Master 269: Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective, Part 1

I've started working through a book edited by Fred Sanders: Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective.  I really appreciate and enjoy reading Sanders' work.  He's an associate professor of systematic theology and tutor in the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University.  He blogs at The Scriptorium and recently published a small but very dense book entitled, The Deep Things of God.  You can find recordings of some of his lectures on youtube, through the Biola website, or and on iTunes U.

Fred Sanders is so thoroughly engaging as a speaker and writer.  The consummate teacher, he presents deep and rich content, sprinkled with his unique brand of humor, informed by wide-ranging background knowledge, in a way that's accessible and that draws the reader/listener in to the learning experience.  I really cannot praise him highly enough.

As someone who is interested in studying (at the amateur level) Christian theology, I so appreciate that, while remaining solidly evangelical, Sanders has no difficulty dialoguing with theologians both ancient and contemporary.  He is actually helping me to understand and appreciate my own spiritual heritage--something from which many evangelicals could benefit.

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In the introductory chapter to this collection of essays, Sanders sets the stage for the work that will follow of doing christology in trinitarian perspective.  Christology is the branch of theology that seeks to systematize our experience and understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ.  "Jesus died for me."  Behind this simple and familiar confession are layers and layers of truth and content and meaning that christology seeks to unpack.

Think for a moment about your respiration--your breathing.  Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.  You're doing it all the time.  It's so familiar to you that you don't think about it usually.  Yet behind this simple, familiar process that we so take for granted are a host of organs and tissues, complex biological and chemical processes, a stunning array of factors and elements that contribute to it.  They are the very things that make your breathing--that make your life--possible.

Something along the lines of this sort of reflection is going on when we sit down to the task of theology and christology.  The basic confession and even some of its underlying entailments, which combine to form an adequate christology, are familiar to many Christians.  But what does not seem to be so common is an appreciation of their underlying structure--all the stuff that actually makes the confession 'work'.  Is it important or worthwhile to seek to understand this?  Well, consider the following point by Sanders:

"Once upon a time, the people most committed to the gospel were the people most inclined to serious theological thought.  The deepest doctrines of Christianity, the ones that are not on the surface of the Scriptures but lie waiting in its depths, were quarried through disciplined theological meditation and patient discernment.  It was not academics or aesthetes with too much time on their hands who did this work, but busy pastors, suffering martyrs, and bishops overseeing the evangelization of entire cities.  As they preached and taught and suffered for the gospel, they worked out the deep logic of the revelation of the Trinity, the incarnation, and redemption.  The more seriously they took the life-changing power of the good news, the more concentration they devoted to the details of sound doctrine." (5)

I'm not going to suggest that everybody needs to spend lots of time studying theology.  But it's worth thinking about how much we are biased against such careful study by a (Christian) culture that sees no value in it and assumes that it's only the stuff of academics and aesthetes.  A good dose of real history helps us to challenge this bias.

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(Yet) another thing that I appreciate about Fred Sanders (and I'll focus on that for the remainder of this post) is the way that he provides tools for framing theological explorations.  Here's an example:

"Though the body of Christian truth is made up of a great many doctrines, perhaps hundreds of them, there are only three great mysteries at the very heart of Christianity: the atonement, the incarnation, and the Trinity.  All the lesser doctrines depend on these great central truths, derive their significance from them, and spell out their implications.  Each of these three mysteries is a mystery of unity, bringing together things which seem, in themselves, to be unlikely candidates for unification.  The Christian doctrine of atonement describes reconciliation between the holy God and fallen man.  The Christian doctrine of the incarnation confesses that the complete divine nature and perfect human nature are united in the person of Jesus Christ.  The Christian doctrine of the Trinity affirms that the one God exists eternally as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." (8)

This way of arranging our theological reflection is not original to Sanders, but he's the one from whom I've learned it; and it really is so helpful for organizing and structuring my own thinking about God.

The other example of this kind of framing tool is the set of Chalcedonian categories that Sanders (following a long tradition) introduces for conducting theology.  He points to the first four ecumenical councils (Nicaea I, Constantinople I, Ephesus, and Chalcedon) as setting up the boundaries for doing Christology.  Nicaea I affirmed the deity of Christ, against the Arian heresy.  Constantinople I affirmed the humanity of Christ, against Apollinarianism.  Ephesus affirmed the unity of these two natures in Christ, against Nestorianism.  Chalcedon affirmed the distinctness of these two natures, against Eutychianism.

That may sound like just a lot of long words.  I won't lay everything out here.  (Fred Sanders does a much better job of that.)  The point is that in seeking to understand how it is that Christ saves, it became necessary for the church to clarify it's understanding of who Christ was.  He could only achieve the reconciliation of God and humanity if He was God.  Humanity could be redeemed in Christ only if He actually was human.  Reconciliation required that Jesus represent both parties involved.  They needed to be distinctly and really represented in Him.

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God is in this place,

And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.