How The Christian Trinity Is Unique

Undifferentiated concepts of God, like God as nature, or God as the evolution of the universe, yield little meaning because they are so vague they fail to grasp the distinctly differentiated aspects of God’s personhood that offer concrete points of integration with human beings. 

The Bible holds a unique place among world religions because what it records about God and persons occurs over several millennia, arising out of particular historical situations and concrete interpersonal encounters. This creates a public account open to all peoples, a common legacy to humankind. “I have spoken openly to the world,” Jesus says. “I said nothing in secret” (Jn 18:20). The cohesiveness of Scripture comes from the divine Subject who guides the biblical narrative, and the human subjects who interact with God.

Bible

Two singular concepts arise from the Bible that reveal how this divine Subject, this God of the Bible, interfaces with people, concepts that arise from the Old Testament and carry forward into the New. 

The singular message of the Old Testament lies in the revelation of a personal transcendent Creator, a novel concept even in the world of ancient comparative religions. 

The singular message of the New Testament lies in the revelation that right thinking about God, or doctrine, combined with personal faith in God, leads to reconciliation and friendship with God, a thesis original to religions of that day.

Christianity

Christianity puts together the Old and New Testament into the synthesis of orthodox doctrine about the personal transcendent Creator, asserting that God can be known and loved by understanding his personality and attributes. This requires a rhythm of integration and differentiation, so that people can perceive, name, and engage the personal transcendent God.

Just how does God disclose and differentiate himself from all the other claims to deity in world history? He simply says, “I AM” (Ex 3:14; Jn 8:58). God’s essence, therefore, constitutes self-existent personality without beginning or end.

"I AM"

 

From this foundational premise, God continues to reveal himself throughout Scripture with names that provide clarification. From the Old Testament come the names God Almighty, for example, and Lord of Hosts, Holy One of Israel, and Ancient of Days—surely meant to convey awe and wonder, mystery and majesty. Not the average idol in the land of Canaan, or the average tribal god. This is God the one and only, Maker of heaven and earth, a transcendent-personal presence to be reckoned with. 

In the New Testament comes increased differentiation, this time toward personalizing God’s immanence, his holy and loving presence in the world. Now God becomes entirely personal—so personal that his name is Jesus. Human, yes, but also divine: one Person with two distinct natures, co-existing without mixture or confusion, in one interpersonal self: Jesus Christ, the Son of Man and Son of God. Here is differentiation, in rhythm with integration. 

Jesus Christ

And through Jesus, God the Almighty becomes differentiated as God the Father, Holy Father, Righteous Father…Our Father. And whom do the Father and Son reveal but the differentiated Holy Spirit: the Spirit of the Father, Spirit of Christ, and Spirit of the Lord.

And what is the sum total of God’s self-communication in the Old and New Testament story? 

One God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.

For more, read: 

CHRISTIAN PERSONALITY THEORY:

Compass Psychotheology Applied

Christian Personality Theory

   

Three Ways to Keep Christianity Simple

Have you ever wondered as a Christian believer how to keep your faith simple and effective over all the years of your life? Have you wondered how to keep your first love for Christ alive in spite of all the cultural, financial, and psychological pressures of modern life?   

I'm going to share three insights that I hope are as meaningful to you as they have been for me in keeping your personal walk with Jesus zestful and focused.

1. Keep in mind that the core teaching of Christianity has to do with the Triune God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This is a great mystery and we ought to feel no shame in receiving it as a gift of divine revelation, rather than a product of our own rational deduction of what we think God could or should be. 

Other world religions have core beliefs about God that must also be accepted through faith and not rationally deduced from experience. For instance, Hinduism professes to believe in a million gods, whereas Buddhism teaches that there is no personal God at all. 

So when the Bible shows us the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each acting as fully God in different historical situations, while existing together as One God, we do well to make this a primary building block of our view of reality. This teaching of the Trinity is especially meaningful to me as a theologian-psychologist because it answers so many important questions about humanity's existence and God's existence; how they are similar and how they differ.

We know from anthropology, psychology, and sociology that humans do not live successfully in isolation. And from your practical experience you know that those people who are loners do not do well in life. They become depressed, develop no social skills, and over time lose even the ability to converse meaningfully. There are two mental disorders that lead to this condition, known as the avoidant personality disorder and the schizoid personality disorder. In both conditions individuals isolate themselves from others, and hide in the margins of life, work, and civilization. Before long, their emotions shrivel up and their cognition becomes bleak and barren. Their spirit dies within them, and even their bodies look forlorn and forsaken.

Looking back at what the Word of God teaches us, however, offers a remedy. God declared way back in Genesis, during the foundational epoch of an ancient civilization, that it is not good for persons to live alone. Why? Because, from God's point of view He has created them for friendship, fellowship, love, empathy, communication, communion, trust, and lifelong interpersonal learning.

In other words, just as God Himself is an interpersonal Trinity, so we are made in His image as interpersonal selves. Whatever else we are called to know or to do, we can never get away from the universal calling to become meaningfully involved with others as God is and does.

Knowing this keeps your life simple in this way: you dedicate yourself to become a lifelong student of personality development and social communication, so that you're always gaining greater facility in meeting, talking to, caring for, and living together with friends, acquaintences, and family members. This calling to caring relationships won't end with your personal death, but is resurrected with your body and personality for eternal pursuit in heaven.

Think of how both in the Bible and today God is always involved in relationships — perceiving, speaking, listening, caring, confronting, feeling, thinking, and acting. And you are invited to do the same!

But you can forsake your calling in Christ altogether by insisting so vehemently on your own selfish ways that you separate yourself from God and spend eternity in hell.

Instead, why not spend your life drawing ever closer in your thoughts and feelings, sensations and spirit, to the living Triune God, and through God's love for others, to them as well. Why not treat even strangers or newcomers as potential new friends? God does, or else he never would have chosen you while you were yet His enemy.

2. Make the Bible, God's personal revelation of who He is and what He expects from you, the foundation of your life. That means reading it many times through, on your own or in a Bible study group, all the while you are going through school, working at a job, or raising a family.

You will no doubt run up against many human opinions, some of them from very smart people, who will contradict what you learn and believe in Scripture. But where were they when God laid the foundation of the Cosmos? When He set the stars in heaven and created the fish in the ocean? When He made the thousand types of butterflies, and formed them to emerge as delicately winged and beautifully colored creatures out of former worms?

Recently a person emailed me to say he had read a Bible verse in his daily devotional that reinforced just what he was in the process of doing with his relationships:

"Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him" (Col 3:9-10).

3. Many atheistic scientists and pseudo-philosophers have been quite enamored with themselves during the short time their enfleshed skeletons walk around, and they make grand pronouncements about God, truth, and meaning. But far greater heed should be paid to Jesus Christ, the Son who was sent by the Father from heaven to teach us about God, truth, and the meaning of life. Don't let His voice from the New Testament or His Spirit whom He sends to indwell you, get lost in the shuffle. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (Jn 14:6)."

It's amazing how well you can do in keeping your first love for Christ, and developing a humble spirit for learning the Word of God, by just placing the Trinity, the Bible, and the love of Christ for you at the center of your consciousness. 

And if you need a little more encouragement, I invite you to read the Compass Series books that my wife and I have provided for fellow Christians or those interested in the Christian faith. In fact, when you read our words, we feel a family feeling toward you, a bond that originates in the Trinity and is passed to us on earth. You are why we write, and we always pray that our concepts are just what you are hoping to find.

May I say, since it's that time of year, Merry Christmas to you, and may God the Father, Son, and Spirit draw very close to you in the coming year!

Compass Psychotheology, Modern Life, and the Bible

Compass Psychotheology brings together a century of research into the psychology of human behavior with a spiritual foundation of Scripture and Christian orthodoxy.

In a nutshell, early in my career as both a psychology professor and licensed therapist, I challenged the metaphysical assumptions that underlie Freudian, Jungian, behavioral, and humanistic approaches to being human. I grateful receiving valuable insights, while replacing the erroneous metaphysics with the foundation of Old and New Testament Scripture: the Bible.

Why did I do this? Because I believe that God created humankind; and that God therefore knows, understands, and created the way humans function as psycho-social-spiritual beings. As a psychology professor I taught twelve different graduate and undergraduate courses. This learning experience opened my own eyes to what God already knows about psychology, including: cognition, emotion, motivation, personality, memory, learning, perception, social psychology, sexuality and lifespan development. I began to understand how "we are fearfully and wonderfully made." And as a direct consequence I grew more in love with God, our Creator and Redeemer.

Knowing these fields within contemporary psychology does not need to exclude spirituality, nor does it need to disqualify the supernatural, miracles, and biblical prophecy as realities, not only in biblical times, but today.

So I sought to put together faith and reason in understanding God and human behavior, with faith coming first, and reason following, as long as it is humble reasoning that includes what Scripture says about human purpose and psychosocial processes.

Now that the ten books of the Compass Series books have been written, my attention is keenly focused on how this body of knowledge can enrich churches and the Body of Christ.

Just today I spoke with a man in his eighties, a nationally known motivational speaker, who said, "Dan, this message you are bringing about how pastor's and congregants need to understand their own and other people's personalities is greatly needed in the church. Too often pastors are prepared in seminary with theological topics and church polity, and given little or know knowledge of human psychological functioning. I hope this changes through the knowledge you are bringing to the Christian faith."

I hope so, too, since my experience over forty years is that many people are incapable of growing a deeper love for Christ precisely because they are held captive to psychological dynamics, especially unconscious ones, they neither comprehend nor make progress outgrowing. 

If there's a mission for compass psychotheology yet to accomplish, it is this: to wed psychology and biblical faith within us, so that we can grow in understanding ourselves and God, and thereby experience more keenly the intimacy and adventure God created us to know.

Why God Makes Room for Your Doubt

From a compass psychotheology perspective, too great an emphasis on perfect faith actually blocks growth instead of facilitating it, creating the unconscious expectation that without perfect faith God will be disappointed and reject a person. 

But God has more patience and maturity than that, for as Jesus said, a tiny mustard seed of faith is sufficient for the Lord to work within a person (Mt 17:20). The Trinity wants to help people face, feel, and process their doubts, which in turn leads to greater faith. 

Even John the Baptist suffered doubts, and sent a messenger from his prison cell to ask Jesus once again if in fact he was the Messiah. Jesus sent back the answer that “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised,” all signs from Isaiah’s prophecy attesting to the Messiah’s arrival (Lk 7:22 NKJV).

Thus, if individuals are trusting Christ for their right standing with God, then God makes room for occasional doubts as they experiment with how prayer does and doesn’t work, what to do when they feel uninvolved in a worship service, how to handle it when they can’t meet a homeless person’s needs, and what to do about behavior they feel is wrong but have to seek God’s help over months or years to overcome. 

Natural rhythms of faith and doubt ultimately bring people closer to the Lord. Although people can’t always hold onto God, he nevertheless holds onto them. As Jesus promises, “No one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:28-30).

During Christ’s Passion, Peter struggles with intense doubt about whether to claim friendship with Jesus or deny knowing him. He temporarily opts for denial just when Jesus needs him most. And after the resurrection, Peter reaches the point where he throws up his hands and says, “Come on boys, let’s go back to Galilee and start fishing.” He stands at the place all human beings know from time to time, even when they also know and love the Lord, where life just does not make sense. There are too many setbacks, too much confusion, and too little guidance from the Holy Spirit.

But then it does make sense. For Jesus follows his weary fishing crew to the Sea of Tiberius, and there he makes a little campfire on the shore and grills some fish, shouting to Peter and the others in the boat, “Have you caught anything yet?” (Jn 21:5). Peter starts to yell back that the fishing is as dismal as his own life, when suddenly he recognizes Jesus and dives headlong into the sea to swim ashore. 

The Bible says the disciples don’t say much at that meal, perhaps too busy internally absorbing the rhythm of doubt and faith, crisis and deliverance, self-consciousness and joy—and feeling mostly awe, not only that they had been right in choosing to follow Jesus, but that they had chosen, for the most part, to believe all he had told them.

Rather than trying to secure a flawless platform of witness that one is adamantly Christian and proud of it, a wiser stance might allow that all human beings, including one’s self, hold even cherished beliefs somewhat precariously, and therefore stand in need of God’s continuous provision to remain close to him.

Once individuals accept that they are both strong and weak, hardy and frail, capable of moments of shimmering faith and times where all seems lost, then they can relax, breathe, and trust in God’s faithfulness and providential care. 

Add to this the hundreds of scriptures that attest to the transcendent power whereby God saves those who hide themselves in him, and people can enjoy a degree of serenity, knowing that he is there for them in faith or doubt. 

For the same Peter who denies even knowing the Lord, later writes to all who would follow Christ, “Now for a little while you may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Pet 1: 6-9).