Council Meeting Minutes May 11 2012

May 11th, 2012 Meeting Minutes
Present:
Peter B, Richard G, Sam E, Tim J

Large Group #6: Understanding (but not Comprehending) the Trinity

Hey everyone! Sorry for being behind on large group posts (not sure who reads them, but hopefully they're helpful for those of you who do). We'll be getting #s 4 and 5 up soon hopefully. I hope midterms were good for you all :)

Monday night, our grad student brother Yan Choi led a theological discussion about the Trinity, providing scriptural passages and the Athanasian Creed for us to study (see full post for more info).

Why is it important to study hard-to-grasp doctrine like the Trinity? It's because we want to know how to properly respond to God (like how to worship, pray, etc.), and being able to do that requires us to know the important aspects about God. (A way to help us distinguish which aspects are the "important" ones is to think of the distinctive qualities of our God. For instance, we have a monotheistic belief, but we also have three parts in one God.)

When we worship, pray, hear the word, read the word--basically when we are relating to God--we are relating to the Trinity. Eg. when we pray, the the commonly accepted way is to pray to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. And we have knowledge, too, that the Holy Spirit is with us and teaches us how to pray.

So we know that understanding the Trinity is important, despite being hard to grasp. So read onward to get material on the Trinity and how we tried to wrestle with these concepts. (props to Yan Choi for the notes)