Q & R - The Ethics of the Trinity - Brad Jersak

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Question:

I've been reading your A More Christlike God.  On page 102 you discuss "Trinitarian love". I've always taken the Trinity as a "given," and never really looked into its implications. But as I've read Jason Pratt's Sword to the Heart, I've come to see that the Trinity has significant ethical implications; God Self-Begetting (the Father) and God Self-Begotten (the Son) always treat One another lovingly. If a Person of God were to rebel against another Person of God, all existence would cease. This gets around the "Euthyphro dilemma" in a way that I do not think unitarian faiths can.  What are your thoughts?  

Response:

You are exactly right. Perhaps more than you even realize.

The doctrine of the Trinity explains how God can be One and God can be Love in God's very nature. If not for the Trinitarian relationship of persons within the One God, then God could not be eternal love. God-as-love would only begin with the creation of an object of that love. But a three-personal God means that God is love, even prior to any created object of that love beyond Godself. 

And we must insist that Trinitarian Christianity remains monotheism. We don't worship three Gods. Orthodoxy proclaims the One God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one in essence and undivided. Note: forever undivided. This is a significant problem for any atonement theory that imagines Father turning from Son. Love ceases? Never. Union of the Godhead is interrupted? Not for a nano-second! 

You mention the "Euthyphro dilemma" ... named after Socrates' dialogue with Euthyphro in Plato's work, Euthyphro. I'm glad you caught that. Spot on. In Socrates' words, "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” In modern lingo, the essence of the dilemma is "Does God will only to do good because he is the Good? Or is the good called good because God wills it?"

Richard Rohr - Falling Upward

Richard Rohr - Falling Upward from Plain Truth Ministries on Vimeo.
Interviewer: Steve Stewart (Impact Nations)

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Greg Albrecht

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The Visitor - Greg Albrecht

KEYNOTE SCRIPTURE: John 1:1-18

There are two biblical stories about the birth of Jesus. One is the factual story of who did what, when and where, given to us by Matthew and Luke. The other story occurs in our keynote passage.

The "other story" concerns itself with the profound significance of what happened at the intersection of time and eternity, when God in the person of Jesus came into our world to be one of us. The first 18 verses of the first chapter of the Gospel of John is powerful, majestic, and in some ways mysterious. As literature, this passage ranks among the most profoundly meaningful essays of a similar length. It is one of those biblical passages which encapsulates the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our passage tells us that God came, in the person of Jesus, to be one of us, as the God-man. Let's just take a moment and try to get our heads around this extraordinary claim of Scripture. The first ten words of verse 14 is a distillation of the gospel; The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

God became a human, while obviously remaining divine, for by definition God never stops being God. He is the Word, the Eternal Son of God, the Alpha and the Omega, the Author of the gospel and the main subject of the gospel, the Lamb of God, the Prince of peace, the King of kings, Lord of lords …as verse 18 calls him, God the One and Only.

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What if God was one of us? - Greg Albrecht

"Stop Acting Like God. Start Acting Like Jesus." The message, on a poster being waved during a rally in support of a minority group, confronted and challenged me. It seemed to be directed at me and my fellow Christians. 

If they really knew Jesus, I thought, they would know that he is God and he was God in the flesh! 

I continued to ponder the poster until a free translation of its intended meaning occurred to me: "Jesus, save us from your followers who seem to be acting like our stereotype of the Old Testament God." 

It was obvious they had a vague notion that Jesus didn't hurt people, that Jesus didn't abuse people, and that Jesus forgave people. 

Maybe you have similar ideas about God the Father, and some stereotypes of Jesus. Maybe some of what you have been told is correct, and some undoubtedly isn't. You might even have been led to think there are two Gods, one harsh and judgmental, the other kind and forgiving.

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Editor’s note: While many believers celebrate the birth of Christ on Christmas day, millions of others extend the celebration of the Incarnation through what they call ‘The Feast of the Nativity’ well into January. In so doing, they think of the Incarnation as encompassing, not only the birth of Christ, but his whole life as God-made-human.

These are the days of the Nativity of our Lord God and Savior, the Incarnation of the living God, the Incarnation of co-suffering Love. The Sunday after the feast, the Gospel story of Herod and the Magi always holds a great revelation for us.

I was asked recently asked online, “Does evidence disprove religion?” Perhaps it doesn't disprove it so much as it exposes it. Remember, we always try to caution that religion and faith are not the same things.

Herod, you know, was a genuine believer. He was very strict about keeping the kosher laws and the other laws of his religion. Even Caesar makes note of the fact that when Herod would come to Rome—as he had to periodically to promise his fealty to the Emperor—he always refused to eat any kind of pork. And he was very careful about the kosher laws. So we could say he was a religious person.

Of course, he also had several wives and he even killed a few of them. He had numerous children both in and out of wedlock. Yet he was very religious! But this doesn't mean he had any faith.

So when the Magi came and told Herod, “Look, the prophecies of your religion are being fulfilled and we have come to venerate the one who has been born according to the word of the holy prophets,” Herod believed. He knew the word of the holy prophets. Yes, he was very religious. He knew and he could consult exactly where the Messiah was to be born. But he understood that the Messiah was to be a military ruler, a military king who would take over the land of Israel and rule it and make it great again.