The following is an excerpt from Carl Trueman’s video lecture on Athanasius:
Carl Trueman remembers an occasion when he was teaching on the Trinity. An ordained minister put up his hand and said, “I think this Trinity stuff is all nonsense. It’s just speculation. So I just tell my people on Sunday that God the Father came down from heaven, died on the cross of Calvary and rose again from the dead.” Trueman said to him, “Well, if you taught that to your people then you taught them heresy. 400 years ago you would have been burned at the stake for so doing.”
Why is this question important? Can Christ save? If Christ is not God then can he save? If Christ is not God then ultimately he becomes nothing more than a good example. Luther says this is turning the gospel into law if Jesus did not come to save but simply to demonstrate to us how the law could be fulfilled.
How does Christ save? Your understanding of the second person of the Trinity is profoundly connected to your understanding of salvation.
Can we know God? A very important point for Athanasius was this: If Christ is not fully God, co-equal with the Father, as fully God as God the Father is, then how do we know he is a revelation of god. The great thing about having a Nicene Creed understanding of Christ is this: When Christ heals the woman with the issue of blood this tells me something about God, because God did it. When Christ speaks God speaks. If Christ is not God then how do I know God? How is Christ a revelation of God?
To what extent is Trinitarianism important in church life and in the way we worship? If that ordained minister had stood up in your church and said the same things he said to Trueman would anybody have noticed there was a problem? Do we only pay lip-service to the doctrine of the Trinity?
If we don’t have a rounded Trinitarian understanding of God then we make God’s love peripheral, contingent and not necessary. What is love? Love is a relationship that exists between one person and another. In a religion where God is one (mathematically) we cannot say that love is essential to God’s being. God could create and then love creation. In this case love itself would become a created relation.The Trinity is important for Christianity because only when you understand that God is three persons can you argue that God’s love is as eternal as he is himself.
Posted December 21, 2011
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