. (pp.339-340)

Glen and others (hi Glen!) are driven by their conviction that we should start all our thinking about God with the Trinity to argue that the Trinity was fully understood by the OT saints. Hence the regular 'Angel of the Lord' etc debates. But while a Lutheran would admit that the Trinity was seen in the OT, just as the Gospel was preached in the OT, they would also want to retain a distinction because:

just as the chief teaching of the New Testament is really the proclamation of grace and peace through the forgiveness of sins in Christ, so the chief teaching of the Old Testament is really the teaching of the laws, the showing up of sin, and the demanding of good. (Martin Luther, Preface to the Old Testament)

For Oswald Bayer there is always a shape and a story to the Bible and to our lives. He sees those who start with the doctrine of the Trinity as flattening the contours of this story, and so missing out on the depths and the heights of the Bible's message about God.

... I must confess its shook up all my thinking. Who knows how it will all settle again.

[A few asides: (a) it is interesting to note that Karl Barth was led the way in both making the doctrine of the Trinity at the beginning of theology, and in arguing that we should deal with Gospel then law. (b) It is also interesting how those who start with the Trinity always seem (IMHO) to be struggling to not say that creation and redemption were necessary for God. (c) In The Cruciality of the Cross PT Forsyth argues that the Atonement (i.e. the Gospel) drives us to the Incarnation, not the other way round. But it could be equally said of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Gospel drives us to the Trinity from our point of view, even if the Trinity is what leads to the Gospel from God's point of view.]

Thoughts on finding Christ in the OT

Over on Dave Bish's blog I've been involved in one the monthly discussions about how Christ is revealed in the OT. So often the two 'sides' seem to go round and round and I have often felt that there was more going on beneath the surface than what shows above the water. But I've never really got what.

You could say that one group just doesn't really believe that God is Trinity, or that the other is denying the newness of the incarnation. However I don't believe that is true of either group of regular commenters all of whom I have great respect for.... Which is not to say that we all don't have a great deal to learn.

However, listening to Mike Reeves on MP3 today suddenly things became a lot clearer. Commenting on reading the OT as all being about Christ he comments:

the key issue is I don't always have to talk about the incarnation, which is what we tend to mean when we say Christ. I don't always have to talk about that. When we say "do I have to go to Christ?" the kind of language we are using is using is "do I have to fast-forward through time to the event of the incarnation when Christ became flesh?" No you don't have to do that. But you have to be talking about the true and living God who is Christ. If you are not talking about him you must be talking about another God [...] That doesn't mean that as you are preaching on Hosea 11 you have to go "oh now lets jump into the New Testament". No you don't have to do that at all. But you must be talking about the same person. I suppose that's the key. So I'm not saying you always have to nip into the New Testament. You don't at all. But you must always be proclaiming Christ. You don't always have to be proclaiming the incarnation of Christ.

(34:43-> of this lecture, the whole series here)

I don't think you would find Graeme Goldsworthy saying that (correct me if I'm wrong). It may be Trinitarian hermeneutics but is it Gospel-centred hermeneutics?

Anyhow, although I am struggling to know where I should be, I think I understand enough to make some wild generalisations:

Group 1 is looking for the person

• This group is concerned about finding the second person of the Trinity. They are looking for God the Son. They tend to be thinking vertically about the relationship of God to humanity. They would stress that you cannot know God except as Trinity.

Group 2 is looking for the gospel-event

• This group is concerned about finding the Messiah. They are looking for the promised perfect human (king/priest etc). They will be thinking horizontally about the story of the bible/world. They would stress that you cannot know God apart from the death and resurrection of Christ.

I don't think I need go to the effort of pointing out the dangers on both sides. Doing one and not the other is clearly disastrous.

The one mediator

"there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5)

There is a discussion going on at the Coffee Bible Club Blog concerning whether the Angel of YHWH in the OT is God the Son. It is at 166 comments and counting - I've never seen anything like it. I haven't had the time to get involved and I don't have firm enough opinions on it anyway.

But I do have a nagging question:

Can there be a mediator between God and humanity who is not human?

Further, can there be a mediator between God and sinful humanity, who does not share in the suffering which is the just punishment for our sin?

The letter to the Hebrews has been brought into the discussion on the blog, although I've only skim read how people have dealt with it. However it would seem to me that Hebrews says several things that are relevant (that I can think of off the top of my head):

• The Old Covenant was mediated by Angels but the New by God's own Son.
• The Old Covenant was also mediated by imperfect sinful priests the New by a perfect sinless priest.
• Jesus was tempted like we were and so can sympathise with our weaknesses.
• Jesus was made perfect for his mediatory role by suffering.

The OT is characterised by a distance between God and humanity. We have to take at full seriousness the verses about people being unable to see God and live because of their sinfulness. Only in the NT did God come close. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:5 it is 'the man' Christ Jesus who is our mediator. That is why the most common places that the NT writers see Christ in the OT are in men - the priests, the kings, the nation.

I don't think the debate is really about whether the Israelites knew the Triune God or a Unitarian God, with the Angel of YHWH as a test case. I think the debate is really about mediation and revelation.

... sorry Glen. I perfectly understand if you want to shoot me now.

Tom Smail on The Holy Spirit

I have a whole host of posts in my head at the moment and I want to get them down before I forget them all. Unfortunately I'm also quite busy and so I'm going to be short on analysis and comment and long on quotes and notes.

I'm really enjoying Tom Smail's book Like Father Like Son, even when I don't fully agree with it. I use the word a lot but it really is thought-provoking.

A difficulty with talking about the Holy Spirit is in keeping two things in balance. We can so understand his personal-nature that we seperate him from the other members of the Trinity and describing him as working outside of or apart from the finished work of Jesus and the finished written word. On the other hand we can understand him as an impersonal force which just a tool of the Father and the Son and not in anyway distinguishable from him. I know I have often not kept things in balance, but I think Tom Smail does quite well:

"He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you" (John 16:15). Pannenberg has fastened on this verse as a basis for understanding the Holy Spirit as a source of personal action distinct from the Son. The Spirit brings to the Son, from outside his own person, a new glory that he does not have within himself. Nevertheless, in the work of the Spirit it is the Son who is glorified. The focus of the work of the Spirit is the work of Jesus, not some work of his own that he accomplishes apart from or beyond Jesus. The Spirit is the one who unfolds all that is implicit in the work of the Son, applies it creatively and transformingly in the mission of the Church across the continents and down the centuries in an endlessly enthralling kaleidoscope of new creation in the men and women who, in the Spirit, are brought into the power of the love of the Father as it is savingly incarnate in the love of the Son.

(p.184, Like Father, Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in our Humanity)

A Centurion for a guide

Trinitarian theology causes me a lot of head scratching. Particularly difficult for me to understand is how 'It is in the Son that God is presented to us in a human life, but through his Trinitarian perichoresis that human life images both the Father and the Spirit so that the specificities of their functions and their relationships come into focus' (p. 105f, Tom Smail, Life Father like Son). However, it is in 'the gospel story where God reveals himself' (p.82, ibid), and it is here, rather than abstractions that things become clearer for me. Tom Smail points to the Centurions's comments in Luke 7 for an example of how Jesus reveals his Father:

"Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes; and to another, 'Come,' and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, "I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith."

Tom Smail comments that:

What that Gentile faith grasps is that, through the exercise of what is proper to his Sonship, namely his obedience to the Father, in which he is a man under authority, he participates in what is proper to his Father - the power to utter a sovereign word that can take the initiative to break savingly into a situation - and becomes a man with authority to issue orders to illnesses.

(p. 105, ibid)

Stumbling around in my head

I'm currently reading Like Father Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in Our Humanity by Tom Smail. It is a good book, and I'm seeing the truth of Jason Goroncy's statement about Tom Smail that 'If only he didn't write so clearly then perhaps he might be taken more seriously as a theologian'.

I'm still trying to thrash over in my head what Tom Smail describes quite well:

'One of Karl Barth's central theological axioms was that when we are talking of God, it is the actuality that determines the possibility and not the other way round. We do not limit our openness to what God has done by prior notions of our own about what he could do; rather, our basis for recognizing what he can do is what he has already done' (p.27)

Karl Barth himself explains how this has massive implications for our understanding of the nature of God:

'If in faith in Jesus Christ we are ready to learn, to be told, what Godhead, or the divine nature is, we are confronted with what is and always will be to all other ways of thinking a mystery, and indeed a mystery that offends. The mystery reveals to us that for God it is just as natural to be lowly as it is to be high, to be near as it is to be far, to be little as it is to be great, to be abroad as it is to be at home.' (p. 152, CD IV:1 The Doctrine of Reconcilliation, 1956; quoted in p.77, Smail)

I keep on thinking over Philippians 2 and this idea. I am far from decided. My difficulty is that Jesus gave up what was naturally his in his incarnation ('though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor'). And also that though he was crucified, he was also resurrected. Although the NT is clear that Jesus' glory is his cruxifiction as well as his resurrection (e.g. John 12) and that he is glorified because of his cruxifiction (e.g. Phil 2:9 and Rev 5:12). It is difficult for me.

Also difficult for me is understand is precisely how the Son reveals the Trinity. Tom Smail describes how he has two icons of Jesus. One depicting him alone looking out, and one of Jesus with the other two members of the Trinity looking at the Father (he has Rublev's famous one).

Smail comments that 'It is impossible to make any sense of the Jesus of the gospels if we treat him as a solitary individual whose significance is in himself' (p. 67 - which begs the question why you have such an icon - I hate icons). My difficulty is understanding whether we should see the Trinity revealed in Jesus as that solitary individual dying on the cross and rising to new life, or in Jesus as he dies in broken relationship toward his Father, and whom the Father restored by the power of the Spirit. The second option would seem to be right, but does that alter Barth's conclusion that for God it is 'natural to be lowly', when our Father is, and always has been, in heaven. Having said that God the Father obviously suffered seeing his Son crucified, and has throughout human history endured his name being blasphemed. All very difficult for me to make my head around!

And as an aside, listenining to their podcast, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo have both introduced me to the wonderful phrase 'pharisaic cadre', and to the fact that Richard Nixon was a Quaker.

The forgotten Father

I've just written in a comment: "I get to know Jesus as the one who loves us so much that he laid down his life for me". This is not wrong, but it is unlike most NT language. Spot the difference...

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

"God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all" (Romans 8:32)

"God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ" (Ephesians 2:4-5)

"the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:9-10)

The difference is that the NT emphasis (perhaps anticipating people like me) is on the Father's love for us in sending his Son, not the Son independently coming to us. Although other passages explain that Jesus loved us too (e.g. Ephesians 5:2). As if that was not enough, the emphasis in the NT is on the Son's death reconciling us to the Father and revealing him (Romans 5:10; 2 Corinthians 5:18).

I am either harbouring a view of the death of Christ that deserves the name 'cosmic child abuse' or a monistic view of God who is occasionally called by different names (Jesus, God, Father, YHWH etc).

The Trinitarian structure of 1 John (Part 2)

1 John closes somewhat abruptly with the statement: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."

This hasn't made much sense to me before because I have always been reading 1 John focused on humans loving one another when reading the book and racking my brains to deal with the seeming Christian Perfectionism. But reading it again today what has struck me is just how much God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) are mentioned. Instead it seems that theology is John's major concern. Of course loving one another is massively important but throughout this is seen as firmly founded on the nature of God himself.

The best way to demonstrate this is to encourage you to read the book beginning to end. Seeing that in God the Trinity is life, light, truth and love (some of John's favourite words).

As John says of his purpose in writing the letter it is "so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1:3). More directly he was prompted to write because of false teachers whose false teaching seemed to centre on a denial that Jesus was from God (2:23; 4:2-3; 4:15; 4:14; 5:1; 5:5-6). John points out that while they may think they can deny the Son while worshipping the Father they are mistaken (1 John 2:22-23, a constant theme in the Gospel as well). Denying Jesus they are actually idolaters!

Not only are they idolaters but by denying the Trinitarian work of salvation they are losing love in the process. As John says:

• "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."
• "the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him."
• "this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."
• "We love because he first loved us."

Incidentally this is yet another instance of where I am beginning to think that Judaizers are the main threat behind many NT letters, not proto-Gnostics or any other kind of Hellenized syncretists.

The Trinitarian structure of 1 John (Part 1)

Peter Dray prompted me to read 1 John today on my commute. It's a book that I have neglected to read for far too long. As I was reading it I guess I have been affected by recent blog conversations over the Trinity with Dan Hames and Glen Scrivener which I have learnt a lot from.

Anyway, reading 1 John today the Trinity seemed to purvey everything. Perhaps this short series of posts will show that I am shooting from left field, but I throw them out as things to test.

1 John 2:12-14 reads

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

The two statements about little children, fathers and young men clearly parallel each other. Perhaps even like this:

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.	I write to you, children, because you know the Father.	Father
I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.	I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.	Son
I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.	I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.	Holy Spirit

The first of pairs doesn't seem to fit my patten. Obviously the second of the two explicitly mentions the Father, but the first doesn't and seems to focus on the Son because of who's name we are forgiven. However, with a different pair of glasses you may focus on the one who does the forgiven, the one we can now know.

The second of the pairs mentions only knowing the one 'who is from the beginning'. John has already said that we know the Father, but the one who is from the beginning must surely refer to the Son of God considering 1 John 1:1 and John 1:1.

How then does the second pair concern the Holy Spirit? I think these quotes suggest that strength, the word of God abiding, and overcoming, are all closely linked to the Spirit in this letter.

by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. (3:24)

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (4:2-6)

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? [...] And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. (5:4-7)

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. (5:13)

We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. (5:18 cf. John 3:1-14)

A marking post on my journey in Trinitarian Theology

[A comment of mine on Dan Hames' blog]

Hello everyone,

I thought I best account for my absence in case it appear rude especially as I am really thankful for this conversation.

Unfortunately I have had not more than 30min at a computer at any one time for the last week (except at work) and I have been given so much to think about that I can't possibly respond properly without a couple of hours! Nevertheless I have not stopped thinking about what has been discussed and I have been able to read things and listen to lectures on my commute, which has been amazing.

In case any of you cared where I am in my journey through Trinitarian Theology, I thought I would do a summary for myself more than anything. But seeing as it has been formed in conversation with you all (esp. Dan and Glen – not because Martin and Paul don’t have good things to say but because they were there first and there when I had the time to read properly) I thought I would post it in a comment here.

0. God is definitely revealed and Glen was right to pick me up on where my rash comments led, but that doesn't mean that he is fully revealed. However I still think that God is primarily (I think I was wrong to say 'only') revealed in relation to creation, and particularly in our redemption.

1. I’m still not convinced that the Trinity is revealed in the OT in the way in which Glen appears to think it is. So many other people have made the argument better than me that I won’t dwell here.

2. I do think the Trinity is revealed in the OT but not because there are plurals in the names of God, an Angel of YHWH, Wisdom of God etc but because the Trinity is revealed in the unity of God too, just as the Trinity is revealed in the one Son so it can be revealed in the one Elohim.

3. Augustine is getting a horribly rough deal. I think he took into account the three much more he has been given credit for in recent discussion. I also have noted that: (i) some seem to think that he was much less neo-platonic on the Trinity than he has Glen and Dan say (ii) he was combating genuine concerns that were as real as the concerns of Glen and Dan (iii) On his book on the Trinity he spends the first third of the book in the Scriptures before moving on to Philosophy (iv) 'substance' was not 'stuff' for him. In all these things I can't help thinking that Augustine is a hook to hang the faults of the worst of post-Enlightenment Protestantism, much as Tom Wright hangs many of the faults of the worst of Evangelicalism on Luther.

4. I have been reading quite a few creeds and catechisms recently and the Apostles/Nicene creed are remarkably focused on the three - as in fact they are remarkably focused on history and the church.

5. Dan and Glen's thoughts about what makes the Trinity one make remarkable sense logically.

6. They also make remarkable sense of the bible’s own discussion about unity in married couples and the church. - incidentally it would be interesting to read something about the connection between monks and celibacy and conceptions of the Trinity. It is striking that whereas Augustine does go to Gen 1:26-27 to learn of the Trinity in the Trinity's image (apparently he was one of the first to do so) he focuses on the individual that is in the image of God and not the couple ('in the image of God...he created them').

7. This MP3 by Mike Ovey on the inseparable operation of the members of the trinity is the highlight of my listening/reading so far (other than this blog of course). It would be worth listening to while bearing in mind Glen's helpful post.

8. In the light of Mike Ovey's talk I wonder what Dan and Glen would do with: "whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise." "Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works." "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." Although something similar could be said of the perfect human relationship this is a quantum leap in magnitude.

9. Is "God is love" any more important than "God is true" "God is spirit" "God is faithful" etc or even "God is a consuming fire". In which case does Augustine have a thought when he says "For we are not going to say that God is called Love because love itself is a substance worthy of the name of God, but because it is a gift of God, as it is said to God" and goes on to identify the Holy Spirit as love because he is a gift. Again we have come round to God’s revelation in relation to his creation and not primarily in himself.

10. So I’m still wondering: How bound to the creation is the revelation of God? The Word of God is a title which begs the question 'Word to who?'. Similarly Father and Son all could be related firstly to God's relationship to his people before to intra-Trinitarian discussion. As Calvin says on John 17:24 which Glen brought up earlier:

"This also agrees better with the person of the Mediator than with Christ’s Divinity alone. It would be harsh to say that the Father loved his Wisdom; and though we were to admit it, the connection of the passage leads us to a different view. Christ, unquestionably, spoke as the Head of the Church, when he formerly prayed that the apostles might be united with him, and might behold the glory of his reign. He now says that the love of the Father is the cause of it; and, therefore, it follows that he was beloved, in so far as he was appointed to be the Redeemer of the world. With such a love did the Father love him before the creation of the world, that he might be the person in whom the Father would love his elect."

Reminds me of Ephesians: “he chose us in him before the foundation of the world”. After all ‘Son of God’ was a title for Israel and her king first in the bible. Father was a title for Israel’s God before it was Jesus’ name for the first person of the Trinity. Although this is a facile discussion in some sense as God is the creator of time. Nevertheless he identified with us, and we identify with him – which came first (1 John says the former)?

11. Praise God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that all three in unity chose to bring me into that community to their own glory!

MP3s on the Trinity

[this is a work in progress]

• Allah vs. Yahweh / Tawhid vs. Trinity (Keith Small) - Bethinking.org, Seminar on differences between Muslim and Christian conceptions of God
• Trinity (Mike Reeves) - 30min evangelistic talk
• Digging Deeper - Depending on the Living God (Mike Reeves and Jo McKenzie) - 3 seminars at UCCF Forum 2007
• The Trinity of Persons, Jesus and the Father, Jesus and the Spirit (Bruce Ware) - 3 messages at the 2005 Desiring God Conference for Pastors
• Inseparable Operation: The trinity working together (Michael J. Ovey) - In a masterful talk given to returning graduates at Oak Hill Theological College in 2002, Mike Ovey expounds the Augustinian doctrine of the inseparable operation of the members of the trinity.
• Equal in Essence, Distinct in Roles: Eternal Functional Authority and Submission among the Essentially Equal Divine Persons of the Godhead (Bruce Ware) - 2006 SBTS Faculty Address
• How can Christianity be both monotheistic and Trinitarian? (Tim Keller)

More here.