Transformission 2010 from Dave Bish on Vimeo.

1. Of course, Adam and Eve were specially created by God, and were the biological progenitors of the entire human race.
2. Hold on, that doesn't seem to fit with the scientific evidence. But anyway, aren't we being a bit too literalistic with Genesis? Maybe they weren't historical individuals, but rather a metaphor for the entire human race, for example?
3. I'm not sure about that—if they weren't historical individuals, then does the Christian doctrine of the Fall really make sense? (E.g., Henri Blocher)
4. Fair point, so it seems they were historical individuals. But perhaps they were not actually the biological progenitors of the entire human race? Could they not have been just two members of a long-established population of human beings, but those to whom God chose to reveal himself in a special way? (E.g., Denis Alexander)
5. But how then are we to understand the nature of the connection between Adam and the rest of humanity? And what does this do to the traditional Christian understanding of sin and death? Does Jesus death on the cross still make sense? (E.g., Steve Lloyd, Michael Reeves)
6. To be continued...

What prompted me to write this was reading the chapter by Michael Reeves, which has been recently been published online at Reformation21. He raises some issues that I hope will be addressed before long (if they haven't already been addressed elsewhere). Also, Steve Lloyd presented some of his arguments at a debate held at my church on Saturday (MP3 available)—watch this space for a report...

But in the meantime, over to you...

God is Father, Son and Spirit loving each other. That's it.

Okay, that's a bit more appealing than Aristotle's definition. But hold on! One God or three Gods?

But this just looks to us like you've got three Gods and they just happen to like each other a lot.

What's the solution?

We're not tritheists because we don't say the Father, Son and Spirit are three individuals; we say they are three persons. ... An individual is something that can be divided off ... so it can stand all on its own. ... Persons need relationship; they can only be understood in terms of their relations. ...

God is just these three persons loving each other. But that is not to say there are three Gods here, because their love for each other is so essential to who they are that none of them would exist without the others. ...

And so, you see, Basil and the boys are really majoring on verses like 1 John 4:16, "God is love", because they're seeing love, which is the relationship between the persons, is the being of God. It makes up the divine unity. God is one because God is love, because the Father, Son and Spirit love each other.

Whoa, hold on a minute! Which God are we talking about?

Sorry?

Which God do you believe in?

You see, the assumption is that we all know what God is; we may differ on the details, but there's no dispute about the fundamental definition. So if you were of a philosophical bent and didn't get out much, you might say:

God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God. ... It is clear then from what has been said that there is a substance which is eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible [touchable] things. It has been shown also that this substance cannot have any magnitude, but is without parts and indivisible ... . But it has also been shown that it is impassive and unalterable

Many Christians would think that's a pretty good description of God. Trouble is that it was written by a pagan philosopher from the 4th Century BC!

Those words, from Aristotle's Metaphysics, are quoted by Mike Reeves in the first of his sensational four-part series on the Trinity, the God of the Bible. The question is whether Aristotle got it right: is his description of "God" a good summary of what the Bible's God is like?

Mike Reeves' answer: No.

We need to acknowledge straight up that the Christian worships an entirely different God to whatever God anyone else worships.