Brad Boydston Explaining the Trinity

Brad Boydston does a great job here...I especially like the way he underscores God's essential  relationality

Der Rosenkavalier Synesthesia

If Der Rosenkavalier is an opera made of crystal and light, this final trio is the prism for the entire work. In an absolutely ethereal combination of soprano voices, Strauss spins and spins three separate melodies until they finally coalesce in a brilliant single ray of sound, then disperse back into their diverse colors. If St. Augustine were here today, I'm sure he would want to include this music in De Trinitate.

What follows are some of the major recent interpretations of the trio with some of the greatest voices of the last three decades. My dream team? Kiri te Kanawa/Renee Fleming (tie), Susan Graham, and Lucia Popp/Judith Blegen (tie).

Munich, 1979
Gwyneth Jones (Feldmarchallin), Brigitte Fassbaender (Octavian), Lucia Popp (Sophie),



Metropolitan Opera, 1982,(subtitled in English)
Dame Kiri te Kanawa as the Marschallin, Judith Blegen as Sophie, Tatiana Troyanos as Octavian.



Met 100 Gala, 1983 (concert version)
Kathleen BATTLE, Elisabeth SODERSTROM, Frederica von STADE)




Salzburg, 1984 (subtitled in Italian)

Tomowa-Sintow (Marschalin),Baltsa (Quin Quin),Moll,Perry (Sophie),Karajan)



Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, 2009 (subtitled in German)
Feldmarschallin: Renée Fleming, Octavian: Sophie Koch, Sophie: Diana Damrau

Islamic Apologetics: "The Truth About Jesus"

Abdur-Raheem Green, an apologist for Islam, is an entertaining, engaging speaker who deserves our attention. We should listen to him carefully and be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within us.



From YouTube:

Born in Dar-es-salaam in Tanzania to British parents, Abdur-Raheem Green's father (born in England), Gavin Green, was a colonial administrator in the then extant British Empire. At an early age he moved back to the UK with his parents. His mother is of original Polish origin.

At the age of 10 he attended a Roman Catholic Monastic boarding school at Gilling Castle and then went onto Ampleforth College and went on to study history in the London University. However, he left his education unfinished in an effort to devote himself to Islamic works.

He became dissatisfied with Christianity at the age of 8, with it not making sense to him.

Green researched and practiced many religions, including Buddhism (for 3 years) before embracing Islam.

Whilst in Britain his father got a job in 1976 working for Barclays Bank International and was subsequently sent to Cairo, Egypt, to set up a branch of the Bank there.

His study of the Noble Qur'an immediately attracted him to Islam and he embraced Islam in 1988. He has been a Daw'ah practitioner in Britain since then.

Green now works in the London Central Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre as the Visits and English Dawa Co-ordinator.

Green is seen akin to lecturers such as Dr. Zakir Naik, Dr. Bilal Philips, Khalid Yasin and Yvonne Ridley, doing many lectures on Islam worldwide and also in London's famous Hyde Park, Speakers Corner.

TOWARDS A RESPONSE TO GREEN:

1) Truth = "something we can reason and establish to be a fact;" which doesn't contradict itself. For Islam, THE word of God cannot have any contradictions. The Bible cannot be THE word of God, and an account inspired by God but written by men. "Truth is a matter of facts; faith may or may not lead you to the truth."

TOWARDS A RESPONSE 1:
Islam (as Green presents it) seems to take language to be univocal, not analogous. Why must this be the case? If language is analogous, there can be such things as paradoxes. Paradoxes are NOT contradictions. They are admissions that there are things which we do not (yet) understand, but which are not nonsense. In a zeal to give a transcendent God all glory, Islam actually vaults human reason above divine reason, by limiting truth exclusively to a quality of propositions, instead of understanding it as a quality of being. (For more about "the truth of all things," read sections 31-35 here, in "The Two Sides of the Coin that is Truth," a section in Josef Pieper: an Anthology.)

Facts are not separable from faith. See the work of Alvin Plantinga and others regarding Reformed Epistemology

2) God doesn't need a son. He doesn't need to kill any son to forgive us: the "atonement" would be the greatest of all crimes.

TOWARDS A REPONSE 2:
Read C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity and the pietists. God's killing his son would certainly would be a cosmic crime if eradicating of sin was simply a matter of avenging His wrath. But what if we need someone to be the perfect "link" between God and us, who willingly offered Himself as "bait" in order to trap Satan? There are many other theories of atonement besides the substitutionary model.

3) Protestants had a noble and correct aim: they were right to reject the paganism and corruption of Catholicism, and seek "the Jesus of History." They rejected the worship of the mythological- theological Jesus, Mary, saints, and sacraments, but they failed to be consistent and follow things to their logical end. The Jesus of history is different from the Jesus of theology. Christianity is a paganism, not a monotheistic religion.

TOWARDS A RESPONSE 3:
Read C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of History .

Liberal Protestantism errs in separating Christ's divinity from his humanity because it holds the modernist skepticism about the supernatural. Liberal Protestantism takes the physical as its exclusive default (witness the historical-critical method and demythologizing.) Islam errs in separating Christ's divinity from his humanity because it takes the transcendent as its exclusive default, and understands God purely in terms of His will. volu. (Voluntarism is fundamentally non-physical.)

Both liberal protestants and Moslems are "either/or" people. Only Christians (Catholics, Orthodox, some Protestants) are able to be "both-and" people, and do justice to the complexity of what is real, and our God-given ability to know it.

4) It is a contradiction to believe that Jesus Christ is both God and man. (45:45) What defines a human being is different from what defines a God.

TOWARDS A RESPONSE 4:
Steve Evans does a thorough job of responding to the charge that the incarnation is logically impossible in chapter 6 of The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith, mentioned above.

See also Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate.

5) The canon grew up alongside the church. This does not establish truth.

TOWARDS A RESONSE 5:
Again, this assumes a very narrow definition of truth, one which gives primacy to ratio and not to intellectus. (Look here ) Furthermore, is this any more problematic than the situation Islam presents: in itself, the Koran may be true and inerrant, but how does a mere mortal sort out what is true? Do the Sunnis or Shi'as have the correct interpretation? Which clergyman is right? Bottom line: we can't avoid appeal to the Holy Spirit, whether it is in overseeing the establishment of the canon, or in assisting our understanding of that canon.

6) God cannot do anything. He can't do something stupid/contradictory. He can't make square circles, yet this is what Christians believe!

TOWARDS A RESPONSE 6:
Yes, there are some muddle headed Christians who do believe God can do contradictory things. But again, C. S. Lewis offers a clarity in The Problem of Pain: "Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God." (One of my most popular entries in this blog concerns this very issue. Read it here).

QUOTES: On Pluralism and Exclusivity

Paul Halupa shared this Sunday in our Veritas class on Christian community:

The Christian is at once the narrowest and the broadest of men. He becomes a man of one Book and one Person. And yet "all things are yours." So he breaks all bonds and barriers. He is a man of one Book, and of all books; of one Faith, and then or all fiaths; of one Person, and then of all persons; of one Interest, and then of all interests; of one Kingdom and then of all kingdoms.

One compass point is on Christ and the other sweeps the horizon. To sweep the horizon without having a point on Christ turns out to be Theosophy. to hold one point on Christ without sweeping the horizon turns out to be narrow conservatism. To have both a single pointedness and an all-inclusiveness is to be a Christian. If you belong to Christ, then all things are yours-- you are at once tha narrowest and the broadest man in the world.

--E. Stanley Jones, Victorious Living

The Shyness of God

this is via the Gauthiers....

The 'Shyness' of God

When the Son of God was on earth, one argument that broke out often among his followers was "Who's the greatest?" In our day, this line is most closely associated with Muhammad Ali, who once told a flight attendant that he refused to wear a seat belt because he was Superman and "Superman don't need no seat belt." Her response: "Superman don't need no airplane."

This is the original temptation ("You shall be as God"), and it continues to infect both families and small groups, congregations and denominations. Whenever we insist on our own way, take credit for a group's accomplishment, or walk away hurt because we weren't consulted, we're struggling with this form of self-centeredness and self-glorification.

By way of contrast, think about life within the Trinity. How do Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to each other? Are there lots of arguments over who's the most omniscient, the most omnipresent, or the oldest? In that absence there is a lesson.

Dale Bruner, in an essay on the Trinity, begins with the person of the Holy Spirit:

"One of the most surprising discoveries in my own study of the doctrine and experience of the Spirit in the New Testament is what I can only call the shyness of the Spirit …

What I mean here is not the shyness of timidity (cf. 2 Tim. 1:7) but the shyness of deference, the shyness of a concentrated attention on another; it is not the shyness (which we often experience) of self-centeredness, but the shyness of an other-centeredness.

It is, in short, the shyness of love. Bruner points out the ministry of the Spirit in the Gospel of John, a ministry constantly to draw attention not to himself but to the Son—the Spirit comes in the Son's name, bears witness to the Son, glorifies the Son (cf. John 14:26; 16:13)."

The ministry of the Spirit could be pictured, Bruner says, by my drawing a stick figure (representing Jesus) on a blackboard. Then, to express what the Spirit does, I stand behind the blackboard, reach around with one hand, and point with a single finger to the image of Jesus: "Look at him, listen to him, learn from him, follow him, worship him, be devoted to him, serve him, love him, be preoccupied with him." This is what Bruner calls the shyness of the Holy Spirit.

But when we look at the Son, oddly enough we see that he didn't walk around saying, "I am the greatest." He said, "If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing" (John 8:54). He said he came not to be served but to serve. He submitted to the Spirit, who Mark tells us "drove him into the wilderness." He told the Father in his climactic struggle, "not my will, but yours be done." Jesus, too, has this same "shyness."

Then there is the Father. Twice in the synoptic Gospels we hear the voice of the Father: once at baptism and again at the Transfiguration. Both times his words are a variation of this message: This is my priceless Son. I am deeply pleased with him. Listen to him! It is worth noticing, Bruner writes, that this voice does not say, "Listen to me too, after listening to him; don't forget that I'm here too; don't be taken up with my Son." Because "God the Father is shy, too. The whole blessed Trinity is shy. Each member of the Trinity points faithfully and selflessly to the other in a gracious circle."

I was raised in some ways to think of God as a proud, almost arrogant being who could get away with his pride because he was God. The doctrine of the Trinity tells me it is not so. God exists as Father, Son, and Spirit in a community of greater humility, servanthood, mutual submission, and delight than you and I can imagine. Three and yet One. Oneness is God's signature. The whole blessed Trinity is "shy."


It's not just in relation to one another but in relation to us that God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—shows forth a stunning humility. For example, what cost does God pay for us to have fellowship with him?

The Son says, "I will leave heaven to come to earth." This is something more than leaving a really nice location (like southern California) for a less desirable one (Chicago). In some way we don't fully understand, the Son freely chooses to leave the perfect oneness he has known for all eternity, to become like human beings in their brokenness and aloneness, to die on a cross, and to experience what Luther called "godforsakenness": "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

But it's not just the Son who pays a price. The Father says, "I will offer my Son whom I love beyond words. I will see him be broken and rejected and killed. I, who have known only perfect oneness with him through eternity, will take on the anguish of estrangement. I will know the broken heart of a father."

And the Holy Spirit pays a price as well. The Spirit says, "I will be poured out on earth, and in mostly silent, invisible ways I will offer to lead and guide; never exalting myself, always pointing to the Son." To a large extent, the Spirit's promptings will be ignored or even denied. The Spirit will be quenched on Earth. The Spirit, to use New Testament language, will be grieved. The Spirit had never known grief through all eternity, but he will be grieved now, day after day, century after century. The Spirit says, "This price I will pay so that any who will might enter our fellowship."

Of course, comprehensive information about the inner life of the Trinity is beyond our grasp. Attributing to Trinity human kinds of emotions—like all our language for God—involves analogies at best. Still, there is a biblical sense in which God is anguished by the unbelief of his people, such as the wonderful reversal in Hosea 11: After a wrenching description of Israel's faithlessness and deserved judgment, the Lord says, "How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?"

Occasionally Christians—even those who have been in the faith for many years—wonder why the doctrine of the Trinity matters all that much. Dallas Willard writes,

"The advantage of believing in the Trinity is not that we get an A from God for giving the right answer. Remember, to believe something is to act as if it is so. To believe that two plus two equals four is to behave accordingly when trying to find out how many apples or dollars are in the house. The advantage of believing it is not that we can pass tests in arithmetic; it is that we can deal much more successfully with reality.

The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that at the core of reality lies not an isolated self but a community of humble love. So self-serving and disunity are not just wrong but doomed. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, this reality is like the law of gravity—we can never break it, we can only break ourselves against it."

---John Ortberg


Concluding Prayer

O God and Father, by sending the Word of truth
and the Spirit of holiness into the world
you revealed to mankind the great mystery of your being.
Grant that we may profess the true faith,
acknowledge the eternal glory of the Trinity,
and worship your Unity of majestic power.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God for ever and ever.
Amen.