Triune God, modalism, or are you heretic?

[UntoHim]

http://rzim.vo.llnwd.net/o43/MP3/LMPT/LMP20111022.mp3

Very good message. I would encourage anybody to listen to whole message (it's only 26 minutes), then go back and listen to this part about the Trinity again, maybe two or three times. Zacharias does a very unique and interesting treatment of the Trinity within this message. I have transcribed the applicable part below. This part starts about half way through the message. If you can run it through Real Audio it starts at about the 12:00 minute mark.

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You know, people often say to us, how does one defend the Trinity? Well, how does one defend life? You think we understand life? Yeah, yeah a man and woman come together and the sperm and the egg get together, and then nine months later you’ve got a little life. Oh yeah, we have understood it. Sure. As Francis Collins said, when you look at 3.1 billion bits of information you find out how much there is really we don’t know.

So what I want to say to you is this: Why is it – think with me now – why is it that you and I always lunge towards the relational. Lee Iacocca said in his book straight talk, “here I am in the twilight years of my life still wondering what it’s all about. This much I know, fame and fortune are for the birds!” He said that. He said “but then I look at my children, and I see them, and I know I love them. And I say to myself if you haven’t love your own family what have you really accomplished in life. If you’ve been the head of an automotive empire, and your name is a household name, and your bank account is multiplied millions of times, and you say I look at my children and I say to myself I love them, and if you haven’t loved them what have you really accomplished in life.” You know what he is telling me? The longing in your heart and mine is for a relationship.

And only in the Trinity do you see the reality of God Who is a being in relationship, and we are made after His own image. And until we are related to Him and related to one another, we will never find the fulfillment in the isolated ego of the “I”. God has made us in His own image. You know, when you think of it for just a moment, when a woman is impregnated and at that given moment there are really three DNAs in her body - Husbands, hers and the child’s…and we think we understand it. If there is the possibility with each added dimension, from the first to the second to the third, ultimately from the infinitude to infinitude, is it really that difficult for God to be one in one sense and three in another sense?

Think of it in another way. Suppose God was not a trinity. Suppose God is a monad, say in as in other concepts. Let me ask you this: Can you really say God is love? Who is He loving? Can you really say God spoke. Who is He speaking to? You end up with an entity who needs other entities in order to fulfill his own proclivities! And that’s why the greatest search of philosophy has always been to find unity in diversity. How do you find unity in diversity? That’s why, by the way, the Greeks came up with universities, to find unity in diversity.

The only way you can find unity and diversity is in the community of the Trinity, where God is a being in relationship, and you and I hunger after relationships. As Augustine(?) said “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee” This concept of the Trinity is very unique in the Christian faith.(Poster takes full responsibility for the accuracy of this transcription)