God the Father, Mentor's Guide, MG06

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G O D T H E F A T H E R

"Glory be to the Father," sings the Church, "and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost." What is this? we ask—praise to three gods? No; praise to one God in three persons. As the hymn puts it, "Jehovah! Father, Spirit, Son! Mysterious Godhead! Three in One!" This is the God whom Christians worship — the triune Jehovah. The heart of Christian faith in God is the revealedmystery of the Trinity. Trinitas is a Latin word meaning threeness. Christianity rests on the doctrine of the trinitas, the threeness, the tripersonality, of God.

~ J.I.Packer. Knowing God. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993. p. 65.

In a time where formal teaching of God’s revelation concerning himself is considered “theological baggage,” it is important to remind the students of what is at stake in right belief about God. Both of their texts affirm the importance of seeing and understanding God aright, in sync with what he has revealed himself to be to us. Our responsibility is to discover God as he is, and not as we think him to be, and want him to be. That our idea of God correspond as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-absorbing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.

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~ A.W. Tozer. The Knowledge of the Holy . New York: Harper San Francisco, 1961. p.2.

One can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of him. I am sure that many of us have never really grasped this. We find in ourselves a deep interest in theology (which is, of course, a most fascinating and intriguing subject — in the seventeenth century it was every gentleman’s hobby). We read books of theological exposition and apologetics. We dip into Christian history, and study the Christian