OK, a slightly odd take on the trinity! 🙂 (with a Star Wars tip)

“I am my father”

However, it is a serious point. The majority of Christians say that God is three persons in one, according to the standard doctrine of the trinity which was formed in the early centuries AD.

By the way, I would define a person as being a individual with which one can have a relationship that is distinct to other individuals that one can have a relationship with (but perhaps in the same group).

However, I can’t see where we get it that God is three persons.

I can see that God presents himself as three persons (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit), but I’m not quite sure that I can make the leap to say that he actually is three persons, especially when you get phrases like ‘I and the father are one’ (John 10:30) (or in the context of a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ‘I am my father’).

I think that I prefer the less well defined understanding of God, that he presents himself as three persons – as opposed to the definition that he is three persons. I’m not sure that we are supposed to understand the mystery of God quite that well.

If we really thought that God was three persons then we wouldn’t say things like ‘God is my friend’, which is a phrase that is grammatically incorrect if he is three persons – because ‘a friend’ (singular) implies one person with the emphasis on both the word ‘one’ and the word ‘person’. Only persons (or should I say people, which is the plural of person) can be friends – organisations or other units cannot be friends, as friendship always entails a relationship with a person (or relationships with people) – so either ‘God is my friend’ (one person) or ‘God is my friends’ (three persons) would be correct depending on your concept of God.

If we look at history we see God presenting himself as one person and then presenting himself as three persons. God is the same throughout eternity, so we cannot assume that he changed, but rather it is merely the way he presents himself (for our understanding) that changed – he used to present himself one way and now he presents himself another way – neither way being incorrect.

What is perhaps unfortunate is that perhaps the ‘three persons’ doctrine was rather pushed by various people through history to the extent that any other interpretation has been pushed to the margins. This has perhaps even lead to certain groups coming up with wildly different understandings of God, that they think avoid the contradictions of the ‘three persons’ idea – groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses who don’t believe that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God.

Anyone got any firmer pointers as to why we should believe that God is actually three persons?

An interesting and thought provoking answer to the question of ‘why is there suffering if there is a God’ is the line that life does not gain meaning from wealth, happiness, toil, oppression, slavery, hunger, life or death but rather is about the eternal matter of knowing God. This relates well to the idea that it is the showing of love, not the relief of hunger, oppression or pain that is important. Whilst we show love through doing these things for others, it is the love that is the point of what we do. The means are the actions we do, the end is the love we show. Oppression and suffering are facts of life, they aren’t about to go away, they have to be lived with.

The freedom that knowing God brings transcends things like oppression and suffering. You can be free whilst still oppressed, have peace whilst embattled.

Now a question that I see as deeply linked with the above is ‘how can we show God to people’?

One thing that most Christians seem to do is to attempt to change people by imposing laws on them. Many Christians see value in trying to get ‘good’ laws brought in. This is because they see that those laws can bring a ‘good’ result and relieve things such as oppression, slavery, hunger or death…

…oh, aren’t those the things that we said weren’t actually meaningful in the big picture and that it was only showing love that was meaningful?

So perhaps imposing our morals on others isn’t beneficial to them because it doesn’t bring people into a relationship with God… Perhaps only showing love is actually beneficial?

I’ve put the word ‘good’ into single quote marks above because I’m using it from a very human perspective of what good is which contrasts with what I believe God’s view of good is. I believe that the only way to do good in God’s eyes is to do His will – doing ‘good’ things isn’t actually good if it isn’t out of obedience to God.

Reflections on two conversations; one started at the beginning in Marks gospel(hat tip to Steve new principle of BBC) and one started at the end with the crucifixion (hat tip to Debbie a co worker at CYM).
Marks gospel starts in a different place to the other gospels, in the wilderness. Mark 1 4 And so John came, baptizing in the desert region . This wilderness is a spacious and wild place, that no-one owned, things didn’t grow, a place beyond and outside the city. It was this place that God came down. Mark 1 v10 As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Then Jesus was then sent further out into the desert. Mark 1 v 12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert

With Debbie we were talking about change and mission, linking to questions about the nature church and what facilitates change; is it about understanding or practice. Do people change in response to seeing something different or through the understanding that can be gained from dialogue.? Obviously there is an element of both but in a church context I think we seek to get people to rethink church through engaging at an understanding level and because we have the sub cultural weakness of evolutionary approach to change (see series of posts starting here) any change will be limited. Debbie’s comment was “remember Jesus was crucified outside the city walls” and change came from; or was motivated from outside.

Now I may be putting two and two together and coming up with six but surely there is a link between the beginning of Mark and Jesus outside the city and the end and Jesus outside the city. What is the significance for ministry and change of Jesus’ approach to remaining outside the city? Maybe it relates to looking for the third way of doing things, maybe (excuse me whilst I go into metaphor mode) it it is about being outside the city with people to discover what God wants you to do (Mark 1) and then getting on with doing it regardless of who in city takes notice or gives permission, going into the city from time to time but knowing that the real action happens outside the city walls.

Maggie posted some great thoughts linked to our earlier strand around love. Check her thoughts out find her blog on the list

I was meeting with some friends about a month or so ago and one of them commented that he didn’t believe in the infallibility of the Bible. Then just the other day I met a chap who complained that he’d met a minister that believed in evolution.

These two statements made me think about what is implied by a belief in the infallibility of the Bible.

The big problem, it seems to me is that everyone will inevitably have a different interpretation of the Bible and that everyone’s interpretation of the Bible (and I’m using interpretation to also mean perception of what it means) must have errors – let’s face it, we are only human!

So what does it mean to say that the Bible is the infallible word of God? Is a statement that cannot make be of any use? I’m going to assume that the Bible is infallible (in fact I tend to believe that it is), however, we now have a huge problem in that nobody has an infallible interpretation of the Bible. So therefore is it meaningless to say that the Bible is the infallible word of God?

If the Bible is the infallible word of God then it doesn’t it make absolutely no difference to anyone because we all make mistakes in interpreting it. What is more important is that ‘the faith we have is infallible’ – which must be true be because faith is from God. What we believe to be faith can only be fallible if it isn’t faith at all.

We know God through faith, through his Spirit communicating to us. This is through all sorts of things, not simply the Bible. It is surely more important to know God than to know what the Bible says about God? (and no, I’m not saying that it isn’t important to know what the Bible says about God!)

On the road to Emmaus the question asked of the stanger walking with the disciples was “Are you only a visitor here?”. Jesus’ presence, before creation and through and beyond time makes us the visitors. What sites will we see as visitors and how many will we miss if we think we are the tour guides?

A Mighty Wind the movie

Richard was telling me yesterday that he is covering ethics with his students at college. What a great subject! Not because you learn how to ‘do ethics’ but because you learn (hopefully) that ethics don’t really do what they say on the tin!

As I see it, the problem with ethics is that it relies on our intellects. We know about 0.000001% (or perhaps a little less) about stuff, about the world we live in, about the people we live around, about ourselves, about the effects of our actions. On the other hand God knows 100% about stuff. So, who would you rather trust?

That kind of leads us onto ‘how to know God’s mind’… and that’s an entirely different subject, certainly not ethics! Let’s face it, I don’t have a ‘system’ for knowing my best mates.

Would there be any truth in saying that in the Law of the Old Testament is an ethical system? I don’t know, maybe you know? Any answers?