Our triune God: living love

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 observed that a Trinitarian perspective makes it perfectly clear to view creation in light of what happened in Jesus. The God who created everything out of nothing (ex nihilo) did so deliberately - out of love, in love and for love's sake.

Thomas F. Torrance and his brother James B. used to say that creation was the result of the infinite love of God. This becomes clear in the words of the Almighty: "Let us make man in our likeness [...]" (1. Mose 1,26). In the expression "Let us..." we are referred to the triune essence of God. Some biblical exegetes disagree, arguing that this view, with its reference to the Trinity, imposes a New Testament understanding on the Old Testament. Usually they evaluate the "Let us [...]" as a literary stylistic device (the Pluralis Majestatis) or see it as an indication that God is speaking to the angels as his co-creators. However, nowhere does Scripture ascribe creative power to angels. In addition, we should interpret the entire Bible with regard to the person of Jesus and his teaching. The God who said, "Let us..." was the Triune God, whether our ancestors knew it or not.

If we read the Bible with Jesus in mind, we realize that God's creation of human beings in his image clearly expresses his nature, which is manifested in love. In Colossians 1,15 and in 2 Corinthians 4,4 we learn that Jesus himself is the image of God. He reflects the image of the Father to us because He and the Father are consubstantial in a relationship of perfect love for one another. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus is related to creation (that is, including mankind) by referring to him as “the firstborn” above all creation. Paul calls Adam the image (antitype) of Jesus “who was to come” (Romans 5,14). Jesus is thus, as it were, the archetype of all mankind. In Paul's words, Jesus is also the "last Adam" who, as the "spirit that gives life," renews the sinful Adam (1 Cor5,45) and so that humanity walks in its own image.

As the Scriptures tell us, we “have put on new [man], which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that made him” (Colossians 3,10), and “all behold, with unveiled face, the glory of the Lord [...]; and we are transfigured into his image from glory to glory by the Lord who is the Spirit" (2. Corinthians 3,18). The writer to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus is "the reflection of his [God's] glory, and the likeness of his own nature" (Hebrews 1,3). He is the true image of God, who tasted death for all by assuming our human nature. By becoming one with us, he sanctified us and made us his brothers and sisters (Hebrews 2,9-15). We were created and are now being created again in the image of the Son of God, who reflects even to us the holy, loving relationships in the Trinity. We are to live, move and be in Christ, who is rooted in the three-person communion of love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In and with Christ we are God's beloved children. Unfortunately, however, those who are unable to recognize God's triune, love-borne entity easily lose this important truth, because instead they adopt various misconceptions:

• A tritheismwhich denies the essential unity of God and according to which there are three independent deities, whereby all relations among them are attributed an externality and not a characteristic inherent in and constituting the essence of God.
• A modalismwhose teaching points to the undivided nature of God, which appears at different times in one of three different modes of being. This doctrine also denies any internal or external relationship with God.
• A Subordinationism, who teaches that Jesus is a creation (or a divine being, but subordinate to the Father) and thus not eternally the God-equal Son of the Almighty. This doctrine further denies that God is intrinsically a Trinitarian relationship of everlasting holy love.
• Other doctrines that, while endorsing the Trinity doctrine, are unable to grasp their very own glory: that the Triune God embodied and gave love in his very nature, even before there was a creation.

Understanding that the Triune God is love by his very nature helps us to see love as the foundation of all being. The focus of this understanding is that everything emanates from and revolves around Jesus, who reveals the Father and sends out the Holy Spirit. Thus, understanding God and His creation (including mankind) begins with this question: Who is Jesus?

It is undeniably Trinitarian thinking that the Father created all and established His kingdom by placing His Son at the center of His plan, destiny and revelation. The Son glorifies the Father and the Father glorifies the Son. The Holy Spirit, not speaking for himself, continually points to the Son, glorifying the Son and Father. Father, Son and Holy Spirit rejoice in this triune love-borne interaction. And when we, children of God, bear witness to Jesus as our Lord, we do so through the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father. As he prophesied, the true ministry of faith is "in spirit and in truth." With worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we pay homage to the Elder, who created us in love, that in turn we might love Him and abide in Him forever.

Carried by love,

Joseph Tkach        
President GRACE COMMUNION INTERNATIONAL