Day one

After some emails to various colleagues about 'church membership', it was down to the first of Peterson's books on Spiritual Theology - Christ plays in Ten Thousand places. He begins by clearing the ground and reminds the reader that spiritual theology = the attention we give to lived theology. In this first chapter he emphasizes the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity.

In his view - "the doctrine of the Trinity prevents us from reducing God to what we can understand or need at any one time. There is a lot going on in us and this world, far exceeding what we are capable of taking in. In dealing with God, we are dealing in mystery, in what we do not know, what we cannot control or deal with on our terms. We need to know this, for we live in a world that over-respects the practical. We want God to be ‘relevant’ to our lifestyle. We want what we can , as we say, ‘get a handle on’. There is immense peer pressure to reduce God to fit immediate needs and expectations. But God is never a commodity to use. ……… we are faced with a reality that we cannot control. And so we cultivate reverence. We are in the presence of the One who is both before us and beyond us. We listen and wait.... Trinity is a steady call and invitation to participate in the energetically active life of God ( earlier in this chapter Peterson uses the image of the dance and quotes Barth - ‘the divine modes of existence condition and permeate one another mutually with such perfection that one is invariable in the other two as the other two are in the one’).

My head is hurting now and so I think it may be time to stop!