Christianity is one of the major religions in the world. Religion connotes the relationship and communion between a creator and his creation. Christianity entails a relationship between man and God. It is possible to consider religion through four basic points of view. These points of view are subjective, objective, moral, and institution. From the objective point of view, religion denotes a moral-spiritual relationship between the creature (man) and the creator (God). Man acknowledges this relationship individually, and expresses it collectively through worship. From the subjective point of view, religion is deeply rooted in mans nature as he seeks to find justification for morality and moral decency.
From the moral point of view, religion is a virtue in a person. This virtue disposes him to honor and worship the absolute (God). Religion is also an institution complete with values, activities, and beliefs systems. The institution has defined organizational structures, a body of doctrines, an ethical code, and a system of worship. The savior Jesus Christ teaches people how to be virtuous. He gives a complete guide for the Christians on how to build a dwelling where the Holy Spirit can dwell in. In relation to God the father, the son teaches the Christians to put His will first. Christians should always try to do Gods will and be like Him. They should also believe strongly that God loves everyone. Religion gives morality the purposefulness and clarity it requires through its ethical code.
The doctrine of the Trinity on moral life
God intentionally created man to be a free moral agent; however, His authority over mans every action is expressly clear. Gods authority exists over the life of everyone regardless of whether one recognizes it or not. Through the Bible and interaction with faithful, God reveals Himself in three facets. These facets are the trinity. The trinity comprises of God the father, God the son, and God the Holy Spirit. Whereas it is unattainable to understand God with the human mind, the triune nature abounds in the universe. It is so common and possibly the intention of the creator. The universe is an example of a triune composition. The basic constituents of the universe are time, space, and energy. Each of this constituent breaks down into three. Space is divisible into the three dimensions; time divides into the three tenses, and energy divides into positive, negative, and neutral1.
God is the greatest conceivable entity and is perfect. Love is moral perfection therefore God is a loving entity. God exist outside time and was there before the creation of man. Because God is eternal and does not change, He sufficiently must express and experience love with Himself. It is insufficient to describe God as loving by showing the love directed toward man. Because God existed before He created man, His love is directed internally to Himself. God is therefore a plurality of persons each loving the other. This affirms the nature of God as a perfect being. God is a triad of persons in an everlasting self-love affiliation. The connection between morality and Christianity is evident throughout the bible. The first book (Genesis) presents several examples. First, God creates using commands, e.g., let there be light. After creating man in His own image, God gives him a command. God expects man to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth2.
After creating Adam and Eve, God gave them perhaps the most significant command in the relationship between man and God. Adam and Eve were free to eat from any tree except the tree in the center of the garden. The tree in the center of the garden is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve disobey this command by eating from the tree. God respond by chasing them away from the Garden of Eden. From the beginning of human life at creation, God sets a concept to form the bases for the relationship between Him and his creation. When humans obey the commands given by God, they receive blessing, however; when they fail to adhere to Gods command, they are punished, as is the case for the first sin. The reason given for the disobedience of the humans is not the intrinsic; rather the bible explains that the serpent convinced them to eat the fruit. Later in the story, Cain kills Abel as the evil spreads throughout the world. The idea of a basic orientation for man either toward or against evil is not present. The idea present in the first few chapters of the Bible is mans free will and the ability of Satan to deceive man3.
Later in the book of genesis, God commands Abraham to leave his ancestral land and move to a land God promises to give him. Later on God instructs Abraham is to kill his son but God prevents it in the last minute by providing a ram for sacrifice. The great grandchildren of the father of faith end up in Egypt because of a drought. The children of Israel become slaves in this foreign land. Later God redeems them from slavery with the help of Moses. Because of the lack of trust in God, the children of Israel wander the deserts for 40 years. During this period, God gives the children of Israel the Ten Commandments on the Sinai Mountain. The commandments are in two parts, one is the obligations of man to God, and the other is mans obligations of man to one another. These commandments together form the bases for law and acceptable moral conduct. Later in the Bible, God makes a covenant with Noah after the floods. This covenant makes the connection between how man should live and how he was created4.
In the New Testament, God the son recaptures God the father commandments and sums them up in to two. This includes the command to love God with all heart, mind, and soul. The other is the authority to care for ones neighbor as the self. Later in the Bible, Jesus in the sermon at the mountain takes the commandments to heart. God not only expects one to abstain from committing adultery but also expects him or her to abstain from lust and lustful thoughts. Jesus commands his disciples to love both their friends and their enemies. This indicates that the commandment of love is not a reciprocate action but an action carried out by true Christians who reflect the nature of God. Jesus later describes a neighbor as a person in need of help. In the Old Testament, God the father gives commands to the children of Israel. This provides the bases for the morals and cultures of the people. In the New Testament, God the son presents a more personal approach in which the moral standards are at an individual level. God the Holy Spirit provide the internal guidance system to the individual. This gives the individual Christian the ability to choose what is right from evil. The Holy Ghost also communicates the fathers will to his creation5.
Moral Life in Terms of the Creative Trinity and Human Participation
Christian understanding of God as trinity denotes that they believe in the relationality nature of God. The description of trinity is a description of others in relation. Each member of the trinity is perpetually in dynamic association with the other and each is equivalent to the other. God is in an eternal relationship portrayed by a dynamic, self-giving, and overflowing love. It is through this love that God creates and sustains everything that is. God is always in a relationship within divinity and relates this unending love towards His creation. God does not require creation to be whole, rather, He wishes to relate with His creation because of His love for creation, including humankind. God always desires to have a beneficent association6.
The understanding of God as the creator of the entire world out of love, and the continued relationship with His creation demands respect for creation. The biblical tradition contains a description of such respect. It asserts the love of God towards the entire creation and particularly with the unborn human. It also announces that the entire creation ought to praise God. Some aspects of the biblical tradition however, tell of human authority over creation. Such dominance is practiced in the perspective of the love of God for creation and the association that God established with humankind. Human beings are the stewards of creation and any human act that may affect the basic features of creation must concur with the true stewardship7. Humans were created to participate in the creative work of God and although creation is open-ended, humans ought to create their own system of relationships in involvement with God. The design of creation is incomplete, and it is through creativity that humans can join in the work of the creator.
Being part of creation humans are in relationship with God. God created Humans in His own image; therefore, they are created to be in true relationship with the creator. The formation, energizing, and establishment of such relationship are through the divine relationship. However, this does not denote that humans are also divine, thus, they cannot share a similar quality of association like the one within the trinity. What it really means is that the foundation of authentic associations according to the bible is the love of God8.
The nature of God is to be in association with the world and the entire creation that comprises even human beings. The fact that human beings are in bond with God does not necessarily imply that the Trinitarian model of godly relativism should relate to human persons in any way. Rather, it is typical regarding the relationship of God with Human beings that the only creatures that God created in his image are humans, who find their identity through relating well with one another as well as with God, since they are created as relational beings9. Living a moral life implies being in close relationship with God. The ability to participate in Gods work means that humans are truly human. Consequently, being truly human implies the image of God in human life.
While reflecting on human genetics and ethics, several theologians have considered the image likeness in humans to mean that humans are co-creators with God. This has in turn encouraged the practical development of tools of genetic involvement as a way of collaborating in Gods creative work of creation in the world. This idea has received a substantial support from various theologians across the globe. Theologian Philip Hefner is renowned for popularizing the idea of human beings being co-creators with God. His main emphasis lay in the explanation that humans take the subordinate position of human creativity relative to Gods creativity. He insisted that humans are co-creators with God, but God too created them. Additionally, this claim faces objection because it aggrandizes the responsibility of human action in Gods artistic and redemptive intentions, misrepresenting what is actually implicit in the biblical command to be Gods custodians in creation. This tempts humans to transgress creaturely limits by appreciating the degree to which the fallen and finite condition restricts their understanding10. It is apparent that pleas to the human beings as co-creators with God tend to support consequentiality perception of moral decision-making.
As mentioned earlier, it is important to realize that human beings are not divine like the Holy Trinity (McCarthy 2012). The relationship of humans amongst themselves and with God is also not like the association within the trinity. The beings in the trinity are members of an everlasting grand chain. They are the original members in the chain and humans are invited to join as members, provided they adhere to the rules that have been set. Humans shape their own patterns that interconnect with the patterns of the original participants. If humans break away from the pattern at any particular time, they become stale because they will have no power to proceed11. They thus become sallow shadows of what they are supposed to be. Although God created humans in His image, it points to a dynamic connection between human beings and God that does not presume that the trinitys co-inherence is simulated in finite humans.
The eternal law
There are four types of laws. This includes the eternal, natural, human, and divine laws. The eternal law is the most basic. The other categories of law originate from the eternal law. According to St, Thomas, law is a rule that enable the measurement of acts. Laws limit the actions of man. In some instances, the law induces man to act in certain ways. Law pertains to reason. This includes human and divine reasoning. Eternal law therefore is the divine governance of everything. God exist outside time. Because God is not bound by time, His reasoning forms the eternal laws. The concern of eternal law is more than the orderliness of the universe. Through reasoning God provides to man from within himself. Man naturally carries the imprint of Gods eternal law. Through the eternal laws, God orders everything to His Glory and Love. This is most evident in the participation of man in Gods plans. The imprint of the eternal laws in man leads to the development the natural laws12.
It is established in the Bible that there is an eternal law made by God but even Him cannot break it. When Adam and Eve broke God eternal law by eating the forbidden fruit, God responded by chasing them away from the Garden of Eden. Even if God is perfectly good and willing to forgive the two, the eternal law is absolute and must hold. The main reason is Satan who knows the law all too well, is trying to find a mistake in the character of God. Eternal law is why God could not just forgive Adam and Eve but had to send his son to suffer and die on earth for the sins of the world. Only through the blood of Jesus is man saved from the eternal wrath of God because of the original sin13.
Laws are necessary even for the earthly kingdom. Wise men know that no kingdom would last even for a day without laws and regulation. The kingdom of God abides forever. In order for God to rule over His kingdom forever, He has to form laws and regulations. Because the kingdom abides forever just like its creator, the laws of the Kingdom must be perfect and flawless. God the son did not come to change the law but rather to strengthen it. The laws of God, including the Ten Commandments and the beatitudes are for every Christian. In the bible, the beatitudes appear in the books of Mathew and Luke. The beatitudes come from a Latin word meaning happy. Jesus gave the teaching of the beatitudes in the sermon at the mountain. There are eight beatitudes and each is enigmatic, accurate, and packed with meaning. Each of the beatitude is from a similar old testament teaching but Jesus gives it new meaning. From the teaching of the beatitudes, we see that Jesus is strengthening the teaching of God the father through his sermons. The beatitudes only build on God the father eternal Laws14.
God the Holy Spirit is a member of the trinity and acts as a message for God the Father. As an eternal member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit dwells in the hearts of the faithful. Before the creation of the earth and man, the three members of the Godhead made a covenant among themselves. The covenant entails issues affecting the interaction of the Godhead with man. God the father is the creator of the universe, God the son is the redeemer of man, and God the spirit is the witness. The Holy Spirit is also a sanctifier. Because unclean things can dwell in the presences of the divine, the system of salvation relies on the action of the Holy Ghost to sanctify. This state is achievable only through the conformity to the eternal laws of God the father. The roles of the Holy Ghost to the faithful include giving strength and revealing the necessary to them. The Holy Ghost is a major component of the Christian religion and enables the Christian faithful to follow Gods eternal laws and ultimately achieve salvation. The Holy Ghost is the stamp of approval for those Christians who uphold Gods eternal law15.
Trinitarian theology in the contemporary world
The progress of Trinitarian theology over the past years constitutes some of the traits of modern theology. This expansion is a multifaceted phenomenon that is often described s a rediscovery or a renewal of the study of theology. However, historical studies provoke us to nuance this judgement, since reflecting on trinity has always been fruitful and has always given rise to novel approaches. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering wrote a handbook on trinity in which they enquire on the characteristics of the contemporary thoughts of modern theologians. One cannot fail to observe the fundamental aspects that are common with the contemporary analysis16.
The concept of trinity is not new to others, although it includes the fundamental mystery of Christian beliefs that should illumine their entire life. Trinity is an obscurity of salvation, and it is for this reason that it was revealed. The Trinitarian theology can be found at the centre of a nexus that is necessary to understand its meaning. This central nexus refers to the Christian liturgy. It was prepared in an exemplary manner by St. Basil of Caesarea during the fourth century. The sacraments, the ecclesial prayer, and the affirmation of faith, in conformity with the scriptures, represent this central nexus (liturgy)17.
The Trinitarian theology is associated with Christology. Reflection by contemporary theologians seeks to avoid the dichotomy that divided Trinitarian aspects and Christological views. Contemporary works usually give emphasis that the Pasch of Jesus Christ is the place of the disclosure of trinity, of course bearing in mind the existence and works of the Holy Spirit in Jesus life. On the other end, the words and actions of Jesus, as taught in the New Testament, only take their complete meaning through believing in the trinity18.
Contemporary views hold that Trinitarian faith is not restricted to illuminating the subject of salvation and redemption, but also regards creation in an equal way. The creation doctrines necessitate the proper Trinitarian consideration. A majority of modern theological studies concentrate more on the problems of unanimity and division between immanent trinity and economic trinity. The issue of the connection between history and trinity is often located at the centre of modern studies of trinity. Many contemporary studies also pay substantial attention to the composite question of the association between the divine scripture and Christian dogma in relation to trinity19.
The contemporary writings on trinity and moral life are not restricted to essays and books that are dedicated to the principles of trinity alone. To make it simpler, one can clearly see the main categories of these studies. There are a few articles devoted to the obscurity of the concept of trinity. Not many theologians have properly undertaken this mission, including Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, Michael Schmaus, among others. A majority of theologians have however placed the reflection of Trinitarian mystery at the heart of their doctrinaire proposals20. To make the matter worse, a number of essays and books in the modern times have concentrated so much on specific aspects of Trinitarian principles.
Conclusion
Trinity means three in one. There are three gods in trinity, but these three gods are united in love. Human beings are supposed to relate well with each other, and with God. They also need to realize that it is through love that God brought life to this world and that we live through love. This love must be present among humans in order to live, because the core reality about god is the very core reality of creation. Humans are special beings in Gods creation as they resemble the image of God, and God calls them to contribute to His creative work. Moral life starts with what one is taught about creation an divine exemplar casualty. The Christian views and teachings regarding trinity and moral life have been explained herein, with great emphasis laid on the understanding of humans participation in the creative work of God. The works of contemporary theologians are varied, but those that address the concept of trinity mostly concentrate on the dogmatic views of the writers, who lay much emphasis on the mystery of salvation in relation to Christian faith.
It is important to appreciate the fact that humans are created in the likeness of God, and it implies that humans ought to participate with their Trinitarian God. All must respect Creation because it represents the abundant love through which God created the entire world and the creatures in it. Humans are stewards of creation, and in this context, must participate in the creative work of God. We need to respect the distinctiveness of human life, and ensure that humans are given the opportunity to accomplish their potential in relation to their association with God and other creatures as well.
Notes
Jones, Gregory L. Transformed judgment: towards a Trinitarian account of moral life. Notre Dame, Ind.: university of Notre dame Press, 1990: 28
Ibid., 34
Ibid., 47
Duffy, Stephen J. The dynamics of grace: perspectives in theological anthropology. New theology series 3. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, a Michael glazier book, 1993: 102
Ibid., 83
Wadell, Paul J. Happiness and the Christian Moral Life: An Introduction to Christian Ethics. Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012:116-126
Ibid., 120
Thompson, John. Modern Trinitarian Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994: 106-123
Ibid., 115
McCarthy, David Matzko. "Moral theology in the Ruins." Journal of Moral theology, 2012: 1-14.
Ibid., 9
Webb, Stephen H. The gifting God: A Trinitarian ethics: Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996: 52
Ibid., 69
Merriell, Donald Juvenal. To the image of the trinity: a study in the development of Aquinas teachings. Toronto: Pontifical institute of mediaeval studies, 1990: 32
Ibid., 98
Ibid., 106
Thompson, John. Modern Trinitarian Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994: 112-123
Ibid., 118
Ibid.,122
Wadell, Paul J. Happiness and the Christian Moral Life: An Introduction to Christian Ethics. Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012:120-126
Bibliography
Duffy, Stephen J. The dynamics of grace: perspectives in theological anthropology. New theology series 3. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, a Michael glazier book, 1993.
Jones, Gregory L. Transformed judgment: towards a Trinitarian account of moral life. Notre Dame, Ind.: university of Notre dame Press, 1990.
McCarthy, David Matzko. "Moral theology in the Ruins." Journal of Moral theology, 2012: 1-14.
Merriell, Donald Juvenal. To the image of the trinity: a study in the development of Aquinas teachings. Toronto: Pontifical institute of mediaeval studies, 1990.
Thompson, John. Modern Trinitarian Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Wadell, Paul J. Happiness and the Christian Moral Life: An Introduction to Christian Ethics. Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012.
Webb, Stephen H. The gifting God: A Trinitarian ethics: Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996.
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