INTRODUCTION:

The Trinity implies that relationships are NOT created by sheer choice, but are built into the very essence of human nature that is made in the image of God. The virtues and graces given to believers through salvation are relational graces. Righteousness, love, truth, and meekness are manifested in our relationships—they are relational graces which are to reflect the blessedness of communion within the Godhead.

I. The Holy Trinity is the foundation for understanding sociology from a theistic vantage point.

A. Who or what determines social order? Government? Popular vote? Statistical analysis?

God’s order in creation includes social order. In his excellent series, The Truth Project, Del Tackett states that God has given us countless examples of order and systems in the physical creation. This means that the social institutions God has given us are awesome in design; they are permeated with beauty and glory; they are the direct result of divine design and not the result of chance. These social institutions are intended for our good and for His glory. (i)
The real battleground today is in created social order. To refuse to see created social order is a visceral reaction coming from man’s rebellion against God. Man rejects the truth of created social order because man does not wish to gaze upon the face his holy Creator.
Our triune God is a social being—this social dimension of God is bound up in His very being. Three persons and one essence—this means that unity and diversity are contained in His own being. And, it means that the relationship between unity and diversity are resolved in God’s own being. When God created social order, He stamped the imprint of His own nature and being upon marriage—the first institution He created.
Submission within the Godhead and submission within marriage are directly related. We go to the source of authority and submission, the Godhead, in order to understand it rightly. Without this action of going to God through the Scriptures, authority and submission are used wrongly by mankind—history is replete with negative examples of their abuse. (ii)
God states that it is not good for the man to be alone (Gen 2:18). In the creation of Eve, He moves Adam from aloneness to relationship to community. Adam goes from solitary to experiencing intimacy, union, community, fellowship, and love. But it is important to note that these relational virtues had existed eternally in the Trinity. (iii)

B. Natural (moral) law is an extension of God’s nature. Natural law is not based upon some abstract principle which is outside of God (R. C. Sproul). Natural law is defined as a rule or 2 body of rules of conduct inherent in human nature and essential to, or binding upon human society.

Thus, to go against God’s blueprint and structure for marriage, family, and church is to go against God’s nature. God’s triune nature is the source of social laws which are to govern the structure of marriage, and family, and church. These divinely ordained social laws are the only true source of unity within these social institutions which He has created (Rom 7:12).
We see and behold in awe, beams of God’s glory through the lens of the social laws and institutions He has created. When God’s social laws are rejected, social pathologies are the consequence. When God says that He hates divorce in Malachi chapter two, He is not just addressing pragmatics alone—or the reality that divorce creates emotional pain. God’s hatred of divorce speaks of His hating the fact that divorce destroys the picture of unbreakable commitment and union in the Godhead and in God’s redemptive covenant with His people.

In today’s world the pathologies of the family are overwhelming. God created the family for intimacy, fellowship, security, honor, unity, love, oneness, respect, nurture, and belonging. The pathologies which discount God’s social laws destroy those virtues. (iv)
The sanctity of divinely created social institutions is captured in a quote from Abraham Kuyper, “If God created . . . [the] social spheres [of marriage, family, and church] for a purpose, then they are sovereign and the state is not sovereign over . . . [these] social spheres.” This has become a critical battle zone in our day and age. Over one secular hundred years of psychology have convinced our culture that social institutions ‘tend to be repressive’ (thus, a part of man’s problems), and therefore ought to be subservient to the state.

C. The Holy Trinity’s eternal communion is the source of the believer’s mystical union with Christ (Jn 14-17; Col 1-2).

Jesus declares this mystery, “I am in the Father, you are in Me, and I am in you” (Jn 14:20; 17:21ff.). This is incredible—it means that Christianity is defined by a social sphere emanating from the communal life of the Trinity. Believing sinners are not just being saved from eternal hell, they are brought into the pattern of the relational life of the Holy Trinity. Through Christ God makes us sons and friends—forever companions who will dwell in the Father’s house

This is remarkable—Christ is giving us His own right-relatedness to the Trinity so that we might be invited into the intimacy of the Godhead. When this reality makes its proper impact upon us, we cannot walk in the world anymore without bearing the reality of who we are in Christ. (v)
This stunning aspect of our spiritual wealth—that we are adopted by God to experience the life of the Trinity also deepens our discernment of sin. Here is the reason why. When divinely ordained social laws (including God-ordained gender distinctions) are blurred, there is a radical de-valuing of marriage, family, and church. When the laws which produce the unity within each of these institutions of God are ignored, disunity and disharmony are the result. This fact must fill our preaching, teaching, and counseling if we are to answer the moral revolution.

God has a precise, all-wise plan for unity within these social structures. In marriage the unity is grounded in the two becoming one flesh. God has given us social laws to protect, sanction, and nurture this one flesh unity in marriage. In the community of the church it is one body with many members—we are members one of another. In Scripture God has given us social laws which safeguard and enhance the unity of the body of Christ. Thus, to view these social institutions from the perspective of the Trinity provides for us a ‘big picture’ vantage point. How vital this is since in our culture we are daily bombarded with the narrative of the moral revolution, namely that equality is only possible if God’s social laws are eliminated.

God’s all-wise plan for unity calls for reverent reflection—the redeemed will ultimately be brought into the relational life of the Trinity. Therefore, pursuing unity and harmony within marriage and within the church now is inseparable from our sanctification. And, this pursuit of harmony is preparation for experiencing the communal life of the Trinity in the glory to come. This gives us a glorious perspective which is exceedingly broad and a scope which is eternal. (vi)

II. The doctrine of the Trinity has profound implications for all reality, and for all social relations including gender relations.

A. To defend the family against state agendas, we need to make a case that only the biblical drama of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration gives a realistic, yet humane account of human nature and of the structure and purpose of the family in society.

In Ted Peter’s impious book, For the Love of Children, he suggests that each parent be required to make a legal contract with his or her children. His proposal is intended to shift from the biological family to a social structure based upon choice alone. This would turn the family into a collection of disconnected, individuals, bound by no attachments or obligations they do not choose for themselves. This is called ontological individualism. It is based on the idea that individuals are the only reality. Relationships become ‘social contracts’ made out of convenience and preference. Peters is stating that relationships are not ultimate (or part of God’s creational design)—only derivative, created by individual choice.
Bedrock reality is that the Holy Trinity provides the divine basis for all social relations. The human race was created in the image of God who is three Persons so intimately related as to constitute one Godhead. The balance of unity and diversity in the Trinity gives a model for human social life because the Trinity implies that both individuality and relationship exist within the Godhead. God is ‘Being-in-Communion’. (vii)
Trinitarian Christian worldview is the only coherent basis for social theory. The Trinity as the foundation of human sociality is not merely theoretical. For, in redemption, believers are called to form an actual society—the Church—that demonstrates to the world the balanced interplay between the one and the many, of unity and individuality. Consider what Jesus is saying in John 17:11, “I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are.” Our Savior is opening up the marvelous truth that the communion of Persons within the Trinity is the model for communion within the Church. It teaches us how to foster richly diverse individuality within ontologically real relationships. Timothy Ware notes, “The Church as a whole is an icon of God the Trinity, reproducing on earth the mystery of unity in diversity.” (viii) The redeemed are called upon to reproduce on earth the mystery of mutual love that the Trinity lives in heaven. (ix)
Gender roles and sexuality have become the focal point in the battle of worldviews. At this ‘ground zero’ battle zone, the forces of secular humanism and feminism have sought to relativize all of the ethical mandates of Scripture, especially those which apply to marriage, family, sacredness of life, sacredness of sexual relations, and gender roles. The Trinity is the foundation for male and female being equal in dignity and value; yet having different roles.

Relations within the Trinity and relations within marriage have a parallel. Communal relations involve listening, deferring, and trusting. There is headship resident in one of the members. There is a difference in roles; yet equality. The Trinity is the model for headship and submission. The difference in roles within the Trinity will continue for all eternity (1 Cor 15:28). Because of diversity with perfect equality, the Trinity forms the pattern for relationships without inferiority. (x)

The Trinity as unity and diversity in the Godhead is the model for human social life. (Note the unity and diversity in the ‘body’ metaphor in 1 Cor 12; Eph 4; Phil 2; and Col 3). Our defense against radical individualism is as follows, as stated in our introduction: The Trinity implies that relationships are NOT created by sheer choice, but are built into the very essence of human nature that is made in the image of God.

Our relationships are designed by God to express the character of our Creator. The doctrine of the economic Trinity is a threat to the egalitarianism promoted by progressivism. Politically liberal thought insists that roles are anchored in capacity and preference, and not in gender. But, this opinion involves completely severing their view of relationships from the Trinity. As Bible teachers we need to know why gender confusion is a frontal attack on the doctrine of God. The Scriptures teach that the roles within the economic Trinity are eternal. (xi)
The differences in male female roles in marriage are part of the created order. See Genesis 2, (Adam naming the animals before Eve was created); Genesis 3, (Adam responsible for morally representing the human race); 1 Corinthians 11:9 (the created order, source, and purpose of each gender); 1 Timothy 2:13 (order and source of each gender’s creation). The real issue in gender role is God’s reflected glory on earth. The complementarian view (male and female complete one another by their gender, and by their gender roles) alone preserves the reflected glory of our Triune God in male female relationships. The complementarian view states that in Scripture God has revealed His specific pattern and plan for gender roles. (xii)
Wayne Grudem’s chart below assists us in understanding how the Holy Trinity shapes our social relations, and why we must not deviate from God’s design:

Each Person in the Trinity eternally and equally possesses the whole substance of the Godhead, yet each is distinct from the others. The members of the Trinity differ from one another by the relations in which they stand to each other (the economic Trinity). Each has absolute personality. The Son is the self-reproduction of the Father (Heb 1:1-3; 5) of whom He is eternally begotten. The Holy Spirit is the reproduction of the Father and the Son, and the Spirit proceeds from both (Jn 14:16, 17, 26;16:7). (xiii)
The importance of the Trinity to apologetics is immense. Anti-Trinitarianism always leads to a “wholly other” God, rather than a God who is transcendent in the biblical sense. Paradoxically, it also leads to a God who is relative to the world rather than sovereign Lord of Scripture (a “blank” God without absolute personality). It makes the Creator-creature distinction a matter of degree, rather than difference in being. Because of the Trinity (both three and one), God can be described in personalistic terms without being made relative to the world. The Trinity answers philosophy’s religious quest, namely, “Why is there no absolute unity (devoid of plurality), nor absolute plurality (devoid of unity)?” (xiv)

The unitarian god (or non-trinitarian god) is unknowable (blank oneness or utter uniqueness). A mono-personal god (unitarian) cannot possess relational attributes unless he decides to create creatures with whom he may relate. By contrast, the God of Scripture is the only absolute, and that absolute is the one and the many.
There is an infinite difference between the ontological Trinity and bare monotheism. We teach that the very nature of God exists in one substance and in three Persons. The tri-personal, or Trinitarian doctrine of God is the only possible monotheism. The way in which monotheism is used in the academy is not really describing the God of Scripture, why? Because there is no such God as a god who is mono-personal (only one person)! Islam and Judaism are committed to the proposition that God is mono-personal. Note the terminology used by the religious leaders who rejected Christ’s divinity, “He deserves to die—He made Himself equal to God by calling God His Own Father” (Jn 5:18; 10:33). (xv)

So-called, ‘monotheists’ (in reality, unitarians) are only worshipping the figment of their imagination (in reality they are atheists or idolaters). Christians are the only true worshippers of the one true, triune God on the face of the earth.

The ontological Trinity refers to God as three Persons, one substance, equal in power and glory. The economic Trinity refers to God in respect to His relation to us, especially redemption. We must understand the ontological Trinity in order to understand the economic Trinity. Only 20% of professing Christendom believes in the redemptive work of all three members of the Economic Trinity: the Father allocating redemption; the Son accomplishing redemption; the Holy Spirit applying redemption. The other 80% plus of Christendom worldwide still places their hope in the sacraments, as if their use constitutes the application of salvation. (xvi)

B. Are moral requirements governing our relationships an imposition on our freedom, OR are they the expression of our true nature as coming from the hand of our triune Creator?

The ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau inspired many of the ‘butchers’ of the 20th Century. If you grasp Rousseau’s thinking, you will understand much of the modern world. Rousseau described what he designated a “pre-social” condition or “state of nature.” In this ‘pre-social’ condition, all social relations are not real, but choices. He envisioned man in a state of nature stripped of all social relationships, morals, laws, customs, and traditions. All that exists are disconnected autonomous individuals whose sole driving force is desire for self-motivation. Rousseau viewed society (and the social relations proscribed by God; the institutions of marriage, church, and family) as oppressive, confining, and contrary to our nature. (xvii)
For Rousseau, what was oppressing man’s natural freedom were the ‘chains’ of relationships such as marriage, family, church, and workplace. His line of thought represented a radical break from the traditional Christian social theory which regards the Trinity as the model for social life (in Genesis, the original man in nature was blessed with the institution of marriage).

The implications of the doctrine of the Trinity is that relationships are just as real and ultimate as individuals. Relationships are part of the created order, thus ontologically good and real. The moral requirements they make upon us are not impositions on our freedom, but expressions of what it means to be human (our true nature). Participating in institutions of family, church, state, and society are part of the Christian’s development of moral virtues that prepare us ultimately to be citizens of the heavenly city. (xviii)
Rousseau spelled out a vision in which the state would destroy all social ties; the individual would only have to be loyal to self. Since the state was the ‘liberator’, each person would be dependent upon the state. No wonder this inspired so many totalitarian regimes! Thomas Hobbes and John Locke proposed the concept as well (each of these three men wrote before Darwin’s time). Darwin’s ‘creation myth’ (evolution) would someday supply the theory that would give credence to the idea of the indeterminate, ‘happy’ beast, namely prehistoric, or early man. These pre-Darwinian thinkers (Rousseau, Hobbes, and Locke) suggested that the 7 reason social relationships are bad is because they interfere with the individual’s ‘freedom’ to create himself. Relationships that are not the product of choice are oppressive (i.e. the biological bonds of family, moral bonds of marriage, spiritual bonds of the church). The only bond which retains autonomous freedom then is the social contract (traditional social ties would be dissolved and then reconstituted on the basis of choice). (xix)

C. Scripture reveals that every worldview based on faulty concepts of Creation; the Fall; and Redemption, will ultimately be hostile to true freedom (instigating rebellion against God). Why was the 20th Century the bloodiest in history? Whole cultures adopted worldviews based upon faulty definitions of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. Thus, they fell into false definitions of the nature of man, false definitions of man’s predicament, and false solutions to man’s problems (false definitions of human flourishing led to false visions of utopia).

The autonomous individual with his false view of freedom is actually the most vulnerable to totalitarian control. Students today who have never read Locke can parrot the notion of social contract. They have bought into the liberal idea of the ‘unencumbered self’ (marriage, family, and church may be ties they have not ‘chosen’—therefore these ties can be viewed as standing in the way of the complete autonomy of the individual). This is the devil’s anthropology; the idolatrous concept of complete autonomy. In that view of man, the core of personhood is our ability to choose our own identity—to create ourselves. This is why from this idolatrous perspective, that relationships and responsibilities are so often considered hostile to essential identity, or God-ordained identity. (xx)

III. The implications of the Trinity for Christian ministry

A. It has been said that the doctrine of the Trinity is the ‘grammar’ of the Christian life and faith. (xxi) “In all of His dealings with us, personal, corporate, social and cosmic, God goes the way of His Trinitarian being.” (xxii) Yet, we so easily divorce theology from ministry practice. We need to ask, “What differences would it make if we joined Christ in His ministry outlined in His Upper Room discourse (John 13-17), instead of trying to get Him to join our ministry?”xxiii “We slander God by our very eagerness to work for Him without knowing Him” (xxiv) (Oswald Sanders).

B. Human beings, created in the image of the triune God, are constituted for relationship. (xxv) Sinners are broken by sin and fragmented by the separations sin produces: separation from God; from others; and from self. The gospel of Jesus Christ ‘heals’ these separations through the Spirit. But this conquest of the separations caused by sin takes place in relationships. God saves us by bestowing and imparting an eternal relationship with Himself (Rom 5:10; 2 Cor 5:18-21). The Christian life involves translating this vertical relationship into our horizontal relationships.

C. The relationships in the gospel community itself are needed for the healing and nurture of souls. In our Western mindset “persons as typically conceived can exist apart from relationships. That is why we generally define human dignity in terms of self-sufficiency and self-determination.” (xxvi) Culturally, we live with the societal impression that “identity is conceived in self-referential terms, so that the authentic self is the inner self. Persons are autonomous and distinct from one another, determining their own goals and desires.” (xxvii)

The cross of Christ breaks into our self-protective agendas and deconstructs our selfreferential notions of personhood. Our complacency about our hyper-individualism must be addressed by the gospel. For in our nation, the essence of self tends to be defined as pure undetermined choice, freedom from tradition, obligation, and commitment. However, when we begin with the triune God we arrive at a far different concept of personhood. Colin Gunton notes that, “God is not more than what Father, Son and Holy Spirit give to and receive from each other in the inseparable communion that is the outcome of their love. . .There is no ‘being’ of God other than this dynamic of persons in relation.” (xxviii)

D. Trinitarian personhood is the key to understanding our identity and role as the image of God. For, “[it] is in our relatedness to others that our being as humans consists.” (xxix) “But the Trinity not only reveals that persons are essentially relational, it also discloses characteristics that define healthy interpersonal relationships.” (xxx)

Author Mark Shaw in his portrait of the Trinity in the gospel of John identifies four characteristics which describe the relations between the members of the Godhead: 1.) full equality, 2.) glad submission, 3.) joyful intimacy, and 4.) mutual deference. (xxxi) Throughout the Gospel of John we see Jesus manifesting these qualities in His relationship with the Father (Jn 1:1; 3:35; 5:18; 14:13, 16; 17:21-26ff.). What a powerful diagnostic this is for the church. Our sociality frequently is not characterized by the intentionality necessary to reflect these traits. Our smug independence, selfreliance, and self-protection prevent us from going out of ourselves in self-giving behaviors.

Chiding believers won’t produce real substantive change. Only the gospel has the power to take us off of ourselves and deliver us from the carnal agenda of attempting to carry our own worth and identity (the self-referential error). And, only life in the Spirit can enable us to reflect but a tiny ray of triune relations. “Still, the triune relations are the essential paradigm, our basic model for human relationships and relationships within the church.” (xxxii)

E. The four characteristics of triune relations are to be lived out in our daily koinonia (fellowship). 1 John 1:3 stresses that our fellowship (koinonia) involves not only sharing in fellowship with other believers, but also together in the triune life of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Our unity and diversity mirrors that of the Trinity. “Equality, intimacy, submission, and deference ought to characterize relationships in the Christian community as well.” The church’s life together is to be patterned after the divine “life together.” (xxxiii) A mind shift is required in order to move away from our individualistic ways of thinking which show up in reductionistic forms of private piety. A reformation is needed in our ecclesiology. Church members need to hear, “When you believed in Christ . . .you entered into the fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, AND the fellowship of every other Christian who is a part of that triune fellowship.” (xxxiv)

Our ‘obese comfort zones’ that stem from our self-protective strategies can only be overcome by the gospel. The gospel drives out fear and transforms our relationships so that we can be “perfected in love” (1 Jn 4:18). There is no other trajectory for spiritual maturity. These controlling truths have the power to blast us out of our spectator mentality so that we form concrete relationships for the purpose of pursuing holiness together and doing spiritual good to one another. God has given us the Spirit of His Son so that through sonship we might live out our relationship to the Trinity and to one another.

CONCLUSION:

We know from Scripture that God’s design for our social relations guards our humanness and the dignity of life. Anti-Christian worldviews suggest that liberty is NOT based on teleology (God’s design)—thus, ‘man is free’ to choose a form of liberty which is based upon his passions. Our young people are being exposed to this philosophy at an alarming rate. Lives are ruined by the popular notion: “Reality is what you make it—fill it with what you want, for you alone are the ‘architect’ of your own identity.”

God’s creational pattern for our relationships is not simply ‘advice’—His social laws are the means by which we acknowledge His Kingship over us. Our willingness to conform to His order is our calling as redeemed individuals and it is our wisdom for living unto God. (xxxv) God has determined that all of our social relations are to be governed by His creational design. Therefore, Christians must seek to develop a missionary mindset in order to stand against the idolatry our age. This mindset involves discerning God’s creational design in Scripture (Eph 5:15-6:4).

Idolatrous worldviews set aside creational design and then reshape the categories to their own desires. To ignore God’s all-wise order is the very cause of unintentionally accepting the idols of our culture. God’s creational structures for our relationships are like coiled springs. Compress them and they will eventually spring back with very great force. Certainly, we see this in the tragedy and epidemic of broken homes, suicides, domestic violence, abortion, gender confusion, and in a host of other pathologies which stem from violating God’s laws for social relations. xxxvi God’s truth suppressed does not go away. When it is pushed down below the horizon of reason and conscience, it resurfaces as lying cultural forms which take men and women captive (Grant Horner). So many of the ‘idols’ of our culture constitute wholesale perversion of God’s gifts and categories. “Perversion of a virtue” consists of taking something God has graciously given to us in the creation and removing it from its moral context. Thus, work, reasoning, ownership, authority, pleasure and sexuality when wrenched from God’s plan, can be easily twisted into a soul-damaging idol. (xxxvii)
Without an absolute standard of freedom which comes from our Creator, a person will ineffably move toward bondage. Christian author Vishal Mangalwadi makes the following observation: to attempt to break free of teleology (God’s design for us as the image of God) is to amputate the soul of man and to fall naked and headlong into a black cesspool filled with razor wire.

The liberal agenda of the progressives is intent on replacing the fathers with another source of authority, the state. There is an antipathy toward the patriarchal family structure of authority, toward a patriarchal view of truth, and toward a patriarchal didactic view of teaching God’s truth (Deut 6).

Christian scholar Peter Jones has pointed out the great danger of seeking to undermine the role of fathers, “Gender relationships and roles are a sovereign act of God at creation, not an imposition of the church’s ideas upon society—Satan gains loyalty when man blurs God-given distinctions.” (xxxviii) Jones’ comments highlight the fact that gender and sexual anarchy is a pointed attack upon God’s nature from which His blueprint for mankind originates. Salvation in Christ alone renews the mind of man so that we welcome God’s pattern for our relationships and gladly bring our thinking and acting under the mind of God found in His Word (‘old ways of thinking have passed away’—2 Cor 5:17).

The whole purpose of our Lord’s incarnation is to restore man to the image of God so that our worth, value, and dignity are fully restored in Christ to the glory of the Godhead. This recovery of our true humanity in Christ is not a totalizing ‘cloning’ process in which differences are eradicated. No, the restoration of our humanity preserves our individuality and uniqueness as men and women. The incarnation does what no human resource can do—in Christ God reconciles humanity, bringing peace and communion with God. This peace and fellowship with God is the purpose for which we were originally created. Thus, our true self-knowledge, value, and uniqueness are inextricably tied to knowing what God is doing in His self-revelation (His infallible Word) and in the incarnation of Christ (Rom 16:25-27). (xxxix)

Endnotes:

i Del Tackett, Focus on the Family, “The Truth Project” C.D. lessons 7-9
ii Ibid.
iii Ibid.
iv Ibid.
v Darrell Johnson, Experiencing the Trinity
vi Del Tackett, Focus on the Family, “The Truth Project,” Lessons 7-9,
vii Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p. 132
viii Ibid. p. 133
ix Ibid. pp. 133-134
x “Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” is adapted from a Winterim Course by Wayne Grudem, visiting lecturer at The Master’s Seminary, Sun Valley, CA.
xi Ibid.
xii Ibid.
xiii Andrew Hoffecker, Ed., Building a Christian Worldview, pp. 86-87
xiv John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God, pp. 47-49
xv John Gerstner, audio message, “The Work of the Trinity in Man’s Redemption”
xvi Ibid.
xvii Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p. 138
xviii Ibid, p. 138 xix Ibid., pp. 138-140
xx Ibid., pp. 140-141
xxi Stephen Seamands, Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service, IVP Books, Downers Grove, Illinois, 2005, p. 19
xxii Ibid., p. 15
xxiii Ibid., pp. 20-23
xxiv Oswald Sanders in Seamands, p. 25
xxv Stephen Seamands, p. 32
xxvi Ibid., p. 33 xxvii Ibid.
xxviii Ibid., p. 34
xxix Ibid., 35
xxx Ibid.
xxxi Ibid.
xxxii Ibid., 38
xxxiii Ibid., pp. 38-39
xxxiv Ibid., p. 39
xxxv Michael Goheen, Craig Bartholomew, Living at the Crossroads, pp. 38-39
xxxvi Ibid, pp. 100, 105, 108, 138-140
xxxvii C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
xxxviii Peter Jones, founder/director of “Truthxchange,” www.truthxchange.com
xxxix Norman Klassen, Jens Zimmerman, The Passionate Intellect, pp. 149-151