I promised last week to discuss the Trinity. Life interrupts me. This time my ministry to parolees got in the way of my blogging. Sorry.
You remember we are talking about Jesus. The serious questions about Jesus, His Personhood, His life, Death and Resurrection, all deserve our attention. My main complaint about Church these days is their overall failure to give Jesus any attention at all, let alone to discuss the serious questions about Him.
You may remember the serious question about Jesus we currently consider. Is Jesus fully human, fully divine or some odd combination of the two? If He is not divine, what difference does His courageous death make? If He is divine, how can He be human? If He is some odd combination of human an divine, how can we possibly expect to imitate His actions, since, I assure, you, I am not divine or eternal?
The Evangelical Atheists of our day mock the Trinity. Of course, these are the same people who mock us for “making wishes to our imaginary friend,” which is their designation for God. In fact, we often, it seems to me, pull back when confronted at various serious points, because we just honestly do not know what we believe. We appeal to our faith, as if faith overwhelms knowledge as far as we know, and lay down our brain at the door. This opens us up to all brand of emotional appeals to “love” on;u, without any attempt to explain the Faith (not our emotional chunk of faith, as if any persuasion would be a violation of tolerance.
Richard Dawkins, in his screed, The God Delusion, insists that scholars of antiquity are doubtful Jesus even existed. He is completely wrong. Scholars of antiquity deny the divinity of Jesus but not His existence. In fact, many do not deny His divinity at all. They simply hold their pens, as they wish to be taken seriously.
Sadly, too many “believers” hold their thoughts in abeyance as well. I cannot always say why this true, but I can tell you (and remind me) what the Bible and the Church traditionally teach about the Trinity.
Back into eternity, the Triune God chooses to exist as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Yes, all these words are accomodational. All human language about God is accomodational, at best and derivative as well. Imagine the task before the original writers as they attempt to show us God!
In truth, as many years (I mean decades) as I have studied the matter, I can still only describe the Person of God in functional terms, illustrating my thoughts in light of what God does, in orderk, by showing what God does, to show what matters to God.
In functional, accomodational illustrative terms, far back in eternity, the Triune God exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but in a horizontal relationship. Imagine this is an expression of the equality of manifest persons of God. The sacrifice of the Christ, Jesus, is on the Cross, yes, but just as boldly in the manger. In the Advent, Jesus (indeed, by taking on Him the very name Jesus) surrenders the independent exercise of His deity. Here in the manger is where He empties Himself of all things and becomes obedient to death, even the death of the Cross. Here is our explanation of why He prayed the night before His death that the will of the Father be done over His will.
In the Advent, the eternal relationship of the Trinity undergoes this illustrative change in functionality. Remember the previous statement the Trinity is horizontal in relationship. At the Advent, the Trinitarian relationship is changed to a vertical one. To the western mind, this implies a lessening of the Second and Third Persons, but the change is one of relationship and not of rank. Regardless, it is a massive sacrifice.
Since the change is one of relationship and not of rank or substance, Jesus is able to be both fully human and fully divine. He is the God-Man, able to show us how to live as human before God and to redeem us from our failings.
We are trying to answer serious questions about Jesus. It is my intention to do so in order to inform believers who may not hear about Jesus very often.