HOME
Christianity is a person, not a religion: foremost the singular person of Jesus Christ (God in the flesh), and finally the singular Body of Christ (the faithful indwelled in the flesh by God). And since one can properly understand Jesus, God the Son, only in relationship with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, one can further say that Christianity is Trinitarianism. The Trinity is the paradigm of creation, the shape of our salvation, and the way of prayer. Accordingly, the Trinity is our hermeneutic—our way to read and understand the Word of God, likewise the creation by God. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life: the way and will of the Father, the literal embodiment of truth, and the eternal life of the Spirit.
The ongoing work specific to this ministry focuses on (1) identifying the fundamental elements and pattern types implicit to the Biblical text, and (2) establishing how elements combine to construct increasingly complex patterns, particularly how Christological patterns construct Trinitarian patterns, and (3) characterizing the relationship between implicit patterns and explicit meaning in the formation of the fullness of the Trinitarian image of God that is related in the Bible. This emphasis on elements and patterns could be termed a form of structuralism to distinguish it from, for example, dispensationalism, covenantalism or federal theology, scholasticism, and Roman Catholic covenantal theology.
A prime example of the triunity of the Bible, likewise human history, is the threefold sequence related by the formation of Adam in the image of God followed by the First and Second Advents of Jesus Christ. In this example, all humanity proceeds from our human father Adam (through Eve in her offspring) just as all creation proceeds from God the Father (through the Spirit in the Son). The First Advent was the revelation of God the Son and ultimately the resurrection of the Son, while the Second Advent will be the revelation of God the Spirit and critically the resurrection of the faithful, the Body of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the three Adams: the first Adam, the last Adam, and the promised new Adam.
Maranatha,
Rex Frost
March 11, 2015
Site header image: Tudor rose and Scots thistle intertwined.