I. God: The Father, the Son, and the Spirit God is Father, Son, and Spirit. God has revealed himself as Father, Son and Spirit, and thus has revealed himself as he is. As Karl Rahner has rightly stated, “The Immanent Trinity is the Economic Trinity.” That is, what God is in himself is identical to how he has willed to act and reveal himself. “How” this revelation took place and the significance of this revelation is our present concern. The Trinitarian terminology is such to note that God has revealed himself to us humans as God the Father, in his Son, and by his Spirit. Hence the God who is uncreated and thus totally other than creation exists in the immanency of a personal relationship of love in the unity of the Holy Spirit as Father and Son. So the Beloved Disciple wrote, “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him…And we know that the Son of God has come and given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” (1 John 4:16; 5:20, ESV) That is, in the mutual nature of relationship within himself as Father, Son, and Spirit, God revealed himself by himself as he exists. As God has revealed himself as he is, God can only be known by God through God – God is known through the Son by the Spirit. Since God is totally other than creation, God cannot be known except through revelation of himself and thus only out of his willingness to be known. God has not only revealed what he is like in the Son, but by his Spirit has given to us his very self in order that we can know him and share in the personal and loving relationship that are his by nature and offered to us by the Father through his Son, Jesus Christ. This relationship between God the creator and the humans that he created is the result of his willingness and initiative to give out of the abundance of what is his by nature of his Being; that is, out of the mutual relationship of love that he is as he exists as Father and Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit. It is by his grace and out of his love that he offers humankind his very self in order that we can partake in the actuality of a relationship with him. This was constituted through the eternal covenant that God made with man when he delivered up his only Son and raised him from the dead. Thus as the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah wrote concerning the New Covenant that was to come, “Behold the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt, my covenant that they broke though I was their husband, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God and they will be my people. And no longer shall one teach his neighbor and teach his brother, saying, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.” (Jer. 31:31-34, ESV) And as Ezekiel declares in unison with the Prophets and the Psalms, “I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the LORD, that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you and all that you have done, declares the LORD God. (Ezekiel 16:62-63, NRSV) So the night before Jesus the LORD offered himself as a ransom for the many (Mk. 10:45) he declared in inaugurating the Eucharist, “This is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.” (1 Cor. 11:25, Lk. 22:20, ESV) And so the Christians from the first understood likewise in their proclamation, here exampled in the doxology of the Epistle to the Hebrews, “Now may the God of all peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with every good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (Heb. 13:20-21, ESV) Hence, the person who is united to God through his inaugurated covenant by grace through faith in the Son is given the Spirit as a guarantee (Eph. 1:14) and is thus related properly to God by his Spirit of grace through faith in his Beloved Son thus becoming a son or daughter of God the Father. Thus for the person united to God through Christ by the Spirit, they know not God as an abstraction since God is uncreated, but as he has freely given of himself through the Son by the Spirit. In becoming united to God through faith in the Son by the Spirit, a person becomes properly a son or daughter of God as they partake of the divine nature (2 Pt. 1:4) and thus share in God himself (Jn. 17:22-23). That is, as God has revealed himself in himself and as himself, the person who is united to God through Christ by the Spirit is united to God and knows God as he is – precisely as the Son of God who reveals God the Father and thus in the intimacy of his own being as that person is endowed with that which proceeds from him. God graciously gives out of the overflowing abundance of his holy love to anyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus – the Man who reveals God the Father through becoming incarnate for us and is known by his Spirit of Grace. As Karl Barth rightly emphasized, “There always remains powerless man, creaturely reason with its limitations. But in this area of the creaturely, of the inadequate, it has pleased God to reveal Himself."
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 12:41:03 +0000
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