It takes the Trinity to read the Bible. The idea was suggested to me in Graeme Goldsworthy's book Gospel Centered Hermeneutics in this quote:
“Jesus as the divine communicator, the saving message and the human receiver demonstrates where the heart of true hermeneutics lies. The gospel is the power of God for salvation, which includes hermeneutical salvation.”
But then I thought of C. S. Lewi's's explanation of the Trinity in relation to prayer from Mere Christianity. Lewis wrote:
“An ordinary Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get in touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God – that Christ is standing beside, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying – the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on – the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. So that the whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kind of life . . . he is being pulled into God, by God . . .”
A similar thing happens when we read Scripture. In the Persons of the Trinity, God is above us (the divine Author who speaks by his Word), God is before us (Jesus, the Word made flesh, historical and immanent, to whom testimony is given in the Word written down), and God is within us (the illuminating Holy Spirit who opens our blind eyes to the divine testimony of the Word made flesh in the Word written down).
It really takes all three persons of the Triune God for the divine communication to take place. God is the Speaker, the Message, and the Interpreter.
No comments:
Post a Comment