Trinitarian Baptism FTW??

To those who read my blog,

So, I am taking this Theology of Worship course at school and the big emphasis in this course is participating in worship with the focus on the Trinity rather than one aspect of God. I don’t get it. Well, it’s not that I don’t get it, but that it’s something I’m wrestling with.

James B. Torrance has a book that I’m reading for this course called,Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace where in it he says:

“Firstly, I have been a child of God from all eternity. Secondly, I became a child of God when Christ the Son lived, died and rose for me long ago. Thirdly, I became a child of God when the Holy Spirit... sealed in my faith and experience what had been planned from all eternity in the heart of the Father and what was completed once and for all in Jesus Christ” (Torrance 76).

Now Torrance is talking about baptism at this point in time. Here’s what I think: I believe in freewill over predestination. I do not believe God sits “up there” on a cloud and looks to heaven and makes a list saying, “yeah, he goes up, but him, he goes down”. I know there’s more to that thought process than all that, but that’s what I get out of it and I really don’t like it. I have an understanding of predestination because the Bible does speak of it but I don’t subscribe to it as God making the decision for us. It’s more that He knew before all things that I would choose. So when I first read this quote I thought to myself, “That’s all well and good, but how do you argue this whole Trinitarian thing from the whole freewill stance?” Then I realized that I don’t have to. Torrance (whether he meant it or not) argued it for me.

Maybe I’m just an optimist, but I look at this quote and think of God working in a stance of freewill. If God knows all things, then He would know that I would choose Him from when time began (and perhaps even from before that). He might have already cherished me as a child at that point.

If I was made a child of God when Christ lived, died and rose then perhaps my view on the cross is actually skewed. I look at the cross as something that was done once 2000 years ago. Now, doesn’t the Father exist outside of time? Then would He not look at the cross as not a moment in time, or as an eternal standing that is a significant today as it was yesterday and as it would be tomorrow? When I chose Christ, He took my hand and led me to the Father and it was the cross which He needed to get by in order to allow me to see the Father. He needed to bridge the gap with the cross. The cross that does not exist 2000 years ago, but here and now and also there and then, and even still there and soon. It did exist, it does exist, it will exist tomorrow. I really don’t think that means Christ is experiencing the cross all the time but more so that the Father sees the Cross when He sees those who chose Him and it is in the Cross that we are made children, even back then.

What really made it come together for me was when Torrance says faith and experience. He does not separate the two. He goes onto say that the Father planned this from eternity, but maybe the Father just knew about it from eternity. I don’t know. That experience thing really sticks with me. I don’t know if I would have gone to Christ if my experiences were different. If I didn’t have the people praying for me that I had, if I didn’t get so wrecked so many times in my youth, if I wasn’t so utterly broken that weekend, then perhaps I wouldn’t be musing on the Trinity at 2:40am and instead be  in a bed in Brampton Ontario wondering if there was more to life than my atheist views allowed me to see. I don’t know.

So what does this have to do with baptism? Well a lot, actually. We are called to baptize in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit. We are to baptize in the Trinity. What does baptizing in the Trinity mean if not recognizing how the Trinity has been active in our lives? It means to recognize that the Father knew you and what you would do from the get go, that the Son’s bridge was set up and is in place in eternity for all to cross if they wish, and that the Spirit takes our faith and our experience and draws us to that bridge so that we can meet with our adopted dad who has been waiting such a long time to embrace us and as I write this I am so filled with emotion right now. I am realizing this love, maybe even for the first time (truly for the first time) or perhaps I’m just re-falling for the same God that I fell for almost 7 years ago. This Father who has taken me out of such crap and blessed me with true love over and over again.

I am not saying that I understand the Trinity or that this is what Torrance meant when he wrote these words (in fact, he might be quite upset with the conclusions I’ve drawn up for myself) but I am saying that I love my dad, my ‘Father who arte in heaven’, my papa, and I’m glad I have Him to run too.

Back to work. Sorry for rattling on.

- Joshua