Although the main evidence for the doctrine of the trinity is to be found in the New Testament, we need to start with the Old. We must never forget that the New Testament is based on the Old. No statement of belief is complete, unless it is seen within the context of the whole Bible, including the Old Testament.
When we study the Old Testament, one thing immediately stands out: the main emphasis is on the unity of God. The word used for ‘one’ is the ordinary Hebrew numeral. God is all on his own. He has no ‘relations’. As far as his Godhead is concerned he is alone, unique. This confession was utterly central for the Jew. It is said of Rabbi Akiba that in the hour of his execution he continued to repeat: ‘One, one, one . . . ‘ Read more
The New Testament also takes its starting-point in the confession and the commandment that God is one. Jesus himself repeats the opening words of the ‘Shema’; Paul writes to the Corinthians: ‘For us there is one God, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.’ James writes: You believe that God is one; you do well.’ The apostles time and again speak of God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, the Father and Jesus are clearly distinguished. Yet the same writers say, with equal emphasis, that Jesus Christ himself is also God. Read more
Throughout human history people have had different pictures of time, especially when they think of eternity or immortality. For many ancient cultures, especially in Africa, Asia and the South Pacific, the rhythmical pattern of the seasons - seed-time and harvest, hot and cold, wet and dry-has given meaning to life itself. The sun, the moon and the stars are the reference points. The goal of living is to harmonize through festivals with the cycle of nature. Read more
It is hard enough to understand God’s unlimited power, his absolute sovereignty. But it is more difficult to understand how this utterly sovereign God, who does whatever he wants, can have meaningful relationships with us, his creatures, without either reducing us to robots or else sacrificing his own sovereignty.
Yet these very difficulties to our understanding can also prove a help. If we can get them sorted out, they help to explain some of the earlier questions we faced. We said that God is both loving toward sinners and angry with them. We find it hard to imagine how that can be. Read more
Both the glory of God, and the difficulties we have in grappling with what he has revealed of himself, stem from the fact that he transcends the limits we experience. God is essentially unlimited. By contrast, we human beings are limited in time (we are born, live and die at a certain time in history); place (if I am in London I am not simultaneously in Montreal or Karachi); power (there are many things I am incapable of doing); knowledge (enough said!). But God is infinite in all these respects. Read more
Martin Luther (1483-1546) and his most distinguished admirer, John Calvin (1509-1564), the two chief architects of Reformation theology, were Bible men. Their theology, like the New Testament’s, revolved round the themes of sin and saving grace, Christ and the church. They avoided commitment to any particular system of philosophy; that was not their interest. And they rejected scholasticism, which they knew well, as unbiblical. Their great aim was to let the Bible, the living word of the living God, speak for itself.
From the Bible they proclaimed the God of the church’s faith — transcendent, three-in-one. They set him forth as the holy judge of sin, who graciously gives sinners peace with himself, through faith, on the basis of the death and mediation of Jesus Christ. Read more
Medieval theology was called ’scholasticism’, because it was developed for teaching purposes by professional instructors in monastic schools (scholae) and universities. It flourished between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) was its greatest, most creative and most influential figure. (A pope declared his theology to be eternally valid as recently as 1879!) Read more
No analysis of Christian belief in God is complete without one further point. The God of the Bible is great, and his worshippers acknowledge that ‘his greatness is unsearchable’. Christians speak of the mystery of God, using ‘mystery’ to mean, not a puzzle that can be solved, but a reality which surpasses our understanding.
A two-year-old boy whose father has a brain like Einstein’s can know his father in a happy parent-child relationship. This is knowledge of the most important kind. Yet the boy could understand very little of what is in his father’s mind, however much his father tried to put it into words for him. There are limits to what a two-year-old, Read more
People have been trying for thousands of years to prove that God exists. Some of the arguments used can be traced back to Greek philosophy. Over the centuries several types of argument have been put forward:
- The Ontological Argument — from the Greek word on (being) — attempts to prove the being of God by reason alone; first put forward by Anselm (1033-1109). God is defined as something greater than anything else that can be conceived. Such a being must exist, for if he did not, he would not be the greatest conceivable being.
- The argument in its various forms has fascinated philosophers down to the present day. But most philosophers today would regard it as fallacious on the grounds that it is at best a piece of abstract logic. A definition may be logically self- consistent, but does it apply to something that actually exists? Before we can say it does, we need evidence to show that there is something actually corresponding to the definition.
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American GIs join in prayer with a chaplain during a lull in fighting during the Vietnam war.
Times of war have often brought people to question the mays of God. Warfare causes such grief and pain that a reaction can come which says: ‘If life is as evil as this, how can we believe in a God who both has all power and also wants the best for us?’ This perplexity becomes worse when, as in the 1914-18 world war, both sides claim the support of the same God. Read more
