Three reasons to meditate on the doctrine of the Trinity

On Trinity Sunday, here are three reasons (many more could be given) why it is good to think long and hard on the doctrine of the Trinity:

1. To know God.  Most basically, if you want to know God, you need to think about the Trinity.  God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, from eternity to eternity.  This is not an extra, deep and ultimately optional piece of knowledge about God; it is not something obscure which is only for advanced believers.  The doctrine of the Trinity describes God's name - Father, Son, Spirit - and somebody's name is perhaps the first and most basic thing you learn about them.  In one sense the whole of redemptive history can be read as God introducing himself, over the course of thousands of years, as Father, Son, Spirit.  It is his name.  And whereas for us a name is a fairly arbitrary label - many names have meaning, but they don't really relate to who we are - God is wholly himself in every presentation of himself: his name conveys the depths of his reality.  Knowing God as Trinity is both basic knowledge - his introductory name - and deep knowledge - because God is not divided, does not hide behind his name but is his name.  To know God, meditate on the doctrine of the Trinity.

2. To understand the gospel.  I take it that the gospel is essentially the good news that Jesus Christ has given himself up to death on the cross and been raised to new life.  His broken body and shed blood are given for the life of the world, for the forgiveness of sinners, for the redemption of the nations.  But how, and why, does this work?  How does the death of one man atone for the sins of countless millions?  Why can death not hold him?  The answer is manifold, but at root it is this: it is the human life of the eternal Son of God which is offered up on the cross and raised up from the tomb.  It is God himself, God the Son, who offers obedience to God the Father, taking up our cause.  And then again, how is it that this comes to affect us?  How does what Christ did there and then come to mean something for me here and now?  It is because the same God, God the Holy Spirit, lives in me and causes me to live.  One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: this is at the foundation of the gospel history.

3. To delight in our blessings.  The gospel tells us that we are invited in to share the love that has always existed between Jesus and his Father; it tells us that we are given the life which Jesus has in himself, having been granted it from his Father.  The doctrine of the Trinity helps us to see that we are beckoned, indeed welcomed, into the life of God himself.  As we are joined to Christ by faith and by the Holy Spirit, we share in the love which the Father eternally has for his Son in the unity of the Spirit.  We are given by grace to share in the divine life of God.  The Spirit poured out on us, enabling us to pray and to praise, is nothing other than God himself - a God who is close at hand as well as far away, inhabiting our own hearts.  To meditate on the Trinity is to gain deep insight into the manifold ways in which we are blessed as believers.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit -
as it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever.
Amen!

The Lord's Prayer, on the Day of Pentecost

Our Father in heaven,

Hallowed be your name in my own heart,
and in the hearts of all your people,
by the presence of your own Holy Spirit.

Your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven;
with the same prompt obedience and holy joy as angels and archangels before your throne,
may I and all your creatures do your will.

Give us today our daily bread,
and by your Spirit sustain us in our life;
for when you withdraw your Spirit we perish,
and when you send your Spirit the earth is renewed.

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us,
and cleanse our consciences from all sense of guilt
as your Comforting Spirit ministers to us
the forgiveness secured by the cross and resurrection of Christ our Lord.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,
sending your Spirit ahead of us to prepare our way,
and walking with us by your Spirit in every step we take.
Equip us, gracious God, by the gifting of your Spirit,
to live in holiness, by whatever path you lead us.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God,
now and forever.

Amen.

Whenever the cloud lifted

Reading Numbers 9 at Morning Prayer today, I felt myself move through a thought process, one that seemed familiar; I think it is a mental road I've trodden many times before.  The story concludes the account of the construction and inauguration of the Tabernacle - an account which has occupied much of the books of Exodus and Leviticus, as well as the beginning of Numbers.  Clearly the Tabernacle is a big deal!  But of course it is: Israel has come out of Egypt to the Mountain of God, and met with God there; but now they are going to move away from the Mountain and journey to their new home - will they also be journeying away from God?  That is a genuine possibility after the Golden Calf incident, until Moses intercedes.  Now God will indeed go up with them, and the Tabernacle is how it is going to happen.

Numbers 9 explains how this works.  The cloud and fire rest over the Tabernacle at the heart of Israel's camp, indicating God's presence with the people.  When the cloud lifts and moves off, the people move with it.  When the cloud stops, the people stop.  "At the Lord's command the Israelites set out, and at the Lord's command they camped."

So my thought process went as follows.  First I thought: wouldn't it be great to have this sort of guidance?  We've just taken a somewhat momentous decision; wouldn't it have been great to have had the equivalent of a cloudy-fiery pillar to direct the way?  I know some Christians who do seem to live a bit like this, seeing sign after sign.  I've no reason to doubt that this is real for them, but it isn't my experience.  I often feel that I have to strike out in one direction or another, without a sure sense that this is right.  The security of a guiding pillar would be very welcome in those anxious moments!

But then I thought: but fundamentally they had to trust God, just as I do.  I bet those Israelites in the desert would have liked one thing that they were never offered: a detailed itinerary of the journey to Canaan.  I wonder if they ever thought that it would be easier to trust God if only he would explain the path ahead, rather than just feeding them piecemeal instruction?  Basically they had to trust that if the cloud wasn't moving it was because they didn't need to move, indeed, must not move; and if it did move, they had to trust that this was the time to pack up the tent and move along.  Sometimes the stops must have seemed interminable - will we ever get there at this speed? - and sometimes the leaving must have been hard - this is a nice oasis, do we really have to start marching again?  But they had to trust.  (The narrative of Numbers shows that they often didn't; just as I often don't.  So there's another similarity).

So the end point on my road was this: it is simply delusional to imagine that if God did things differently I would find it easier to trust him.  God signposts every step with a pillar of cloud?  I want to see the big picture before I'll trust him.  God promises his presence and help and then leaves me to prayerfully make decisions?  I want clear signs.  I think even if the Lord unfolded his whole plan to me - assuming I could understand it, which of course I couldn't, I would still wonder what might be going on behind the scenes.  The problem here is not lack of guidance; the problem is sin.  If we trust him, we can walk with him in uncertainty and doubt, and into darkness; if we don't trust him, whatever signs he shows will not make us trust him.

The question, then, for Israel and for me is very simple.  Is God trustworthy?

And the gospel gives the answer: yes, he is trustworthy, for he has kept every promise he ever made in Jesus.

The ethics of abortion

Abortion is in the news again, with the possibility that the landmark judgement in the USA which ensured the legality of abortion may soon be struck down.  Now, I preached Psalm 139 on Sunday as we celebrated new life, and with the affirmation that each baby is knit together in the womb by Almighty God very much ringing in my ears, it seems right to celebrate anything which might reduce the likelihood of this creative work of God being interrupted and thwarted by the destructive work of humanity.  It grieves me, frankly, that here in the UK abortion is hardly controversial; just a medical procedure, which we all tacitly agree to by funding it through our taxes and carrying it out through 'our NHS'.  It is not an ethical question in our society at large.  But it should be.

It is generally accepted that the newborn baby is a human being, fully deserving of all the protections which we typically accord to human beings and which we often bracket under the heading 'the sanctity of life' - a phrase which continues to be used even by people who don't really believe in sanctity as a concept at all.  Okay.  Let us take this as accepted.

So the question is this: what ethically significant change has there been in the baby?  He or she was in the womb, and now they are not; has that bestowed humanity on him or her?

Typically I don't think we would say so.  We talk about 'the baby' while she is still in the womb.  Sometimes we talk to the baby while she is still in the womb!  The baby is human, whether they have passed through the birth canal or not.  The onus is on the so-called 'pro-choice' advocate to show what the ethical difference is.

If not the birth canal, is it some other change earlier in pregnancy?  Is that why we typically limit the stage at which abortions can be carried out?  But what change is it that occurs, and why is it ethically significant?  Is it the ability to survive outside the womb?  If so, why is that ethically significant?

The logic of the 'pro-choice' position is that it is down to an expectant mother to decide whether the developing human being within her has value or not.  That is the logic.  You can try to wriggle out of it all you like, but there is no escaping the fact that what makes the difference between a foetus with no rights and a baby with rights rests in the will of another human being.

One human being gets to decide whether another human being has value or not.

There are lots of complicating factors, and I don't want to minimise them.  But I cannot see that any of those factors change the basic equation.  Is this an ethical position we're happy with?

Ah, but since abortions will happen anyway, shouldn't they be safe and regulated?  But there is no safe abortion for the baby involved.  And it matters what we as a society are prepared to sanction.  If we are talking about the taking of a powerless human life, then it matters that this be illegal even if it still happens.

I don't know how to make this a live issue again in British society.  Maybe, absent Christian presuppositions, it can't be done.  Maybe, as I've mused sadly before, we are past the point where ethical arguments can make headway against the 'sanctity of choice'.  But maybe it's just that this is another one of those areas where we believe things are important, but don't want to make things socially awkward by acting on our beliefs?

The Air We Breathe

Glen Scrivener's new book, The Air We Breathe, carries an endorsement from the historian Tom Holland, and it's not difficult to see why.  Holland's book Dominion is never far in the background, with its argument that modern Western culture is only explicable as the result of Christian influence.  I reviewed Dominion previously; I expressed there some hesitation about how Christian apologists might (mis)appropriate Holland's thesis to argue that the impact of Christianity on the West has been uniformly positive and that all good things (and no bad things) stem from Christian influence.

I'm happy to say Glen has avoided this pitfall.

The essential argument of this book is simple: many of the values which we take for granted, which are so familiar as to be a part of 'the air we breathe' are not, in fact, universal values, but are firmly rooted in Christianity.  In particular, Glen traces the origins of our thinking about equality, compassion, consent (particularly in the arena of sexual relations), enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress - and shows how in each case our view of these things is decisively rooted in Christian teaching.  This is illustrated historically and philosophically, and rooted in the opening chapter ('The Night Before Christmas'), which shows how the values of the ancient, pre-Christian West differed so radically.

Take, for example, the chapter on equality.  Glen asks us to imagine the ancient philosopher Plato being brought onto a television chat show.  He's there to comment on the claim that 'some lives are worth more than others' - but of course "it is trivially obvious to the father of Western philosophy that lives are of unequal value".  He can't even understand the debate.  Of course women are worth less than men; of course slaves are worth less than freemen.  With ample quotations and examples, Glen demonstrates that the idea that all human beings are of equal worth depends on the Christian story, and only entered the world with the Christian gospel: "the God story and the equality story stand or fall together."

I said Glen avoids the pitfall of arguing too much.  What I mean is that he is clear that the church and Christian thinkers have not always been, so to speak, on the side of the angels.  In the chapter on science, for example, it is acknowledged that the church has in fact not always been a friend to the scientific project (although, as also noted there, the mutual hostility has been much exaggerated in the retelling over the centuries).  The chapter on Enlightenment is even clearer in this regard.  But the point is that where Christians have gone wrong, it is because they have not been true to their own deepest beliefs.  The resources, then, to correct those wanderings are also present in the Christian message, and in fact even when we judge them for going wrong it is Christian-inspired standards we are applying.

Where Glen is able to go furthest beyond Tom Holland (and I should say that the book is far from just being a re-hash of Dominion, however much influence there might be) is in asking the question: is the Christian story true?  In chapter 10, 'Choose Your Miracle', we are asked to consider not just whether Christianity has had a huge cultural impact; the previous chapters have demonstrated beyond a doubt that it has.  Here we are asked to consider whether the influence of the Christian story on the modern world is explained by the fact that the Christian story is true.  This chapter leads to a final appeal: to those who have no faith, to investigate the person of Jesus; to those who feel done with Christianity, to think twice before abandoning the church, despite its failings; to those who call themselves Christians, to lean hard into the weirdness of the Christian story, to understand and express how radical it really is.

I think this book is persuasive.  I find it more persuasive because in a sense it has properly limited aims: it just invites us once again to consider Jesus.  It shows clearly that we in the modern West are not done with him, even if we think we are.  It helps us to navigate our Christ-haunted culture, and asks gently whether it is not in fact the Risen Christ, rather than the ghost Christ, who explains it all best.

You can, and if I were you I would, pre-order it now.

The Good Book Company were kind enough to send me a free copy of The Air We Breathe.  They didn't commission or influence this review.

News and reflections

Way back in February 2016, I shared here the news that I was taking on a part-time role as a pastor of a new church plant in Cowley.  In due course that part-time role became a full-time role, and it has been a huge privilege to minister to this little church community over the last six years.

On Monday, however, we voted together as a congregation to close our doors (so to speak; we meet in a community centre, which will no doubt continue to open its doors).  May 15th will be our last Sunday Celebration together.  This has been the culmination of a few months of discussion and prayer together, and although I'm more gutted about it than I can say, I am convinced it's the right course of action.  In due course I will reflect on what's led to this closure, but for now suffice to say that two years of covid-related restrictions and pressures have exposed and intensified our fragility, and there isn't the energy to start again.  So here we are.  Thankfully a number of other churches have started in the last six years, and Cowley certainly won't be left without a gospel witness; nor is there any shortage of churches for the remaining members of CCC to move into.  Nevertheless, it's all very sad.

For us as a family, this means an uncertain future.  I have been planning for some time to do some more study - I have a PhD plan related to writing a theology of preaching.  Where we had been assuming this would be part-time alongside ministry, we now feel that perhaps we are being providentially led to start full-time.  That carries all sorts of challenges, mainly financial.  If you want to hear more about that, let me know, and I'm sure there will be updates in the future!

One line of reflection that I've been pursuing is around God's faithfulness.  I noted on Twitter the other day that a church was marking its 40th anniversary, and celebrating this evidence of God's faithfulness.  Has God, then, not been faithful to us, as we shut up shop just after our 6th anniversary?  But then I think about how it could have gone: we are not closing because of any great scandal, or because of any declension from the faith once entrusted to the saints.  People have grown spiritually in the last six years, and will take that growth into other church fellowships and be a blessing.  The Lord has carried all of us through tough times - not only covid, but other terrible things.  He has, over and over again, demonstrated his faithfulness to us.  Celebrating the 40th anniversary of a church should indeed be an occasion to give thanks for his faithfulness; in a different way, perhaps in a minor key, closing a church could also be an occasion for thanksgiving.  He is faithful, and will surely continue to be faithful to each member of the church as we move on.

Another line of reflection has been prompted by CCC members looking around for churches to go to.  There are plenty of solid churches in Oxford; we are deeply privileged that way.  But it has made me think a lot about the wider church.  I completely understand why many church leaders have become suspicious of anyone who has an agenda for the wider church.  We've had enough of the power hungry and the controlling.  I completely understand the priority of humble service in one local congregation.  But as the people I've been commissioned by the Lord to care for move on into different churches, I find that I can't be indifferent to the state of those churches.  Yes, what we need most of all is people who will work unobserved and unpraised in their little corner of the vineyard; but we do also need people who will seek the reform of Christ's churches on a wider scale.

My final line of reflection is prompted by a sermon I heard in college chapel many years ago.  The preacher was a Lutheran, and it being college chapel he was able to deliver what was basically a lecture about Dietrich Bonhoeffer rather than an exposition of Scripture.  Ordinarily that would make me grumpy, but this was useful, and I come back to it often.  I wish I could remember who the guy was!  He talked about Bonhoeffer's notion of life as fragmentary.  There is so much in life that we start but are not able to finish; so many bits that don't quite seem like finished projects.  Even the projects which do seem finished often don't seem to obviously fit into a 'whole life'.  Life is a series of fragments.  And yet the Lord is able to collect all the fragments of our lives, and make of them one whole: a really, whole person, fully integrated, and beautiful, like a mosaic.  Nothing wasted (remember the fragments of bread they gathered in Galilee!), everything properly placed.  We are closing our church in the Easter season, knowing that everything we put dead into the ground the Lord is able to raise into glorious new life.

The death of the sinner

As we approach the end of Holy Week, I've been thinking again about the significance of the death of Jesus Christ.  I've noted before that a central element of the New Testament presentation of this significance which I think is often missed in contemporary reflections is the death of the sinner in the death of Christ.  That is to say, when Jesus died on the cross, sinful humanity died a warranted, judicial death in him.  To unpack that a little:

-A real thing happened when Christ gave up his spirit and died.  It is not 'as if' we sinful people died there; we actually really did.  In God's sight, we died in his death.  The reality of this is, so to speak, crucial.  The foundation of the believer's response to the death of Jesus is faith expressed in baptism, and in baptism we are said to be buried with Christ.  But this can only be the case if antecedent to our recognising and entering into this being dead in Christ we had actually died with him.  In Christ, we really died.  (That might mean we need to rethink what death actually means!)

-The death of Christ was the death of sinful humanity per se.  The Lord Jesus took on our nature (not, note, an individual human being, but human nature).  He carried that nature through temptation and cross, and ultimately to the point of death.  Though he was not a sinner, it was the nature - the flesh - of those who were sinners which he had vicariously assumed.  There is no future, then, in sinful humanity.

-The death which was carried out in Christ was a death sentence, a warranted judicial death.  It was, in fact, the execution of God's just sentence on sinners.  I've been thinking a little, provoked by this post from Ian Paul, about the extent to which we can say, with the hymn, that in Christ's death 'the wrath of God was satisfied'.  This sits at the heart of the understanding of the cross as penal substitution - the idea that Christ bore the punishment merited by sinful humanity.  I think we can and should say, and sing, that God's wrath is satisfied, but amongst other qualifiers I would add that this only makes sense if we understand that God's wrath was satisfied by the removal of the object of his wrath.  It is not that there is a conflict in God - he really loves humanity, but he is wrathful against sin - and so to resolve the conflict he exhausts his wrath on Jesus, like a child punching a pillow until they've let out all their anger.  No, God's holy love and holy wrath are one and the same, and in his holy love for sinners he pours out his holy wrath on them (in the person of Christ) until sinful humanity is done away with.

-The heart of the gospel is that all this happened in him.  That he voluntarily assumed our place, identified with sinners, and carried their case through to death - this is amazing.  When we recognise who he is - the very God against whom we had offended, the God whose holy wrath burns with all the heat of his infinite holy love - well, then it is simply breathtaking.  That my death took place in him, that the death which awaits me is merely the shadow of death with nothing of judgement in it, this is the wonderful significance of the cross.  The key question, I think, which it provokes is: if all this happened to me in him, what then is to happen in me?  And the answer to that is essentially that being dead in him to sin, I ought to (and must) die in me to sin; that by the Spirit I am to be enabled to make real in my life and experience what is already real in my very being, because real in him.