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

 

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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.

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.

My book recommendations for reading on the Trinity are:

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

What others would you suggest?

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.