I stayed up till one in the morning . . . thinking . . . thinking . . . thinking . . . about this fundamental Truth of the universe:
That ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him (John 10:38).
- I realize that John 10, John 14, and John 17, etc. are an epicenter for evangelicals and LDS in the intermountain West.
- And googling “perichoresis” this morning, I didn’t realize that whole internet sites carry this theme.
http://theperichoresis.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/perichoresis/
- Up in northern Idaho, Leithart writes some interesting thoughts, too.
http://www.leithart.com/archives/000074.php
- How about this? I would like to take Liethart and Kruger on a fishing trip here in Southeastern Idaho and listen to them hash it all out.
Such marvelous, marvelous, marvelous truths in Scripture.
Thinking of heart issues . . .
et
Jesus in Idaho Falls 
Such marvelous, marvelous, marvelous truths in Scripture.
It seems like for you, there is only one Truth in scripture — that God the Father and Jesus Christ (and the Holy Spirit) are “One Substance”. That is certainly the spin you are putting on every scripture you post around here. The irony in all this, of course, is that the very concept of a “One Substance” Trinity — as opposed to a Godhead composed of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, which is a Biblical concept — is entirely extra-Biblical. If the Bible is inerrant and sufficient, as you claim, then why isn’t the “One Substance” Trinity found in it? Why does it depend on Greek philosophical constructs for its existence?
John, you should have been with us this past Sunday morning.
We talked about how some would charge us for worshipping a substance.
The real, living, relational Triune God created materialistic substance.
Nope, God does not depend on a rescue from the Greeks. 😉
Todd, I am excited that you are moving more and more into these truths.
This is, of course, not the only truth in Scripture, but it is indeed the central one. Why? Because while Scripture does not describe the communitarian, triune God as one “substance” (“essence” or, best, “being”), it does speak of what that “being” is: love. “God is love,” as we read in I John.
Quoting Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams can be problemmatic these days, but in the following, he is spot on:
“Because God exists in this threefold pattern of interdependent action, the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one in which there is always a ‘giving place’ to each other, each standing back so that the other may act. The only human language we have for this is love: the three dimensions of divine life relate to each other in self-sacrifice or self-giving. The doctrine of the Trinity is a way of explaining why we say that God is love, not only that he shows love.”
No, we do not worship a “substance.” We do not even worship (a) “being”. We worship a tri-personal God who is love. This is tautological. Full personhood implies love. Love implies, requires, interpersonal relationship. Intelligence may or may not be eternal: LOVE is eternal.
John f,
To be fair a composite deity is also quite Greek too.
And from an Eastern Orthodox perspective homoousious doesn’t express any philosophical concept since it is an apophatic term. And this is due to the fact that God ad intra is incomprehensible.
So from an Orthodox point of view, “one essence” is actually anti-hellenistic.