Starting from where I left off yesterday, here I was in my sixties, brimming over with 16 years worth of foraging in the forests of the spirit-filled life; fresh from my encounter with the Hebrew word Elohim and its lessons about the Godhead and its invisible nature (Romans 1:20); blooming with a nascent belief system soundly oriented to and based on the precedents of research, knowledge, historical fact, and sound witnesses; and standing solidly on my own choice consciously made, I see now that I was fully primed for something.
So, what something? you may well ask, curious reader.
Keeping in mind that God, Elohim, is a plural description for the godhead (Blog #11) and God has an invisible nature (Blog #12), I began to consider how a plural Godhead exists in an invisible way. Worth pursuing, don’t you think?
I found insight in this area from extensive delving into the musings of C.S. Lewis, a life-long favorite of mine. As I understand Mr. Lewis, God’s “invisible nature” is first of all as a spiritual being (Greek, zoe) without a body or organic brain (Greek, bios—that comes later), BUT WITH A MIND. (David C. Downing, Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles, Chapter 3: The Spiritual Vision of the Narnia Chronicles).
But the truth doesn’t stop there—the Godhead’s image is zoe and more.
Consider this. I repeat, the largest image of God for Judeo-Christians is the triune God, 3-in-one. But three what? one absolutely must ask. For this answer I cast about in various places. The great hymn "Holy, Holy, Holy" gave me a real heads-up one Sunday in worship service. It says, “God in three persons (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit), Blessed Trinity”! Not that I had not heard or sung this hymn an infinite number or times before, I had, but this was the first time, the first time I heard it as a jubilant secret breathed to me on the exalted lyrics of this hymn of praise.
From Wikipedia free encyclopedia I include this quote with links. "Holy, Holy, Holy" is a Christian hymn written by Reginald Heber (1783-1826).[1][2][3] Its lyrics speak specifically on the Trinity.[2][3] It was written specifically for the use on Trinity Sunday.[3] John Bacchus Dykes composed the tune Nicaea specifically for this hymn in 1861.[3] The name is a tribute to the First Council of Nicaea which formalized the doctrine of the trinity in 325.[2][3]”
Collecting my gems of information gathered so far, let’s see where they lead. I found that C.S. Lewis has just told me that the spiritual being of the Godhead exists with a mind and then I found that the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy told me that the Godhead, specifically each person of the Godhead, each member of the triune, is first and foremost a person. Then my American Heritage Dictionary defined person as “an individual of specified character.”
Next, I discovered what the phrase Godhead-of-three-persons means. Genesis 1:26-28 addresses the Godhead when it discusses the likeness (or image) of God! Listen to what Larry Christenson, B.A., B.Th., has to say about the Godhead in Kingdom Dynamics, The Spirit-Filled Life Bible (c.1991, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
“These verses introduce a phrase that is the cornerstone of the biblical understanding of man: image of God. The image of God is presented first and foremost in relation to a unique social or community concept of God. . .one God, yet a community of persons.”
Pondering that statement, I recalled a statement by William Lane Craig, a man many call Christianity’s current and greatest Apologist. In a Sunday School class Richard and I attended, (Dr. Craig was teaching at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia) he explained the Godhead (and I paraphrase, though faithfully, I hope) as a center of 3 distinct personalities in a functional hierarchy. What a gem of insight!
Well, that substantiated what I just quoted Larry Christenson as saying—the Godhead as a community of persons.
To this I added the studied belief of other apologists that I had providentially tucked away for just such a moment. As I have described before, until the incarnation of the Word, the persons of the trinity are singly and collectively purely soul-spirit beings.(Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality, Gary R. Habermas and J.P. Moreland, 1998).
All this left me wondering, how then does this 3-in-1 Godhead work? Though my understanding was making great progress it still had quite a way to go. I was ready to consider what I had thus come to think of, rather progressed to think of, as the spirit-mind connection.
Note here, valued reader, how this spiritual odyssey is reshaping the thinking of the airhead debutante in me. This effect proves why I have told you to choose carefully what and whom you believe, because both profoundly influence your thinking.
To be continued . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment