Month: May 2008

I was thinking last night and this morning about a line Peter Kreeft once gave. He spoke about how sad we are in that in passages like Deuteronomy 4, which I read last night, and Deuteronomy 5, which I read this morning, that the people are told to not worship the sun, moon, and stars. Now Kreeft and I agree that we shouldn’t, but the sadness today is that we aren’t even tempted to.

As I thought about that last night I went out and looked out at the stars. I couldn’t see the moon from my patio but I saw the stars and thought, “It’s a distant point of light X number of light years away.” How sad indeed! While there have been blessings from the age of science, it seems we have made the worldview mechanical to the extent that we lose our wonder.

The largest mountain in our Solar System is on the planet Mars and is Olympus Mons. When I think about this mountain, I get a sense of awe and wonder. I sometimes wonder if mankind will ever climb to the top of that peak or not. I wonder what it would be like to get a view of the sun from Pluto. I wonder what is going on in that red spot of Jupiter. I wonder what it would be like to see the underground sea of Europa.

These things should give us wonder. It should amaze us so much that we are tempted to worship. I should look at the star and realize what it really is. It is a huge mass of gases that has constant activity going on, if that star is even there any more! For all I know, it could have died out billions of years ago and I just haven’t seen that yet.

We may know what the moon and sun are today, but why does it not amaze us that they are? Could we even rule out that they were deities? Now as a Christian, I don’t think that, but can we rule it out? “But the moon is a body of rock!” Who’s to say a god couldn’t have a body of rock? Who’s to say the way the sun appears to us is actually the body of a god?

Kreeft takes this to everything in life also. He says when he meets a man who doesn’t struggle with lust, he doesn’t envy him. He pities him. If you don’t struggle with lust, then that means that you’re not seeing the lady as a beautiful creature. When you see her, there should be some part of you that is at least tempted to sin. It takes self-control to not let your desires win out, but you should be tempted. Remember temptation isn’t a sin. It’s what you do with it that is.

Could it be our age of science has made men and women as mechanical as the universe?

Could it be in doing so, we’ve failed to see the grandeur of God?

How much farther an this go?

I post on the blogs of the city where I live in and recently had someone telling me that the Golden Rule can be found in any other religion. In fact, the missionaries made up the lie about what I was saying is really found called “The Silver Rule.” This is where the teacher of the religion says that what you do not want others to do to you, do not do to them.

I was told the missionaries came up with this lie because they could not believe that the people they witnessed to could have such a rule. First off, it seems pretty dumb for the missionaries to come to people who have been handling sacred texts for years and tell them their text doesn’t say what it says. You can accuse missionaries of many things, but do not accuse them of being fools right out. That should send red flags up to anyone.

The teacher I was told to look up was Confucius. I was also told to not read the Christian commentary on him. Good thing because I don’t own a Christian commentary on Confucius. Silly me. I just happen to have a copy of the Analects of Confucius with me. So what do I do? I go last night and I start looking through them and reading them. They’re quite good, but towards the end of the evening, I look for the golden rule.

What do I find?

You guessed it. The silver rule.

Now don’t get me wrong. That’s still a great rule. I do think Confucius was a very wise teacher and I highlighted a number of the sayings that I found in the Analects. However, as wise as the greatest teachers have been, they are grasping in the dark in comparison to Christ. They are holding up candles to guide in the darkness. He is the light itself filling up the caverns we wander in.

This wasn’t just Confucius who said it either. Rabbi Hillel said the same thing to a Gentile who wanted to be a proselyte to Judaism. He said that that teaching was the Law and the Prophets and everything else was commentary. Again, that’s a great piece of advice and we should follow it, but it is not the golden rule that Christ gave us.

My main point now is that this was also done with little research on my part and apparently none on my opponents. Now if someone can show me the Golden Rule there, I’ll gladly admit my error. However, too many people have tried to pass off great ideas like this with the hopes of fooling those who are ignorant of Christianity and their Bibles. What’s sad about it is that those people usually are ignorant of Christianity and their Bibles and they get taken in by it.

I did put up the reference by the way from the Analects. I haven’t seen this individual show up yet in reply. Maybe it will happen soon.

Until then Christian, be prepared. Always be ready to check up on what you hear. Always.

Last night, I mentioned that I had spoken at an event recently on a panel. Now my topic was on the question of God’s existence, but most of our questions seemed to be about the second topic of miracles. The first one given was about what we do with miracles in other religions. Hume had a problem with this also saying that all miracles cancel each other out.

The first question to ask though is whether we have reason to believe these other miracles. Take for instance, Islam. The Qu’ran is quite clear that Muhammad performed no miracle. On the other hand, it does affirm that Jesus performed miracles. Miracle stories show up later, but these can be traced to when Muslims debated Christians and they had a miracle-performing Jesus to face from their non-miracle performing prophet. The first biographies of Muhammad also showed up well over 100 years after his death. Compare this to the Bible where the gospels can easily be dated to before 70 A.D.

What about a pantheistic system? Miracles don’t make much sense though if all is maya, an illusion. Why have a miracle that will get someone more attached to the physical world? Would God be doing a miracle on God if all is God? This would also assume that God is personal. Another pantheist, Spinoza, rightly saw that if God is all and God is impersonal, as he often is in pantheistic systems, then miracles are impossible.

Buddhism? For classical Buddhism, there is no God. Now there are some forms of Buddhism that believe in a deity, but Buddha said the question of God is irrelevant. Why would miracles fit in though? Buddha’s teaching was that we needed to be detached from the world and eliminate our desire. How would a miracle help his system?

Also, was mentioned this modern wave of faith healers and such. Friends. I am quite skeptical of snake oil and such and with what these people are teaching, I am quite skeptical indeed. However, it is at this point that we need to get to the second point that is to be covered when we are dealing with the question of the miraculous.

A miracle in another worldview does not prove that worldview. I believe God can grant miracles to people in other religions as light that can get them towards him. I am also open to false miracles that come from dark powers. Again, I’m skeptical of such claims, but I’m open to them. The question to be asked is “What does the miracle verify if it is true?”

For Christianity and the resurrection, it’s clear. It is a verification that Jesus Christ was who he said he was and God is vindicating his claim. It is proof that we will rise again as well and that the battle against the forces of evil has been won. It is now up to the Christian to go and spread that good news to the world Christ came to save.

If you encounter a claim, by all means, examine it. If it is false, disregard it. If true, look at what it says. I anticipate you’ll still be at the cross at the end of the day.

I’d like to thank the speaker at our church this morning. On my blog of course, I keep the names secret normally, but he knows who he is and I’m going to do what I can to make sure he gets a copy of this, but he preached a fantastic sermon this morning. It was one that got a standing ovation and not just because our speaker has a great mind, but he showed he has a great heart as well.

Our speaker spoke about having courage and used Jeremiah 1:17-19 as his text. I was quite surprised though to hear him speak this way. I was sitting there thinking “What do you need it for? You’re only one of the best minds that our school has.” And yet, there is some timidity. It made me think of how Paul described himself as timid face-to-face but bold when away.

I pondered about myself as well and thought, “Some people would say the same thing to you about when you’re insecure.” Maybe it’s a trait of our personality type. I will not have much problem speaking before a crowd. I can be nervous beforehand, but when I’m up there, I’m fine. Doing a Q&A Panel, (Which I did last night and could blog on some questions we received) doesn’t bother me. If you wanted me to walk up to a complete stranger on the street and evangelize though, that’s terrifying.

So I’ll say it for everyone reading this. If you all pray for me any, pray that I will have courage as well and speak the Word of God with boldness as was prayed in Acts 4. For me many times, there is a battle to get control of emotions. Things are getting better though as I’m out more and having to face new experiences, but then being overwhelmed with Seminary work at times throws an extra hurdle in.

Our speaker also wanted to know if we were taking the Word of God seriously. I’ll admit many times this is a struggle. Meditation is a lost art and prayer is difficult. I think one thing that makes prayer so difficult today is that we have so much of this modern nonsense thrown in about hearing the voice of God and what you are to expect when you pray.

He mentioned loving your enemies as well and asked if we took this seriously and mentioned what some enemies had done recently. I won’t say what it was, but he was crying for awhile and I couldn’t blame him. It was such an odd moment. I wondered if I should rush up on stage then and there for awhile. I had no idea what to do. I watched his bride-to-be wondering if she would do anything and she was sitting there. I guess she knew better than the rest of us. No one did anything, but I believe that moment spoke more than the words that were said.

So what would I say to my friend?

I’d say I respect you more than you know and I feel honored that you have come to like me and know me also being the new guy around. I find that incredibly humbling. I wish you well in your soon coming marriage. (Hey! That proves you have some courage!) I hope when you get back that sometime we can get together and just chat. I think I could learn a lot from you, but then I’d just like to get to know you better on a friendly basis as well.

You’re a great guy my friend, and a model we should all emulate. May God bless you on your journey.

I have a friend who’s a regular reader here at Deeper Waters. This lady would be the first to deny what I say. I see her though as a quite godly lady who on the devotional side I have no doubt is more committed than I am. I thought about her today getting ready to speak somewhere as she had said she prays always for me and my roommate and knew I was speaking tonight as I’d mentioned it much earlier. She is definitely a saint in my eyes and I’m pleased to call her friend.

She spoke to me a couple of days ago about an incident by first asking me if I know Greek. I don’t. I know a few words here and there and could probably read a sentence, though I couldn’t translate it. I asked her why and she told me she’d been around some Christians who do and they were saying that you just couldn’t get the full message without the Greek language and that she wasn’t as mature in her faith without that knowledge.

Now I’ll grant one part. You can get a much fuller understanding of what’s going on in the Scriptures by studying the original languages, as I have done some study in Greek. However, I was infuriated to hear that some people were lowering my friend’s Christianity and calling her immature simply based on the fact that she does not know Greek. (I challenged her to learn the language though and maybe she will anyway.)

This is a danger many of us face who are intellectual. I will not deny that I believe God gave me a gift of intelligence. However, I cannot make one hair on my head white or black. Why should I think I was the one that gave my head the ability to grasp ideas the way that I do and store knowledge? Now I can work at what I have an improve it, but there are some people with a more natural bent this way and I believe I am one of them.

It would be easy, and I’ll admit it’s sometimes tempting, to look at the other person in church and think, “Do you have any clue whatosever about the JEPD hypothesis?” or “Can you explain to me what the outcome is if we deny the doctrine of the simplicity of God?” or “I bet you can’t tell me what heresy is being dealt with in the epistle to the Colossians.”

It’s a real danger, but I must not do that. I do often get compliments, and while I could use them to puff myself up, I have to constantly remember who I am. I am but of yesterday and know nothing. God made it just fine without me and he can make it without me. I am not the blessing to him in my ministry. I am the one that is blessed by being allowed to be in this work. I am not glorified by what he does. He should be glorified by what I do.

Knowledge can definitely puff up, and it angers me to see this happening. If you know the original language, great! Don’t use it though to think that you’re superior to your fellow brothers and sisters. If anything, use what you can to teach them and help them. Remember also the blessing of being a teacher. A teacher is supposed to teach their students, but a student ends up teaching their students more.

Intelligence is a gift, but like any other gift, it’s to be accepted in gracious thankfulness. It’s not about you. It’s about him. And yes, this is something I have to remind myself also. I suspect we all do to some degree.

During a class break last night, some of us were discussing the rise of science and the rise of philosophy. Why was it that the sciences seemed to take so long to get up to speed? I believe the ancients were far better at philosophy than we are, but there is no question that as far as the sciences go, we have them completely outmatched.

I began pondering this and I think it’s a false paradigm. We make it so that it seems that the advance of science took place all of a sudden when some restraint was removed. The world was progressing along and then we unchained the beast of science and lo and behold, it went wild and started becoming the dominant force.

A difference between philosophy and the natural sciences is that while philosophy can comment on the material world, it can comment on areas outside of the sciences. It also doesn’t require any special equipment, although equipment giving us new discoveries can help. If someone wants to be a philosopher, they simply need to have a mind that they are using. Granted, it requires discipline and good thinking skills, but it’s mental work.

Science, on the other hand, requires material work. One has to have their senses in order first off, but then science advances by the more work done in the material world. There are some discoveries that are made that simply allow the take-off though of science. Unfortunately, we often think the take-off is a result of a new worldview paradigm. It could be, but could it more likely be that someone makes an invention that makes inventing easier for everyone else?

This invention would not be created in a vacuum either. This invention is riding on the back of other inventions. For instance, some of our first major developments were in the area of agriculture. This makes sense though as agriculture would be used to keep us alive and producing families capable of producing minds. The Christians did this in fact.

What about education and money? Those are needed also. The Christians were the ones that brought about capitalistic moves. This is what led Aquinas and others to write about the making of profit. It was through good finances that the ability to build institutes of higher learning were established. Who built the first universities? That’s right. The Christians.

Keep in mind that throughout this time period, the Christians were working. There was much writing and going on. The debates might seem meaningless and silly, but they are important. We are still debating the issues that they debated back then. Obvious ones are the nature of God. Mainly in our day, his existence. What about universals though? Do they exist or not? This is the debate on nominalism. What about war? Aquinas was one of the main writers on the just war theory.

However, as the Christians were working, they did eventually develop the Printing Press. This would make education even more likely as we could then produce books en masse. This would increase the spread of the knowledge as more people would learn to read. The more people learned to read, the more likely great inventions were to come about. Lo and behold, we have inventions like the steam engine.

Rodney Stark has well said that the industrial revolution was not a revolution so much as an evolution. This was naturally happening. Consider the example of a human body. A human body is naturally growing, but it is at one point that we call puberty that things take off and all of a sudden, rapid growth takes place.

Was it atheism that had this? How could it? It was Christianity that was making things take off throughout history that brought about agriculture, capitalism, and education. I’d definitely include science in the category. There is a connection between the two. The other side will have to show that an event like the falling of the Bastille has some connection with the rise of science.

Could it be that a simpler explanation is that we have a modern bias that wants to argue that Christianity held us back and then when that held us back, science took off? Never mind that while science is good, I don’t think the highest goods come from science and chances are, neither do you. (Does science tell you how to love your spouse? Does it tell you what the meaning of life is? Does it tell you what the greatest good is?) Science can tell you much about this world, but can it answer the most important questions you have?

In our age, it is an attempt to cut off the world from the traditions of the past, which would naturally include Christianity. It is a paradigm that needs to be cut off instead. We are standing on the shoulders of giants and if we knock those giants out from under us, the heights we can reach and the distances we see are lowered then as well.

I’m currently involved in a course on philosophy and in the textbook, I’ve recently read on Socrates. Readers should know that Socrates is one of my favorite characters in history. I do have a Socratic dialogue I wrote on here where Socrates encounters an evolutionist. The life of Socrates is a fascinating subject and if you read the Platonic dialogues, he is an amazing figure to watch.

One characteristic listed of Socrates was that he really wanted to know what things are. This is something quite important for us to do in most any endeavor. When I meet with someone and I disagree, one of the first things I try to do is to get us to define our terms. If you meet with a Jehovah’s Witness for instance, get them to define terms like “Trinity”, or what it means when Jesus is the “Son of God.”

This doesn’t mean you let them define the terms per se though. It means you let them tell you what they think they mean. Then you can be sure you are talking about the Trinity that you believe. If they speak of a Trinity of three gods, then you can be sure they are not talking about the Trinity of Christianity. If you talk about a Son of God that is begotten in time, then you can be sure they are not talking about the Son of God in classical theism.

Socrates did the same kind of thing. In the Lysis, he wants to know what friendship is, in the Meno, virtue, in Theaetetus, Knowledge, in the Republic, Justice, etc. You can enter a dialogue like the Lysis and think “Why yes. I know what friendship is.” In the end, you’ll be wondering if you really do know. The last time I read it, I was left stunned again and wondering what kind of friend I was as the Lysis makes you bring everything into question.

An importance of this in our day and age though is if we know what things are any more. Now someone can tell me what this laptop I’m writing this blog on at the time is, but can they tell me what the wisdom I’m using to write it is. (Well, let’s hope I’m using wisdom.) They can describe the chemical reactions that go on in my brain and throughout my body when I see a beautiful lady, but can they tell me what desire and love are really? Are they simply chemical reactions?

What about goodness? Does goodness exist in reality, or is it something that we merely impress upon reality. When I see someone giving money to charity, are they really doing a good thing, or am I taking my idea of goodness and throwing it onto that event? If that is the case, is there really such a thing as goodness or is it just my subjective idea?

This will get us into the idea of Protagoras. He is famous for saying that man is the measure of all things. If a man were to think something is true, then that something is true. There is a way in which we can agree but a very limited way. If a wind blows and you experience it as hot and I as cold, it would be quite foolish of me to argue that you are not experiencing it as hot. Now I can argue that there’s something wrong with your physiology if you think that wind is hot or with your mind, but I cannot argue that you did not experience it that way.

The wind does have an objective nature though. It is not two contradictory things. What about goodness though? Does goodness have an objective nature? Does truth? Does knowledge? Does love? Do we really know what these things are anymore, or is it that because these things cannot be described empirically, then we cannot say? Is it because they do not have physical properties that they do not really exist? Is all that is real merely the world I experience through my senses?

And for those of us who disagree, do we really pay attention to what these things are? Do we sit down and say “Anybody have any ideas on what holiness is?” If anyone wonders, it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like that also. We just don’t sit down and discuss great ideas any more. Let us suppose we sat down to discuss holiness. Even if we reached no definite conclusion, would we say that it was an entire waste? Doubtful.

Our generation is one to be concerned. We no longer know what things are. We have reduced everything to physical properties. What about ourselves? Have we made ourselves merely physical properties? Do we know who or what we are any more?

Where I work, cigarettes are for sale. A lady today was wanting to buy some and noticed my unfamiliarity with a product and said “Well, you wouldn’t know that because you don’t smoke. (On a side note, while it is true that I do not smoke, it does not mean I would not know about cigarettes. I may not have experiential knowledge, but I can still have knowledge. Because I am a virgin, it does not mean I don’t know anything about sex.)

Then she started telling me she didn’t smoke and hadn’t for 20 years but then just started smoking again. Her opinion was that she was going to die so she might as well die in a good way rather than have something like Alzheimer’s and live for 10 years and not know who she is. (Makes one wonder if going down so mattered and you’re going to die anyway, why not go ahead and play Russian Roulette.)

It left me in an odd state. What was this lady’s sunnum bonum? (For those who don’t know, this is one’s greatest good.) It seemed to be avoiding pain in this case. It would be better to die quickly and painlessly how she was going to die.

That seems odd doesn’t it? Why base your life simply on a moment called death? Getting there can be a prolonged process, but the last breath is just a moment no matter when it occurs. When it happens, does it necessarily matter how you go? How you get there can matter at times. If, for instance, you get there by intentionally taking an overdose of pills, then you have a problem. If you die after a long battle with cancer, that’s something else. (This is assuming cancer not really brought about by your own actions.)

A lot of us think about how we’re going to die. Do we spend our time thinking about the larger point in how we will live? It has been said that it is easy to die for Christ, but it is not easy to live for him. If someone puts a gun to my head and asks me if I confess Christ and says if I do, I’m dead, then that is just a moment. It’s said and it’s done. I would also hope that I would say “Yes I do.” (I’m cautious to say such things. There was this guy named Peter who said the same kind of thing years ago.)

I find it harder though, and I’m sure you do as well, to live for Christ. In each decision I am making throughout the day, am I living for Christ? That is what I have difficulty doing. The Christian life is a life of virtue and that is difficult in our society. It is difficult to practice self-control and to properly long for justice without revenge and to give to charity when you’d rather go to the bookstore instead.

That is what is difficult and that is what matters most, for now that is. Ultimately, what matters most is not how we live now or how we will die, but how we will spend eternity. How we will spend eternity is not solely determined by how we die though. It is also determined by how we live now. We are living each moment telling God how we desire to spend eternity. (If that thought scares you, it’s not just you. It scares me when I think about it.)

We sometimes want to treat life as something off in the future. I’ll get serious about X later. Life is not in the future though. Life is here now. Why aren’t we serious about X now? Why aren’t we serious about God now? Now there are some cases that are clear exceptions. I’ll be a good husband when I get married. Why aren’t I one now? Because I’m not married. I’ll go to school when I get the money. Why aren’t I in school now? Because I don’t have the money.

Some aren’t like that now. The question to ask is why aren’t we being serious about our faith now? As far as I can tell, there is only one answer. We don’t want to be. All of us are like that to some extent also. All of us make Christ less than #1 at times. If we always had him as #1, we’d never sin. We all do though, so we all have work.

Of course, there is good news in that. (And it’s not that I’ve saved a bunch of money on car insurance by switching to GEICO.) The good news is that while we don’t love Christ completely, God has his complete love always available for us. He will love us as much as we accept that love. It’s there and waiting and it will work for our good for our good is his good ironically. (Not our good necessarily as we picture it but as he sees it.)

How shall we live? With Christ as #1. How shall we die? The same way. How shall we live in eternity?

You know the answer by now.

Last night, I had a situation come up late at night that required my presence. My roommate and I were both up til 3 AM that night and it was a difficult night for me. Twice during the night, I went to the restroom simply because I felt so sick. Nothing happened at those times, but for a season, it sure felt like it did. It’s certainly a comfort though living with someone who I knew that if something had happened, he would have been there immediately.

I’ve talked about the team my roommate and I make some before. When we had the Mormons visiting recently, he and I were working on the same strategy though often coming at it from different points. We’re quite different in some ways, but those ways are the ways that we complement one another the best.

Last night, I saw more of that. It wasn’t just us, but there were other people involved. Towards the end, it was simply us men helping another fellow man in an hour of need. It was then that I saw much of what made my friends so great. While we all belong to the same organization and we all work in it, while we were there, rank did not matter. Each person used their own strength and they supported the other.

It makes me think of Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 where Solomon talks about the benefit of friendship. In a book that is usually so pessimistic, this is one bright light. I ponder some if my friend hadn’t had us there last night, what would have happened? I had my concerns, of course, and we were weighing the options on how to handle this. Someone would say “I don’t know how he’ll react to this,” with my answer is “Do we know how he’ll react to anything?”

It’s one response I don’t get. We can predict how people will react, but people are not machines. We cannot know for sure how they will react. My friends would likely predict that if they mention Smallville in my presence, I will have my eyes light up. Let’s suppose though that I’ve been really sick all day and I was vomiting and about to pass out. Having me walk into a room in a state ready to pass out might not even be changed by mentioning Smallville.

On the other hand, let’s suppose that I had asked a girl out and she said yes and not only that, but she gave me a kiss. It could be that when I got home, that I would hear friends saying “Smallville”, but my mind is still back there at the event that happened when I got the kiss. The point is that people are not machines and we cannot predict with certainty what people will do.

We chose to do what we thought best though. My roommate was the one that said something that needed to be said first. That was his strength in this case. I was worried about how this friend would take things and just got nauseous in thinking about it. However, when it came to the questions that my friend had, that was when I was the one who stepped in and handled that part.

This was a great blessing though and as I’ve told my friend now, you’ve found out who your real friends are now and how they’ve flocked to you. Indeed, we have. I even had called in sick to work today because, well, I was nauseous of course, but also because I had stayed up so late. I get sick pay anyway, but even if I hadn’t, my friend needed me. That was more important.

My friend’s character I believe is greatly improved as well as revealed. I was amazed last night and told him his heart was a heart of gold. He was more concerned about his fellow friends than he was about himself. I wondered if I would be the same way. I might have been, but that’s one of those things that my personality type just wonders about.

It’s a great gift that God has given us in friends. Some of us have this idea that it’s Jesus and I all the way. That sounds good, but it’s not at all. God did not make us to exist in isolation. He made us to relate to other human beings. This starts with family, continues with friendship, and can culminate in the ultimate friend in the case of marriage. The heavenly culmination however is, of course, entering the presence of God. In the terms of the four loves, we go from Storge, to phileo, to eros, and to agape. Each one goes beyond the other but I don’t believe destroys the other.

Thank God for them also. Where would we often be without these friends? Now when these Mormons came by, for one week my roommate was away seeing his family and couldn’t be back in time. He trusted me to answer them as I would have trusted him had it been me away, but it is so much better when he is there with me. That is when the teamwork comes into play.

Friends. I thank God for them. I hope you thank him for yours as well.

My roommate and I recently had several visits from Mormons on a weekly basis. There’s something really nice we all seem to like about Mormons. While I disagree with their doctrine, in many ways, they do put us to shame. They do try to be morally upright people and they do place a good emphasis on the family and I’m pleased to fight alongside them on political issues like abortion.

I have to disagree though on their doctrine. Explaining why would be another blog. It’s just a system that I can’t really agree with on theological, biblical, and philosophical grounds. It doesn’t help that there’s no historical or archaeological backing that I see either. I just don’t have any grounds whatsoever to be a Mormon.

Yet as we talked one day recently, one topic came up. The Trinity. (By the way, the Mormons had to go back home so they’re no longer visiting. If you guys ever read this, I do miss you and I hope that I can see you again. You really are great guys.) It came down to the Mormon view of the Trinity vs. the Christian view.

Keep in mind something. The Trinity is one of those ideas that gets me going. I could sit and talk for hours on the Trinity. As I was talking to these Mormons, I was getting excited. It’s entering a hyper-mode. This head Mormon that was doing most of the talking was smiling either. Whether it was because he understood what I was saying or because of my excitement, I don’t know.

For the record, he did say he was understanding it. That’s when I said that that wasn’t the best thing to say. The best thing to say is that he is grasping it. We are fleas trying to figure out the elephant that is God. It is as if we are approaching the sea with a teaspoon and thinking that we are really understanding it with our knowledge being the teaspoon and the Trinity being the sea.

I discussed this later with another student here at the Seminary. This student told me that the Trinity was what really set us apart. I had to agree with that as this was what I emphasized to my roommate. If we get them close to the Trinity, we get them close to an understanding of God as he has really revealed himself.

That student’s point should not be ignored and this is a concern for the Christian church. The Christian church has long lost an interest in the Trinity. The Trinity is just this idea that Christians keep and they use it whenever Jehovah’s Witnesses knock at the door. Do we really see any day to day ramifications of the Trinity? Does it affect us in our lives?

Every Christian needs a defense of the Trinity. They need to be able to go to the New Testament AND THE Old Testament and show that the Trinity is there. It needs to be more than one verse as well. You need to be able to go all over the Bible and show them the Trinity in several places. Can you pull out verses from Zechariah and Isaiah and Genesis to show the Trinity? What about the Angel of the Lord?

Many of us could go to the New Testament, but we need to be able to go to both testaments. We also need to be able to explain this in a philosophical way. If we show that the supposed Trinity is true, but then have it being one person and three persons, then we haven’t shown the biblical Trinity. We’ve shown a false idea and are getting into heresy.

The Trinity needs to be accurately explained. We need to know what is meant by person and what is meant by being and what is meant by nature. Are the persons one in nature or just one in purpose? Does it matter? Do the persons differ in any way? What does it mean that the Son is Begotten and not made? What do the creeds say about the Trinity?

I could go on and give my answers, but I write this tonight simply to encourage readers to learn for themselves as well. The doctrine of the Trinity is our friend. It’s what sets us apart from the other worldviews. No other system has anything like the Trinity. It’s also the key in explaining the world as it is. The world created by a monad god would be different from that created by a Triune God.

Let’s return to the Trinity. It’s our heritage after all. It’s how God has revealed himself, and if he has revealed himself in some way, we need to know about it.