Thinking Through the Trinity

 

If you have been following this blog for a while now, you know that one of the major effects my master’s work has had on my theological development has been to point towards the Trinity.  I have been convinced that this doctrine is foundational, not only for tests of orthodoxy, but for our everyday lives with God.

One of the most interesting topics to me at the moment is exploring the relationship between the economic (who God reveals Himself to be to us) and immanent (who God is “in Himself”) Trinity.  Right now, their is a contentious debate going on between two scholars, Paul Molnar and Bruce McCormack, regarding how to understand this relationship.  Recently McCormack did a series of lectures that pertained to this and surrounding issues.  There has been other work done on this topic very recently.  Click here to get the ball rolling.

My Current Thinking on the Lord’s Supper

 

Over the last year or so, a lot of my beliefs have been shifting significantly.  To cite one example, growing up in a conservative church, i never knew that there was a view other than the one i held, which i later learned was called the memorial view.  My beliefs on this matter have already shifted somewhat, and are still a bit in process.  So, here are my current musings on the Lord’s Supper, which i originally discussed here:

I think that since nearly all conservative evangelicals typically (over?)emphasize the sermon, the Eucharist is an afterthought.  It seems that most people don’t even think about what is happening at the Lord’s Table.  To me this is tragic.

My two cents on why many evangelicals downplay the Lord’s Supper is that most have a severely underdeveloped pneumatology.   Although this is changing the Holy Spirit is still, to paraphrase the great theologian Karl Barth’s (and maybe Picard’s) words: “the last theological frontier.”

How this fleshes out in the Eucharist is that since we often fail to realize the presence of Christ in the Holy Spirit many relegate Jesus back to the 1st century and “remember” Him in the Lord’s Supper.  Jesus doesn’t need to merely be remembered.  Jesus wants to connect with us here and now when we take the sacrament.  I know that i’m caricaturing the memorial view a bit, but i think that many fall into this trap of merely “remembering” what Jesus did for them, as opposed to being lifted into the presence of Christ here and now in the sacrament.

All that said, i’m not sure what category i best fit into.  I don’t know if i need to have absolute clarity on this matter: a little mystery seems okay at this point.  I do know that i’ve moved past a mere “memorial” view.  I think this is healthy.  It seems to me that to think about the Lord’s Supper in pneumatological (and thus Trinitarian) terms forces us to do so.