Integrating Missionally » Trinity

A Review – Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth

David Phillips — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:01:30 +0000

Manifold Witness

Dr. John Franke is the Lester and Kay Clemens Professor of Missional Theology at Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia. A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of having lunch with him just to talk about theology, faith, and the emerging church. He was a gracious host. In addition, he challenged me with a question regarding the Trinity that changed my whole perspective of ministry and of God. He asked me, “What does it mean to hold to a Trinitarian theology?” In other words, what are the practical implications of a trinitarian theology? That set me on a journey that ended in me looking at all of ministry through the lens of the character, nature and function of the Trinity. I have called that concept the MIROR.

Dr. Franke has written a new book called Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth (Living Theology). The title is quite provocative and alone causes concern for many. However, if people will take the time to read the book, they will find a treasure chest full of wisdom, theology, and insight that can help them understand God, Truth, and knowledge. It will also cause them to consider the gospel and how it operates in culture.

Franke’s thesis is this: “the expression of biblical and orthodox Christian faith is inherently and irreducibly pluralist. The diversity of the Christian faith is not, as some approaches to church and theology might seem to suggest, a problem that needs to be overcome. Instead, this diversity is part of the divine design and intention for the church as the image of God and the body of Christ in the world.”

His thesis is an attempt to deal with this issue: “if the Bible is the Word of God, given so that all God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work, and if God gives wisdom liberally to those who ask, and if the Holy Spirit is at work guiding the church into all truth, how are we to account for and make sense of the plurality of the church? Why is it that Christians from across time and around the world, seeing guidance and understanding concerning the mysteries of life, and the hope of the gospel, have come away from their study carrels and their prayer meetings with such different conclusions on nearly every aspect of the one faith?”

The word that gets everyone’s attention is the word plurality. Franke asserts that all human knowledge involves interpretation – that is is shaped by the conditions and situations from which it emerges. However, Franke also asserts that just because human knowledge and perceptions of truth are always formed in the midst of particular situations, this does not mean that ultimate truth does not exist. God has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and thus the reality of ultimate or transcendent truth is to be affirmed despite the acknowledgment of the interpretive character of human knowledge. In this, Franke follows the line of contemporary brain research on how we understand ourselves and our world as well as frameworks in epistemology, though these disciplines in general ignore the metaphysical.

In the book, Franke develops this theme in the areas of church history, church tradition, and church mission. He also indicates that his view of plurality can be expressed even in the orthodox view of God. God is both plural and singular. He is plural as in the three persons of the Trinity and yet singular in the Godhead. Therefore, truth and knowledge hold in tension plurality-in-unity and unity-in-plurality. Diversity of belief is thus an expression of the Trinity.

The implications of this plurality are found in the various denominations that have developed throughout church history. It also finds itself in the very different expressions of theology within the church. Franke’s idea is that if there is plurality, the full expression of understanding about God can be found in learning and appreciating various theological constructs. This is because theology is not a universal language. It is situated within the the reflections, goals and culture of a particular people and community. White, Western, reformed people view theology from that cutlure. White, Western, arminian people view theology differently. Theology formation is born out of the experiences and stories of the people doing theology. A black man or women may have a different understanding of theology based on whether they grew up in the ghettos of New York or in the suburbia of the Midwest or the in the homes of those who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in South. And we can learn from their perspective. That doesn’t necessarily require agreement; yet at the same time, it may open us up to a different understanding of the heart of God.

It also finds its expression in the gospel. The gospel is an enculturated story. Franke agrees with Leslie Newbiggin who says, “Every interpretation of the gospel is embedding in some cultural form”. (118) The challenge for faithful Christian witness is not to arrive at some form of unenculturated gospel or theology but to be able to discern between legitimate and illegitimate enculturations of the gospel and theology.

The church engages in the task of theological reflection through the development and articulation of models of Christian faith. The sources of construction for these models “are the Bible, the thought-forms of the contemporary setting, and the traditions that make up the tradition of the church. The intent of this constructive process is to envision all of life in relationship to the living God, revealed in Jesus Christ by means of biblically normed, historically informed, and contextually relevant models and articulations of Christian faith that communicate the Christian story and its invitation to participate in the reconciling and liberating mission of God.” (120)

I do have a couple of criticisms of the book. First, I would have appreciated Franke giving us some examples of legitimate and illegitimate enculturations of the the gospel and theology. I understand that this was not primarily a practical theology book, but some practical expressions of this thought would have been helpful. I appreciate that he may want us to do the hard work of figuring those out for ourselves, but an example or two would have been nice.

Secondly, Franke notes the following:

The Spirit engages in the ongoing work of speaking to the church in its varied setting through the appropriation of the text. This does not eliminate the importance of exegesis in an effort to engage the voice of the author, but it does point to the idea that the speaking of the Spirit is not bound solely to the original intention of the biblical authors. Literary theorists note that one an author writes a text, it takes on a life of its own as it is read and interpreted in new and constantly changing situations. The speaking of the Spirit through the texts of Scripture means that while the intention of the author is an important concern, it is not the only concern. It does not represent the fullness of the speaking of the Spirit, since this always involves the response of the reader. (77)

I find this statement discomforting. In part because I have been taught that it can’t mean today what it didn’t mean when it was written. That was the mantra of my New Testament professor. I would have appreciated Franke unpacking this further, providing some practical expression of this that would enable me to get a more complete picture of what he was trying to communicate.

Overall, I think this book has great value.

Note to the FTC: I bought this book myself!

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Theosis

David Phillips — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 01:44:15 +0000

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The Ladder of Divine Ascent

I was reading the other day and came across an idea called Theosis. The author of the book I was reading referred to a quote by C.S. Lewis talking about the topic. So I am interested in its meaning. Here is information from Wikipedia:

In Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and Eastern Catholic theology, theosis (written also: theiosis, theopoiesis, the?sis; Greek: ??????, meaning divinization, or deification, or making divine) is salvation from unholiness by participation in the life of God. According to this conception, the holy life of God, given in Jesus Christ to the believer through the Holy Spirit, is expressed beginning in the struggles of this life, increases in the experience of the believer through the knowledge of God, and is later consummated in the resurrection of the believer when the power of sin and death, having been fully overcome by God’s life, will lose hold over the believer forever. This conception of salvation is historically foundational for Christian understanding in both the East and the West, as it has been developed directly from the apostolic and early Christian teachings concerning the life of faith…

St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote, “God became man so that man might become God.” (On the Incarnation 54:3, PG 25:192B). His statement is an apt description of the concept. What would otherwise seem absurd—that fallen, sinful man may become holy as God is holy—has been made possible through Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. Naturally, the crucial Christian assertion, that God is One, sets an absolute limit on the meaning of theosis: it is not possible for any created being to become (ontologically) God, or even part of God (the henosis of Greek Neoplatonic philosophy).

Through theoria, the contemplation of the triune God, human beings come to know and experience what it means to be fully human (the created image of God); through their communion with Jesus Christ, God shares Himself with the human race, in order to conform them to all that He is in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. As God became human, in all ways except sin, He will also make humans god, in all ways except his divine essence. St Irenaeus explained this concept in Against Heresies, Book 5, in the Preface, “the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through his transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”

Wikipedia contributors, “Theosis,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theosis&oldid=250872419 (accessed November 29, 2008).

Have any of you heard of this and understand what it means?

MORPHE: Eternal Subordination and Male/Female Roles

David Phillips — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:57:48 +0000

In this episode of MORPHE, David and Todd Littleton discuss the issue of Eternal Subordination. They provide a definition from the CBWM and why it has arisen in this time period.

Duration: 45 minutes

The MIROR: An Indwelling Incarnation

David Phillips — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:23:06 +0000

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MIROR: Indwelling and Incarnating

In this post, I want to expand on the “I” in MIROR, which is Incarnational. The aspect of the incarnation that we need to explore deeper is the concept of indwelling. The idea of ‘living in’ or ‘indwelling’ is connected to Michael Polanyi’s ideas of tacit and focal awareness. (1)

Polanyi’s Tacit Knowledge

Almost two years ago I was faced with the prospect of reading Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy by Michael Polanyi. Polanyi (1891-1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath whose thought and work extended across physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. (2) Len Sweet has every one of his doctoral students read Personal Knowledge either in the first or second semester. It is the only book he requires to be read by every doctoral student. It is a very difficult book to read and it felt like having a root canal without drugs. It was so difficult that I had to read Lesslie Newbigin to understand just part of what Polanyi was saying.

Polanyi proposed the idea of Tacit Knowledge. With tacit knowledge, people are not often aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Tacit knowledge is considered more valuable because it provides context for people, places, ideas, and experiences. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact and trust.

Tacit knowledge is not easily shared. One of Polanyi’s famous aphorisms is: “We know more than we can tell.” Tacit knowledge consists often of habits and culture that we do not recognize in ourselves. In the field of knowledge management, the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge which is only known by an individual and that is difficult to communicate to the rest of an organization. Knowledge that is easy to communicate is called explicit knowledge. The process of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge is known as codification or articulation. (3)

Two examples of tacit knowledge include:

1. If I use my hands to feel something in the dark, I am only tacitly aware of my hands; I am focusing my attention on the surface I am exploring, not my hands. I am aware of my hands only in the fact that they are instruments being used to feel what is in the darkness.

2. The words we speak, the actions we take are not conscious for us. They become conscious when someone or some thing shows us what we are doing. As a result, we are only tacitly aware of our words and actions as we have indwelled our words and actions. They are part of who we are.

Indwelling in Jesus

In John’s Gospel, Jesus defines for his followers what is to be their relationship to him. They are to “dwell in” him, as he “dwells in” his father. Jesus was not to be the subject of their observation, but the body of which they were a part. By “indwelling” him in his body, they will both be led into a deeper understanding of the Truth and become the means by which God’s will is done in the world. (4)

The indwelling in the life of Jesus means that Jesus’ life becomes our life. In doing so, Jesus’ life flows out of our own, so much so that people see our life as a reflection and expression of the life of Jesus. We are tacitly aware of what we say and do because we are focally aware of whom we encourage, love and minister.

Jesus was “in the father”, indwelling and incarnating the father, to such great depths, that people understood his words and actions as being God’s words and actions despite the fact that Jesus never explicitly stated for our western minds, “I am God”. While Jesus understood his indwelling and incarnation, he expressed it tacitly; it just flowed from him.

Indwelling in the Church

As the Old Testament unfolds, we begin to see God’s undying love for Israel. Yet, this love and commitment is to Israel the instrument of God’s love for the rest of the nations. It becomes clear that to be God’s chosen people means not privilege but suffering, reproach, and humiliation. Israel was called to embody or indwell in her own life God’s agony over an unbelieving, disobedient world. In the New Testament, that manifestation was found in the one who would suffer the ultimate agony of death on a cross on behalf of all peoples. (5)

Where is the body of Christ is now found? In the Church. Therefore, the body of Christ is called to indwell or incarnate in its own life, both locally and universally, the love and agony of God for this unbelieving and disobedient world.

Unfortunately, we have distorted that privilege just as Israel did. We have taken the love that we should be directing to the world and we have redirected it onto ourselves. We have become the focal point of our awareness. We have become primary, not the world for which God weeps.

So what must we do?

1. Fall in love with the Godhead all over again. In our churches, we are proclaiming principles, not relationship. We preach practices, not relationship.
2. We must retell the stories of Israel as they redirected the MIROR onto themselves instead of the world they were called to love. We have done the same thing in USAmerican churches.

As Christ-followers, we have to live IN the Christian story in the living narrative of a living Jesus. When we embody, incarnate and indwell Jesus, people begin to see not the church or the person by the Godhead behind the person. And when people see Jesus for who he really is, like the woman at the well, they embrace him and run and tell all those that they know.

Notes

1. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 98.
2. Wikipedia contributors, “Michael Polanyi,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_Polanyi&oldid=243647741 (accessed October 17, 2008).
3. Wikipedia contributors, “Tacit knowledge,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tacit_knowledge&oldid=245462216 (accessed October 17, 2008).
4. Newbigin, 99.
5. Newbigin, 84.

The Trinity, the Incarnation, and the MIROR

David Phillips — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:53:23 +0000

The incarnation may be the pivotal point in all of scripture. Next to the creation that opens the Bible and the re-creation that closes the Bible, the incarnation stand as the point where the re-creation and restoration of all of creation begins.

The Trinity requires that we consider the importance of the incarnation.

In the incarnation we find the sending God arriving to meet his creation in their own form. The Godhead puts on human flesh so that evil can be conquered and redemption can be offered. In the incarnation, we find the nature and character of the godhead embodied in Jesus Christ. In Christ, we are presented with the character and nature of God in a way that we can understand and experience – the physical touch of the very real Godhead. It is in the incarnation that we realize the depth of love the Godhead has for us and that we have a great high priest who not only understands our life but can intercede for us on the basis of that understanding. We can identify with them through the incarnation as we see the great lengths that the Godhead would go through to identify with us.

The incarnation was not just about saving people from their sins. The incarnation was about the Godhead conquering evil, restoring creation and redeeming mankind. All of creation is under re-creation because of the incarnation, resurrection and ascension. The impact of sin affects all of creation, from the birds of the air to the ground on which we walk (Hosea 4:3). The incarnation, however, is working to see the purity of the Garden of Eden restored all over the earth. This includes humankind. And it is in the incarnation that the restorative process begins.

The incarnation is the embodiment of the nature and character of the Godhead.

The incarnation provides us with an indication of the nature and character of the Godhead. Through the incarnation we see how the Godhead related together (the perichoresis). In the incarnation we see that God so loved the world, and that love was focused primarily on those whose lives were enslaved to sin and to religious legalism. Jesus lived among the fringe of society, those who knew the pain and struggle of life and wanted to be free of the consequences evil had brought upon them and that they had brought upon themselves. He touched those who had not felt a human touch in years. He healed those whom society believed was living in sin. He wept over the suffering and evil that was rampant in the world. And he offered hope from it all. He offered healing and love. He offered the presence of God to those who were longing for for it.

The MIROR church is the expression of the incarnation in its context.

The MIROR church is a reflection of the Trinity and as such has an incarnational aspect. The purpose of the MIROR church is to be the embodiment of the Godhead in the church’s context. The same nature and character of the Godhead is reflected outward as the church incarnates the loving, healing, freeing and restoring nature of the Godhead. It is part of the restorative and re-creative process that began with the original incarnation.

What does this mean for the church? It means that its focus is on those outside the community. It takes the faith community into the world, feeding off the sending (or missional) aspect of the Trinity. It works among the hurting, starving, broken, and dying of society, partnering with the Spirit to bring healing, forgiveness, hope, and the overwhelming provision and love of God.

This also means that the primary goal is not to draw them into the church’s own specific community of faith but to allow communities of faith to sprout where the church has touched the world. This can be across the road or across the ocean.

In living an incarnational life, the MIROR church is a reflection of the heart of Trinity.

The Miror and the Mission

David Phillips — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:42:02 +0000

If the Trinity is the basis for understanding Miroring Theology, and if it is the basis for understanding even ourselves, then we must address the missional aspect. I want to use missional in the context of sending. We must see part of the function of the Trinity as sending. God sent the Son, the Father and then Son sent the Spirit, and the Spirit sends the person.

The church, empowered by the Spirit and and led by Christ, sends people out. Why? Because the church is a miroring of the character, nature and function of God. If God is a God who sends, the church needs to be sending. The minute we stop sending our people and our resources, we stop being the church God intends. In addition, every person has a responsibility to go and sew. The minute we stop going and sewing we cease to be a reflection of the God whose character, nature and function we have within us.

Why do we not send? Lack of Faith

The brokenness caused by sin causes us to hoard and gather instead of sew and send. We want to keep who we have and what we have for ourselves instead of releasing what God has given us to be used by God in the ministry to the world. “We don’t have enough to give away” some may say. I say to you that you and your church lack faith. Sewing and sending are expressions of a kingdom mentality believing that if we make that a priority we will indeed be provided for. It’s biblical. Remember this verse, “Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all these things will be added unto you”? What are these things? The basic resources we need to exist: food, shelter, and clothing. When we refuse kingdom living through releasing, sending and sewing, we are depending on our own abilities to provide for ourselves. That demonstrates a lack of faith necessary to be the church of God who reflects his character, nature and function.

Where do we send?

We were called to be witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. “Well, that was then David”. Yes, and since this is now, we need to understand that means we need to be sending and releasing wherever we are and to wherever people are all over the world at the same time. Wherever you are and wherever people are living is where we are to send people and resources. That means across the street and around the world. Also notice the emphasis on witnesses in Act 1:8. That means more than money. That means going and telling and demonstrating the love of God. It is the personal touch, like that of the Trinity. Again, failure to send, sew and release where you are and wherever people are means we are not living out the eikon-ness of the God who created us and thus do not reflect Him.

Book Recommendations for…The Trinity

David Phillips — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:29:31 +0000

My book recommendations for reading on the Trinity are:

Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology by Stanley J. Grenz
Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology by Fred Sanders, Klaus Issler
THE SOCIAL GOD AND THE RELATIONAL SELF by Stanley Grenz
Experiencing the Trinity by Darrell W. Johnson
After Our Likeness: The Church As the Image of the Trinity (Sacra Doctrina) by Miroslav Volf
God’s Life in Trinity by Miroslav Volf and Michael Welker

What others would you suggest?

The Trinity: Foundations for Missional Theology

David Phillips — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:34:03 +0000

Rublev’s icon of the Trinity

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Rublev’s icon of the Trinity

Almost two years ago (more like 18 months), I was having lunch with Dr. John Franke of Biblical Theological Seminary in Hatfield, PA. I posed to him a question concerning a situation I was having in my church. He was kind enough to answer my question with a question, asking me, What are the practical implications of a Trinitarian theology? I had never been asked that question before and had no answers.

Being ashamed that I could not answer the question, I sought the answers. This question is important because we have made functional modalists out of people. In addition, we have abstracted the Trinity. It’s something difficult, therefore it is to be spoken of only in the halls of academia. When is the last time you preached a series on the Trinity? Or even heard one preached?

However, all theology must be practical theology, and the Trinity is no exception. The fusion of thought on this topic and some discussions I was having within my doctoral work led me to form some thoughts not only about the practical implications of the Trinity but its framework for missional theology.

Len Sweet coined the phrase the MRI church in a class discussion and in his book The Perfect Storm. (Shameless plug: My wife blogged through this book earlier this year) He said that missional churches are an integration of missional, relational, and incarnation aspects, hence the MRI. But I am going to expand Sweet’s idea to a MIROR Church ©. Missional Theology needs to be an integration of:

Missional
Incarnational
Relational
Organic
Reproductive

In being a MIROR church, we are reflecting who God is in the context of His Trinitarian nature.

Functionally, this is who God is in each of His persons, attitudes and expressions. Though God is one, He is three and each of those three have practical implications for both the church AND for a Christ-follower. It is this practical understanding of the Trinity that I believe gives us the foundation for Missional theology, thought, practice and lifestyle.

Think with me for a moment. God is:

missional (he sent his son)
incarnational (he entered into our world in the Garden, in the Old Testament, in the New Testament),
relational (he established a relationship with himself in the Trinity, with Adam & Eve in the Garden, etc),
organic (he took many forms in the Old Testament -fire, clouds, visitors, Angel of the Lord, Melchizadek- based on the context where the incarnation took place)
reproductive (he reproduced himself by making mankind in his own image)

You can work this process through each member of the Trinity. In doing so, and in understanding that we are eikons of God, we come to realize that we too have those natural aspects to our character, function, identity, and spirituality. Yet because we are cracked eikons (a result of sin) we often fail in living these qualities out in the manner God intended. Nonetheless, they are part of us.

The church is also a reflection of God. Thus the church will have an integration of missional, incarnational, relational, organic, and reproductive qualities and aspects. Failure to integrate each of these qualities is a failure to be a missional church, and in my humble estimation, a church in the image of God.

In my next post, I will expound on the Trinity, the concept of missional, and how that is the foundation for the other elements of a MIROR church.

The Need for Understanding Missional Theology

David Phillips — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:19:56 +0000

Missional Church

Missional has become such a buzz word in recent years that it has almost become diluted. For instance, a church I know in the Birmingham, Alabama area was labelled a missional church by its pastor simply because the church goes on mission trips. However, this church is far from missional in either theology, thought or practice. Going on a mission trip does not make a church missional. The publishing and resourcing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention is sponsoring conferences this year on Missional Sunday School. Now I have no doubt that Sunday School can be missional, but I have to believe that they are using this term to attract people to the conference; I personally doubt you are going to see many churches adopting a missional theology and practice out of this.

I own a publishing company, Missional Press. Because we were getting proposals on a variety of topics, we started a separate imprint called MORFX Press. I did not want to dilute the missional brand, and we have limited the books we will publish under the Missional Press label.

So we really need to begin to look at a healthy understanding of missional theology. I want to do this through an upcoming a series of posts.

In this series we will:

Look at the theological basis for missional thought, theology and practice.
Examine the importance of a Trinitarian theology and its relevance to missional theology.
Examine some practical implications of Trinitarian theology.
Look at each member of the Trinity and how each demonstrate an aspect of missional theology.
Look at the importance of reproduction within missional theology.

I will contend that missional theology is found in the character of God, but specifically it is an aspect of Trinitarian theology. The unfortunate issue is that few understand the Trinity and even fewer sermons are preached on the Trinity.

This all starting sloshing in my brain when, over a lunch meeting two years ago, theologian John Franke posed to me this question: What are the practical implications of a Trinitarian theology? I will explore some of those in this series as well, while maintaining the focus on missional thought, theology and practice. The first post should arrive tomorrow.

Embracing the Mystery

David Phillips — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:17:06 +0000

This weekend my wife and I went out to dinner with a couple from our church. The wife noted that our last two worship gatherings felt more like a Friends Meeting than a Baptist worship service. Some in her family were Friends (Quakers) and she had been to several meetings. She noted this because I’ve started talking about the Spiritual Disciplines in worship. When we discussed meditation we actually took time in worship to meditate on scripture, re-write it in our own words, look for application and then pray over it. Twenty minutes of silence occurred while all that happened. In our worship gathering this weekend, we talked about prayer and so we actually took time as a corporate body to pray, and we ended with a big prayer meeting.

So I in this conversation I got to learn from her all about a Friends Meeting. It was quite fascinating and unique.

I then told her that I had in the past year or two considered spending some time either at a spiritual retreat center run by a Friends group or a monastery. There was a puzzled look on her face. I noted that these both were places known for Christian mysticism. Early Christianity was filled with mystics. Some even think Paul was a Jewish mystic who became a Christ-follower and maintained the mystical elements of his faith. In addition to the practices of solitude and silence that I need, I am interested in exploring the mystical side of the Christian faith.

This may be unsettling to some. Don’t let it be.

In my spiritual journey I have experienced more of the mystical side – or at least what I would call mystical. I was at a camp in college talking with a young lady. In the midst of our conversation, very clearly the Spirit spoke to me and said, “She’s been raped”. Five minutes later, she told me of how she had been raped a couple of years earlier. In another conversation with a friend during college, the Spirit spoke and said, “She’s been sexually active”. Two minutes later she described that part of her past and because I did not flinch or react to her -because I knew it was coming – she was finally able to see the unconditional love of God and God as Father. I was in college, in my apartment on a Sunday afternoon after a great worship gathering, and the Spirit spoke very clearly. “What do you want?” was the question and I responded with three requests. We (the Trinity and I) spent the entire year working on these three things, which prepared me for the future.

Then years of silence.

Recently, however, I have had a greater sense of mysterious God. Last year, I had a dream during a particularly hard time in my life and at the end of the dream I heard a beautiful voice singing, “I will stand by you”. I immediately awoke realizing that God had just spoken to my through that dream, and today I live in the confidence that God’s provision will stand. And most recently, I had a vision of a great fire that started in Delaware and burned north, to the I-95 corridor and went north to Portland, ME and south to Washington DC. It was the fire of revival and I have been praying for another Great Awakening for this country. Interestingly enough, one of my tribesman (denominational guy) had a similar vision five nights in a row.

Also, I notice that when I spend time meditating on the scriptures, I find myself longing to hear from the Spirit. The more I am in the word, the more I release myself to the Spirit whom I expect to teach me and instruct me and intercede for me. I have all of this learning, but I long for the Spirit. And I am willing to let the Spirit take me on a journey in a direction I do not know where I will end up.

This may be unsettling to my friends. Don’t let it be. I’m not talking full-blown hyper-charismatic behavior here. No laughing revivals revivals or dancing on stage with Paula or Ken or Jesse or Benny. I am talking about embracing the triune God, in all His persons, and that is a scary, mysterious journey that people struggle with.

I noted to a friend last week that my denomination has replaced the Holy Spirit with the Bible in the Trinity. In our attempt to achieve orthodoxy (and might I add, by very unbiblical methods at times) I believe we have jettisoned the Spirit from the Trinity and replaced Him with the Bible. Now I know that no one would say that out loud. But from a very practical sense, that is what has happened.

As we talked about this over lunch, I asked my friend (who’s much more theologically astute than I), “Are we willing to trust the Spirit alone?” He noted he struggles with that. But he also encouraged me to explore that and write on it. The idea: does our bibliology trump our pneumatology?

We struggle to embrace mystery in our lives because it takes us out of control. Someone else must “taking the wheel”. (Thanks Carrie Underwood!) It means we truly allow God to lead us. He truly becomes in charge.

This is the journey of a pneumanaut – one who rides the Spirit.

I hope, over the next couple of weeks or two, to actually put together a few posts about how our bibliology has trumped our pneumatology. In the meantime, I ‘m off into the mystery. It’s never dull and there is always something new to see. I’m tired of being shackled. I want to embrace the mystery.

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MORPHE: Eternal Subordination and Male/Female Roles

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The MIROR: An Indwelling Incarnation

Polanyi’s Tacit Knowledge

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Indwelling in the Church

So what must we do?

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The Trinity, the Incarnation, and the MIROR

The Trinity requires that we consider the importance of the incarnation.

The incarnation is the embodiment of the nature and character of the Godhead.

The MIROR church is the expression of the incarnation in its context.

In living an incarnational life, the MIROR church is a reflection of the heart of Trinity.

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The Miror and the Mission

Why do we not send? Lack of Faith

Where do we send?

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Book Recommendations for…The Trinity

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The Trinity: Foundations for Missional Theology

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The Need for Understanding Missional Theology

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Embracing the Mystery

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