Rizaline Dalit

REFLECTION PAPER NO.5

“NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD”

QUESTION: Explain the nature and Attribute of God as holy-love.

ASNWER:

According to the definition of “Grace, Faith, and Holiness” book, theology, the whole subject is
concerned with the doctrine of God. We discuss many things about and there are many other truths
commonly subsumed under the rubric of the doctrine of the Father, or God the sovereign. God is the
first in the essential of doctrines. “God is not one of our religious beliefs; He is the belief. He is not one
of the doctrines; He is the doctrine.” Calvinistic doctrines of electron and predestination are more logical
inferences from a particular understanding of the divine nature than the result of exegesis of biblical
passages. The most extreme expression of it, was in the so- called Death of God theology, with several
attempts made out of this milieu to formulate an atheistic Christianity. This is the God of revelation, not
of religion. But the time would surely come when people would ask “well, why make this exception?”

The immanently emphasis of liberalism was reacted to and replace by the stress on
transcendence by the nonorthodox movements. In a word, if we would speak meaningfully about God,
we must speak in terms of transcendence: conversely, if we are speaking meaningfully about God, we
must speak in immanently terms. One has been referred to as the “immobilize” view, while the other is
designated the “out-going”. If “eternity” is understood as timelessness, there is no possibility of an
interrelation between the two. In the case there would be an “infinite, qualitative distinction between
time and eternity” (Kierkegaard/ Barth).

The affirmation to the central of the Old Testament that God is holy, living one in the Nature of
God as love (AGAPE) is no simply an idea but an experience reality acting in and through human life.
Divine nature appeared simply as undifferentiated, super natural power. It is agape because it says in (1
John 4:8) that God is love. This is the basis for claiming that the character of God is decisively defined
by Jesus Christ and His works. We can actually see that God is love through the life of Jesus. That He
obey the command of the Father even though His life is the exchange of forgiving our sins. The
symbolism of the love of the Father is the Son which is Jesus Christ, and Jesus showed His love by
crucifixion. We experience the love of God by Jesus as confirmation that the central of the Old
Testament is that God is Holy, living and one in the Nature of God as love (AGAPE) through Jesus His
Son. And the love of God appeared to the wrath of God. According to address this apparent tension by
speaking of love (gospel) as the proper work of God while wrath (law) is his foreign work. So we can
conclude that Jesus is the symbolism of God’s love.
 Rizaline Dalit

REFLICTION PAPER NO.6

“THE TRINITY”

QUESTION: Identify the false view on trinity. Elaborate the nature of the Trinity and importance in the
Christian faith.

ANSWER:

The Christian understanding of God includes the belief that there is “threefoldness” in the divine
nature. Others are subtler in that they properly identify the persons of the Godhead, yet reduce the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to pieces of a divine puzzle, or as three separate gods. So, as we briefly
explore these flawed depictions of the Trinity, it’s important to keep in mind that the Bible reveals one
true and living God, who exists as three distinct, but inseparable, co-equal, co-eternal persons – Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinitarian question is largely one of dogmatic development.

Tritheism

This term refers to an interpretation that regards the Father, Son, and Spirit as “three gods” and
emphasizes the distinction of Person in such a way as to obscure the unity of God. it is the commitment
to monotheism that gourds against such a dissolution. Tritheism teaches that the Godhead essentially
consists of three separate gods. While it is accurate to say the Father is God, the Son is God, and the
Holy Spirit is God, it is wrong to say these three persons constitute three separate deities.

Modalism

A popular and widespread teaching, apparently dominant in the west because of its emphasis on
the divine unity, was Modalistic Monachianism. This interpretation denied a real distinction between
God and Christ. The belief that there is one God in substance and person, and that the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit are three successive functions, or modes, of that God but not distinct persons. In Old
Testament times, God appeared as the Father. At the Incarnation, He showed up as the Son. And after
Jesus’ ascension, He manifested Himself as the Holy Spirit. Modalism teaches that these modes are
consecutive, never simultaneous.

Subordinationism

In various and sundry forms, this deviation was the most pervasive and widespread of all the pre-
Nicene abortive to explain the relation between the Father and the Son. Another way of expressing a
modalistic view of God. Sabellius, a third-century priest, argued that God is like an actor wearing
several masks – first, the mask of the Father, then the mask of the Son, and finally the mask of the Holy
Spirit. But behind these masks is just one person. Under this is the “Adoptionism”, which does not know
of a God who loves sufficiently to take the initiative in world- salvation. It falls short of who so loving,
so interested in the affairs of men, that he conceives a plan for human salvation.

Arianism

Arius begins with a ”pagan view of God as unknowable, impassible, unchangeable and
unreachable” and so could not conceive of the incarnation of such a being. It reasoned that the Son was
created by the Father before the beginning of the world. Thus the Son, being a created thing, is of a
different nature to the Father. If we were to give Arianism a simple to understand name but slightly
convoluted name, it could be called “there-was-when-the-Son-was-not”. The main objection to Arianism
is that it portrays Jesus, the Son, as a work of God – a creature who is part of creation. Clearly this is
wrong because if we are worshipping Jesus, then we would be worshipping a created being, a creature.

As a student of biblical school it is important that we know all this things so that can be aware, and we
know how to speak with them if we can encounter one of them.
 Rizaline Dalit

REFLECTION PAPER NO.7

“THE GOD THE CREATOR”

QUESTION: Elaborate the theological implication that God is the Creator.

ANSWER:

One of the important implications of the doctrine of the Trinity is that we cannot speak of
creation exclusively in terms of one Person of the Trinity. The biblical witness testifies that the Father,
Son, Spirit were all involved in the creation act/ process,

Colossians 1: 16- 17 “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible
and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rules authorities; all things have been created through him
and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

John 1: 3 “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been
made.”

Genesis 1: 2 “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep,
and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

1 Corinthians 8: 6 “yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and
for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through
whom we live.”

Psalm 104: 30 “When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the
ground.”

Thus when we speak of God Creator, we speak of the total Godhead. There are few doctrines
that have more wide-ranging implication for life and belief. It touches on ontological questions; it
provides a basis for ethical understanding and the foundation for human social institution; it relates to
providence, miracles, and prayer. “The idea that God is the creator of all things the indispensable
foundation on which the other beliefs of the Christian faith are based”. One of the central features of the
creation narrative is the Creation’s judgment that it is “good”. First, it is God’s judgment and not that of
the creation: therefore it cannot be primarily that is good for the created beings, although we cannot a
priori say that is excluded.
 Rizaline Dalit

REFLICTION PAPER NO.8

“HUMANITY AS SINFUL”

To speak of God as Savoir brings into the picture that doctrine traditionally associated with the
Son, although we must avoid speaking of Christ as Savoir is such a way as to set the Son over against
the Father or so as to leave the impression that salvation is not the work of God. The bible always speaks
of human beings in their totality in this connection. So we must not so much speak about sin as about
humanity as sinful. “It also remembered that good and evil are personal terms. They are qualities and
acts of persons, not abstractions having independent existence.” original righteousness, then, is
constituted by a fourfold freedom. The use of the concept of freedom in this context presupposes the
reality of freedom as the power to choose to be or remain in this relation of freedom, but two uses are
not synonymous.

The same idea can be conveyed by the term openness. It is symbolized by the time of
communion with the Creator that Adam and Eve enjoyed in the “cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8). This
freedom of the first pair for God was grounded in the freedom of God for them. Obedience is the
condition for maintaining this openness. The forbidden fruit of the Genesis account symbolize the point
of testing. No genuine relation is possible unless it is freely chosen and apart from the possibility of
violating it, it cannot be affirmed.

We have argued that sin is essentially a religious category, but further definition is necessary,
since religion may be conceived in different ways. But we have insisted throughout that humanity’s
relation to God must be conceived personalistically. Thus, sin is violates that relationship and causes a
separation between God and mankind.

Sin as Unbelief. This proposal is misunderstood if unbelief is interpreted intellectualistically. In

Egocentricity or pride as sin. If God does not have dominion in human life, something else
does, and this something else is one’s own ego. Therefore unbelief and egocentricity is simply the same
thing seen from different points of view.
 Disobedience as Sin. John Wesley defined sin “properly so called” as “a voluntary transgression
of a known law.” It is virtually a reproduction of the Johannine statement in 1 John 3:4 that “ sin is
lawlessness.” Lawlessness is an attitude, a mind-set that declares one’s freedom from legitimate
constraints. Since rebelliousness is the antithesis of faith, we do not see sin as disobedience to be
essentially different from sin as unbelief or egocentricity.

Sensuality as Sin. Here we encounter another possible deviation from the distinctively religious
nature of sin. If the understanding of sin as sensuality tends toward Pelagianism, the understanding of
sin as sensuality tends toward Gnosticim. Sensuality, in the strictest sense, is seeking one’s own
gratification. This self- gratification brings it directly into connection with basis sin of egocentricity.
Since sexual lust is one of the most graphic instances of how egocentricity manifests itself in the form of
self- gratification, it has been the preoccupation of Christian thinkers, and many have mistakenly
identified sin with sexuality under the rubric of concupiscence.

Original sin involves the loss of original righteousness: therefore it may be seen as the absence or
perversion of the relationship in which Adam and Eve stood in the “state of integrity”. The disobedience
also radically altered the interpersonal relation, so that the first pair were no longer free for each other.