GOD

Have you ever had to describe someone you know and struggled to find the right words? This has already happened to me and I know that it has happened to others too. We all have friends or acquaintances whose description is difficult to put into words. Jesus had no problem with it. He was always clear and precise, even when it came to answering the question “Who are you?”. I particularly like one passage where he says in the Gospel of John: “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me ”(John 14,6).

This statement sets Jesus apart from all leaders of other faiths. Other leaders have said, “I am looking for the truth” or “I am teaching the truth” or “I am showing the truth” or “I am a prophet of the truth”. Jesus comes and says, “I am the truth. The truth is not a principle or a vague idea. The truth is a person and that person is me. "

Here we come to an important point. A claim like this forces us to make a decision: If we believe Jesus, then we must believe everything he says. If we don't believe him, then everything is worthless, and we don't believe other things either that he said. There is no downplaying. Either Jesus is the truth in person and speaks the truth, or both are wrong.

That's the wonderful thing: knowing that He is the truth. Knowing the truth means I can trust what He says next: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8,32). Paul reminds us...

When asked about the oldest creature, some may refer to the 10.000-year-old pines of Tasmania or to a 40.000-year-old shrub there. Others might think of the 200.000 year old seagrass on the coast of the Spanish Balearic Islands. As old as these plants may be, there is something much older - and that is the eternal God revealed in Scripture as living love. Love manifests the essence of God. The love ruling between the persons of the trinity (Trinity) already existed before the creation of time, since eternity. There has never been a time when true love did not exist because our eternal, triune God is the source of true love.

Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) emphasized this truth by referring to the Father as "lover", the Son as "beloved" and the Holy Spirit as the love that exists between them. Out of his never-ending, infinite love, God created everything that exists, including you and me. In his work The Triune Creator, the theologian Colin Gunton advocates this Trinitarian explanation of creation and asserts that we have to refer to the entire Bible as testimony and not just the creation story of the 1. Book of Moses. Gunton emphasizes that this approach is not new - this is how the early Christian church understood creation. For example, Irenaeus stated that a Trinitarian view makes it seem innocuously clear to view creation in the light of...