This morning I was roused from my bedroom at the unearthly hour of 10am. I was expected the gas man, so I just picked up the phone and buzzed him in. To my surprise I was greeted at the door by two averagely well dressed young men. They said they were from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and asked me if I’d like a leaflet about the Bible… you can guess where this is going.

I said I already knew a fair bit about the Bible and that I was a Christian. I think they might have left it there, but I couldn’t resist asking them why my translation of John 1:1 was so different to theirs… I kept trying to get an answer as to why their translation, the New World Translation, changes the phrase “and the Word was God”, to “and the Word was a god“. I tried to explain that all other translations I know of, those translated before and after the NWT all use “was God”, and only theirs renders it differently - and completely changes the meaning.

These guys weren’t able to answer the obvious translation issue. But they’re not stupid (well they are a bit) they had another argument up their sleeve… If Jesus is God then why did he pray to his Father in John 17? This brought back happy memories of Mike Reeves on the Trinity at Word Alive, I explained that Jesus is in nature God, but is a distinct person from the Father, and the Spirit… you know, Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit loving each other?? They said, “oh you believe in the Triune God?” as if it was some weird and wacky belief.

The other guy then took me to Colossians 1 - “Jesus is the firstborn”. I explained that firstborn is not the same as being born first, or being created first but is to do with Jesus’ pre-eminence and heir status over creation. I asked them why humanly speaking Jesus died, why it was that that the Jews brought blasphemy charges against Jesus??

The first guy sensed they weren’t really getting anywhere so made moves to go… I enquired once more about the accuracy of their bible, but no answers. But they said they might come back, part 2 pending, maybe…

A Biblical Response to JWs

Key Verses to look at

“All of life for the Christian is Trinitarian - this doctrine is so amazingly practical!”

It’s not as good as Mike Reeves on the Trinity but worth a listen! This sermon on Trinity is the first of a 13-week series on Doctrine, that takes us up till then end of June, then Driscoll comes to Brighton!

Since Word Alive, Trinity has been a fresh revelation, and it’s been great to listen to those talks mentioned previously and to study a bit at church and to think more about the applications of Trinitarian theology in every sphere of life. Anyway, something that Mike Reeves referred to in his talk was the Athanasian creed, sounds quite random. But it just so happened I was sitting in the balcony at church today and during the bit of communion when all the distributors first receive I was getting a little restless (I know I should have been praying prayers of humble access, but anyway), so I saw in front of me a little book, the Book of Common Prayer, so thought I’d have a browse… what caught my eye in the contents was the “Creed of St. Athanasius”, basically it says that if you’re a Christian then a solid grasp of the Trinity is central to faith. I think it’s pretty awesome…

Whosoever will be saved,
before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith.
Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled,
without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.

And the Catholic Faith is this:
That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity,
neither confounding the Persons,
nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father,
another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.
Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost.

The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate.
The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible,
and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.
The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal.

And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.
As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated,
but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible.

So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty,
and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three
Almighties, but one Almighty.

So the Father is God, the Son is God,
and the Holy Ghost is God.
And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.
So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord,
and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords, but one Lord.

For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge
every Person by himself to be both God and Lord,
So are we forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say,
There be three Gods, or three Lords.
The Father is made of none, neither created, nor begotten.
The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten.
The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son,
neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons;
one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts.
And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other;
none is greater, or less than another; But the whole three Persons
are co-eternal together and co-equal.
So that in all things, as is aforesaid,
the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.
He therefore that will be saved is must think thus of the Trinity.

Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also
believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess,
that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man;
God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds;
and Man of the substance of his Mother, born in the world;
Perfect God and perfect Man,
of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.

Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the
Father, as touching his manhood; Who, although he be God and Man,
yet he is not two, but one Christ;
One, not by conversion of the Godhead
into flesh but by taking of the Manhood into God;
One altogether; not by confusion of Substance,
but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul
and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ;
Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell,
rose again the third day from the dead.
He ascended into heaven, he sitteth at the right hand of the Father,
God Almighty, from whence he will come
to judge the quick and the dead.
At whose coming all men will rise again with their bodies
and shall give account for their own works.
And they that have done good shall go into life
everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.

This is the Catholic Faith, which except a man believe faithfully,
he cannot be saved.

Source: Anglicans Online

Just started listening to a few talks by Mike Reeves on the Trinity from Forum 2007. Just refreshing my memory from Word Alive which was a real eye-opener to see the glory of the Triune God.

“Trinity isn’t an invention of some emotionally constipated monks”

“Trinity is Father, Son and Spirit loving each other”

Also picked up a few books from the local Christian bookshop today, thought I should use my book tokens there rather than getting everything off Amazon… picked up, quite cheaply, Incomparable by Andrew Wilson on the Character of God and a little gem, Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, my first Banner book!

I try not to do too much when I go to Word Alive as I just get really tired - despite plenty of coffee and cake. However, I did make it along to all four sessions of the ‘Triune God’ seminar series. Apparently Don Carson was going to take this, but had to pull out, so we got Mike Reeves instead, a worthy replacement, who I think I actually love - in a Christian brother way.

I just realised Mike Reeves’ talks from the UCCF South-East Training weekend got lost in a deleted post, so I’ve added a new blogroll for good MP3 talks and Mike’s talks are linked there -thanks to Bish for those.

Anyway, so I went to these four sessions, which were quite hard going - firstly they were on about nap time, secondly there were lots of what to me seemed somewhat obscure old theologians and philosophers referred to (Aristotle??, Plato?? - joke, I’d heard of them), thirdly English isn’t my strong point so the addition of some Hebrew, Latin and Greek on top of that was tough, and fourthly and finally we were thinking about one triune God which is inevitably going to be mind boggling.

So we started off looking at how we define God, trying to move away from ideas of “divine being” or “substance”, but instead to look at Father, Son and Spirit. This had profound implications for speaking with people from other monotheistic faiths, especially Muslims. I guess could be tempting to find common ground, believing in ‘one’ God, but actually we believe in Father, Son and Spirit - and our Father, our God-head is profoundly different to Allah.

We then looked at how we can reconcile ‘oneness’ and trinity and different approaches in Christian theology throughout history - trying to fit the 3 into 1, and trying to understand how the 3 can be one. We learned that God is not simply 3 characters, 3 faces and that actually analogies like the Egg and H2O aren’t great ones. Rather God is three persons in loving relationship. This brings a whole new emphasis to 1 John 4:16 - “God is Love”. It’s not primarily saying that Love is an attribute or characteristic of God, no it goes much deeper to say that God is a relationship - Father, Son and Spirit are One God because of the loving relationship that joins them. God is Relationship, God is Love. So what does it mean to be in relationship with God? It means to be brought into this loving communion, to be loved by the Father as the Son is loved as the Spirit is loved - that was a Wow moment, where Mike starts to use bigger hand gestures. He then talked about “Hypostasis in Extasis” which I can’t quite remember what it means, but it was to do with the nature of who God is wanting to express his loving relationship into the world - hence creation, revelation of himself, and salvation to draw humanity back into relationship, so we went to the Scriptures to look at the Trinity in action within these themes…

Creation

Gen 1:2 - The Spirit of God moves of the water

Gen 1: 26 - Let us make man in our own image

Col 1: 16 - By Jesus all things were created

John 1: 3 - Through Jesus all things were made

Revelation

John 16 - It was great to be able to study the ‘upper room discourse’ at Sparkford 2 in the summer (and good to see at least one person from my dorm group in this seminar). The discourse is just packed with profound truths about the trinity - specifically on Revelation, from verse 13 it talks about the Spirit speaking, not on his own, but what he hears from the Son, and this not from the Son, because the Son got it from the Father in the first place.

Salvation

We didn’t look at Hebrews, but the stuff in Student Celebrations about Jesus the High Priest presenting himself as a sacrifice to the Father seems appropriate. We looked at John 17 - Jesus prays (presumably in the Spirit?) to his Father, he prays that through (the Cross?) the Son and the Father may be glorified. He prays for his disciples, for protection and unity. He prays for all who will believe (us?), praying that they may be one as we (Father and the Son) are one. The Son intercedes in prayer for his people with the Father, and ultimately on the Cross intercedes for his people by taking the Father’s punishment.

‘Cosmic Child Abuse’

One phrase used by Steve Chalke and others has been to liken the doctrine of PSA to ‘Cosmic Child Abuse’. The Father punishing the Son, can this be right in the light of what we’ve said about this loving communion of God? Firstly, there is the statement that Richard Cunningham raised, “God doesn’t forgive sin, he only punishes it” - I hope to blog on this later - if we reject this statement then we don’t have a problem, if we accept it, then we see Jesus being punished by the Father for our Sin… Love and Just Punishment are neither in conflict or contradiction, so the question is, is it more loving for the Father to punish the Son for Sin or to let the world face the punishment? I’m going with the former… but it comes back to “Hypostasis in Extasis”, the idea of God wanting to broadcast his loving relationship - redemption of humanity, through the atonement of Sin is the only way this can happen, the only way that humanity can be drawn back into the loving communion which is God.

Some people think theology is boring, or simply intellectual - actually (and Mike Reeves has helped me in moving away from any notion of those two ideas) Christian theology gives glory, fear and reverence to an awesome God!