Knowing God Starts with Knowing Self | Westminster Catechism | Q 1-6

Hey friends, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast as we continue,
really, in some ways begin our latest series on the Westminster Catechism.
If you haven’t seen last week’s intro,
it might be helpful to understand that there
is really three parts to the thing that we’re going to talk about.
There’s the Westminster Confession,
and then there are two catechisms.
We will be looking at the shorter catechism.
That’s actually what it’s called,
the shorter Westminster Catechism.
It has been a standard of faith and teaching in the Presbyterian Church.
It has been really in a signature way for Presbyterians.
There have been historically other groups that have used it,
but I think in the current age, Michael,
this is really ours.
Most of the other documents in our book of confessions,
some of them come from other churches,
some of them are still being used by other churches.
But Westminster is unique to the Presbyterian family.
There are Presbyterian churches of all various stripes that would all,
to a greater or lesser
extent, affirm that this remains an important document for us.
And I think as we get in,
you know, before we get into the actual questions,
and this whole catechism is laid out,
question and answer, and that’s the way that it was done
as a teaching tool.
But I think as we move toward that,
it’s an interesting question,
Michael, to think if you’re writing a document that is going to teach the faith,
where do you start?
Do you start with creation?
Do you start with sin?
Do you start with the human problem?
Do you start with Jesus,
the answer to the human problem?
You know,
it is telling, I think we see something of the idea behind this document and the people
who wrote it when we realize where they started.
And I think that that’s always an interesting question to ask.
Why do they begin where they do?
This is a particularly relevant question if you frame this as one of the pivotal Reformed Theological documents.
And you may or may not know that John Calvin wrote what is one of the certainly fountainhead
documents of what is now the Reformed tradition, called the Institutes.
And in the Institutes,
John Calvin famously begins with knowledge of self and then moves
to the idea of knowledge of God,
and that ordering is intentional.
The Institutes are very dense.
So if you pick them up today and you start reading through them,
this may not be obvious
or apparent to you.
But the way that Calvin fleshes out this idea is that no human experience of God ever starts
with God outside of ourselves.
That we’re always creatures,
we’re always human,
and so therefore,
we must understand something about ourselves before we can turn to the conversation about understanding the divine.
And here, as we kick off the shorter catechism,
Clint, that is the very same assumption framed
inside this teaching.
Here, the question that we’re going to kick off with is,
what is the chief end of man?
They could have just as easily begun this catechism with what is the primary revelation
of God.
And then they could have talked about Jesus,
they could have talked about how we came to
know God through the God incarnate,
and then how the Scriptures speak to God.
They will have that information,
but they lead here with the idea of the chief end of
human life, because there’s something deeply reformed about starting with the recognition
that we can only start with ourselves.
We can only get to the edge of who we were made to be by a creator.
We are, by definition, the created.
And so I think that’s unbelievably helpful,
and we might not know it if we don’t pause
to talk about it.
Where we start in a catechism like this is a reflection of the tradition that it stands
in.
And I think we see the difference between a theological text,
which would start in a different place,
and a teaching text that begins,
“What is our purpose?
Why are we here?”
I think this is a – I really think this is one of the strongest beginnings of this
type of document.
I love this language.
I grew up with it as Presbyterian.
Some of you may know this question by heart,
maybe you remember.
What is the chief end of man?
If we were writing it today,
we would say of people or of humanity.
But what is our purpose?
What is the reason we’re here?
Why do we exist?
What is this all about,
right?
And I think what a fascinating place to begin a conversation about God,
about self,
about the nature of life.
What is the reason?
What is our role?
Why is it that we find ourself drawing breath and walking around and interacting with others?
What is the point of it all?
And the answer – again,
I think this is wonderful,
poetic.
Our chief end is to glorify God,
and we’ll just kind of break this answer into two parts.
I mean, this is not surprising that our ancestors started here,
to glorify, to magnify, to praise, to worship.
You could put in several synonyms there.
But we’re here.
We exist to bring glory to God.
The reason we are created – and we haven’t gotten to that yet – but the reason we’re
created, the reason we’re here,
our primary focus for the life that we have is to elevate
the one who gave it to us,
to magnify Him, to worship Him, and to give Him praise.
That is, Michael, I think a profound,
not surprising,
but a beautiful way to start the discussion.
The language here really matters, Clint.
Looking at this, note that it says that the chief end is to glorify God.
And there’s two things I want to point out about this that I think are really significant.
And the first is that when you’re looking at the end of things theologically,
you can’t help but bring in this whole conversation about revelations,
about the consummation
of all things, that in the end,
God will make all things come to a purpose,
that as if we
look at a canvas,
you can see on the back the strands that are all intertwined and messy.
But when you turn it around,
you see that there was an end from the beginning,
that the Creator had something in mind,
and that it all pieces together.
There is an end,
in other words.
That is deeply foundational as a,
I would argue, a person of Christian faith.
But to be reformed is to recognize that this is all going somewhere,
even if it doesn’t
necessarily make sense right now.
And then the other part of this is that as we recognize that our lives are moving towards an end,
the temptation is to think that it’s all about what we do.
In other words, we hold the fate of the universe in our hands,
that it’s every single one of our
choices that culminate in the end of all things.
But that’s not exactly what’s in mind here,
Clint.
This isn’t just about that the end is chosen by us,
but that rather that God is in some way,
and we’re going to see this as we go further down the questions,
using this word of providence, that God is actually active in the midst of human life,
leading us towards an end.
So this first question,
if left unto itself,
may lead us to believe that what’s at play
here is that humans have to get it right.
There’s some sort of task or list that we have to check off all the boxes that that’s not
a whole understanding of this.
Yes, we have an end is going in the direction,
but God’s at work and involved in it.
So as this idea of glorifying is the created has been made to lead towards this end that God
is actively involved in.
And if we’re willing to contribute all that we have in it,
God will be glorified.
Yeah, I do think the word end is interesting.
It means, you know, not only do we have a destiny, ultimately,
to glorify God, but a purpose while we live as well to glorify God.
And how we get there,
I think, is interesting.
I think people who know Presbyterians well might be a little surprised with this language.
We’re often thought of as a kind of formal people,
at best,
serious and thoughtful.
At worst,
maybe a little stale,
maybe, you know, a little staid.
And so what a beautiful place to start that we read in the second half of the answer here.
Our chief purpose, our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever.
We often don’t associate the idea of joy with Presbyterian theology,
with Presbyterianism in general,
and it seems like an odd place to start.
I mean, we might expect to glorify God and be faithful,
to glorify God and keep the law,
to glorify God and evangelize,
to glorify God and fill in the blank.
But rather than a task,
rather than a set of things that we’re expected to do,
is this idea that at our core,
we are made to give glory to God and thereby,
in doing so,
to enjoy God,
to receive joy in that relationship,
to be a presence that is joy-filled in the
spirit of the one who created us and the one who gives us purpose.
This is a…
I don’t think we maybe have led enough of this into the rest of it.
This is a remarkable,
and I think it has to be, Michael,
divinely inspired place to start.
You know, you think of a bunch of somber Scotsman and Englishman sitting around writing theology,
and the fact that they stumbled on,
or however they got there,
to enjoy God forever is a
beautiful way to start.
Clint,
I think this is the right saying,
correct me if I’m wrong.
Isn’t the saying,
“They’re like a duck in water,
someone is happy and enjoying a thing.”
I point to that for this reason.
One temptation might be that when you ask the question,
“What’s the chief end of man?”
That your mind might go to a place where what you follow with that is the set of rules and
expectations that you have to live by,
the servitude of being a person created by God.
What is so wise,
so deeply scriptural, and so deeply human is this recognition here that
our chief end is to glorify God and then to enjoy Him forever.
And if we are created by God,
if God walked with us in the garden,
if God chose to live
with us and then ultimately to take on flesh to be with us in the most real and deep sense
of that word, then the only place we will find true enjoyment like the duck in water
is in relationship with that God,
right?
It’s not that you have to force a feeling.
It’s not that you have to conform to a particular thing.
It’s in our nature that to be human is to find joy in a place of rest with God.
That’s to use St.
Augustine’s language.
There’s a sense in which that this is the easiest place to be human.
And I just think that’s the word that needs named here,
that when we talk about glorifying
God and enjoying God,
that’s not about putting on an exterior self that is hypocritical.
It’s not trying to be something.
It’s rather recognizing that at our core,
glorifying God and enjoyment of God’s presence
in our life is the core foundational baseline.
And if we’re willing to fall into that,
if we’re willing to believe that,
this is how we land on this language of faith,
then we discover the chief end,
the chief goal, the chief point of that creation from the very beginning.
So you’re right.
This is a surprising place,
Clint, to find joy so quickly in the midst of such a pivotal
Presbyterian document that might surprise us.
But I think there is deep wisdom.
And by wisdom, I don’t mean philosophical wisdom,
though it is that it’s deeply personal
wisdom that if we look at our lives,
if we take a real assessment of ourselves and we did a class
in which we sought to do that,
if you took a real heartfelt,
close assessment of your
affect and you never have joy,
then I might put to you that that is a sign that you’re
not currently living into the chief end for which God made you,
which is to experience
this kind of overflowing glory and thanksgiving for what God has done.
And then ultimately,
an enjoyment of that which God has given you.
That is a deeply personal sign that we’ve heard the gospel.
It’s a live network,
and we’re living into that chief end.
Yeah, we have other ground to cover,
and I don’t want to get bogged down here,
Michael, but I think this,
if properly understood, is remarkably freeing,
the idea that rather than
your chief end is to glorify God,
and that means that you are now chained to burdens and responsibilities.
The idea is that in glorifying God,
you are set free to enjoy,
to have a life literally with joy in it.
That’s what enjoy means,
to put joy into something.
And that’s not simply for this season that we’re alive,
to enjoy Him forever.
Again, speaking to that promise that joy will be an eternal reality in our relationship with our
Creator.
So, this is a wonderful place to start the Catechism.
I think one of the best opening
lines of any theological material that I personally know of,
what is the chief end of people?
Our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
Well said,
well written, and when understood, I think really a great place to start a conversation of what it means to be people of faith.
We then move to the question of how.
So, if this is our purpose,
if this is our end,
how do we do that?
What rule has God given to direct us how we might glorify and enjoy Him?
In other words, how do we know what the path is?
What is the teaching?
What is the instruction
that leads us to understand how to do those things,
how to worship and how to enjoy?
And we see the answer here.
It is the Word of God,
which is contained in the scriptures of
the Old and New Testament.
It is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him.
Michael, this is thoroughly Presbyterian,
thoroughly Reformed.
The Word of God,
notice which is contained in the scriptures because our ancestors have always taught us
that scripture is in itself a tool that God’s Spirit uses.
So, it is not the words themselves
that we consider the capital W word.
It is the way those words,
it is the way those scriptures
point us toward Jesus Christ,
point us toward relationship.
The Word is contained in the
scriptures and it is the only rule.
Now,
if we were parsing this out theologically,
they would have, as we talk about the role of preaching,
we talk about the role of study,
but as a place to start,
everything that we endeavor to do and be as Christians is rooted in the Word,
which is found in the words of scripture by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
And so,
this makes me smile
because it sounds so much like us.
So, this one is, oh yeah, Presbyterians wrote this.
You kind of get that real quick.
I don’t want to belabor the point though.
I do think it is worth slowing down here because
you might not get why this distinction matters so much for Presbyterians.
There are folks in
the Christian family who,
when they turn to the scriptures,
they expect and rely upon them
to provide a very different sort of outcome.
They might turn to them and see in them
the Ten Commandments and therefore,
the things that are chiefly required of us.
So, they might turn to them to see this particular understanding of being the authoritative Word of God.
When we look here and in the second question,
they’re asking us about the rule that God has provided.
Fundamentally, they start with the capital W,
Word, which is a reference from the Gospel of John,
the idea that Jesus Christ is the Logos or the thing that orders the entire universe.
And then they say, and that thing,
that understanding,
that thing that we need to know for salvation,
for our own life and work,
it is contained within these scriptures.
They point to him that we have to be attentive within the scriptures and that if we do that,
we’ll be led and guided to Jesus Christ.
That distinction is absolutely fundamental within the Reformed
understanding of Christianity because it gives us all at once a real rule,
a real guide, a real boundary line to this is where we live within,
the revealed life of Jesus Christ.
This is a place
that we must stay.
On the other hand,
it gives Christians a substantial latitude to come to scriptures with doubts,
with questions,
with real interpretive direction to ask those scriptures
to engage with the present moment in which we live.
In other words, we can come to the text
with a real belief,
Clint, that when we come to scripture today,
the living Word will be revealed
and our job is simply to humbly look and submit and invite the Spirit to communicate that to us.
So,
and maybe I’ve not done us a favor in helping flush that out either,
but I think that there is
a substantial movement here that is distinctively Reformed and unbelievably helpful to the Christian today.
You don’t need to look to the scriptures as this perfect,
intricate puzzle that needs
put together and if only you put together,
then you found salvation.
No,
the scriptures will be
a trustworthy, faithful guide to the revelation of the One who is the ultimate putting together
of the universe.
That is Jesus and that’s deeply Reformed seen here in the Catechism.
Yeah, I think that this reminds us,
Michael, that truth from the Christian viewpoint,
and most Christians would agree to this,
truth is anchored in scripture.
When we encounter ideas about God,
our first and most compelling question has to be,
“Is that a biblical idea?
Is that
idea echoed in the pages and the teachings of scripture?” Having said that,
I think anyone who’s tried to read the scripture seriously understands there are days that you read a
scripture and it’s all well and good.
You learn something, you see something,
you interact with it,
and there are other days where it comes alive and it speaks to your life and it captures your
attention and it communicates to you in a profoundly different way,
in a powerful way.
And I think this is sort of an expression of the Reformed idea.
It is not the word of God simply
because it’s on the page of the Bible.
It is the word of God because it comes alive
by the power of the Spirit and points us to the living word,
which is Jesus Christ.
And that is
not exclusively, but it is an expressly Reformed Presbyterian way to understand the scriptures.
So, what are we saying here?
We’re saying if our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever,
then we look to the scriptures to teach us how to do that because in the scriptures we find
contained, we find present the living word of God,
which is Jesus Christ,
and that directs us into our purpose.
So, then we move to the next question as we narrow the focus here.
Well, what do they principally teach?
What do these scriptures,
this rule that we have on how to
glorify and enjoy God,
what is the main point that they present us with?
And the answer here,
the scriptures principally teach what humans,
what people are to believe concerning God
and what duties God requires of them.
So, we have both doctrine and discipleship here.
The scriptures teach what we are to believe and what we are to do.
And again, we anchor both our
theology and our practice in the scripture.
There should be a scriptural justification for the
things we profess and for the things that we do,
for the actions that we take.
And this is the main point.
This is the primary teaching of scripture.
What do we believe?
And not just what
we believe, and this is important,
that our ancestors felt it vital to connect our belief and our practice.
And I think that’s a – it’s a short answer,
Michael, but the strength of it is
we see that partnership theologically between what it is we proclaim and then what it is
we go and do.
What is our belief and what is our duty?
You might not know this just immediately coming to this catechism,
but Clint,
it’s striking how in question three,
the framers of this have jumped right into a long-standing theological debate in
the history of the church.
There’s this long-standing conversation between Paul and the New Testament and James,
and the question of,
“Well, if we’re saved by grace through faith,
then what role is there for works?” And then James says,
“Faith without works is dead.” And these two
things seem to live in this complicated, messy tension.
What I appreciate about the founders of
the faith and the drafters of this confession, Clint,
is that they jump right into it right away
and they say yes.
They say yes.
Mysteriously,
those are true.
We are saved by grace through faith, and also,
faith without works is dead.
And so we’re called to believe,
we’re called to do.
God expects us to live our faith in real and meaningful ways.
And I’m not going to
belabor that, that both of those are true,
and that is deeply wise.
There’s a kind of
faithful humility in looking at the breadth of scriptures and saying, “Yes,
these two things are both named,
and they’re both important.” We don’t always know exactly how they play out,
exactly what extent belief,
what extent the action,
you know, is that 50/50,
is that 51/49?
They’re not concerned with that.
Yes,
these are both true,
and then they leave it for the
community of faith to live it out,
to make this real.
Darrell Bock And we find both of them in the scripture.
We look to the Bible,
the Holy Word.
We look to the living Word in the scripture to direct us in both what we should think and how
we should act, that we find both of those important parts of human life in the scripture.
And so then we move toward if – so again,
follow the logic.
So what do scriptures teach?
They teach what we should believe about God and what God requires of us.
And then the follow-up
question, “Well, what is God?” And this is a dangerous question, Michael.
Not dangerous
in the sense of risky maybe,
but dangerous in the sense that whenever we try to take human language
and apply it to the Almighty God,
we are going to fall short.
We lack the capacity to describe
who God is,
what God is,
how God is.
So whenever we take an attempt,
make an attempt to say things about God,
we have to realize that that’s going to be an incomplete list.
Having said that,
our ancestors give us a kind of theological checklist here with lots of loaded words
in terms of what are the attributes of God,
what are the things we know about God,
this God that we’re talking about proclaiming,
this God who we want to enjoy and worship,
what do we know about God?
And here we go.
God is spirit,
infinite, eternal,
and unchangeable in His being.
Wisdom,
power, holiness, justice,
goodness,
and truth.
Now,
this is probably where
two pastors have to be careful because we could fill up hours on every one of these books,
every one of these words.
Books have been written about every one of these words.
There are months worth of sermons in this list for theologically minded people.
Having said that, they all say something.
So God is spirit.
God is other than we are.
God is infinite.
God is timeless.
No beginning, no end.
We see that again,
eternal.
God is unchangeable in His being.
I’m going to put an asterisk there,
but it is important to understand that the framers,
the divines as they were called,
understood that it was important to say about God that God isn’t one thing today
and another thing tomorrow.
God isn’t different than God used to be.
God doesn’t evolve and change.
God is—we can trust who God is as unchangeable in His being,
wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
So He is infinite,
eternal, and unchangeable in all of those things,
in all of those attributes,
in all of those aspects.
God is the infinite, eternal,
unchangeable expression of wisdom,
power, holiness, justice, goodness,
and truth, and that is about as complete a list as you can get or certainly as you need.
So if you’re going to do justice to the question of what is God in two lines,
I think we’d have to say they did pretty well.
Yeah, they took a really solid swing at it.
I really don’t think we have time to go through
each one of these.
I do want to just quickly speak to the affect of coming to a list like this.
When we come to a list that says that God is infinite, eternal, unchangeable,
wise, powerful, holy, just,
good,
and truth,
what it should do is inspire within us a deep
sense of humility and a deep sense of reliance upon God.
In other words, when we look to God
and we encounter God as this spirit who is all of these things,
we should recognize this substantial
goodness of the Creator,
the one who is beyond our ability to describe in all of these
high,
very lofty words that are hard for us to get our mind around one,
yet alone all of them,
and to say that all of these simultaneously at once are true.
God is the best of all of these things,
and what that should do is inspire within us as humans a deep sense of need to remain
connected to that, the source and font of all good,
and also a real present awareness that we
always stand underneath that.
Whenever we participate in the best of what it means to be human,
we’re going to experience some of these things in our life,
but we will always,
and by definition, fall short.
So there’s a real,
I think, warning in this clip.
Be very careful to not over-identify
one person of faith or one pastor,
one religious leader.
No one person can encompass who God is.
You may see images,
fleeting glimpses of some of these things.
You might see goodness of the person,
or you might see holiness in them.
You might know someone who is wise,
but God is all of this,
to perfection.
This is who God’s being is,
and we should accept nothing less than this as our understanding of God.
That’s well said, Michael.
I do want to come back to the asterisk.
The word unchangeable here is an interesting word,
and I want to make sure that this is properly understood,
because sometimes I do think Christians,
particularly who have grown up in rigid
expressions of the faith,
think then of God as being rigid,
of God as being distant or
unaffected or impassive, and that’s not, I think, the intention here.
The idea of saying that God
is unchangeable is saying that the fact that God is all wise and powerful and holy and just and good
and true is never changing.
That doesn’t waver.
That is never less true.
That is always the full
expression and the baseline of who God is.
Having said that, it doesn’t mean that God is unchangeable
in the sense of unaffected by relationship,
that God is just simply watching from a distance,
the idea that God is disinterested in people.
Unchangeable doesn’t mean unaffected.
It doesn’t mean impassive, and I think we want to make sure that when we walk over a word like this,
we don’t stumble on it,
because I think that the rest of this has already made clear,
and certainly the rest of the document will make clear,
that we are in relationship with a God who is dynamic,
who is creative,
who is inspiring,
and so we want to make sure we don’t hear this word to hint at any
kind of staleness or staidness or a kind of flat line relationship with this God.
What this means is that when it comes to the essence of all of the good attributes of God,
they never change.
God is always good.
God is always true.
God is always just and holy.
God is always wise,
and those are the things that absolutely do not waver and do not change.
I want to make that—I
don’t know if we need to make that clear,
but that word I think can easily be misunderstood.
Actually, Clint,
I think the next question actually serves to prove that point,
so let’s just jump right to it.
Yeah, the next question.
Are there more gods than one?
And the answer is short,
as you would expect.
There is, but one only,
the living and true God.
Right.
So the fundamental Christian affirmation which would be connected all the way back to
the earliest creeds, the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed,
this idea that God in God’s substance
is one,
that we have one God,
that God is in that sense in God’s being,
unchangeable because God is God,
that God is not some amorphous, changing spirit,
like would have been believed in the ancient times.
But the idea that God is not stayed or that
God is somehow some perfect crystalline being who never changes or has relationship or being,
this is critiqued by the question that follows it.
Because when we turn to the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity, what we see in it,
and I’m skipping ahead here,
but you have God who is one,
therefore God whose being and unity can be trusted to always be that.
But then in incarnation,
we discover that Jesus prays to the Father and says,
“I’m going to send the Spirit to you.” And in this triune
understanding,
we come to know that God is even in this beautiful relationship with God’s self
and that that relationship is so broad as to invite all of the creation into it.
So it’s to say
that God can be trusted in God’s substance of who God is,
but God is also a live network in this
deeply spiritually relatedness which is always making it so that God’s not one being.
So there’s a lot more to that,
Clint, than just what is that unchangeable in His being that’s four words,
that brings so much meaning into it simultaneously.
Yeah, and obviously throughout the rest of the document,
we’ll see that God is in relationship
with us, which is messy, and the navigating of that has ups and downs,
and we bring brokenness and
and struggle to that.
But we see here in the next question that even within God,
there is relatedness, there is relationship,
there is one God,
but within that oneness,
there is a partnership,
there is a creative plurality at the heart of the one God
that is instructive.
And I do,
again, Michael, just want to insert,
this is where we see
a reminder that the catechism is designed for people in the church.
This is not something
that’s handed out to non-Christians.
This implies a certain amount of familiarity with the language
and the concepts and the beliefs of the Christian faith.
This is supplemental,
but it’s not exhaustive.
I mean, certainly you couldn’t cover the Trinity in three or four lines,
but let’s at least hear what they did say.
How many persons are there in the Godhead?
There are three persons in the Godhead,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
and these three are one God,
the same in substance,
equal in power and glory.
Now, if you know some church history,
you know that these
three lines written as an answer to this question summarize centuries of really messy theological
battles, in some cases actual battles,
wars, theologically and even militarily over these ideas.
What does it mean that there is Trinity?
What is three in one?
These are difficult concepts
that the Christian faith itself wrestled with mightily in its infancy,
in its early period.
There was not consensus on some of this for a great deal of time.
Having said that, we arrive at this place where with language we’re familiar with,
we describe God as the Father,
Son,
and the
are one God.
And the point of the catechism is not to try and explain something that is largely unexplainable,
but to use to the best of our ability language to capture and to
give some reference to this doctrine that we believe is core to the question of who God is.
The questions that we’ve had thus far, Clint,
questions one through three,
maybe you would argue four,
in some ways do show our heritage,
some of those core convictions about where one
starts in our understanding of faith.
Questions five and six are deeply rooted to the history of
the faith.
These are the questions that define the universal faith,
and those who frame this
would have considered this being really a footnote to the history that they’ve received,
to say that this is what it means to be a Christian in the stream of the historic faith,
is to believe that the scriptures teach that there is one God who has three persons.
And it’s just to say,
though we have sometimes,
I think, done a disservice to this, Clint,
to make it sound
complicated.
We’ve told kids, “Oh, this is a thing that you’ll never figure out.
It’s a math equation
that doesn’t work.” I think the problem with the way that we frame it when we do it that way
is we flatten God into this unknowable,
unapproachable, unassailable being.
And that’s not the intention of a creed like this.
I think what we are encouraged to see here is that
God is like any person so beyond,
and even more so than any person,
so beyond the ability to
summarize with human words or in a book or in one experience,
that when you look at God,
you see that God is both deeply rooted and substantially one,
but there’s way more to
it than that.
And as we see it through eyes of faith,
we can see that God is at work in these persons.
It’s, I think, an invitation to mystery.
It’s an invitation to faith.
It’s actually an invitation to this beautiful kind of conversation.
It’s not a “beat you over the head with a book”
kind of statement of the Christian faith.
It’s read, I think,
holistically that God, who is one, who has three persons,
there’s really this beautiful invitation into a fundamental belief
of the faith, and that is that it is both mysterious and free and it’s joy-filled,
and that in the midst
of this God who’s bigger than our ability to comprehend or to say in a simple sentence,
it’s a shorthand way to say,
“Isn’t this an incredible invitation to this thing beyond
that we can’t totally understand?” Right,
and I think that is the core of it,
Michael, that we profess that God is knowable,
but God is not understandable.
We will not figure God out,
and yet we are invited into relationship with God.
And I think probably discussions of Trinity
are the places where it’s been the most difficult to walk that line,
because we have a word here,
substance, and if you know some Christian history,
you know that substance is a very loaded word.
There were long-drawn-out theological arguments over the substance of the Spirit versus the
substance of Jesus, and so this whole language battle sort of develops around this single word
substance, and they’re important.
They pave the way for us being able to profess and confess the Trinity,
and yet when we try to do that,
we do, I think, risk lessening our concept of the mystery,
that you used that word,
Michael, it was a word I had written down,
that when we talk about the
Trinity, I think we take the quickest path to understanding that our God is mysterious.
Yes, we know things about God.
Yes,
we even give God labels,
wise and powerful and holy and just
and goodness.
We even say that God is unchangeable and infinite and eternal.
We call God Spirit,
but when we get down to the heart of who God is,
we profess that we know some things that
we simultaneously don’t understand,
and I think there’s a humility in that.
I think there’s actually a beauty in that.
I think there’s something profoundly
theological,
profoundly spiritual in that reality.
We know God, and we know some things about God,
but if we have to try and define the core of how God is who God is,
we don’t know.
We have a question mark.
There are things beyond our ability,
and those are the things left to trust,
left to faith,
and the Trinity certainly is one of those doctrines in our faith that I think
delivers us there fairly quickly.
It is always striking to me how quickly people will turn to
the doctrine of the Trinity as this thing like,
“Explain that, pastor,” and what’s interesting
about that, I think, to the scientific mind is figure out how this works and explain it to me,
and it’s generally done in jest because,
of course, it can’t be done.
I actually think
that when a wise Christian,
when you give a wise Christian time to talk about the Trinity,
there’s something deeply inspiring about being in a faith that takes very seriously this God,
whose love is so deep and so overflowing that we’re invited to be part of this living,
eternal life because God,
the Father, the Son, with the Spirit,
binding them together, is creating this reality which is both fundamentally true at the core of who we are as humans.
To go back to question one,
it is the ultimate chief end of the human to glorify God and to
enjoy God’s life forever.
That’s what the Trinity is,
the life of God,
and we’re invited to be part
of that.
This is a beautiful, mysterious gift,
but when we become fixated on its parts and
understanding it and controlling it and breaking it down like a mechanic might break down the parts of an engine,
we fail to see the invitation in it,
and that is to live with a certain kind of
orientation to the world,
open to mystery,
open to God’s revelation in surprising places,
recognizing that God, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, is at work in our lives in ways that
we might not see if we weren’t willing to invite God to open our eyes and our ears.
There’s maybe a way,
the point maybe I want to make here,
Clint, is we might come to a catechism
thinking its chief goal is to teach us,
and this catechism is intending to provide the right path
for the discipleship of our mind.
That said,
I think a catechism like this is also seeking
to shape our hearts,
shape how we live in the world,
and you might think that we’re reading,
or I’m reading too much into two questions,
but I would submit to you humbly,
I think that there’s
more here than just right thought.
I think there’s also how we live in the world with a kind of
openness and a kind of willingness to see and have things revealed to us,
and I see that in this as well.
I agree, Michael.
I think some of the most profound things we learn in our life,
we don’t learn from having them explained to us.
We know that we are loved long before we have some concept
of an explanation of love.
We know laughter and humor and joy long before we try to figure out
what those things mean,
and so in this catechism,
we are being taught the church’s answers to these
questions.
We are being given the language of our ancestors to say, “Here’s the question.
Here’s what we believe the answer to be.” And the prime intent here is not to then explain the answer to us,
but to show us a picture of the God that we’re encountering and learning of and being in relationship with.
And so,
yeah,
I mean,
obviously two and a half lines of explaining Trinity
isn’t enough unless it is.
Unless it’s not an explanation,
it’s a statement of faith.
And as a statement of faith,
there are three persons in the Godhead,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and there are three as one God,
the same in substance,
equal in power and glory,
is all you need to know.
And once you accept that as true,
this is a wonderful summary of that truth.
And so,
if you find yourself frustrated with the catechism for not going far enough,
remember what it’s trying to do, and remember that it’s for those in the circle,
not outside the circle,
and that may be helpful.
Yeah, and it’s maybe worth,
as a concluding note,
to just remember that every creed,
as we talked about in the introductory conversation,
does have a context,
and it generally has a thing
working under the surface that has caused the framers of it to ask questions afresh.
And just to be blunt,
questions of Trinity were not particularly pressing in figuring out what it
meant to be reformed in that particular day and context.
In other words, there’s some footnotes to trusting and really standing on the shoulders of the Christians who have come before,
saying that their account of the Trinity is trustworthy,
to say, “We’re here to ask some questions about
what it means to be human.
Look at how they began the catechism, of course,
with the chief end of the
human.” And I think it’s worth noting that this is why we have multiple confessions,
this is why we
have multiple catechisms, even different, you know, the longer and the shorter.
What they serve to
accomplish, Clint, is they give us a picture of different aspects at different times when people
ask different questions that gave them a moment to use different words.
And that’s why it’s important
to hold all of them,
I think, in tension.
Yeah,
I’ve always thought those things are snapshots
of the faith in that moment,
and these are good ones.
This is a good snapshot.
This remains
as complete a short answer,
I think, as one could give about many of these topics and subjects.
And so we hope there’s been something in this today that’s been interesting,
that’s been helpful, and it’s maybe been challenging, encouraging for you.
We will continue to move on.
There is a great deal of structure to this catechism.
We’ll try to point that out as we go.
And we’ve tried to break it in places that sort of help get to that structure.
So today, kind of looking primarily
at the human and the initial things we encounter about God,
we then will move on into more of what
that means in our next podcast,
our next episode.
Hope you can join us.
We thank you for your time,
for your patience, for being part of the conversation.
Thanks, everyone.