As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
I’d planned to post the next article in my short series about “personhood” in the context of the Trinity. But, alas, my intellectual bandwidth is unequal to the task right now. Next week, though, the article about the social trinitarian understanding of “person” is coming!
Read the series.
In this final part I want to gather things together and summarize what has gone before. In the latter half of the full piece I interact with some other views. I shall not concern myself with running over that ground here. I shall only outline the major pillars of my position on the New Covenant:
The doctrine of the Trinity tells us there is “One Being, three Persons.” Of course, it’s more complicated than all that, but we’ll leave it there! In this definition, what is a “person?” That’s a hard question. Two main views are common today; the classical model and the social model. The Church has traditionally held to the classical view. However, if you ask the right questions, you’ll likely find most Christians actually believe in the social model.
“ ‘No evil will befall him’ (v. 10)–he won’t even dash his foot against a stone because God’s angels are protecting him (v. 11-12)! Has that been your experience?” - P&D
“I’ve posted links to each chapter in the story of how I went from being an atheist to a Christian. You can find those links below.” - John Ellis
“There is more to our union than just receiving our justification. But there would also be no justification upon the believer in Christ is there was not this deep and close intimate union between Jesus and the believer that is established by God. I am in Christ and Christ is in me.” - Ref21
“…there is one kind of review that I have especially wished for, a review that is both 1) academic and 2) critical. One such review has indeed been published, and the author, Dr. Jeffrey Riddle, was kind enough to share it with me. I wish to respond to Riddle’s review” - Mark Ward
“If our identity is riding on our differences with other believers, we will tend to major in the study of differences. We may even find ourselves looking for faults in others in order to define ourselves.” - TGC
The questions I’ve raised above are not ivory tower speculations. I believe these questions are important to answer if we are to understand fully the implications Christ’s temptation as well as his victory over temptation for you and me. Consider the following three points of practical application:
Some Christians have always been troubled by God’s command to the Israelites to kill all the pagan inhabitants of the Promised Land. Moses ordered the people to “devote them to complete destruction,” (Deut 7:2). Why would God do this? Where’s the mercy? Where’s the love?
There are at least two reasons why God did this.
First, God did it because of the terrible sins of the pagan nations
Discussion