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THE TRINITY: APPREHENDIBLE BUT NOT COMPREHENDIBLE |
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Last week I wrote that the Trinitarian nature of
God is important if we are to be saved.
This is because the Bible teaches both that God alone saves, and
that it is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit working together that
saves us. Since we are saved only by
the work of the three persons, the three persons must necessarily be the one
God. We also stated that the doctrine
of the Trinity is a "mystery" in the sense that we could never
discover the Trinitarian nature of God using unaided human reason – the
nature of God is something that God Himself must reveal. This means that the source of our
knowledge about God is God Himself and not our own imagination. Theologians have always said that the doctrine of
the Trinity can be apprehended but not comprehended. This means that we can understand that the
one God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. However, it is not possible for us to
understand everything about the Trinity.
This is not a cop-out. It is
simply true that finite man is not able to have exhaustive knowledge of the
infinite God. Some people reject the teaching about the Trinity
because they cannot figure out how the One God can eternally exist in Three
Persons. When they do this, they are
putting human reason above God's revelation.
This is a wrong use of the human intellect. God gave each of us a mind
so that we would order our thoughts according to His Word (2 Cor 10:5; Ro
12:2; Ps 1:1-2; 119). This is the
basic meaning of "love the LORD your God with … all your mind"
(Matt 22:37). Television provides a good illustration of how we
can apprehend something without fully comprehending how it works. Most of us do not know (in an exhaustive
sense) how the sound and picture get from the tv studio to our living rooms,
yet we do not have any problem using the tv.
It is similar with the Trinity.
While we do not comprehend all the ins and outs of the doctrine, we
can apprehend both its truth and its importance, but only if we submit our
thoughts to the authority of God's Word. |
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