Outline for MACS course on the Trinity

Posted here for collaboration purposes while the course is being developed.

Background
Several months ago, Ed was soliciting ideas from people who had been involved with MACS Classes in the past and I hatched the idea of doing a course on the Trinity. Because the intention is to structure courses in four-week blocks, I expanded it to involve discussions of the deity of Jesus, the deity of the Holy Spirit and the character of God the Father. The outline as it has developed to date is as below (the order is still tentative).
In each segment I want to emphasize ...

• group input and discussion;
• why these concepts matter to us in day-to-day life;
• Scriptural support.

Content
1. The Deity of Jesus

• Verses that indicate Jesus is God
  • his claims about himself
  • his actions
  • the claims of others on his behalf


• Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah
• Old Testament theophanies and Christophanies
• Objections or alternative theories of Jesus' nature; responses to them
  
  • If Jesus was divine, how could he say things like "Who touched me?", "the Father is greater than I" and how could he be surprised ("He was amazed, and said, 'I have not found faith like this in Israel'")?
  • Answer: He had both a fully human nature and fully divine nature, and these were occasions when it was consistent with his will and mission to operate within the confines of his human nature. Conversely, on other occasions he made statements and did actions that were consistent with his divine nature.
    
  • If Jesus was divine, why there were things that the Father knew that he didn't: e.g., ("Not the angels, nor even the Son, but only the Father")?
    • Answer: "Equal" is not the same as "identical." They are one Being but three Persons.
  
  
• Why it matters to us on a practical level that Jesus is divine, and not merely a created being (even one of a very high order).

2. The Deity of the Holy Spirit

• Verses that indicate that the Holy Spirit is a Person and not just an impersonal force
• Verses that indicate the Holy Spirit is divine
• The function of the Holy Spirit, to point to Jesus
• Why it matters to us that the Holy Spirit is divine

3. The Character of God the Father
There would be a different emphasis here because we obviously don't need to defend the idea that the Father is divine. Instead, I would focus on God's attributes and why they matter to us in daily Christian life.

• Omniscience: God knows everything, past, present and future.
  
  • How can God know everything and we can still have free will (and therefore accountability)?
• Omnipotence: God is infinitely powerful.
• Omnipresence: God is everywhere.
• Some objections to God's existence and nature, and how to respond to them.
  Responses to questions such as:
  • "If God created everything, where did God come from?"
    • Answer: The question presupposes that God exists in time in the same way we do, i.e., He has to "come from" anywhere. This is a false assumption because time is a means of measuring part of His creation, i.e., the physical universe, and He is no more bounded by time than by distance or by any other measurement of the universe. "I am that I am."
      Why this matters practically to us.
  • "Is there anything God can't do?"
    • Answer: Yes, there are many things He can't do, and they can all be summed up in the phrase God cannot do anything that is contrary to His nature.
      Why this matters to us.

4. The Trinity

• Verses that indicate God is three Persons in one Being.
• Old Testament verses that point to the Trinity.
• Discussion of how the three Persons are co-equal and co-eternal, equal in prerogative and divinity but different in role and in interaction with us
• Why this matters practically to us.
  • In a strictly monotheistic view, God would be incapable of love and communication without having creatures to share these things. In essence they wouldn't be part of his nature, i.e., even these attributes would be created, not innate. But with the Trinity you have love and communication in eternal existence between the Persons of the Trinity, not contingent on us creatures to share them.