Alister McGrath Theology Basics (2018) Chapter 7: Trinity — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:01well hello again Alister McGrath
2. 0:03theologian dr. University and this
3. 0:06series of short presentations is
4. 0:07designed to get you started with my
5. 0:09textbook theology in the basics so we
6. 0:12now come to the eighth presentation
7. 0:13which deals with the doctrine of the
8. 0:15Trinity and this is covered in the
9. 0:17seventh chapter of this textbook and
10. 0:20this is a difficult doctrine back in the
11. 0:22days when I was an atheist I tended to
12. 0:25see religious people as deluded and
13. 0:27irrational they believes all sorts of
14. 0:29ridiculous nonsense and of course if
15. 0:31I've been asked to single out what I
16. 0:33regarded as the most absurd aspect of
17. 0:35Christian belief I would have pointed to
18. 0:37the doctrine of the Trinity how can God
19. 0:39be three and one at the same time it
20. 0:42just seems incomprehensible Teamster to
21. 0:44violate all the categories of human
22. 0:46logic however having discovered
23. 0:49Christianity I began the serious study
24. 0:52of Christian theology I have to say it
25. 0:53was like a an intellectual rebirth
26. 0:56bringing a new quality and focus to my
27. 0:59faith and I found theology to be
28. 1:02invariably demanding and occasionally
29. 1:04exasperating yeah I persisted and I
30. 1:08discovered that taking theology
31. 1:10seriously forced me to expand my mind to
32. 1:13develop a principled attentiveness
33. 1:15towards the rich Christian vision of
34. 1:17reality and force myself to take it to
35. 1:20pieces and uncover its inner logic and
36. 1:24that's why I want to begin this
37. 1:25presentation on Trinity by talking about
38. 1:27a concept of mystery because one of the
39. 1:30most fundamental insights of the
40. 1:32Christian faith is that God cannot be
41. 1:35fully grasped by human reason the point
42. 1:39is that the God simply overwhelms our
43. 1:42mental capacities the the vastness of
44. 1:44the reality of God simply cannot be
45. 1:47fully grasped by the human mind and
46. 1:49that's one of the reasons why the idea
47. 1:51of mystery is so important theological
48. 1:53mystery is not an irrationality it's
49. 1:57something which overwhelms the
50. 1:59capacities of human reason and Lewis yes
51. 2:03Lewis made this point in his very famous
52. 2:05book a grief observed when he remarked
53. 2:08how can our incurably abstract intellect
54. 2:13or
55. 2:13allow us to grasp total reality that's
56. 2:16an important point and in many ways the
57. 2:18whole doctrine of the Trinity opens up
58. 2:21this area of mystery for further
59. 2:23discussion it seems to me that Augustine
60. 2:26of Hippo put this very nicely he wrote
61. 2:29if you think you have grasped God it's
62. 2:31not God who you've grasped because
63. 2:33anything that we can grasp fully and
64. 2:36completely simply cannot be God because
65. 2:38it would be so limited and impoverished
66. 2:41it's it's all too easy for us to create
67. 2:44God in our own likeness
68. 2:46yet this falls short of the glory and
69. 2:50majesty of the God that stands at the
70. 2:53heart of the Christian disclosure the
71. 2:56key point we've got to realize is that
72. 2:58in the end our words are just not good
73. 3:01enough to cope with the conceptual
74. 3:03majesty of God which is so splendidly
75. 3:06expressed in the notion of glory so what
76. 3:11is dr trinity well in many ways the
77. 3:13doctrine of the trinity is the outcome
78. 3:15of the christian communities principled
79. 3:18attempt to tell the truth about god no
80. 3:22matter how difficult this might be to
81. 3:25capture or to represent some years back
82. 3:28i wrote a book about the sadly neglected
83. 3:30Swiss theologian Emil Brunner and he has
84. 3:33some interesting things to say on this
85. 3:35and one point he makes is that the
86. 3:39Trinity really is what he calls a
87. 3:42security doctrine it's meant to protect
88. 3:45the glory and majesty of God from our
89. 3:48well-meaning attempts to reduce this to
90. 3:51something that we find easier to handle
91. 3:53so what pressures led to the emergence
92. 3:57of this way and thinking and speaking
93. 3:59about the richness of the Christian
94. 4:01vision of God why the Trinity in what
95. 4:04ways dance adopting trying to help us to
96. 4:06preserve the mystery of God and preserve
97. 4:10God's richness so let's begin to look at
98. 4:13some points that I hope you'll find
99. 4:15interesting the first point to make is
100. 4:17this speaking of God is Father Son and
101. 4:20Holy Spirit really identifies the three
102. 4:23essential building blocks
103. 4:26that we need to weave together if the
104. 4:29full Christian experienced understanding
105. 4:32of God is to be expressed adequately no
106. 4:35one picture image or model of God is
107. 4:39good enough one model is that of a
108. 4:42transcendent God who lies beyond the
109. 4:45world as its source and creator
110. 4:46the second is the person of Jesus Christ
111. 4:49as our Savior and the third of course is
112. 4:53of the Holy Spirit who is present and
113. 4:55active throughout the created order and
114. 4:57the doctor maternity brings these three
115. 5:00models together to let us grasp a
116. 5:03coherent and distinctively Christian
117. 5:06understanding of God
118. 5:08now the Christian Bible offers us a rich
119. 5:12and complex picture of God especially
120. 5:15the way in which God relates to the
121. 5:17created order and to human beings and
122. 5:19the doctor Trinity aims to preserve this
123. 5:23mystery to hold everything together by
124. 5:25insisting that this grand vision of God
125. 5:28in all its totality should be
126. 5:31apprehended by faith despite the mental
127. 5:34discomfort this may cause us it's not
128. 5:37that this vision of God is irrational
129. 5:40it's because this vision of God is
130. 5:42overwhelming and if we want to do
131. 5:45justice to this rich vision of God we
132. 5:48have to allow God to tell us how to
133. 5:50represent him
134. 5:52now both the Old and New Testament
135. 5:55writers are emphatic there's only one
136. 5:58God he's the God of Abraham Isaac and
137. 6:01Jacob here o Israel the Lord our God is
138. 6:06one God and this theme is taken up by
139. 6:09New Testament writers again there is no
140. 6:12God other than the one who created the
141. 6:14world led Israel to freedom and gave her
142. 6:18the Lord so no but the God who liberated
143. 6:22Israel from gap-toothed in Egypt is also
144. 6:25the same God who raised Jesus Christ
145. 6:28from the dead
146. 6:29so maybe some images might help us here
147. 6:32think of Claude Monet's paintings of
148. 6:36water lilies like these in his garden at
149. 6:38uni in north
150. 6:39Frantz we see their great leaves and
151. 6:42elegant flowers on the surface of the
152. 6:43water but what is going on beneath the
153. 6:47surface of that water what's the bigger
154. 6:49picture and the point here is that the
155. 6:52surface appearance what we see is
156. 6:55sustained by a complex root system the
157. 6:58water is grown stalks that are embedded
158. 7:01in the ground at among the ponds and
159. 7:03these provide physical support and
160. 7:06biological nourishment for leaves and
161. 7:08flowers they're part of a bigger picture
162. 7:11or again think of an iceberg we see only
163. 7:14the surface of these majestic structures
164. 7:16yet the bulk of the ice lies beneath the
165. 7:20surface hidden from view so we might
166. 7:23think of the Christian proclamation of
167. 7:25God redeeming us in Christ as being the
168. 7:29bit of the iceberg that we see the
169. 7:32doctrine of the Trinity is a sub
170. 7:33structure that supports this
171. 7:36Proclamation which lies beneath and
172. 7:39behind this Proclamation so the tip of
173. 7:44the iceberg is a Christian Proclamation
174. 7:45but the bit beneath the waterline is the
175. 7:48deeper truth about God that underlies
176. 7:52that Proclamation so let's explore a way
177. 7:56of thinking about the Trinity which is
178. 7:57proved very helpful to many people and
179. 8:00we find this in the writings of the
180. 8:02American theologian Robert Jensen
181. 8:04especially his book the triune identity
182. 8:08Jensen argues that the Trinity names the
183. 8:12Christian God again the Trinity names
184. 8:14the Christian God he writes at Father
185. 8:17Son and Holy Spirit is a proper name for
186. 8:20the God who Christians know in and
187. 8:23through Jesus Christ God is the one who
188. 8:25raised Jesus the promised Messiah of
189. 8:28Israel from the dead and for Jennsen the
190. 8:32Christian doctrine of the Trinity
191. 8:34unpacks and explores that basic sentence
192. 8:38so basically Jensen is arguing that far
193. 8:43from being a rather pointless piece of
194. 8:45theological speculation the doctor
195. 8:48maternity is central to a distinctively
196. 8:50an authentically Christian theological
197. 8:52vision
198. 8:53we find this idea also in the American
199. 8:56theologian Catherine Mary the Kootenay
200. 8:58who died in 1997 who wrote the shape of
201. 9:02Trinitarian doctrine is dictated by the
202. 9:04pattern of redemption everything comes
203. 9:07from God everything is made known and
204. 9:10redeemed through Jesus Christ and is
205. 9:12concentrated by the power of the Holy
206. 9:15Spirit so let's look at the sections of
207. 9:19the chapter on the Trinity in theology
208. 9:21the basics so you can guess sense of
209. 9:24what structure it has and work through
210. 9:27this material on your own we begin by
211. 9:30looking at the grounds of the doctrine
212. 9:31of the Trinity why do you do that it's
213. 9:33because it's important to be reassured
214. 9:36there are good foundations for this
215. 9:39doctrine basically this section sets Art
216. 9:42why this doctrine had to be there then
217. 9:46we move on to look at the development of
218. 9:48the doctrine of the Trinity in
219. 9:49particular course during the patristic
220. 9:51period and this introduces you to the
221. 9:54pressures that led to the formulation of
222. 9:57this doctrine now obviously there are
223. 9:59some ways of thinking about the Trinity
224. 10:01that weren't very helpful one of them is
225. 10:03modalism it's what's called the
226. 10:05Trinitarian heresy it's the idea that
227. 10:07God the Father works in one fashion God
228. 10:11the Son works in another fashion God the
229. 10:13Spirit works in a different fashion
230. 10:15in other words just different ways of
231. 10:16being God what's wrong with that well
232. 10:19this section will explore that they move
233. 10:22on to a really interesting question
234. 10:23given that the Trinity is a very
235. 10:25abstract idea how do we actually
236. 10:28visualize this and of course many
237. 10:30Christian writers have developed
238. 10:32analogies for Trinity they're very
239. 10:34important we look at some of these then
240. 10:36we look at Jensen's idea of the Trinity
241. 10:38and the naming of God they move on to
242. 10:41look at John Wesley who used hymns as
243. 10:44ways of communicating the Trinity and
244. 10:47basically Wilker some of the ways in
245. 10:49which Wesley is able to use hymns to
246. 10:51help us grasp what the Trinity is all
247. 10:53about one of the writers who's written
248. 10:56most about the doctrines in the
249. 10:57twentieth century is yoga Moulton and he
250. 11:01developed a social trend in other words
251. 11:03an idea of the Trinity which primarily
252. 11:05is socially
253. 11:06a social in character and we'll look
254. 11:09both at multiples approach and his
255. 11:12critics concerns in developing this now
256. 11:17as with every other chapter we end with
257. 11:19a text and we end this chapter with an
258. 11:22exploration of a passage which comes in
259. 11:24the beginning of car Bart's Church
260. 11:26dogmatics it's very interesting in
261. 11:28relation to dr. Trinity and I think
262. 11:30you'll find it very stimulating now
263. 11:33there's much more needs to be said I
264. 11:35hope this presentation gives you a
265. 11:37helpful framework as you begin your
266. 11:39reflections on the doctrine of the
267. 11:41Trinity thank you very much indeed for
268. 11:43listening I look forward to speaking to
269. 11:45you again soon the next presentation
270. 11:47when we start to think about the
271. 11:49Christian understanding of the nature of
272. 11:52the church