Song - The Gift of God to the Soul of Man

Someone happened to mention to me recently, that angels don't sing. My "that sounds dodgy" antenna went up immediately. I wasn't too sure about that. After all, every Christmas, for as long as I can remember, I gustily sing out the traditional "Sing Choirs of Angels..." from O Come All Ye Faithful and Hark the Herald... You know the rest. But if you look in the bible, that person was right. In fact according to the Bible, the rest of creation doesn't sing either! Declares? Yes. Calls? Yes. But doesn't sing.

Singing is God's gift exclusively to those made in his image. Every time you put on your MP3 player, whether you're listening to Christian or secular songs, classical or modern, you are hearing an echo of the image of God from the depths of those who are made in their image. Whether they acknowledge it or not. Every time you open your mouth in song, whether you sound like a French horn or a foghorn, you are displaying something unique to the rest of creation.

When we sing, we are displaying/experiencing something of the divine life. And surely it can only be that way, for only humans can experience what it is to be forgiven and saved. Angels don't. Creation doesn't. Greater depths of emotion and experience require greater depths of expression to do them justice. Song is just that - a beautiful union of words and music. The intelligible, united to the ineffable.

So much singing all down history and all over the world has hijacked God's intent for this gift and forced it into the service of sinful and even diabolical ends, but this post isn't a knee jerk call for Christians to burn all of their non-Christian CDs, (although discernment is clearly needed in choosing what you feed your soul with). Rather to ask us all to stop a while and listen with renewed ears. Singing is sacred a gift of God to the souls of men and women, a gift that we can either squander or gratefully use every day to nourish our souls with truth and to have fellowship with the living and true God. A gift that the mighty angels have only ever been able to wonder at, and all the more will they do so, on that great and final day when they hush themselves to listen whilst those who have been redeemed by the living God, sing a new song to Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb: face to face...

So what to sing this Christmas? Hark the herald angels say... doesn't quite have the same ring to it... :-S

The Image of God

This is probably my best attempt to sum up these posts (1, 2 & 3) in easily digestible form. The image of God is reflected in marriage in the created order. It ties with what Augustine said when he described the Trinity as Lover, Beloved and Love.

Before you shoot me for heresy and say that I demean the person of the Holy Spirit, by making Him an arrow, not a circle, think carefully where you would get your texts to shoot me from. I fully believe that the Spirit is a person, but that personhood is expressed in a different way in the divine life to the other two. I have only ever seen divine dialogue in the bible, never divine trialogue. Father talks to Son and Son to Father, but you never catch the Son having a chin wag with the Spirit, (at least I haven't come across one yet) or the Father doing the same. The Spirit speaks to and through the believers, but not as a defined stand apart entity within the Godhead to the Godhead.

The Holy Spirit - Consummator not Clone

The Son of God reveals who the Father is by being his complement not his clone. Just as you know the bear by the imprint of his feet on the ground, so too you know the Father by the one who is the imprint of his nature.

The Son completes the community of the Godhead by being different (that's what being a complement means. A good wine complements a good meal - completes it, dare I say, it makes up for what is lacking. It doesn't mean that wine = better or that wine = more chips). The one is more sweetly enjoyed when accompanied by the difference of the other.

So we are left with the question who is the Spirit?

The Spirit is different again and completes the community of the Godhead by consummating or unifying the complementary personalities of the Father and the Son as one. He flows eternally in love between the Father and the Son. He is the overflow of their delight in one another. To put it another way: Father and Son are one in the unity of the Spirit.

That sounds really abstract and weird so let's ground it. Remember, our guide is the Bible, and our interpreting principle is not western philosophical logic but the revelation of symmetry. (It's got to be really simple, otherwise we, along with some Indonesian tribes from the 14th century, will have an excuse for unbelief on the day of judgment.)

So here is my question: Where in the Bible, outside the trinity, is the only place where you see two united as one? Where do you see two complimentary persons united in loving, faithful, life-giving union? Where is this image, this metaphor of the divine nature, the divine life, clearly on display?

Marriage.

Which is exactly what you see in the creation of Adam and Eve. Two complementary persons unified as one in the bond of marriage.

I am personally absolutely convinced that this, more than anything else, is what it means to be made in the image of God, (other interpretations e.g. "the attributes" tangent off into abstraction and speculation and encourage us to be self-obsessed and antisocial rather than generously outward-looking and sociable). This is simple biblical symmetry, that the simple-minded like you and me can understand. Wherever, you have biblical marriage, you have a simple, but profound picture of the divine life where beautiful diversity is found in perfect, faithful, life-giving unity. This is why Paul cites sexual misconduct/dysfunction as the ultimate supression of the truth, because it stops us from seeing in real life, in concrete metaphor, (in glorious technicolour and surround sound - but don't let your mind wander too much there ;-) the divine life of God.

This is the reason you and I exist. It wasn't cos some single billy no mates god in the sky was bored one day and decided he would make a universe to trivially amuse himself. God is not a sycophant desperate for human worship. When a husband and wife, express the greatest joy and delight in each other a delight that is exclusive, faithful, physical, mental and spiritual - in short all-consumming (or consummating) - the overflow of that delight is life in the form of a child. In this way, they echo the Father and Son, who in the power, joy and faithful union of the Spirit overflowed in creative pleasure and made the whole cosmos, both seen and unseen. The marriage bed, is a theatre of the intimate, invisible life of God and should be respected by all. Oh how I need help to feel the weight and beauty of this and fight my tendency to reduce sex to a merely mechanistic/selfish act of gratification.

Only the triune - diverse, yet unified - God of the Bible can truly be love: self-giving, life-creating love.

The reason we call God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit and not Man, Woman and Holy Matrimony is because the story doesn't finish at creation, (in fact, it doesn't begin there either) but at salvation and re-creation. The symmetry of marriage is not just a means of understanding the Trinity, but also the relationship Christ has with the church. But that is for another post. We haven't reached the bottom of the rabbit hole just yet!

tbc...

Ruminating on the Daily Little Resonances of Eternity

Two things have happened this week in this visible and temporary life that made me pause and rejoice in the reality of the invisible and eternal one.

1.

I finally got off my backside and went to get my replacement tax-disc from the DVLA at Theale. I had been dumb enough to lose the original after it arrived in the post back in May and to my shame, I have been driving illegally for the last three months! (Two if you count the fact that I was in East Africa for a month, but yes you're right, that doesn't make it any better and yes, I'm squirming! The photo makes a good job of hiding it though.) So whilst the dues for my car had been paid, I nevertheless had failed to display the evidence of that transaction appropriately.

A good metaphor, I feel. For whilst the ransom on my life has been paid, how often it is that I fail to display that evidence appropriately! I thank God for mercy!

(Still squirming... :-S)

2.

The GCSE results were published today. A friend of mine said that she was proud her son's achievements, then wondered on Facebook, in good humour, if that kind of pride was allowed.

I found myself pondering (as I often do) that off the cuff remark and thought it wholly appropriate!! Parental pride in the wholesome achievements of their children is good. Necessary even. Moreover, (and this is when I found myself all of a sudden punching the air and cheering) it's an appropriate, if small, echo of the pride the Father must have felt as Jesus rocked up in Heaven after the resurrection!

I doubt the Celestial Philharmonic played this when he did, but as a piece written for coronation, it's another echo of the installation of the king...

Jesus the Son - Complement not Clone

Following on from this post, here is my current thinking on the issue of unity and diversity in the Trinity. Comments/questions welcome.

My starting point here is that the divine nature (God as trinity) is simple to understand for if it wasn't we would have an excuse for unbelief before the judgment seat of Christ. It has to be simple so that the only reason for not getting it is choosing not to. The Bible clearly reveals God as a community of persons who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit not by logical argument, but by symmetry. The danger comes when we are tempted to fall into metaphysical speculation and are so busy reading between the lines for the logic that we fail to read the lines themselves and ask the Holy Spirit for the revelation of symmetry.

With that in mind, what's wrong with saying, that the Son is as different from the Father as you are from your earthly father? Whilst you are not your father, you are nevertheless 100% human and (in the perfect scenario) remain 100% relationally united to him, (until you leave and cleave). So then, the Son can be totally distinct from the Father and remain 100% divine and relationally united to the Father.

When Paul states in 1 Corinthians 11 that the woman is the glory of man, he is not saying that she is a clone of the man, that would be ridiculous and the human race would be doomed to extinction before it had even got going! The Woman displays the glory of the Man by being his complement. I think this is the paradigm we need in our heads when we read the writer of Hebrews saying that the Son is the radiance of the Father's glory. The Son declares the Father's glory by being his complement, not his clone. The Son completes the Father in the same way that the Woman completes the Man. Father and Son are both fully divine, but without each other, their existence is meaningless.

This is important, because if we think trinity = 1 + 2 clones we will fall into the trap of thinking that the Father doesn't need the Son or the Spirit and could act unilaterally if he wanted to (we would then say he simply chooses not to). That is impossible. It's not just that the Father chooses not to do what the Son can do; the Father cannot do what the Son or the Spirit does, and the same applies to the other two. (For example, the Father cannot be mediator but the son can.) All three persons are absolutely necessary to the community otherwise the whole thing collapses.

Glen Scrivener fills this point out beautifully, go read.

The next question is then, who does that make the Spirit?

tbc...

Splendid Sundays in the Son

This afternoon, a bunch of us went for a stroll on the Bramshill Plantation. It's a gem of a place to go for a walk, (15mins by car south out of Reading!) and I'm stunned that so few local people I meet seem to know it's there! (Perhaps I should keep it that way and not blog this. The last thing I want is human traffic jams on a Sunday afternoon!) Highlights include:

The Lake
Today we didn't see any fish or swans, but we did see dragonflies gadding about as well as some amazing shapes massaged by the wind into the surface of the water.


The Wildlife

Almost trod on this little fella...

The camera on my mobile phone is rubbish. In the distance on the photo below, (you can't make them out) we saw some fawns.

We also saw a stag at 20m, but he was gone before I had time to fumble my camera out of my pocket.

The People

More great conversations about life as we know it thus far, as well as the hopes and perplexities that lie ahead.

Great place... Go there.

NB Not a "smart-shoe" or buggy friendly place, unless you have one of those buggies that looks like a decommissioned lunar explorer!

Thank you Jesus... again!

Is This What Comes To Mind When You Think of Trinity?

Have a look at this video clip from the film Multiplicity:



Is this what you think of when you think of the Trinity? Essentially an original master (Father) with two carbon copies of himself, (Son and Spirit) that are just subordinate in authority and different in function to him? Is there anything deficient in this view?

Ponder a while, maybe even leave a comment. I'm still thinking about it, but will log my thoughts at a later date.