Monday, June 26, 2006

Trinitarian tidbits

Reading the latest issue of Asbury Journal, I noted some nice trinitarian bits scattered in its concluding folio. Aggregating them makes a nice refresher course in the reason why theology has blossomed under the needed reminder of its thoroughgoing trinitarianism in the last half-centuty.

  • The work and experience of salvation is the work and experience of the Holy Trinity

  • To know God in Christ is to know the Trinity

  • The fullness of the Trinity participates in Jesus' self-giving for us

  • The saving, healing presence of the Trinity means that Christians "in pure love renewed" experience the restoration of God's image and become the very dwelling place of the Trinity

  • Salvation is a trinitarian dogma, involving all of history. Through salvation in Jesus Christ by the Spirit we become experientially, communitarily involved with the God of the universe who is now effectually working to restore all creation

  • [The implicit trinitarianism underlying the book of Ephesians provides] a way of uniting new birth and sanctification with the socioeconomic and cosmic dimensions of God's work of new creation

  • The entire life of the church--in all its varied practices--is meant to embody participation in the Father's sending of the Son and the Spirit for the sake of the world



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2 comments:

  1. tchittom12:26 PM

    Here's a few more bits from that same issue of The Asbury Journal. These are on worship and the Kingdom:

    There can be no separation of worship or liturgy from the totality of life as we really know it. Worship, in this broad sense then, is the grateful surrender of all we are and all we have

    All of this life together--including the sharing of personal possessions so that no one lacked the basic necessities of life--was aimed at living in and manifesting the reign of God

    Worship is recapitulation, and as we repeatedly participate in the Eucharistic [sic] actions of offering, and thanking, and breaking, and giving--the constitutive aspects of an authentic, sacrificial life--God conforms us into the image of Christ--our lives become truly Eucharistic [sic] as fiath working by love leading to holiness of heart and life. [The author links this to the concept of paideia.]

    Home is wherever God's reign is realized in the life of the world.

    I also liked this bit from a hymn by Charles Wesley:

    In me, Lord, thyself reveal,
    Fill me with a sweet surprise;
    Let me thee when waking feel,
    Let me in thine image rise.

    Let me of thy life partake,
    Thy own holiness impart;
    O that I might sweetly wake
    With my Saviour in my heart!
    O that I might know thee mine!
    O that I might thee receive!
    Only live the life divine!
    Only to they glory live!

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  2. tchittom1:54 PM

    I was thinking this morning about the potential danger of equating the ad extra operations of the immanent Trinity with "progress" after the fashion of pro-moderns who consistently forget that technological progress is not at the same time spiritual or moral progress.

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