WOVEN INTO GOD IN CHRIST

If you are like me you may have not paid much attention to the trinity and the nature of what a trinitarian God means. It took my reading of two excellent small books on the nature of the trinity to alert me to the fact that the trinitarian God is foundational to who God is and to who were. It’s basic to our inclusion in God as daughters and sons. It’s also the reason why legalism and law-based religion is a furphy. The books I found so helpful are entitled, Trinitarian Conversations 1 and 2.' They are easy enough to read. They are Bible based, rooted in the theology of the Church Fathers, are Christ centred, and channels of revelation.

NOT A HOLY BLOB
I learned that the trinity is indeed three persons, one God. Not just a kind of Holy Blob as is often imagined. I learned that the relationship between the three is a perichoresis; a relationship in which they are distinct, yet part of each other without losing any of the uniqueness of each. I learned that love is what this relationship is. So that when we say that ‘God is love’ we are describing the joy of oneness and celebration of being themselves IN ONENESS WITH OUR TRINITARIAN GOD.

From other sources I leaned that this Relationship of oneness and togetherness is also holiness. Thus, when we are urged to be holy as God is holy this encouragement is not made with reference to some abstraction that is separate to God and ourselves like the law. It means agreeing with Christ that He has enfolded us in God.

HOLINESS, A FORM OF BEING
Holiness is God’s gift to all via the atonement. It’s our enfolding in God in the person of Jesus Christ. Obedience means allowing oneself to be the beneficiary of God’s grace in Jesus Christ – meaning that we agree with God that in Jesus, the trinity has reached out to we humans to engulf us in God and to imbue us with God in a living way, that is similar to God’s own perichoresis. There is no abstraction here. We have been drawn into a relationship, a state of being that is alive with absolute life and light.

MYSTERY OF GODLINESS
Karl Rahner writes, “There must be a connection between Trinity and man. The Trinity is a mystery of salvation, otherwise it would never have been revealed. We should show why it is such a mystery. We must point out in every dogmatic treatise that what it says about salvation does not make sense without referring to this primordial mystery of Christianity.” (1) The mystery that is our reality is the un-doing of Adam and the inclusion of ourselves in oneness with God.

PRE-DESTINED TO LIFE IN GOD
The primordial mystery of Christianity is that the First Creation was enacted with the Second Creation in mind. I mean the new creation referenced by John in the prologue to his gospel and the new creation emphasised by Paul with the words, ‘Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation’ Gal 6.15 NIV.

The meaning of life is that God is trustworthy, that He really is love and that we have been adopted by God, drawn into Himself, made one with God in the spirit of sonship. The meaning and reality of a holy life is that you have been encompassed in God. But new creation is not just about you. It’s about society and the Earth.
(1)  Karl Rahner, Trinity, p 21.