Had an interesting turn of conversation yesterday. One of the senior attorneys came in, and since he is conservative too (in an office space that is more left-leaning), we talk quite a bit. Through the normal twists and turns of conversations, (interesting indeed!) he ended up asking what mainstream Christianity believes about a topic. Coming from a Mormon viewpoint, I think he meant kind of a basic evangelical perspective. But as he was talking, he really came down on the trinity as a demonic invention of the early church.

I politely listened and was prepared to defend it if he wanted me to, but he didn’t ask, so I let it go. I just listened. But it started me thinking about 2 different things.

The first is that while I typically look to bridge gaps and find commonalities, Mormonism is clearly NOT Christianity. They use the same terminology, but despite superficial similarities, there is a whole different doctrine of who God is and a whole different set of references for where they get that info.

The second is, while I could defend the trinity as a biblical doctrine, I thought it might be better to start from a different point: give a broader look at the gospel, and then demonstrate why the trinity is essential to that. 

So I thought I’d put together something along these lines.

The bible gives us an overview of history, starting with the creation in Genesis to the restoration in Revelation.

With the creation of the world, God says it was good. Man dwelt with God in the garden of Eden.

Sin broke that fellowship and man was driven out of God’s presence. The Bible then details the process of God overcoming the obstacle of sin and restoring fellowship between God and man.

When Israel is given the law, they are told that if they are holy, God would be in their midst, be their God, and they would be his people. The law showed us that we were sinners, and the sacrifices showed us what was necessary to overcome sin, because holiness was needed to dwell with God.

They were told there would be a Messiah that would come and redeem them. But who alone can save but God? The answer is no one! 

Jesus, as God in the flesh, fulfilled that the law by paying the penalty for us. He died on the cross in our place so we wouldn’t have to. But more to the point, he rose again so we could too. He overcame the stain of sin and cleared our debt so that God could dwell with us. We are given a ‘down payment’ of this when we are told both the Holy Spirit and Jesus would dwell within believers. But we look forward to the day when all creation will finally be redeemed and set right again.

Finally in Revelation at the completion of all things, we see this phrase – Now the dwelling place of God is with men. 

The attempt to deny Jesus as God, places salvation elsewhere. But the book of Romans is clear that salvation comes through faith in Jesus. And that faith is another non-negotiable part of the equation. The law was clear that we could never be good enough to dwell with God. It is only through the atoning sacrifice that sin could be paid.

All schemes that demote Jesus to less than God necessarily place salvation outside of God. And consequently, places salvation in works, the very thing we should have learned was pointless.

 God’s grace is free, and in him we find rest from our burden of sin. Any plot to do away with salvation by grace through Jesus, is necessarily turning man back to a failed system of works. That system was never meant to save anyone, it was only meant to show us how fruitless our works were. 

So the point of history is for God to be able to dwell with man. Sin broke that and so had to be overcome. Only God himself could possibly pay the price of sin.

This is the basic outline. I’ll want to refine it, and add the references as footnotes or something.. (can we do footnotes in tumblr? ) But that’s the basic story- a story of redemption, salvation, and being set free from the burden of trying to be good enough.