The Surprising God

In the Christianity Today  article " Learning to Love Leviticus ," Christopher J.H. Wright notes that to properly understand the nature and purpose of God's law, we must account for several contextual issues: God's purpose for Israel in the world as the people of God the nature of the ancient near-Eastern cultures in which Israel existed how the nature of law and, most particularly, the nature of Torah (which means "instruction") helps us understand its application the nature of our Triune God as a relational being--helping us understand why he would have a law in the first place and how he would apply and uphold it in relationship with his covenant people Wright then explains the application of the Torah (OT law) to Israel and then to Christians. Here are some illustrative quotes: God gave Israel his law in order to shape them into a society that would reflect God's character and values in the midst of the nations—what we might call a mission...

Trinitarian theologian Paul Metzger (pictured at left) recently gave a sermon entitled "Love God and Do What You Want." The context of his sermon was a conference discussing the calling that Christians have to engage the culture. Paul addresses the motivation for cultural engagement. To listen to an audio recording of Paul's helpful sermon,  click here .

An axiom of our Trinitarian, incarnational faith is that God does what God is.  Said another way, Scripture teaches us that there is no disjunction between God's doing and God's being. For example, God loves (does loving things) precisely because God is love (his being is that of a triune communion of love). As we live into our union with Christ (our journey from union to communion with God), any disjunction between who we are in Christ and what we do in Christ is progressively healed. I say "progressively healed" because it is a journey on which we continue to bear the marks (the "stain of sin") of residual disjunction between being and doing that results from our fallen nature. Like Paul in Romans 7, we decry the reality that though we desire to do good, our actual doing often reflects more our old nature (in Adam) than our new nature, which is our true being in Christ. Because we want to do good, we often look for strategies and programs to assist...

In the short video below, trinitarian theologian Dr. Marty Folsom talks about twin realities that are the basis of his understanding of trinitarian theology: that the triune God exists in relationship  that we as humans live within God's relating life   For additional videos from Dr. Folsom,  click here .