{"id":620,"date":"2008-05-08T12:53:10","date_gmt":"2008-05-08T12:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/creator-sanctifier-and-redeemer.html"},"modified":"2008-05-08T12:53:10","modified_gmt":"2008-05-08T12:53:10","slug":"creator-sanctifier-and-redeemer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/creator-sanctifier-and-redeemer.html","title":{"rendered":"Creator, Sanctifier and Redeemer"},"content":{"rendered":"

A good explanation of why that doesn’t cut it from Christianity Today – because reinforcements in these discussions are always helpful. <\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Furthermore, it is a mistake to focus only on the phrase “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” without noting the two words that introduce it in the Great Commission: ” \u2026 the name<\/em> of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”<\/p>\n

Whenever God reveals his name, he reveals his character. We see in God’s name his communal nature and desire for a personal relationship to his people. “I Am who I Am,” he told Moses. “The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob \u2026 This is my name forever.”<\/p>\n

Almost all the recent alternatives to the Trinitarian formula undercut the personal significance of God’s name by replacing it with words of function. As many have noted, “Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier” encourages modalism, the heretical teaching that God’s threeness is more about his modes of operation, or our perception of him, rather than something intrinsic to the divine essence. Biblical Christianity teaches that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in creation, redemption, and sanctification. A document “commended for study” by the Presbyterian Church (USA) explicitly rejected a modalist understanding of “Creator, Savior, Sanctifier,” but still encouraged its use, along with “Mother, Child, and Womb,” “Sun, Light, and Burning Ray,” and other troubling triads.<\/p>\n

As theologian Robert Jenson has noted, “Such attempts presuppose that we first know about a triune God and then look about for a form of words to address that God, when in fact it is the other way around. \u2026 [T]he phrase Father, Son, and Holy Spirit<\/em> is historically specific and can be what liturgy and devotion\u2014and, at its base, all theology\u2014must have, a proper name of God.”<\/p>\n

God is serious about his name\u2014which is why he took the trouble to reveal it to us in Christ. To create an alternative according to our cultural sensibilities is at best parody and at worst idolatry, even if it is constructed from the good metaphors God has given us. Most idols, after all, are created from God’s good gifts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A good explanation of why that doesn’t cut it from Christianity Today – because reinforcements in these discussions are always helpful. Furthermore, it is a mistake to focus only on the phrase “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” without noting the two words that introduce it in the Great Commission: ” \u2026 the name of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCreator, Sanctifier and Redeemer - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/creator-sanctifier-and-redeemer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Creator, Sanctifier and Redeemer - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A good explanation of why that doesn’t cut it from Christianity Today – because reinforcements in these discussions are always helpful. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}