His eternal relational loveChristian faith confesses God is relational and God is love, writes Adam Dodds.
Years ago, I was a tourist in Luxor, Egypt, looking at ancient temples.
Our guide Abdullah, an accomplished Egyptologist, described ancient Egyptian mythology, mentioning that Osiris, Isis and Horus formed a Trinity of Egyptian gods.
Having studied the doctrine of the Trinity, I suggested to him that this was a misuse of the word Trinity, for he was referring to tri-theism - belief in three separate gods.
Christians, however, worship and believe in one God.
The purpose of Christian belief in ''the Trinity'' is to identify what Christians mean by ''God''.
This teaching on the Trinity is held in common by the Christian Church worldwide (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal) but which many outside the church ridicule.
The doctrine of the Trinity has been called the height of metaphysical speculation, been labelled contradictory, and is often held to be irrelevant for practical living.
And yet Christian faith insists this doctrine is not based on speculation, is not contradictory, and is highly relevant to practical living.
Why is this important?
Author A. W. Tozer claimed: ''What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.''
A person's convictions about who ''God'' is determines that person's belief system, including beliefs regarding morality, values, identity, purpose and destiny.
Allow me to delve into the heart of Christian faith - the identity of God, and appreciate its relevance today.
A common criticism to Christian belief in the Trinity is that one cannot equal three and three cannot equal one, but this is only an objection to a caricature of the doctrine of the Trinity.
The engine that drives the doctrine of the Trinity is the conviction that God the Father definitively revealed Himself in the person of Jesus, and in the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, Christians believe God is three Persons who share one being.
God's being is relational.
It is a unique unity without perfect parallel or analogy - but is this not what we should expect when speaking of the eternal, uncontained God who has revealed Himself to finite, limited creatures?
The theologian Augustine once said, ''If you can understand it, it's not God.''
Why?
Because to completely understand a concept of ''god'' would prove that that conception originated in human thinking, and therefore is fully understandable.
Nevertheless, this unique divine unity - three Persons sharing one being - is not completely beyond our comprehension.
Take a human - you - one person whose being is at once physical, mental-emotional, and spiritual.
Physical pain is different from emotional pain.
There is a plurality, a diversity, within your oneness.
Similarly, at a biological level, there is complexity within unity - bone cells are different from muscle cells and neurons, and so on.
Within creation most forms of oneness include complexity and plurality.
If this all seems a little complicated, that's because it is.
As C. S. Lewis provocatively says: ''If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it isn't. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We're dealing with fact! Of course, anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.''
Since the infinite God has revealed Himself in Jesus to finite creatures, we can expect knowledge of God to be both complicated, yet understandable.
An important question to ask is, ''So what?''.
Why does this matter?
The apostle John says God is love; not that God loves only some people, or loves some of the time, or that love is one of the things that God does.
No! God is love.
Within God's eternal being, God is love.
This affirmation is only possible because of the doctrine of the Trinity.
One cannot ''be'' love in isolation, by himself or herself.
Love only makes sense in the context of relationships.
Love can only exist between persons.
Love is relational.
Now, before God created the universe, God was alone, yet Christians affirm God is love pre-creation.
How is this possible? Because within the being of God, love emanates between Father, Son and Spirit, giving and receiving love to and from each other.
What does this mean?
One author said, ''The words 'God is love' mean not that loving is only one of God's many activities, but rather that all His activity is loving activity.''
Since God's being is three persons in eternal relationship, God is relational and personal.
How does this description relate to your understanding of God?Concretely, what does love look like?
In the verse immediately after the declaration ''God is love'', the apostle John writes, ''God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.''
Sacrificial giving for the good of the other. Ascribing unsurpassable worth to the other.
This is what love looks like.
''What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us,'' Tozer suggested.
Christian faith confesses God is relational, God is love.
• Dr Adam Dodds is senior pastor at Elim Church, Dunedin.
