Howard C. Wilkinson - "How Can There Be One?" (May 28, 1961)
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| (piano music) | 0:03 | |
| (inaudible) | 0:12 | |
| - | (priest) The paragraph in your chapel bulletin, | 0:19 |
| which expresses thanks to a large number of volunteers, | 0:21 | |
| whose faithfulness this year has made possible, | 0:27 | |
| our university's services of worship. | 0:30 | |
| Entirely omits the largest group of volunteers, | 0:34 | |
| Who have made possible this service, | 0:39 | |
| and that group is called the congregation. | 0:41 | |
| Because were it not for a congregation that does not have | 0:46 | |
| to come to chapel, | 0:51 | |
| but which does with great faithfulness and regularity, | 0:52 | |
| these services would not be possible. | 0:57 | |
| We therefore wish to join you in an expression of thanks | 1:00 | |
| to God for the privilege of worshiping him here | 1:04 | |
| in this chapel from Sunday to Sunday, | 1:06 | |
| and an expression of thanks to you for your faithfulness. | 1:10 | |
| For even today, in spite of the fact that | 1:15 | |
| many have completed their final exams | 1:17 | |
| and have gone home and others who are still on campus | 1:19 | |
| are in headlong flight from everything except study, | 1:23 | |
| for the finals which yet remain, | 1:27 | |
| we do have here in this service today, | 1:29 | |
| considerably more than a corporal's guard. | 1:31 | |
| I can sympathize with those who have been in intense study | 1:35 | |
| for final exams, because for the last several weeks, | 1:40 | |
| I have been studying very furiously for this | 1:43 | |
| my final examination this morning. | 1:46 | |
| Which is about to commence. | 1:49 | |
| So we are very happy that you have given this kind of | 1:52 | |
| service to God during this academic year. | 1:56 | |
| And we bring our regular series of university services | 2:00 | |
| to a close today. | 2:03 | |
| And there will not be open to the public | 2:05 | |
| a service next Sunday, | 2:08 | |
| but there will be a service here of course, | 2:10 | |
| particularly for those who are graduating from one of the | 2:12 | |
| schools of the university. | 2:14 | |
| Then in the summer, | 2:17 | |
| according to the schedule announced in today's bulletin, | 2:18 | |
| we will have our summer school series, | 2:21 | |
| of university services, taking up our regular series | 2:24 | |
| again in September. | 2:28 | |
| I would like now to preach to you on a question, | 2:32 | |
| of how can three gods be one God? | 2:38 | |
| We are asked to believe that this is the case, | 2:44 | |
| by our Christian faith. | 2:47 | |
| As a matter of fact, | 2:50 | |
| our Christian faith asks us to believe or to do, | 2:51 | |
| a good many things which are very strange. | 2:55 | |
| When first they are announced to us. | 2:59 | |
| For instance, | 3:02 | |
| our Christian faith tells us, | 3:04 | |
| that if a man seeks to save his life, he will lose it. | 3:06 | |
| But if he will lose his life for the sake of the gospel, | 3:10 | |
| he will find it. | 3:13 | |
| Then it goes on to say that | 3:16 | |
| our Lord Jesus is Christ, | 3:17 | |
| invites all men everywhere to follow him, | 3:19 | |
| to obey him and to serve him. | 3:23 | |
| But then tells us immediately that, | 3:27 | |
| he does not call us servants, but friends. | 3:29 | |
| And then on the heels of this announcement, | 3:35 | |
| we are told that he invites all his friends to wear a yoke. | 3:37 | |
| And further mystifies us by telling us, | 3:43 | |
| that this yoke, will comfort us. | 3:46 | |
| And that it will be easy. | 3:48 | |
| Can you imagine anything more strange than this? | 3:51 | |
| Or perhaps you're saying | 3:55 | |
| "Yes there is something more strange than that, | 3:56 | |
| about our Christian religion, | 3:58 | |
| it tells us that if two, | 3:59 | |
| people will enter into Christian marriage, | 4:00 | |
| they will not be two any longer. | 4:02 | |
| they will be one." | 4:04 | |
| I think the strangest of all though, | 4:07 | |
| is really this doctrine of the Trinity. | 4:09 | |
| In which doctrine we are told with great emphasis, | 4:13 | |
| that the Christian faith believes in monotheism. | 4:16 | |
| That is to say that there is one God, instead of many. | 4:19 | |
| We do not believe in polytheism. | 4:24 | |
| Many gods. | 4:27 | |
| We believe there is only one God. | 4:28 | |
| But we Christians worship three divine persons. | 4:31 | |
| Now, since this is Trinity Sunday, | 4:37 | |
| in all Christian churches around the world. | 4:41 | |
| It seems to be a good time for us to take a look at this | 4:44 | |
| Christian doctrine of the Trinity. | 4:47 | |
| Particularly this year in view of the fact, | 4:50 | |
| that the world council of churches will be meeting | 4:54 | |
| in New Delhi, India. | 4:58 | |
| And the doctrine of the Trinity will be, | 5:00 | |
| the basic Christian belief of the theological nature, | 5:02 | |
| which will be examined by the delegates, | 5:07 | |
| from all communions in all nations who meet there. | 5:10 | |
| Now, whatever difficulties we may encounter | 5:14 | |
| in trying to understand this doctrine, | 5:19 | |
| or whatever may be our questions, | 5:21 | |
| about the plausibility of it. | 5:23 | |
| There can be no question, but that for 1600 years, | 5:26 | |
| this has been the teaching of the main line | 5:30 | |
| of the Christian Church. | 5:33 | |
| This idea of the Trinity has been the basic understanding | 5:37 | |
| which we have had of God for 16 centuries. | 5:45 | |
| And it has permeated all the life and thought of the church | 5:49 | |
| and has even gone into the naming of things, | 5:53 | |
| which Christians hold dear. | 5:55 | |
| Located here in Durham for example, | 5:58 | |
| is a Trinity Methodist church. | 6:00 | |
| In Durham there is a street named Trinity Avenue. | 6:04 | |
| At Duke University, | 6:09 | |
| the undergraduate men's college is called Trinity College. | 6:11 | |
| Ever since the year 1334, | 6:17 | |
| all liturgical churches around the world have celebrated | 6:20 | |
| once a year, Trinity Sunday. | 6:25 | |
| Now this has been on a par with Resurrection Sunday, | 6:31 | |
| and with Advent Sunday, | 6:37 | |
| and with other special Sundays in the Christian year. | 6:39 | |
| So far as the liturgical churches are concerned, | 6:42 | |
| there is no question, | 6:46 | |
| but that this has been a widely accepted belief | 6:48 | |
| or doctrine in the Christian movement. | 6:52 | |
| If you were to turn to the articles of religion, | 6:55 | |
| which set forth the faith of the | 6:59 | |
| Anglican communion around the world, | 7:01 | |
| you would find that the very first article of religion | 7:02 | |
| affirms our belief in the Trinity. | 7:06 | |
| Not simply in God, but in God as one God in three persons. | 7:10 | |
| This is also the first article | 7:16 | |
| of religion in the Ecumenical Methodist Movement. | 7:18 | |
| Which takes in some 15 denominations in the earth. | 7:21 | |
| A while ago when we sang our first hymn of adoration. | 7:25 | |
| Holy holy holy. | 7:29 | |
| We gave praise to God in three persons, blessed Trinity. | 7:30 | |
| As you would note in your bulletin. | 7:37 | |
| When we sing the Gloria Patri, we affirm the Trinity. | 7:39 | |
| The early church fathers, set forth their belief | 7:43 | |
| in the Trinity as did the schoolmen and the reformers, | 7:45 | |
| the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds declare it. | 7:49 | |
| Dr .J. S. Whale | 7:53 | |
| who is a very outstanding British theologian | 7:54 | |
| who preached here in this chapel last year. | 7:56 | |
| Has said in his book on Christian doctrine, | 7:58 | |
| that this is the inescapable Christian doctrine. | 8:01 | |
| There are some Christian doctrines he said, | 8:05 | |
| which have been avoided or escaped by some theologians. | 8:08 | |
| But the doctrine of the Trinity is one which | 8:12 | |
| cannot be escaped ever, | 8:14 | |
| by any serious Christian theologian. | 8:17 | |
| We may interpret in different ways. | 8:19 | |
| We may wish at times that for the sake of | 8:21 | |
| theological clarity and precision, | 8:24 | |
| that we could do away with it, | 8:26 | |
| but we must always come back to it. | 8:28 | |
| There is no escape from it within the Christian community. | 8:30 | |
| Well, so we have before us then, | 8:36 | |
| the doctrine of the Trinity. | 8:38 | |
| It is worthwhile to note however, | 8:44 | |
| that this doctrine came to us in a very practical way | 8:48 | |
| and that it has a very practical bearing upon our lives. | 8:52 | |
| This did not come about as a result of the rarefied | 8:58 | |
| speculation of theoretical theologians who had much leisure | 9:02 | |
| and little duty to perform. | 9:07 | |
| Rather it came about as a belief that was hammered out | 9:10 | |
| on the angle of the experience, | 9:14 | |
| which man had with a God who revealed himself to us, | 9:16 | |
| as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. | 9:20 | |
| And it was because of the empirical experience, | 9:25 | |
| which men had of God in this way, | 9:28 | |
| that we were driven in the fourth century | 9:32 | |
| to come to some kind of a clear statement, | 9:33 | |
| of what it is that we understand about our God. | 9:37 | |
| It is a very practical doctrine. | 9:46 | |
| Walter Russell Bowie has said, | 9:49 | |
| that if we were to divide our Christian doctrines | 9:51 | |
| into two groups, | 9:54 | |
| and call one of them "The revealed Doctrines" | 9:56 | |
| and the other "The Derived Doctrines". | 9:59 | |
| That this would come in the category of | 10:02 | |
| "The Derived Doctrines". | 10:05 | |
| That is to say is a doctrine that is derived out | 10:08 | |
| of the experience which men have had with God, | 10:10 | |
| as they have encountered God. | 10:13 | |
| This faith in the Trinity. | 10:17 | |
| Well, now we've been talking around it here | 10:21 | |
| for a little while. | 10:22 | |
| Let's address ourselves directly to the question | 10:23 | |
| of what is it that we believe | 10:27 | |
| when we say we believe in the Trinity? | 10:29 | |
| Let me suggest that the key word is triune T- R- I- U- N- E. | 10:33 | |
| You will find some hymns in the Methodist Hymnal learning, | 10:42 | |
| hymns of books of other denominations, | 10:45 | |
| which use this word. | 10:49 | |
| The blessed God triune. | 10:51 | |
| This word triune as opposed to tritheism or polytheism. | 10:55 | |
| It is a belief that there is one God in nature | 11:02 | |
| and in substance, | 11:08 | |
| but having three personalities. | 11:10 | |
| That is to say that there is a unity in the nature of God, | 11:16 | |
| which transcends the distinctions of three personalities, | 11:22 | |
| without abolishing the three personalities. | 11:28 | |
| That God has one uncompounded nature or essence. | 11:33 | |
| But that he has made himself known in three persons. | 11:39 | |
| And that he is three persons, triune. | 11:44 | |
| I suppose this would be a good time to pause and admit, | 11:50 | |
| that this doctrine really is basically a mystery. | 11:54 | |
| And no matter how many words we use in our attempt to | 11:58 | |
| describe it, | 12:01 | |
| we shall at the very best end up with a description | 12:02 | |
| of a mystery or a mysterious description of a reality. | 12:06 | |
| We shall not finally satisfy our minds | 12:10 | |
| that we fully comprehend this. | 12:14 | |
| Dr. Robert South, who was an Englishman, | 12:18 | |
| who lived in the 17th century once made the statement that, | 12:21 | |
| the person who denies this fundamental Christian doctrine | 12:25 | |
| of the Trinity may be in danger of losing his soul. | 12:28 | |
| But that the person who attempts to understand it | 12:32 | |
| is in danger of losing his wits. | 12:34 | |
| This may very well be true. | 12:38 | |
| We have to admit that prosaic human words, | 12:40 | |
| break down and are incomplete in their effort to describe, | 12:44 | |
| what we have experienced about God in this area. | 12:49 | |
| But I would like to add parenthetically that this is not the | 12:54 | |
| only area in which human language has been found | 12:57 | |
| to be inadequate to describe experienced realities, | 13:00 | |
| for a long time, | 13:03 | |
| it has been accepted by the human race, | 13:04 | |
| that art and poetry and music, | 13:07 | |
| have been legitimate areas of expression, | 13:12 | |
| of experienced realities that could not be captured | 13:16 | |
| in prosaic words. | 13:19 | |
| And so what we are saying here is simply that | 13:23 | |
| this is one area which has defied the best efforts | 13:24 | |
| of our keenest thinkers, | 13:31 | |
| completely to describe and explain. | 13:34 | |
| But which has been such a recurring experience | 13:40 | |
| of the human race, | 13:43 | |
| that we cannot doubt it anymore than we can explain it. | 13:45 | |
| And so we simply affirm it and say, | 13:49 | |
| "Here is what we believe, | 13:53 | |
| God in three persons, blessed Trinity." | 13:57 | |
| Now ordinarily when a preacher has gone about as far into | 14:03 | |
| his sermon, as I have gone into this one today, | 14:07 | |
| he will stop and say, | 14:11 | |
| "Now friends, | 14:11 | |
| let me give you an illustration of the topic of my sermon." | 14:13 | |
| But there's the rub. | 14:19 | |
| There is no illustration which completely illustrates, | 14:21 | |
| the divine Trinity. | 14:26 | |
| Because the Trinity is unique. | 14:30 | |
| And when something is unique, | 14:34 | |
| there are no exact parallels to it. | 14:35 | |
| But the very definition of something that is unique. | 14:37 | |
| Of course, there have been a great many efforts made | 14:41 | |
| down through the Christian centuries, | 14:44 | |
| to illustrate what we believe and understand | 14:46 | |
| about the Trinity, | 14:49 | |
| but each one of the illustrations has something about it | 14:50 | |
| that makes it break down as an analogy. | 14:52 | |
| One of the symbols that has often been used partially, | 14:58 | |
| to illustrate the Trinity is three circles. | 15:02 | |
| Each one of which overlaps an area of the other two. | 15:06 | |
| So that they are all joined together | 15:12 | |
| by their overlapping of each other. | 15:14 | |
| And this has been one effort that has been made | 15:18 | |
| to illustrate or to symbolize, | 15:21 | |
| what we understand about the nature of God. | 15:24 | |
| That God the father is represented by a circle, | 15:28 | |
| which takes in part of the circle, | 15:32 | |
| that represents God the Son, | 15:35 | |
| and takes in part of the circle, | 15:38 | |
| which represents God the Holy Spirit | 15:40 | |
| and the other two in turn overlap over the | 15:43 | |
| circle that represents God the Father. | 15:45 | |
| This perhaps is one of the oldest efforts, | 15:49 | |
| at illustrating the Trinity. | 15:52 | |
| St. Augustine thought he had done a pretty good job, | 15:55 | |
| of illustrating it. | 15:58 | |
| When he said the Trinity is like a tree, | 15:58 | |
| there are three phases or aspects to a tree, | 16:02 | |
| and yet the same wood he declared is in all of the three. | 16:05 | |
| There are the roots, the trunk and the branches. | 16:10 | |
| And he said that God is like that. | 16:13 | |
| It's the same God in the roots that is in the trunk, | 16:15 | |
| and that is in the branches. | 16:19 | |
| There are difficulties, of course, with this analogy. | 16:21 | |
| Two days ago, | 16:26 | |
| I was in an office in one of the buildings on this campus | 16:27 | |
| and saw a lovely amaryllis in a vase, | 16:30 | |
| on the desk of a secretary. | 16:35 | |
| She had grown this lovely Lily in her garden, | 16:38 | |
| and had brought it, placed it in the vase. | 16:41 | |
| It had one stalk Strong and unified | 16:43 | |
| coming up out of the vase. | 16:49 | |
| And then at the top there were three lilies. | 16:51 | |
| And to the best of my ability to examine them, | 16:54 | |
| each Lilly was identical with the other two. | 16:57 | |
| They were the same. | 17:01 | |
| And yet, when you try to think of that as an illustration | 17:03 | |
| of the Trinity, it breaks down too, | 17:07 | |
| because there are so many points at which, | 17:10 | |
| this illustration is not applicable | 17:12 | |
| to what we believe about God. | 17:15 | |
| In the Boston public library. | 17:18 | |
| We find one of the works of Arachno Sergeant, | 17:21 | |
| who thought that he was going to paint the Trinity. | 17:26 | |
| And so high in the library, | 17:31 | |
| is this painting by Sergeant, | 17:34 | |
| three Kings seated on three Thrones. | 17:36 | |
| And draped around them was a seamless, unending robe. | 17:41 | |
| And he thought he had caught the idea of the Trinity. | 17:51 | |
| But theologians who have reflected upon this have said, | 17:57 | |
| "No, this is not an illustration of the Trinity either, | 18:00 | |
| though there is some mark of similarity." | 18:07 | |
| Perhaps another approach we might make, | 18:12 | |
| in our effort to understand what the Trinity is, | 18:14 | |
| and how it applies to our Christian living, | 18:17 | |
| would be to take a look at some of the views, | 18:21 | |
| that have been expressed about God, | 18:23 | |
| which have not been accepted by the main line of the | 18:27 | |
| Christian Church. | 18:30 | |
| Deism is a faith that there is a God, | 18:33 | |
| but that he is not a person. | 18:36 | |
| And then there is Unitarianism or Universalism which says, | 18:39 | |
| "Yes, there is a God and he is a person, | 18:43 | |
| but there's only one person." | 18:46 | |
| And in line with this idea, | 18:48 | |
| they do not regard Jesus of Nazareth, | 18:50 | |
| as being in any sense divine. | 18:52 | |
| And they do not think of the holy spirit as a separate | 18:54 | |
| personality or as a part of the Godhead. | 18:57 | |
| And then there was Sabellius who taught, | 19:02 | |
| Yes, there are three persons. | 19:05 | |
| Indeed, there are three gods. | 19:08 | |
| And this was the open door that led to Modalism, | 19:12 | |
| where we thought then of God as being unified, | 19:18 | |
| but as expressing himself to mankind in three modes, | 19:23 | |
| or three ways or three faces. | 19:27 | |
| Like an actor who is one person in a play, | 19:30 | |
| but in three different scenes, | 19:33 | |
| he wears three different costumes, | 19:35 | |
| but he is the same person. | 19:37 | |
| And the modalists have said, | 19:41 | |
| there is one unified God who is one person, | 19:42 | |
| but he has expressed himself. | 19:45 | |
| First of all as a Creator, next as the Son | 19:47 | |
| and third as the Holy Spirit, | 19:52 | |
| This view has generally been rejected | 19:56 | |
| by the main line of Christians. | 19:59 | |
| In our own day, there have been two men | 20:01 | |
| who have played a variation on this theme. | 20:03 | |
| Cyril Richardson of union seminary has used the term symbol. | 20:07 | |
| God has three symbols, | 20:12 | |
| or the Trinity is a way of symbolizing, | 20:15 | |
| three manifestations of the one God | 20:19 | |
| Pit Van Dusen has tried to explain his interpretation | 20:23 | |
| of this by saying, | 20:26 | |
| "God is like Teddy Roosevelt," | 20:27 | |
| in that Teddy Roosevelt has been understood | 20:29 | |
| by some people as a statesman, | 20:33 | |
| and by other people, as a hunter, as a frontiersman, | 20:34 | |
| as the leader of the rough riders, | 20:38 | |
| but to the children on Sagamore Hill, | 20:41 | |
| Teddy Roosevelt was known as a tender playmate. | 20:43 | |
| And so he said, Teddy Roosevelt, | 20:48 | |
| has as it were a personality as a statesman, | 20:51 | |
| he had as it were the personality of a hunter, | 20:55 | |
| and he had as it were the personality | 20:59 | |
| of a playmate for little children. | 21:01 | |
| But now the strange thing about | 21:05 | |
| that is that if Teddy Roosevelt, | 21:06 | |
| the statesman were to attempt seriously to confer, | 21:10 | |
| that is to say, | 21:14 | |
| to have a conversation with Teddy Roosevelt as the hunter, | 21:15 | |
| he would not have ended up in the white house, | 21:19 | |
| but in a house with the white coated attendance. | 21:21 | |
| Now we do believe from our scriptural records. | 21:27 | |
| That Jesus Christ believed he had earnest | 21:31 | |
| conversation with God the Father. | 21:36 | |
| So that if you are going to make sense | 21:39 | |
| out of a great deal of the gospel record, | 21:42 | |
| you have to admit that here was a personality known as | 21:43 | |
| Jesus of Nazareth. | 21:47 | |
| Whom we believe was divine having prayerful conversation | 21:48 | |
| with a personality whom we know and whom he declared to be | 21:52 | |
| God the Father. | 21:55 | |
| And then we have also this same Jesus Christ saying to us, | 21:56 | |
| it is expedient that I go away | 22:00 | |
| in order that I might send to you The Holy Spirit. | 22:02 | |
| Who will take what is mine and declare it under you. | 22:07 | |
| So that we have Jesus referring to two other personalities, | 22:11 | |
| whom he identified as divine. | 22:16 | |
| In addition to his own personality, | 22:20 | |
| whom we identify as divine and whom he himself said | 22:23 | |
| that he was the son of God. | 22:28 | |
| So it looks like that if we are going to think of this | 22:32 | |
| mystery of the nature of God as Trinity or as triune. | 22:35 | |
| In terms that are practical to us, | 22:42 | |
| we will think of God in the same way, | 22:43 | |
| that God was revealed us. | 22:47 | |
| Namely, first, as creator, as law giver, | 22:49 | |
| as the fountain of all righteousness, as the judge. | 22:53 | |
| We will think of God then, | 22:56 | |
| as Emmanuel God with us who came and dwelt among us, | 22:59 | |
| in Jesus of Nazareth and explained to us in the terms | 23:05 | |
| which we are able to understand, | 23:09 | |
| what the will and nature of God is as it refers to | 23:12 | |
| and relates to human life. | 23:15 | |
| So that in so far, | 23:19 | |
| as God in his infinite nature | 23:20 | |
| is relevant to human life in its limited aspects, | 23:22 | |
| we can know through seeing Jesus of Nazareth, | 23:25 | |
| what God means for of this world and these people now. | 23:29 | |
| And third, | 23:34 | |
| God the Holy Spirit, | 23:37 | |
| a continuing presence in our midst, | 23:40 | |
| doing what Jesus said he would do, | 23:44 | |
| namely taking the revealed will of God in Christ | 23:46 | |
| and explaining it to us. | 23:50 | |
| Unfolding that the will of God to us, | 23:53 | |
| as we are able to understand it from century to century. | 23:56 | |
| So that now because of the continuing presence | 24:01 | |
| and activity of the holy spirit, | 24:04 | |
| we see implications of the will of God | 24:06 | |
| expressed in Jesus Christ, | 24:09 | |
| which first century Christians did not see. | 24:11 | |
| And for us, | 24:15 | |
| it appears that this was revealed in Christ 2000 years ago. | 24:16 | |
| And doubtless, if this world continues for more centuries, | 24:23 | |
| there will be our children and grandchildren | 24:28 | |
| and great grandchildren | 24:31 | |
| who have been inspired by the holy spirit, | 24:33 | |
| who will wonder why we in this generation did not see | 24:35 | |
| implications in Jesus Christ, | 24:39 | |
| which they see as they are led by the holy spirit. | 24:42 | |
| The holy spirit is God's continuing activity | 24:46 | |
| in our hearts and lives today. | 24:49 | |
| Why do you suppose that there was not | 24:53 | |
| an alcoholics anonymous group a hundred years ago? | 24:55 | |
| Such as has been having its convention in Durham, | 25:00 | |
| for the last two days. | 25:03 | |
| The implications of alcoholics anonymous has always been in | 25:05 | |
| the gospel of Christ. | 25:10 | |
| It has always been the teaching of the gospel that no person | 25:13 | |
| is ever sufficient in himself to overcome his own problems. | 25:17 | |
| It has always been the teaching of the gospel that we should | 25:22 | |
| live only a day at a time ask for grace. | 25:25 | |
| That is to say manna from heaven a day at a time. | 25:27 | |
| And yet it has been only in this generation, | 25:32 | |
| that somehow this idea has caught fire | 25:34 | |
| and has brought hope to hundreds of thousands of persons | 25:37 | |
| who otherwise would have no hope. | 25:41 | |
| This is the work of the holy spirit. | 25:44 | |
| Today there are movements for unity, | 25:48 | |
| abroad in the earth touching many communions, | 25:51 | |
| Christian denominations. | 25:56 | |
| And we say, wow, why was this not done earlier? | 25:59 | |
| Because Jesus in his high priestly prayer, | 26:03 | |
| prayed that his follower might be one. | 26:06 | |
| And yet, somehow it has only come in these recent years, | 26:09 | |
| that this terrific movement | 26:14 | |
| for the unification of the body of Christ has caught fire. | 26:16 | |
| I believe this is the work of the Holy Spirit | 26:21 | |
| In March of this year, | 26:25 | |
| the the Duke University Board of Trustees. | 26:27 | |
| And in April, the Wake Forest College Board of Trustees, | 26:30 | |
| took action saying that any son or daughter of God, | 26:33 | |
| who is qualified to do academic work | 26:39 | |
| might apply for admission at Duke or Wake forest. | 26:42 | |
| I believe this is a work of the Holy Spirit. | 26:46 | |
| The holy spirit of God is working now in the hearts | 26:50 | |
| and lives of people to bring about, | 26:55 | |
| the doing of the will of God. | 26:59 | |
| But now there's something very interesting for us to notice | 27:01 | |
| in this connection. | 27:03 | |
| If when Jesus of Nazareth, | 27:06 | |
| was walking on this earth in the flesh, | 27:10 | |
| it could be said that God the Father | 27:13 | |
| was at work in Jesus Christ, | 27:16 | |
| reconciling the world unto himself. | 27:19 | |
| It can with just as much truth | 27:22 | |
| and force be said today that God the Father | 27:25 | |
| and God the Son are at work in the holy spirit, | 27:28 | |
| reconciling the world unto God. | 27:32 | |
| And there is no sense in which the Holy Spirit | 27:35 | |
| and God the father were not at work in Jesus of Nazareth. | 27:38 | |
| And there is no sense in which when God the Father | 27:42 | |
| is doing his creative work | 27:44 | |
| and explaining his creative purposes, | 27:47 | |
| that the Holy Spirit and God the Son, are not present. | 27:49 | |
| There is a unity in the Godhead. | 27:53 | |
| But finally, I think we have to admit, | 27:59 | |
| as we've already indicated that this is a mystery | 28:01 | |
| and true sons and daughters of God, | 28:04 | |
| may explain this mystery in different words. | 28:07 | |
| And we should not break fellowship with those who use | 28:10 | |
| different words than we use, | 28:12 | |
| in explaining the manifestations of God. | 28:14 | |
| This is particularly true in view of the fact that | 28:17 | |
| at the time this first doctrine was developed, | 28:19 | |
| the word person did not even the same thing | 28:22 | |
| that it means today. | 28:26 | |
| And so when they said God, in three persons, | 28:28 | |
| they were not meaning exactly what we mean when we say that | 28:31 | |
| and to come right down to it, | 28:35 | |
| we in 1961 don't even know what human personality is, | 28:37 | |
| much less divine. | 28:41 | |
| there're studies going on in psychological laboratories, | 28:44 | |
| at a good many places in this earth in an attempt | 28:46 | |
| to find out what human personality is after all. | 28:49 | |
| And we don't know for sure. | 28:52 | |
| What is a person? | 28:55 | |
| who can give a definition that is acceptable to all? | 28:57 | |
| Much less then should we move with recklessness, | 29:02 | |
| to draw lines and set boundaries for the personality of God | 29:06 | |
| and say all who do not agree with these are out. | 29:10 | |
| Rather, I think we answer the question of | 29:15 | |
| how can three be one? | 29:17 | |
| In our practical lives, in our spiritual living, | 29:20 | |
| in our devotion, and dedication. | 29:25 | |
| We do it by praying to God the Father | 29:29 | |
| in the name of his son Jesus Christ, | 29:32 | |
| as we are prompted by the Holy Spirit to pray. | 29:36 | |
| we do it by living in such way that the purpose, | 29:40 | |
| which God the father had in mind when he created the earth. | 29:44 | |
| And which was made plain in the life of God the Son. | 29:48 | |
| Will by the help of the Holy Spirit be actualized | 29:53 | |
| in our lives personally. | 29:58 | |
| And in our social order. | 30:00 | |
| This is the working way in which three can be one. | 30:02 | |
| Gloriously in the redemption of mankind | 30:10 | |
| and in the doing of the will of God the Father, | 30:14 | |
| God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. | 30:17 | |
| Oh God, our heavenly father. | 30:27 | |
| We make bold to come to the thy throne of grace, | 30:30 | |
| in this and in every time of need. | 30:33 | |
| Because thy son whom we came to know and to trust | 30:37 | |
| has bidden us to do so. | 30:42 | |
| And because through the mysterious working | 30:45 | |
| of thy Holy Spirit, | 30:49 | |
| we find grace in our hearts today to turn toward thee, | 30:50 | |
| and to make this prayer. | 30:55 | |
| And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, | 30:57 | |
| the love of God father and the communion of the Holy Spirit. | 31:01 | |
| Be with you now and ever more. | 31:05 | |
| - | (man) Good night sweet ladies, | 31:15 |
| good night, good night, good night. | 31:16 |