Trinitarian Hospitality, A Parishioner’s Reflections

On reflecting on my sermon on Biblical Hospitality, one of my parishioners, Gracie Scott, offered some thoughts and applications based on her study of the issue framed by a Trinitarian model:

God, the three in one, is hospitably life giving, so how are we to be also?

Triune God – Father, Christ, Holy Spirit

FATHER: Breaths life into man (6th day)

Man: Gen. 1:28 Christians are to be fathers as well (parenting as a type of hospitality)

CHRIST: Justification, He awakens the soul through His blood

Man: Welcome the lost into our homes that they may see and hear the Good News (eating with the tax collectors who are in need a Physician, Mark 2:17)

HOLY SPIRIT: Sanctification – aids and speaks throughout our life after justification

Man: Fellowship with fellow believers. “Iron sharpening iron” (Prov. 27:17) throughout sanctification.

Another parishioner, Kandace Trotter, summarized in her senior thesis the contrast between selfishness and the God who delights in hosting:

The selfishness pervasive today does not take into account that God is hospitable, and each person of the Trinity acts selflessly toward the other, always serving one another in love (Smith 22, 41). Just as the Trinity is serving one another in love, so we should be serving with hearts overflowing with love. Hospitality is an act of physical and spiritual selflessness, so let us take this virtue and apply it in our daily lives, seeing that selflessness and hospitality flow out of love and respect for the Triune nature of God (Peterson 17).

Well done, ladies!

Tolkien and Lewis

In the preface to Colin Duriez’s Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship, he writes that “It was Tolkien who helped to persuade Lewis, for many years as an atheist, that the claims of the Christian story, in its humble setting in first-century Palestine, should not be ignored, appealing both to the intellect and the imagination.” (preface, x)

Mormonism and Joel Osteen

The same questions asked in the early church are being asked again in the 21st century. The Nicene Creed, a standard summary of Christianity, is threatened on a regular basis.

With the political scene heating up, and the Romney ticket becoming certain, the national debate is beginning to focus on the religious affiliation of candidates. This being the case, Romney’s Mormonism will take central stage again much like Kennedy’s Roman Catholicism in the 60’s.

Many evangelicals will taste the Republican pie certain of its bitter taste. However, they will claim its bitterness is tolerable. The more sophisticated evangelicals will argue that this is a necessary step, an incremental move that will bear fruit in the long term. The bottom line is Obama must go, and Romney is the likely candidate to assure this desired exit.

At the same time, there are a growing number of Christians who not only argue on the basis of Romney’s unconvincing credentials as a conservative, but also that his Mormon faith is unhealthy, and undesirable in the quest for a Christian republic.

Though many politicians play their religious syncretism with skill, Romney’s faith is unquestionably headed towards Utah. So, does this mean evangelicals need to back up in their creedal dogmatism? Or should they insist that a line is a line? Or did Athanasius die in vain?

Kennedy was quick to throw the pope under the bus. Will Romney do the same with Thomas S. Monson? Further, how will evangelicals undertake this theological analysis? Will they be able to distinguish properly between a non-Trinitarian and a worshiper of the One who is Three and One? These types of discussions will undoubtedly continue in the days ahead. Christians–many of whom I respect–have taken the “anything but” argument, and will push for a Romney presidency. If these evangelicals pursue this route–and there are many noble ones who will– may they be sure that they not confuse their Christ for an unknown god.

Mormonism–for all its moral qualities–is not Christian. Joel Osteen’s version of Jesus Christ is not Christian. His appeal to a broader view of Jesus–though politically savvy–is precisely the type of affirmation Jesus rejected. The Christian cannot afford to lose precision at this point. Our confession cannot be compromised:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.