Of course, then there’s the view that the Trinity, which is a *doctrine* that Church has created, is better understood as merely a symbol by which finite humans can attempt to understand the Infinite.

That and the Nicene Creed, from which many views of the Trinity have their base, was basically a power grab by the early Church done at the behest of Constantine to snuff out the unorthodox heretics so he could have a unified church and religious legitimizer.

Certainly, there is great power in the relational view of the Trinity and it shines a great deal of light on how we are to interact with each other. But that power can be corrupted, in tragic irony, to break apart relationships and people, to draw a line between who’s in and who’s out.

Last week, the issue of homosexuals in the church came up in three different, unrelated conversations that I was involved in. The fact that it kept coming up was interesting.

However, the only place I encounter the complementarian issue is online.

I have friends at various stages of detox and so I do get to have some of these kind of conversations in real life. Of course the depth of conversation varies depending on who I am with.

I think my online conversations color some of my real life conversations. I also think that real-life conversations bring balance to some of the ideas that I engage with online.

I think blogs tend to congregate the kind of people who like to process ideas in writing.

Very intriguing, both your post and the comment thread. I really don’t have anything other to add other than a “thank you” for helping me think through these thoughts.

Dang it, I just got the visual image of the Athanesius Creed on my back:

http://jeffgreathouse.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-tat.html

Maybe, I will need to go get it covered up.

*Normal Voice*

I do believe that all three are God but I do not believe that are one another and I do not believe there is a hierarchy.

But then again, sometimes, I do not like the deep stuff.

Very well-said!!

“There is incredible mystery in the fact that the most holy God of the universe, whom we serve as Lord and King, also invites us into this intimate, familial relationship.”

What a great statement. I think this came into such clear focus for me while reading Joseph Myers’ book ‘Organic Comminty’. Joseph presents the Kingdom of God as a great organic emerging community as opposed to a master-planned outcome community. In the chapter on coordination he contrasts the ‘cooperation with the Master-planner’ paradigm with the ‘collaboration with the Creator of organic order’ paradigm. Before reading this chapter, I never deeply considered the fact that God didn’t have a ‘paint-by-number master plan’ for my life, and then it was to be my life-long quest to try to determine what that plan was and then cooperate by placing the proper colors within the proper lines. Rather, He has given me a ‘clean canvass’ of life through Christ, and He invites me to collaborate with Him as to what life-picture will emerge on that canvass. The even more incredible thing is that He invites us to do this as a community. Indeed, it gets messy at times, but it is so much more challenging and fulfilling to be involved in the emerging process of organic order through collaboration than it is to be a pseudo-artist trying to cooperate by filling in the lines that the ‘professional master-planners’ are continually drawing out for us.

God didn’t create robots, He created people.