Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Trying To Be More Trinitarian

One thing that I have been challenged on recently is my overall lack of Trinitarianism.

It's Carl Trueman's fault. The guy is an absolute menace to a comfortable pew-sitter like me. I was listening to his lectures on medieval church theology (which are worth listening to, despite the audio problems, which I think are due to a less-than-successful transfer from cassette), and he mentioned on several occasions that a pet peeve of his is the functional unitarianism of the evangelical church.

And doggonit if he isn't right. I mean, when was the last time you included all three members of the Trinity in your prayers?

I think prayer is where the whole thing intersected for me, because I was already feeling the weight of not praying as I should, and then to have this added to it, was really the tipping point for me.

There's more that could be said--more that I could go into--but now isn't the time. Instead, I'll just say that I'm working on all of those things, and a part of my inspiration is by looking at published historical prayers.

The Book Of Common Prayer is one of the most obvious, but not the only one by any means. But there are other things as well, like this book on Presbyterian Liturgy (I'm currently reading through Calvin's prayers), and this book of prayers and meditations by Anselm (that last was recommended by Trueman in his lectures, BTW).

The point is this: I'm trying to make progress in thinking Trinitarian, so that I will pray more Trinitarian.

What about you?

3 comments:

David said...

I get your point, but how does Jesus' instruction to pray to the Father in his name fit into this?

Matt Gumm said...

My knee-jerk reaction, "I'm a blogger, not a theologian," is both trite and wrong. So I guess I just have to say that I don't know, and I'm still wrestling through it.

Perhaps it would be better to say "prayed to the Father about the work of the Holy Spirit?"

David said...

Something like that, I think. But then, I'm just a blogger.