This was for me a wonderful evening – because we got to talk about the glory of Christ. Glenn is a Presbyterian minister in Rosebay (a South African Indian Australian – as is his wife) and Nalini is a medical science lecturer. Please take the time to listen to this..pass on and feel free to put in your questions….
Cafe Online 5 – The Resurrection – with Simon Manchester
Yeas that summed it up with different views – the pantheist with with everything being God, the approach with God being unknowable and the God being incarnational in Jesus, so can be known. But in the case of the latter there is a “get it” but also there is mystery as well. Just as for me (an I’m guessing for most men) women are a marvellous mystery ;).
So yes it’s not uncommon to hear folks saying they are “spiritual but not religious”. It is the zeitgeist hey? It sounds “cool”. So what then is there to be of relevance to this just as Paul was a Greek to the Greeks Gentile to the Gentile, Jew to the Jews so that nothing be a hindrance to the gospel.
Can we be a spiritual but not religious to the spiritual but not religious in order that there be no hindrance to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and therefor be able to share this good news without hindrance?
‘Spiritual but not religious’ reminds me of the laughter – inducing fears of the “superstitious atheist”.
Thanks for prompting our thinking about this sublime and mysterious truth of the trinity; someone has tried to capture the essence in this summary:
“Three in One, and One in Three;
But the Middle One, He died for me.”
A threshhold concept for me was in N.T. Wright’s _Who was Jesus?_
‘To say that Jesus is in some sense God is of course to make a startling statement about Jesus. It is also to make a stupendous claim about God.’ (p.52)
1 God is relational. A uni-person God would not be relational. Would not be Love.
2 It is in the inter-relation of oneness of the Father, Son, Spirit, that God is eternally, pre-creation Love.
3 In the relational Tri-unity of God we can be brought into relation, into union with Christ, into that union. John 17.
4 Such sublime knowing, fellowship with God as Father, Saviour-Son (our, Brother friend) and indwelling Spirit.
5 Perichoresis was mentioned an understanding of which, if correct has greatly enhance my appreciation of the simplicity and complexity of the Trinity :
Fullness of the Father and fullness of the Son, and fullness of the Spirit, dwell in the Father.
Fullness of the Son, and fullness of the Father, and fullness of the Spirit dwell in the Son.
Fullnes of the Spirit and fullness of the Father and fullness of the Son, dwell in the Spirit :
Three in One
6 Another excellent book on the Trinity is, “The Good God” by Michael Reeves.