TEACHING: The Trinity Beautifully Explained by Dr. Ravi Zacharias

[Music] to be a student and be a Christian is difficult they will be challenged pretty much at every step of the way there are some particularly in Religious Studies department who can be pretty harsh I think 40 grand Jellicle persons it's very difficult for them they start to question they searched out my question is about the law of non-contradiction my problem is that I like the law of non-contradiction and I don't like the law of non-contradiction with Christianity I think that we run the possibility of showing favoritism at least in the presentation that I feel like I heard because the problem with Hinduism is that in its core it violates the law of non-contradiction for Christianity what is more in the core of Christianity than its doctrine of God and in our doctrine of God was more in the core of our doctrine of God then the Trinity that God is both 1 and 3 and I wonder if I'm showing favoritism and accepting violations of the law of non-contradiction fair enough I think obviously if you if you are looking at that which is systemically contradictory and then the doctrines of each faith you raise you raise a legitimate question the doctrine of the Trinity which it talks about you know one one being and yet three persons in the Godhead so let me try and illustrate this as best as I can because this I think is that this does the nerve of the heart and the heart of what the Christian faith is all about CS Lewis in one of his books talks precisely about this analogical comparison between God and human beings and he says if you take a dimension in life and add a second dimension to it then a third dimension to it he said that each added dimension you have greater capacity and greater and greater possibilities of that which can be actualized if you take one dimension you get a straight line you take two dimensions you get a figure you take a third dimension you can get objects and he said when you break these dimension their dimensions down the fundamental components remain the same but the aggression of those components give you greater possibilities so when you've got a finite being and and and a contingent being and limited being but you've got one dimension in which you're describing the very nature of being you add to that now the possibility of an infinite being an uncaused v + + + + being that is non dependent you get the possibility of a of a never of a being with greater complexity and the illustration I like to give to you is this it is not even so much that you start from the end nature of God and come down here you start from where we are to understand what this might be fishermen knew there was a difference between 1 & 3 Paul the rabbi knew there was a difference between 1 & 3 Luke the physician knew there was a difference between 1 & 3 these are not kind of airheads floating around trying to posit a new kind of a concept to just bring - to give a mathematical incongruity what they are talking about is that in the complexity of the very being of God there is an AI you relationship within the Godhead now to go from where we are to where God is I think it is critical we we followed this kind of reasoning here it is this the greatest search for philosophy of all time has been the search for unity and diversity the greatest search has been for unity and diversity the early Greek philosophers were looking at it and then out comes somebody with four unities earth air water and fire so his student comes on the scene and says wait a minute those are for not one so we coined the word quintessence what is the fifth essence that unites these four essences the word university to find unity in diversity on every American coin a pluribus unum out of the multiplicity you find one now how do we explain unity and diversity in the effect which is what this world is you and I are part of the effect we've got unity and diversity in the effect of this universe the only way to explain unity and diversity in the effect is if you've got unity and versity in the first course and only in the Trinity is there unity and diversity in the community of the Trinity if you do not grant that you actually have even a bigger problem to deal with for example in the Islamic concept of God which is a monadic concept of Allah and they of course repeatedly throw against the Christian this attitude that we've got a plurality of God's we've got a plurality verse that is not so the Lord your God is one in the complexity of the Trinity there is an AI you and a relationship in the Godhead himself if you've got a monadic concept of God apart from the Trinity then you end up with another philosophical problem if God ever says he loves who was he loving before the creation if God says he speaks who was he speaking to before the creation so communication and affection or love is contained in the Godhead right from the beginning where God speaks in the community of the Trinity where God loves in the Christian faith only does love precede life in every other faith life precedes love so we end up defining love on our terms there is no referent against word but if you see the love expressed within the concept of the Trinity and God's Jesus's prayer was that you and I may be one even as he and the father are one all I will say to you as Mortimer Adler the great Jewish philosopher who is a late comer to Christ said there will have to be majesty and mystery in God himself and he says to me the mystery of the Trinity is a revelation how of God is complete in himself in one being the three persons as they relate in love and in language no sophisticated mathematician need to tell the four writers of the Gospels that 1 and 3 are not the same and yet they were hard and purposeful in the reflection of what the doctrine of the Trinity is all about if you look at your heart and I look at mine you know my daughter's I mentioned yesterday are in Indonesia they just left Indonesia last night and flow into Thailand they're part of the tsunami relief my two daughters in their 20s this morning as I spoke to her arriving in Chiang Mai in Thailand she said dad never in my life have I seen what I have just seen coming from Aceh I've never seen anything like this bodies are still floating on shore members and parts of limbs are coming on shore and you know here they were for nearly 48 hours they couldn't eat or drink anything no bathrooms or anything of the kind what is it that drives humanity to go and reach out to these so stranded and so hurting I think it's the love of our fellow human beings that we are willing to go and do that we have loved is now at the heart of existence and God is love it is within the Trinity itself that we hunger for relationships you hunger for relationship i hunger for relationship existentially I believe it is revealed in the Holy Trinity himself where the father loves the son and the father and the son send the holy spirit is it 1 and 3 no I believe it's one in one sense 3 and another it's not a mathematical issue it's a very nature of being unity diversity in the community of the Trinity there's both majesty and mystery and I believe when we see God face to face we'll find out why it is he made us thus to hunger for relationships ourselves [Applause]

Channel: Light Words Today! Channel

Views: 448,921

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Keywords: Ravi Zacharias (Author), Trinity (Belief), God, Truth, Gospel, Lord, Word

Id: 788hMI1Lc-s

Length: 8min 42sec (522 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 06 2015