Skip to main content

The Trinity and our prayers

I friend of mine emailed me a question about the Trinity and our prayer life. Here's what I replied. Anyone got any feedback?

*****

If I understand you correctly, you're basically asking two related questions:
1. what is the impact of the Trinity on our prayers; and
2. is the recent trend towards praying simplistically to Jesus a symptom of an unhealthy anti-intellectual anti-creedalism?

Re 1: we pray to the Father, through the Son as our intercessor, in the power of the Holy Spirit. The NT pattern seems to be:
* the Father has priority in planning & willing all good things;
* the Son, in incarnate Jesus Christ, is the one who actually puts all the good things into effect - they are all "in Christ"; and
* the Spirit actually enacts the spiritual blessings in us & for us.

So, when we pray, we reflect this pattern. We pray to the Father, as our heavenly Father. We have become his children in and through Christ - by his death and resurrection for us; and by us putting our faith in him; so that we identify with him, and he with us. Ref: John 5:19-17; John 14:13-18 ; Gal 4:6; Eph 1:3-14; Eph 3:14-19; Col 1:3-14; 1 Pet 1:2.

That said, I don't think it's necessarily sinful to pray to Jesus. Stephen does: Acts 7:59-60. I can't think of any bible passage where someone prays to the Holy Spirit; but, seeing as the Spirit is God, again, I don't think it's sinful to pray to him.

But it is better to follow the Biblical pattern as above. That's because the Christian life is not one of minimum requirement - "what's the least I can do to please God?" - but one of maximum heart devotion - be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect; all our heart, soul, mind & strength; our bodies as living sacrifices.

And that brings us to 2. Simplistic praying to Jesus may be a symptom of anti-intellectual anti-creedalism - which, I think, is just laziness. Christianity is not merely an intellectual matter. Granted. But it's not un-intellectual either. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, MIND and strength" (Mark 12:30 & Luke 10:27; Matt 22:37 drops strength but retains mind).

That said, I won't jump on someone & criticise them too harshly for praying to Jesus. The doctrine of the Trinity is a tough one to wrap your mind around. The incarnation is a wonderful truth; Jesus is the one who became human and died for us; so it's easy to feel close to Jesus.

The solution, I suppose, is to emphasise that in Christ, the whole Trinity comes close to us: John 14:6-10, 16, 18, 23. This is why we pray to the Father; because, in Christ, he really is our heavenly Father! Rom 8:15-17; Gal 3:26; 4:6-7. We're part of God's family; we have a sure expectation of living with him in glory forever - it's what makes heaven heavenly. This is an intellectual truth to be understood and assented to - but it's so much more than that: it's a personal, spiritual, theological (in the sense of "God-oriented", not just human-focused) reality, to be enjoyed and rejoiced in.

What do you think? Does that help?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A better understanding of nonbelief

The Nones Project is an ongoing study into the belief systems of people who call themselves non-religious. A few weeks ago one of the project leaders,  Ryan Burge  of Washington University,  posted some really interesting preliminary results  on his Substack.  1. We've probably heard of people who are spiritual but not religious (SBNRs). SBNRs were "the largest group of nones" in the sample. They believe in the supernatural realm but not necessarily in "a God." They are "deeply skeptical of religion but highly interested in spirituality," therefore individualistic and anti-institutional.  2. But this study differentiated SBNRs from people they called Nones In Name Only, NiNos. They different to SBNRs by being religious about their spiritual. They believe not just in the supernatural but in "God." And they tend to engage in traditional communal religious practices while SBNRs practice individualised eclectic bespoke spiritual practices. The s...
Post a Comment
Read more

The different distractions of secularity and spirituality

There has been a lot of discussion about the recent 'vibe shift' away from radical atheism back towards an openness to the supernatural. I don't think this new spirituality is necessarily an openness to the unique claims of Christ. It will more probably replace one set of commonly-accepted misunderstandings about Jesus with another.  Under radical atheism, people dismissed the Biblical claims about Jesus' resurrection because they 'knew' that it was impossible. Jesus hadn't really died. He just passed out (after being beaten and whipped and crucified) and then woke up in the tomb (and rolled away the stone himself and overcame several guards). Or the disciples hallucinated that they saw him (even though Jewish beliefs of the time didn't expect one person to rise possessing eternal life himself; they expected a general resurrection at the end of time - see John 11:24 ). Or something else.  The so-called 'explanations' of Jesus' non-resurrectio...
Post a Comment
Read more
TGC Australia recently published an analysis by Dr Sarah Quicke of whether we are experiencing a 'quiet revival' of interest in and/or conversion to Christianity  here in Australia. It does it a good job of describing the difficulties involved in both gathering and interpreting data about religious beliefs and behaviours, e.g. the difference between the 44% who (still) call themselves Christian and the 8% of people aged 18-35 who actually "believed and lived out the gospel."  Quicke refers to the very insightful McCrindle report An Undercurrent Of Faith , released in March 2025, which uses an analytical method called cohort analysis to try and work out how a particular group of people tend to behave over time. The purpose of this post is to draw attention to one element of that report which agrees with Quicke's analysis but also adds some detail to it.  Here is what the cohort analysis showed about different age groups' identification with Christianity:  As y...
Post a Comment
Read more