The Holy Trinity. Part 3

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Easter Rice
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1 The Holy Trinity Part 3

2 Introduction In the last two sessions, we have seen that three eternal centers of consciousness coexist in the Godhead, and that our knowledge of God is predicated on cognitive and propositional revelation (i.e., special revelation). In our final session, we will consider how to govern our lives in the light of God s Triunity.

3 1: Develop a Christian Worldview James W. Sire: A worldview is a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic makeup of our world. R.C. Sproul: A worldview is a unifying system of thought.

4 1: Develop a Christian Worldview Ronald H. Nash: A worldview is a set of beliefs about the most important issues in life. Chuck Colson & Nancy Pearcey: A person s worldview is intensely practical. It is simply the sum total of our beliefs about the world, the big picture that directs our daily decisions and actions.

5 A worldview is like an intellectual lens through which we see the world. - Pete Bocchino

6 1. Develop a Christian Worldview This means we must faithfully submit ourselves to God s divine self-disclosure and allow our thoughts to proceed on the basis of who he discloses himself to be.

7 Dallas Willard, Ph.D. One must think, and thinking is hard. What we believe are the rails upon which our lives run. And when our beliefs match up to the facts, we have truth.

8 2: Bask in God s Love for You God is a kind and loving Father and is an inherently outgoing, life-giving God. As a Father, he loves you with an everlasting love (Jer. 33:3). You can delight in his tender care and providence. He will never leave you. God s love for you was confirmed when Christ died for your sins. Our salvation is rooted in the Trinity.

Brennan Manning Here is revelation bright as the evening star: Jesus comes for sinners, for those as outcast as tax collectors and for those caught up in squalid choices and failed

9 Brennan Manning Here is revelation bright as the evening star: Jesus comes for sinners, for those as outcast as tax collectors and for those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams. He comes for corporate executives, street people, superstars, farmers, hookers, addicts, IRS agents, AIDS victims, and even used car salesmen. Jesus Brennan Manning

10 Brennan Manning not only talks with these people but dines with them fully aware that his table fellowship with sinners will raise eyebrows of religious bureaucrats who hold up the robes and insignia of their authority to justify their condemnation of the truth and their rejection of the gospel of grace.

11 3. Bow in Worship & Praise When we consider the lengths to which the Son went, the whole Trinity indivisibly accompanying him, we must bow before him in worship and praise. Consider the choruses and hymns we sing: Are they Trinitarian or binitarian? Could Unitarians, Orthodox Jews, or Muslims sing our songs? The worship of the church is the communion of the Holy Trinity with us his people. It is common to view worship as something we do, but it is first and foremost something the Triune God does. The worship of the church is grounded in the mediation of Christ and consists of adoring the three in their distinct persons and relations with one another.

12 4: Love His Church As the Father is the lover and the head of the Son, so the Son is the lover and the head of the church. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive (Bonhoeffer).

13 5: Embrace God s Design for Marriage In marriage, the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He is the lover; she is the beloved. Embrace biblical headship and submission. Reject a feminized doctrine of God, which eliminates anything that gives credence to submission by the Son to the Father in the Trinity.

14 6: Marvel at His Creation Creation is about the extension of God s love outward so that it might be enjoyed by us. God created all things to live in cheerful harmony. Embrace the three cardinal virtues in the universe: Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Creation does not play to an empty audience (Luci Shaw).

15 Marvel at His Creation Do you understand a frog more on a biological dissecting table or in its natural habitat?

16 C.S. Lewis We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.

17 7: Reconcile Relationships God delights in harmonious relationships. Worship and reconciliation go together. Worship entails the whole person submitting to, becoming conformed to the one worshiped. Forgive as Christ has forgiven you.

Gregory Nazianzen This I give you to share, and to defend all your life, the one Godhead and power, found in the three in unity, and comprising the three separately; not unequal, in substances or

18 Gregory Nazianzen This I give you to share, and to defend all your life, the one Godhead and power, found in the three in unity, and comprising the three separately; not unequal, in substances or natures, neither increased nor diminished by superiorities or inferiorities; in every respect equal, in every respect the same; just as the beauty and the greatness of the heavens is one; the infinite conjunction of three infinite ones; each God when considered in himself; as the Father, so the Son; as the Son, so the Holy Spirit; the three one God when contemplated together; Gregory Nazianzen A.D. 329 A.D. 390

19 Gregory Nazianzen each God because consubstantial; one God because of the monarchia. No sooner do I conceive of the one that I am illumined by the splendour of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. When I think of any one of the three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that one so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.

20 Concluding Thoughts We need to preserve the unity and identity of the one indivisible being of God and, at the same time, the irreducible differences among the three persons. Don t build your doctrine of the Trinity either on the one being of God in isolation or on the three persons (or any one of them) in isolation.

Ideas Have Consequences

Ideas Have Consequences Introduction Our interest in this series is whether God can be known or not and, if he does exist and is knowable, then how may we truly know him and to what degree. We summarized the debate over God s