Calvin Synod Herald, 2006 (107. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2006-05-01 / 5-6. szám
10 CALVIN SYNOD HERALD questions and ideas, and we talked about them and about our conversion and revolt against God. It was good to hear all the testimonies. We talked about the waiting in Advent. Some will really enjoy the coming back of Jesus because they will have a family and a real home. Some others will be afraid of His coming because they live in sin, and the ones who live in sin cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. We also talked about the Bible, and I planned that every week we should “schmooze with the Bible.” The reason is that there are many of the homeless who don’t know the Bible at all, and when we read, they don’t even know where to look for the text. It was good to see that everyone could find the Gospel of Luke and each of them had read a verse from the text. It was also good to see how they had the courage to pray aloud. After the sermon, they had new questions and ideas, and we talked about them. It was 9PM when we started the agape. We ended the gathering with singing and blessing. The Second Helvetic Confession Chapter 3 Of God, His Unity and Trinity [1] God Is One. We believe and teach that God is one in essence or nature, subsisting in himself, all sufficient in himself, invisible, incorporeal, immense, eternal, Creator of all things both visible and invisible, the greatest good, living, quickening and preserving all things, omnipotent and supremely wise, kind and merciful, just and true. Truly we detest many gods because it is expressly written: The Lord your God is one Lord (Deut. 6:4). I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me (Exod. 20:2-3). I am the Lord, and there is no other god besides me. Am I not the Lord, and there is no other God beside me? A righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me (Isa. 45:5, 21). The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Exod. 34:6). The mystery of the ages, God is One! This most of the world, meaning mankind can accept. What else could a living being be other than one? The debate would be whether God is the only God, or just perhaps chief among many gods. The tiny spark of light left in mankind from the fall says there is a god and establishes a baseline desire to worship in mankind. We call this the light of nature. Paul addresses this in Romans one and goes so far as to say that where mankind by this natural light does that which is in concord with the law of God, that there is no need for the law, or in the words of Paul they are a law unto themselves. This does not establish a natural law that is equal to the revealed law of God, but acknowledges that indeed as promised God has revealed Himself to all mankind so that in the most base of creatures, the full knowledge of God resides, though not made manifest nor recognized by the creature without the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. Thus here we make the statement not only that God is one essence or person, but also most emphatically testify that there is no other god period. This stands in stark contrast to the liberal church of today that in places declares there are more ways to God than Christ, or that perhaps there is value to other so-called world religions. This is false for there cannot be a religion where no god exists. In their blindness people believe and bow before images of that which does not exist in reality. The whole of the contest between Elijah and the false priests of religion in his day on Mt. Carmel was to prove this one point, besides God there is no other God. God Is Three. Notwithstanding we believe and teach that the same immense, one and indivisible God is in person inseparably and without confusion distinguished as Father, Son and Holy Spirit so, as the Father has begotten the Son from eternity, the Son is begotten by an ineffable generation, and the Holy Spirit truly proceeds from them both, and the same from eternity and is to be worshiped with both. [2] Calvin attempted to explain this as one of essence, yet three in subsistence. That is while one in essence each of the three persons we know as the Trinity is able to subsist as the whole and complete person. [3] This is the best explanation through the centuries in that it ends the debate of the foolish imagination of man that would deny the clear Word of God that says God is one, yet pays attention to the individual persons within the Godhead. Every heresy has its roots here in the whom and what of the God is three statements. We are dealing with the spiritual, a metaphysical nature that is beyond the ability of man to see or demonstrate; therefore man continues to search for the how of the Trinity. Many miss the whole concept and as will be dealt with in a moment, create three gods or one god with three heads as if some sideshow freak of nature. Anything that denies the oneness of God, or attempts to deny the full deity of all three, or separate the three in any way is heresy and to be given absolutely no countenance in the church. All heresies have done one or all of these things. Calvin’s preferred wording here appears to be that the Son proceeds (is begotten) from the Father Eternally and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son eternally. This is important, especially the word eternal in this construction. God does not change and God has never changed. Add to this the understanding that eternity is not an infinitely long time line, but the absence of time, which God created for the benefit of the creation, and an understanding of God begins to develop. The existence of God in community (as Three) in eternity is an important concept for the development of human relationship as the visible means of what God has had from the beginning, the perfect relationship within the Godhead. This is why God uses marriage and family so often as the example of His relationship to mankind and especially His people. Man cannot understand the rest of Scripture until this point is accepted; this is the pivot point for all properly formed theology. This drives home a point most men seem to forget, you cannot develop one portion of systematic theology if it causes conflict with another point. As God is whole, so must any complete theology come full circle and be whole or one. God is one and God is three is not in conflict with one weighed against the other, but both statements are an absolute truth. A footnote supposedly from the original Helvetic renders the full understanding here as “ Lest any man should slander us, as though we did make as though the persons existing together, but not all of the same essence, or else did make God of divers natures joined together in one, you must understand this joining together so as that all the persons (though distinct one from the
