Marginal Christianity

Ron Rolheiser tells us to ask 3 questions of ourselves to evaluate our spiritual health: 1) Do I pray every day? 2) Am I involved with the struggle of the poor? 3) Do I have the kind of friendships in my life that move me beyond bitterness and anger? This suggests to me a trinitarian form to our spirituality: -Talk with God -Walk with Christ -Live in the Spirit If we follow two central rules for talking about the trinity to this we get the following: -such talk, walk, and life always and at the same time constitute our spiritual life, and -this talk, walk, and life cannot be separated from each other or played off against each other. This triune form of spirituality, then, constitutes our participation in the life of the triune God!

   C. S. Lewis on the Triune God Only Christianity, according to Lewis (in Mere Christianity ), gives us an idea of what something “super-personal” might look like. Eastern religions picture God as finally non-personal, a single reality into which all entities are part of, like water drops in the ocean, and will be absorbed into. Lewis observes, “If that is what happens to us, then being absorbed is the same as ceasing to exist.” Christianity alone has “any idea of how human souls can be taken into the life of God and yet remain themselves—in fact, be very much more themselves than they were before.” Here’s Lewis’ analogy for this: -One-dimensionally, there is a straight line. -Two-dimensionally, there is a square. -Three-dimensionally, squares can be combined to form a cube, something inconceivable in a one-or-two-dimensional world. Similarly, in our world we believe one person is one being. Some marriages, perhaps, give us a hint of “two becoming one.” But still we are b

Revelation 1:1-8: Introduction One Sunday in the mid-90’s a.d. the Holy Spirit visited the prophet John on the island of Patmos where he was exiled because of Jesus and the witness John bore to him. God had a message to give to him, a message he delivered through Jesus about Jesus (“revelation of Jesus Messiah,” 1:1) through an angel. Intended for seven churches in Asia Minor (1:11), John (not the author of the gospel though they share some similarities) penned this mysterious and controversial message. Not so much to its recipients, perhaps, but throughout history its fortunes have varied wildly (see introduction). This message comes with a blessing (seven actually, see introduction) on those who read, hear, and heed it (1:3). Head, heart, and hands are all necessary for a faithful response to this message – not any one or two of them alone. The message concerns Jesus Messiah – his true identity and significance for both his people and the world. Something on the near hor

Jesus, God in human flesh, is the ultimate expression of God’s BHAG – his B ig H airy A udacious G oal. Such a goal is “ clear and compelling and serves as a unifying focal point of effort” that engages people in their “innards” and is “tangible, energizing, highly focused.  People ‘get it’ right away; it takes little or no explanation” (Collins, https://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/BHAG.html). The thing God wanted from forever, the divine BHAG, is for God and humanity to live together in friendship and love on this world he created for it. God desired this so much, to be so close to us, as close as he could possibly be, in fact, that he decided to become one of us!   His coming as one of us was always God’s plan. That was enormously complicated after humanity sinned and rejected friendship with him, to be sure. It now included the necessity to deal with sin and its effects in order to reclaim and restore humanity and creation to God’s intention for them. Do you realize

by Peter J. Leithart 8 . 25 . 17 F or much of the past century, theologians have busied themselves reconceiving the doctrine of the Trinity. Taking cues from Adolf von Harnack, some complain that the lively God of the Bible was domesticated by the fateful triumph of “classical theism,” which imprisoned the Triune God in the static, ahistorical, impersonal categories of Greek philosophy. Heidegger captured the mood: No one, he famously said, would want to pray, sacrifice, sing, or dance before Aristotle’s unmoved Mover. Classical theists have been making a comeback of late, insisting that the tradition is better than detractors claim and that the supposed innovations have been unhelpful at best, heterodox at worst. Both sides are half-wrong, or, more charitably, half-right. The classical theists are right about the tradition: Trinitarian theology isn’t an Athenian captivity of the Church. The innovators are right that the concepts and formulations of Trinitaria

Spend a few minutes pondering this magnificent statement: “We will now try to give the briefest possible outline of what the love of God is which is the real basis of our love to God, determining its character. One thing is certain, that according to Holy Scripture it has nothing to do with mere sentiment, opinion or feeling. On the contrary, it consists in a definite being, relationship and action. God is love in Himself. Being loved by Him we can, as it were, look into His ‘heart.’ The fact that He loves us means that we can know Him as He is. This is all true. But if this picture-language of ‘the heart of God’ is to have any validity, it can refer only to the being of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It reminds us that God’s love for us is an overwhelming, overflowing, free love. It speaks to us of the miracle of this love. We cannot say anything higher or better of the ‘inwardness of God’ than that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and therefore that He is love in Him

April 06, 2017by: Crossway This is a guest post by Fred Sanders, author of The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything . This post is part of our 10 Things You Should Know blog series. 1. The Trinity is something God wants us to know. If you believe the Bible reveals that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then you ought to believe that God made this known because he wants us to know it. "The secret things belong to the LORD," but God's triunity is not among those secret things, or he wouldn't be talking about it and neither would we. "The things that are revealed belong to us" (Deut 29:29). 2. The doctrine of the Trinity is not illogical. It doesn't teach that God is three persons in one person, or three beings in one being, or three in one in some abstract sense. It teaches that God is three persons in one being. Partly because there are no other examples of such a thing, God's triunity transcends our

The Horse and His Boy (HHB) is occupied with the importance of discovering one’s true identity and living out of that identity. Shasta and Aravis, along with their horses Hwin and Bree, learn through their adventures fleeing Calormene across the desert to the north that they are not who they believed themselves to be and that their true longings were fulfilled only in learning and living into their true identities           Lewis wrote this series of stories out of the Christian convictions that grounded and shaped his own life. The emphasis on identity in HHB is consistent with those convictions. However, there is one other identity that comes into clearer focus in this story. And that is the identity of God. Throughout the series we have heard of the Emperor-beyond-the-sea (analogous to God the Father in Christianity), seen Aslan in action (analogous to God the Son), and, if we’ve read carefully, noticed how Aslan’s “breath” brings life to whatever it is breathed on. A

I don’t remember the source for this story but it is wonderful! One Saturday morning a father was sitting on the floor in his den sorting through the week’s accumulation of junk mail. Unbeknownst to him, his 10 year-old son and a friend were sneaking up on him. Dressed out in their camo gear replete with eye black and helmets the kids crept to the doorway of the den. With a cry they bounded out and dove at the father amid his pile of junk mail. Then the fun started. They rolled and rough-housed around the den floor till all were exhausted. They fell apart belly-laughing for several minutes. The father looked at his son’s friend and realized he didn’t know him. Salvation is participating in the life of God through Jesus Christ. Like that kid who joined in the son’s fun with his father, we too share in the all goodness, beauty, and love – and fun! – of the life of the triune God! If you imagine yourself joining Jesus is such hijinks with the Father, you have some sense of ho

1.     The God The Christian faith is founded on two truths. Both are mysteries, that is, truths we cannot figure out or discover for ourselves not matter how much time, information, and insight we might have. These two truths, realities, mysteries revealed in the Bible are that God is not a singular being. God is one but differentiated within himself. In theological terms, the Christian God is triune, three-in-one. The how-this-can-be question cannot, of course, be explained but only described. Remember, we are dealing with matters beyond human understanding or imagination. That’s why this revelation of the triune nature of God makes the Christian view of Go utterly unique among world religions. 1.1         God is not like a Billiard Ball but like a Molecule A billiard ball is a complete and self-sufficient entity by itself. It needs nothing else to make it what it is. All its interactions with other balls or the rails of the table are external to what it is.           

( by Peter J. Leithart 12.1 5.15) The point of Trinitarian theology is not simply that there are three instead of one. We can’t just plug our pre-conceptions about God into the Trinity, and say that now we are Trinitarian. We can’t assume Deism, the idea that God is a watchmaker who leaves the world to run on its own, and then say that we are Trinitarian because we believe in three watchmakers. We can’t assume that God is sheer power like Allah, and then say we are Trinitarian because we believe in three Allahs and not just one.  To confess the Trinity is not merely to confess a number, but to confess that the true God is a certain kind of God. What kind of God? For Paul, the answer to that question has everything to do with Jesus. Read more at http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2015/12/confessing-trinity

by Adam Johnson on September 8, 2015 You have likely heard several bad images of the Trinity. Ice, water and steam are one in that they are all water, but three states. There are three leaves to a clover, but one clover…. There are any number of such images, each offering an incomplete and largely unhelpful instance combining threeness and oneness. Ultimately, of course, each of these images depends on one or more largely heretical assumptions which undermine the benefit of the image. The reason for this is twofold. On the one hand, the Trinity cannot be explained by creation. On the other hand, the Trinity is what does the explaining–it is the basic reality, the living premise, which serves as the foundation for understanding everything which it has brought into existence. All that changed, however, in 2002, with Gatorade’s foray into the doctrine of the Trinity, offering us what I take to be the most complete and helpful image for the doctrine currently found under the sun.

God's people is to be his Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement. This was its mandate in whatever form it assumed in the Old Testament. This is its mandate as the church. The church is to be subversive. It is to undermine from the bottom up the attitudes, actions, patterns, and systems put in place due to the revolution of humanity against God in the garden. The church is to be counter-revolutionary demonstrating and declaring in its own life the designs God always intended for human life and setting itself against the passions and projects of rebellious humanity. We live for the way the world will be not for the way it is or was. The Bible is for the most part the Field Manual of Operations for God's Subversive Counter-Revolutionary Movement. It reveals the vision of God for creation, humanity's rejecting of that vision, and God's continuing passion and strategy for a pursuit of his erstwhile human creatures and their communities, the victory of

Terrance W. Klein  | May 29 2015 - 9:35am | 1 comment My nephew has a tattoo. Perhaps, more than one, but, as I pause to picture, I can clearly remember only the one. It’s a simple gothic cross, running the length of his right bicep. Although we live a little less distant than a two-hour car drive, we dwell in different worlds. He’s just under thirty, never married. He struggled to finish high school. Until the drop in prices, he was employed in the Kansas oil fields. When I would see him at my mother’s home, his voice abandoned its native languor only if one coaxed him into describing oil field work, the challenges that weather, terrain, and technology presented. Like so many of his generation, Confirmation was my nephew’s passage out of Catholicism. There were no struggles with Church teaching, doctrinal or moral. No conflict with clergy. The institution simply vanished from his life when he took his first job and moved out of the home. Had it ever been a part of his life? Was hi