Knowing of God comes through encountering our Father in Heaven- who though transcendent, comes to us in and through our Lord Jesus Christ, by the immanent presence of the Holy Spirit. Christian life is therefore wholly derived from our communal knowledge of the Triune God. This knowledge comes when God speaks to our whole being. We come to know God because He comes to know us.
Knowing God comes when by His Spirit, He summons us to Himself. When he summons us, He engages us and acts upon us as the object of His love, Word, and fellowship. This knowledge comes when God encounters us, when Jesus’ life touches us. Thus when after the woman in Scripture “spent all she had on physicians” and “no one could cure her,” she saw Jesus and said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” When God reveals Himself, and He speaks to us, we encounter Him. Then we know God, because He has met with us, has spoken to us, and so revealed Himself to us.
Encountering God therefore involves but transcends cognition. When God personally meets me, then I know Jesus has passed by today and I touched his cloak. To know Him is God’s eternal objective when He comes to us. Christian life is therefore inherently theological, because God is sanctifying us by calling us into the fellowship which exists within the communal life of His triune personhood. God is always calling and inviting us to partake in the common life shared between the Father, Son, and Spirit. God is forever celebrating this love around the open table of the reciprocal love resonating within the triune community of Himself, who is the person of God. This I believe reflects the meaning of the ancient conception of God’s triune personhood according to the perichoresis (“dance”) metaphor, which infers the dynamic movement of divine life within the Godhead. All that we confess as the revelation of God in Christ, as the true worship of God, and subsequently as Christian life and tradition- is that God is the triune communal personhood of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We therefore cannot speak of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit without endeavouring to keep our confession encircled with the knowledge that God encounters us through the doxologies of His triune giving of Himself to us, to make us communal partakers of the relational life resonating in Him. Authentic New Testament spirituality is wholly trinitarian. The greatest good bequeathed to the Church via 20th century theology, was the trend towards grounding Christian life, tradition, and whatever may be confessed of God, upon the triune life of God.
Monte Lee Rice (© Copyright January 2007)
Bibliographical references
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