Introduction:
C.S. Lewis was wrong... the oft quoted story about C.S. Lewis' bold declaration that 'grace' is the one thing that makes Christianity different from all other world religions is wrong. Michael Reeves points out that actually it's 'Trinity' (which is still one word).The Protestant Buddhists
Francis Xavier was a Roman Catholic Missionary to Asia. When he reached Japan in 1549 he came across a particular sect of Buddhism (Yodo Shin-Shu) that stank, he said of what he called 'The Lutheran heresy'. That is, like the Reformer Martin Luther, these Buddhists believed in salvation by grace alone and not by human effort. Simple trust in Amida, they held, instead of trust in self, was sufficient to achieve rebirth into the pure land. If we call on him, they taught, then despite our failings, all his achievements become ours.
Of course the 'salvation' in view here was nothing like Christian salvation: it was about enlightenment and the achievement of Nirvana. It was, nonetheless, a salvation grounded on the virtues and achievements of another, and appropriated by faith alone.
We need not be disturbed by such similarities. That which distinguishes Christianity has not been stolen. For, what makes Christianity absolutely distinct is the identity of our God... the bedrock of our faith is nothing less than God himself, and every aspect of the gospel - creation, revelation, salvation - is only Christian in so far as it is the creation, revelation and salvation of this God, the triune God.
The above quote is interesting and a good reminder that we needn't be so afraid of celebrating the uniqueness of Christian faith. I think that the belief in a Tri-une God is quite obviously something that distinguishes us from all and any other faith but it is also the thing we're least (read I) likely to talk about since it seems a rather embarrassing and illogical idea. Reeves goes on to helpfully say:
Can we rub along with just 'God'?The temptation to sculpt God according to our expectations and presuppositions, to make this God much like another, is strong with us. You see it all down through history: in the middle ages it seemed obvious for people to think of God as a feudal lord; the first missionaries to the Vikings thought it obvious to present Christ as a warrior God, an axe-wielding divine berserker who could ou-Odin Odin. And so on. The trouble is, the triune God simply does not fit well into the mould of any other God. Trying to rub along with some unspecified 'God', we will quickly find ourselves with another God.
That, ironically, is often why we struggle with the Trinity: instead of starting from scratch and seeing that the triune God is a radically different sort of being from any other candidate for 'God', we try to stuff Father, Son and Spirit into how we have always though of God.
What was God doing before Creation?
We are to understand God not in terms of 'creator' or 'almighty' that is by reference to what he does but in terms of who he actually is, the loving relational and triune God who has always existed and always will exist. He is not, as Aristotle, described him 'the Uncaused Cause' but he is Father, Son and Spirit and getting a glimpse into their relationship means that we are better positioned to know him and live in relationship with him.God does not need us, he did not create us to keep him company. One danger of describing God simply in terms of what he does 'Lord, Ruler, Creator' is that it can imply that he needs something to be Lord over and Rule or create. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Swiss theologian Karl Barth put it starkly:
Perhaps you recall how, when Hitler used to speak about God, he called him 'the Almighty'. But it was not 'the Almighty' who is God; we cannot understand from the standpoint of a supreme concept of power, who God is. And the man who calls 'the Almighty' God misses God in the most terrible way. For 'the Almighty' is bad, as 'power in itself' is bad. The 'Almighty' means Chaos, Evil, the Devil. We could not better describe and define the Devil than by trying to think this idea of a self-based, free, sovereign ability.' Mere might is not all God is.Quotes from this chapter:
In other words, I can never really love the God who is essentially just The Ruler. And that, ironically, means I can never keep the greatest command: to love the Lord my God. Such is the cold and gloomy place to which the dark goat-path takes us.
That is who God has revealed himself to be: not first and foremost Creator or Ruler, but Father.Quoting Athanasius in his debate with Arius over the nature of God (4thC)
The right way to think about God is to start with Jesus Christ, the Son of God, not some abstract definition we have made up like 'Uncaused' or 'Unoriginate'
With 'The Unoriginate' we are left scrambling for a dictionary in a philosophy lecture; with a Father things are familial. And if God is a Father, then he must be relational and life-giving, and that is the sort of God we could love.The loving Father
Since God is, before all things, a Father and not primarily Creator or Ruler, all his ways are beautifully fatherly. It is not that this God 'does' being Father as a day-job, only to kick back in the evenings as plain old 'God'. It is not that he has a nice blob of fatherly icing on top. He is Father. All the way down. Thus all that he does he does as Father. That is who he is. He creates as a Father and he rules as a Father; and that means the way he rules over creation is most unlike the way any other God would rule over creation.
It is only when we see that God rules his creation as a kind and loving Father that we will be moved to delight in his providence.
A Father is a person who gives life, who begets children... this God is an inherently outgoing, life-giving God. He did not give life for the first time when he decided to create; from eternity he has been life-giving... love comes from God. Whoever does not love, does not know God.
And just as a fountain, to be a fountain, must pour forth water, so the Father, to be Father, must give out life. That is who he is. If he did not love, he would not be Father.
If he created us in order to be who he is, we would be giving him life.
In Hebrews 1:3 it says that Jesus Christ, the son, is the radiance of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature/being. The 4thC theologian Gregory of Nyssa explained this by likening it to the light that emanates from a lamp - I love this quote:
as the light from the lamp is of the nature of that which sheds the brightness, and is united with it (for as soon as the lamp appears the light that comes from it shines out simultaneously), so in this place the Apostle would have us consider both that the Son is of the Father, and that the Father is never without the Son; for it is impossible that glory should be without radiance, as it is impossible that the lamp should be without brightness.'
A wonderful and extremely challengeing summary of marriage as it relates to the Trinity was also laid out. In just a few words he summed up, for me, what I think I ought to be working toward in my marriage:The Son has his very being from the Father. In fact he is the going out - the radiance - of the Father's own being. He is the Son.
The heavenly hodge-podge of modalism is what Reeves calls 'moodalism' three different moods of the one God. A great quote on this:
That dynamic is also to be replicated in marriages, husbands being the heads of their wives, loving them as Christ the Head loves his bride, the church. He is the lover, she is the beloved. Like the church, then, wives are not left to earn the love of their husbands; they can enjoy it as something lavished on them freely, unconditionally and maximally... Such is the spreading goodness that rolls out of the very being of this God.
'The trouble is, once you puree the persons, it becomes impossible to taste their gospel.
St Hialrius (Hilary of Poiter) said that:
Mere Trinitarianism.
Trying to define God without starting with the Father and his Son, he saw, one would quite simply wind up with a different God.
The Apostle John wrote his gospel, he tells us, so 'that you may believe that Jesus is the christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.'
John Calvin once wrote that 'if we try to think about God without thinking about the Father, Son and Spirit, then only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God.'
This God simply will not fit into the mould of any other. For the Trinity is not some inessential add-on to God, some optional software that can be plugged into him. At bottom this God is different for at bottom, he is not creator, ruler, or even 'God' in some abstract sense: he is the Father, loving and giving life to his Son in the fellowship of the Spirit.Creation: The Father's Love Overflows
The Father has always enjoyed loving another, and so the act of creation by which he creates others to love seems utterly appropriate for him.
Referring to Jesus' prayer in John 17:
The Father loved him before the creation of the world, and the reason the Father sends him is so that the Father's love for him might be in others also.
We have been created that, knowing his love, we might love the Lord our God.
It's all Greek to me:
Hypostasis - means something similar to 'foundation'
Hypo = under; Stasis = something which stands or exists.
LXX translates Psalm 69:2 when the psalmist says 'I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold (hypostasis).'
Hebrews 1:3 'The son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being (hypostasis).
The son is the exact 'foundation' of the Father.
Ekstasis (from which we get 'ecstasy') means to be beside yourself or outside yourself.
Ek = 'out from'; Stasis = something which stands or exists
What we have been seeing is that the Father, Son and Spirit have their hypostasis (foundation) in ekstasis (outside himself). That is, God's innermost being (hypostasis) is an outgoing, loving, life-giving being. The triune God is an ecstatic God.
The Father finds his very identity in giving his life and being to the Son; and the Son images his Father in sharing his life with us through his Spirit
God gives away - he is ecstatic:
The tragedy is that so many think that the living God is the devilish one here, as if her created us simply to get, to demand, to take from us. But the contrast between the devil and the triune God could hardly be starker: the first is empty, hungry, grasping, envious; the second is super-abundant, generous, radiant and self-giving
Grace then is not merely his kindess to those who have sinned; the very creation is a work of grace, flowing from God's love.
This God's very self is found in giving not taking.
His very nature is about going out and sharing of his own fullness, and so that is what he is all about... his pleasure 'is rather a pleasure in diffusing and communicating to the creature, than in receiving from the creature.'
In the sunshine of God's love: We become like what we worship
Richard Sibbes a Puritan preacher who spoke so winningly of God's kindness and love that he became known as 'the honey-mouthed' preacher. He saw God as winning, kind and lovely: he spoke of the living God as a life-giving, warming sun who 'delights to spread his beams and his influence in inferior things, to make all things fruitful.'
That is, God is simply bursting with warm and life-imparting nourishment, far more willing to give than we are to receive... the creation (he says) was a free choice borne out of nothing but love.
Wherever God's Spirit is, fruitfulness is the result, creation occurs as an overflow of the love and goodness of God.
In the book of Job Elihu says 'The Spirit of god has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.' (Job 33:4) Ongoingly in his creation, the Spirit vitalises and refreshes. He delights to make his creation - and his creatures - fruitful. Isaiah writes of the time when 'The Spirit is poured upon us from on high and the desert becomes a fertile field, and the fertile field seems like a forest.' Is 32:15 The psalmist sings 'When you send your Spirit, they the creatures are created, and you renew the face of the earth.' Ps104:30
The supposed sexism in the Da Vinci Codes is simply wrong. Gnosticism has at its core the idea that the earth was created as an evil banished from the spiritual goodness that originally existed and that women, since they were created from the side of man, were similarly bad. On the other hand:
Studies have shown that in that world it was quite extraordinarily rare for even large families ever to have more than one daughter. How is that possible across countries and centuries? Quite simply because abortion and female infanticide were widely practised so as to relieve families of the burden of a gender considered largely superflous. No surprise, then, that Christianity should have been so especially attractive to women, who made up so many of the early converts: Christianity decried those life-threatening ancient abortion procedures; it refused to ignore the infidelity of husbands as paganism did; in Christianity, widows would be and were supported by the church; they were even welcomed as 'fellow-workers' in the gospel. In Christianity women were valued.In the triune God is the love behind all love, the life behind all life, the music behind all music, the beauty behind all beauty and the joy behind all joy. In other words, in the triune God is a God we can heartily enjoy - and enjoy in and through his creation.
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