God Is Relationship

Trinity is a conceptual attempt to provide coherence to God as God is revealed variously through Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our scriptures: God is emphatically personal; God is only and exclusively God in relationship. Trinity is not an attempt to explain or define God by means of abstractions (although there is some of that, too), but a witness that God reveals himself as personal and in personal relations. The down-to-earth consequence of this is that God is rescued from the speculations of the metaphysicians and brought boldly into a community of men, women, and children who are called to enter into this communal life of love, an emphatically personal life where they experience themselves in personal terms of love and forgiveness, of hope and desire. Under the image of the Trinity we discover that we do not know God by defining him but by being loved by him and loving in return. The consequences of this are personally revelatory: another does not know me, nor do I know another, by defining or explaining, by categorizing or by psychologizing, but only relationally, by accepting and loving, by giving and receiving. The personal and interpersonal provide primary images (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) for both knowing God and being known by God.

- Eugene Peterson, "Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places"

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