The Happy Land of the Trinity

 

Continuing these reflections . . . how is it necessary for our good to know these things? Let me suggest four different ways this applies to me.

 

First,

 

Before the Beginning, the Triune God: a world of love and happiness

Before there was time, God in Trinity, was perfect and complete in himself.  God is love because the Triune God, who was always and ever Father, Son, and Spirit, loved and delighted in each other in perfect unity.

 

Before there was time, there was God, and in God there was love and life and joy.  The incarnation too the life of the Father and Son and made it visible.

 

Francis Schaeffer was given twenty minutes to preach at the Princeton University Chapel service.  While he was not within my sectarian camp, I respected him.  I went to hear him.  In twenty minutes he took us back before the foundation of the world.  He told us that God, being three persons and One God, lived in love and joy and relationship.  Relationship and love were eternal.  That is why we knew love and relationship. 

 

Sanders says, 

 

God the Trinity is the end, the goal, the telos, the omega.  In himself and without any reference to the created world or the plan of salvation, God is that being who exists as the triune love of the Father for the Son in the unity of the Spirit.  The boundless life that God lives in himself, at home, in the happy land of the Trinity above all worlds, is perfect.  It is complete, inexhaustibly full, and infinitely blessed. (62)

 

Or take this quote,

 

The inner life that God lives, in the happy land of the Trinity above all worlds, is a livelier life than any other life. (81)

 

This means that for the Christian, the true God is a reason for joy and love and relationship.  If God were an infinite mind (Vulcan-like for you Star Trek-ies) then there would be no song at creation.  Love would be a creation of God.  Relationship would be a thing dreamed up by God.  But neither love nor relationship would be expressions of God himself.

 

When I was a boy I would sometimes consider how long eternity was.  I would think back to before there was time.  I was not a theologian.  I probably had a child’s version of the big bang.  But I remember this, when I thought back that far I had an overwhelming sense of loneliness.  If there was a God he was there – formless, inactive, present to himself.

 

It is not so.  Such a God is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The Monotheism of the Christian is Trinitarian.  It is lovely.  It is categorically different than the Monotheism of Islam. 

 

God being Triune creates and redeems coherently.  Creation is sacramental.  It is a work of God consistent with the being of God.  Man in the image of God is consistent with the being of God.

 

Redemption is consistent with the being of Gpd.  To say that God is love is not a phrase describing our Savior, it is a description of the eternal relationships within the Godhead.

 

Comments

[Richard Morris]

"Before there was time, God in Trinity, was perfect and complete in himself. God is love because the Triune God, who was always and ever Father, Son, and Spirit, loved and delighted in each other in perfect unity." There is no other name above the Name.
I have read your series thus far and have really enjoyed it. Thank you for reminding me of the magnificience, love, and perfectness that is Triune God.