About
After this mini-course you'll understand what are the basic elements of the doctrine of the Trinity, why popular metaphors lead us astray, and how to enjoy the doctrine of the Trinity in your walk with the triune God. This mini-course will take us through the origin of the scandalous idea that the Jewish God, known to be one-and-only, was somehow also three. And what prompted that idea? The early Church's experience of Jesus—and then of the Holy Spirit. The only appropriate way to honour Jesus was in worship, and yet worship was due only to the one true God. Jesus therefore somehow had to be that true God—and so had to be the Holy Spirit who succeeded him weeks after his resurrection. The course will then examine the several popular heresies surrounding trinitarianism in the early Church (and today), and the attempts by worthies such as Augustine and Rublev to provide useful images of the orthodox doctrine. Later attempts to link the "image of God" in human beings with the trinitarian life of the Godhead get a critical look. And the course concludes with encouragements to enjoy the triune God by carefully recalling and applying trinitarian doctrine to our prayer and praise. The doctrine of the Trinity has seemed to some to be a preposterous and needless complication of monotheism. To the Church universal, however, it is a necessary, if still mysterious, statement of the God we worship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Getting it right will help you get right the whole story of salvation.