This morning in MPJ’s Doctrine 2 class, we discussed the limitations of a number of popular illustrations for the explaining what happened at the cross of Jesus.
Here are 3 things I’ve been thinking since:
- We often stumble when the illustration involves discussion involving a father giving up the life of his son. Parallels are quickly made between God the Father and God the Son. I don’t know of any illustration that adequately explains the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Therefore, one of the problems with these illustrations is that they’ve crossed into the impossible territory of illustrating the Trinity.
- For this reason, I think that it’s better to illustrate the love and sacrifice of Jesus with (albeit limited) examples of sacrificial love shown by other people. There’s the example of the husband who dies in the place of his bride (very different from this jerk) by putting himself in the line of the shark while on their honeymoon. There’s no need to allegorise the illustration so that the shark becomes a picture of God’s wrath or anything like that, but simply say that this is but a fraction of the love that Jesus has demonstrated at the cross.
- Don’t forget the Old Testament! Use it to illustrate the work of Jesus. About 10 years ago I heard Al Stewart explain the sacrificial system from Leviticus and used it to illustrate the work of Jesus – I’ve used a similar illustration quite a few times since. Another obvious example from the OT would be Isaiah 53 and the different images of Jesus the suffering servant.
What do you think?
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It’s a similar situation trying to describe the Trinity using the old ice, water, steam trick.
I’ve ended up just saying the three are so united in their love that they’re one, rather than trying to say it’s like a shell, a yolk, and egg white.
p.s. congrats on 120,000! coffee+tv has a measly 646.
my resolution with explaining trinity is to not go near illustrations. i used language from the bible, and language from early church creeds in explanation.
keep blogging mate – i’ve been enjoying your posts… factor in that you’ve got more readers than that when you add on the RSS reads.
Sounds like an interesting class, Dave.
Just wondering though, surely there are times when it’s entirely appropriate to speak of what happened at the cross (or at least begin speaking of it) in terms of a father giving up his son?
I understand the limitations of this kind of illustration (what illustration doesn’t have limitations!) but I’d imagine we wouldn’t want to lose this aspect of the cross either…
It’s thoroughly appropriate to speak of God the Father giving up his Son upon the cross, because the bible speaks of such. It also speaks of the Son willingly laying down his life.
So it’s essential to talk about this aspect, I’m arguing that there isn’t an illustration that adequately makes the point. I can speak of the pain of giving up my son, but my son and I aren’t one and I shouldn’t give up my son, so it falls down on too many levels to use as an illustration. Better off talking about me, a dad, laying down my life for my boy… And even staying away from father/son language cos it just aids confusion of nature of God in Trinity.
Just a thought – Jesus does this very thing doesn’t he, in Mark 12:1-12?
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2012:1-12&version=NIV
Though I get it that he’s making a slightly different point, more aimed at the Pharisees and their rejection of Jesus.
yeah i think you’re right, it’s making a slightly different point.
but nonetheless, i’m sure – especially when it’s from Jesus – that there are exceptions with my theory.
i guess i’m saying be careful!
illustrations will often fall down when:
1) you try and illustrate the trinity
2) you over-allegorise
thanks for the discussion guys!
peaceout
I agree with the problem of illustration, especially when it comes to spiritual things. I have been thinking since that class also and i wish i had some wisdom like Jesus. He was able to explain spiritual things in a very understandable way, through earthly explanation.
But i must admit there are aspect we can try and capture but i do not know of anything that captures the fullness of the cross, except the cross!
Should this mean we cannot illustrate certain aspects of the cross?
my thought is that we just shouldn’t push our illustrations too hard.
dan said
“Should this mean we cannot illustrate certain aspects of the cross?”
i think that’s okay.
if the point of an illustration is to help convey the meaning of a point/text, then it’s wise to not use an illustration if you make things harder to understand. better to just do your best at explaining something without adding illustrations that just don’t work.
so that’s a deliberate decision i’ve made with explaining the trinity. every illustration i’ve heard so far is inadequate and only a small step away from trinitarian heresy.
@matty j
yeah good call.
I wrote a series of four holiday annual kids’ club programmes that all involved explaining the atonement (we had two skits a day, one “True Stories from the Bible” skit which was a narrative explaining a particular aspect of the gospel per day and then a parallel skit which illustrated the same thing, but with characters in whatever theme we had for the year).
What I didn’t notice until looking back on them years later was that I actually illustrated the cross differently for each year to reflect different aspects of the Trinitarian relationship. I don’t know what you guys think but I reckon the ticket is not straying too long on any illustration and changing it up.
Thanks for the comments steve. Do you mind sharing a couple of the illustrations?? Cheers mate