Tag: Relational
Being in a Personal, Relational Relationship with God, On Triune Terms
God is not an analogue to analyze. God instead is a triune and eternal relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God (de Deo uno) in three persons (de Deo trino) to be inhabited, through Christ, and enjoyed. The Christian is in an immediate relationship with the triune God through union with Jesus Christ. We are indeed, as Christians, in an intimate and personal relationship with the living God. Not because we are persons in relationship with God—thus predicating what God’s relationality and personalist reality must be—but because God is eternally personal and [onto]relational within the inner-reality (in se)…
Sin as Primarily Relational Rather than Forensic
Often you will see me emphasizing the sin/grace matrix as a relational rather than a purely forensic reality. This bears out only if the One we have sinned against is in fact a personal rather than monadic law-like being. Sin is personal and relational because, first, God is a relation of triune persons. At root our relationship to Godself is indeed based upon the correspondence God has first (before the foundations of the world) established for us in His imago Dei (cf. Col. 1.15), in His free and gracious election to be with us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus…