No doctrine, as we have already seen, is more profound than that of the Trinity. And no doctrine is more important to the life and health of orthodox Christian faith and practice. Luther gets it right. The human mind cannot grasp it and the tongue cannot adequately express it. I had a professor who once said, “If you try to figure this doctrine out you will lose your mind, but it you deny it you will lose your soul.” Surely this is the article of faith, the article by which true Christians will stand or fall.

Too much of American Christianity has been reduced to slogans about Jesus that can be placed on bumper stickers and billboards. To some extent this is the result of marketing the Christian faith in popular culture. I am more concerned with the loss of the doctrine of God which is behind this marketing. We have a doctrine of God that is both distorted and undeveloped.

By the early fourth century a number of the important issues surrounding the doctrine of the Trinity came into much clearer focus. A very popular leader by the name of Arius became a star in northern Egypt, at one of the most important centers of early Christianity. His claim was straightforward and clear. He believed that there was only one eternal, invisible God. As a consequence Arius argued that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was begotten from God, and thus created. The Son had a beginning before which he did not exist. In a letter to Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, Arius argued that the Son “was fully God, only-begotten, unchangeable” while at the same time he argued that “before he was begotten or created . . . he did not exist.”

Part 1

This edition of the ACT 3 Weekly is different. Usually I write a biblical or theological commentary on some aspect of the Church’s faith, life, or mission. This week I want to tell you about ACT 3. Who are we? What do we do and why do we do it? What are my dreams and hopes for the future of this unique mission?

Part 2

This edition of the ACT 3 Weekly is different. Usually I write a biblical or theological commentary on some aspect of the Church’s faith, life, or mission. This week I want to tell you about ACT 3. Who are we? What do we do and why do we do it? What are my dreams and hopes for the future of this unique mission?

Part 3

This edition of the ACT 3 Weekly is different. Usually I write a biblical or theological commentary on some aspect of the Church’s faith, life, or mission. This week I want to tell you about ACT 3. Who are we? What do we do and why do we do it? What are my dreams and hopes for the future of this unique mission?

Part 4

This edition of the ACT 3 Weekly is different. Usually I write a biblical or theological commentary on some aspect of the Church’s faith, life, or mission. This week I want to tell you about ACT 3. Who are we? What do we do and why do we do it? What are my dreams and hopes for the future of this unique mission?

Part 5

This edition of the ACT 3 Weekly is different. Usually I write a biblical or theological commentary on some aspect of the Church’s faith, life, or mission. This week I want to tell you about ACT 3. Who are we? What do we do and why do we do it? What are my dreams and hopes for the future of this unique mission?

This edition of the ACT 3 Weekly is different. Usually I write a biblical or theological commentary on some aspect of the Church’s faith, life, or mission. This week I want to tell you about ACT 3. Who are we? What do we do and why do we do it? What are my dreams and hopes for the future of this unique mission?

In the full flush of the overwhelming joy of the resurrection of Jesus, and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the earliest Christians were profoundly constrained to come to grips with the question: “Who is God?” A passage like 1 John 1:1–7 made it clear to them that they had seen the living and true God in Jesus Christ. Here divine revelation (“that which was from the beginning . . . the Word of life”) was linked with human sensory perception (“heard, seen, looked at, touched”), thus revealing that the apostolic witness was to a person who had two natures, one divine and the other human.