Deeper Waters Podcast 7/6/2017: M. James Sawyer

What’s coming up this Saturday? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The Trinity. It’s one of our core central doctrines as Christians and yet one of the most misunderstood. Many of our church members are confessing Trinitarians and yet practicing Arians. When it comes to their discussion of the Trinity, they top it off by becoming modalists for the time.

Does the Trinity really matter? Is it just this esoteric doctrine for the theologians to debate back and forth but makes no difference to us? Do we only need to think about it when Jehovah’s Witnesses show up so we can show them that they’re wrong on a doctrine that we don’t understand the point of ourselves?

My guest this Saturday says no. The Trinity is a gift to us and it is a doctrine we all need to understand. In many Eastern churches, the Trinity is essential to them and their practice. If the Trinity was wrong, everything would be changed. If you can abandon the Trinity in your Christianity and nothing or little changes, then that shows you how much the Trinity really means to you. My guest is coming on to hopefully help us all appreciate it more. His name is M. James Sawyer.

So who is he?

M. James Sawyer got his B.A. from Biola in 1973. He got a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary in New Testament in 1978 and went on to get a Ph.D. from there in 1987 in Historical Theology. He has published numerous books and articles and contributed to them as well and is the author of the book Resurrecting The Trinity.

This Saturday, we’ll be talking about that last book. M. James Sawyer wants the church to wake up to the doctrine of the Trinity. It is not something that just needs to be brought out when Jehovah’s Witnesses come by. We need to really study the Trinity and learn what a difference it makes in our faith and practice. I have long been an advocate of the idea that our churches are sadly way too shallow. Part of that is that we don’t really do theology much anymore. It’s all application. Part of that theology includes the doctrine of the Trinity.

We’ll be discussing defending the Trinity, the history of the Trinity, and we will also get into personal application. There is nothing wrong with personal application after all, but there is something wrong if that is all that you have. We will have a show on not only about how the Trinity is true, but also what difference it makes. Hopefully in the end, you will have your eyes greatly awakened to the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity and know why it matters.

I hope you’ll be listening to the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast. I also hope that you’ll go on ITunes and leave a positive review. It lets me know that you appreciate the show and it makes it easier I understand for others to find it so please consider doing that.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Resurrecting The Trinity

What do I think of M. James Sawyer’s book published by Weaver Book Company? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The Trinity is something that many people do not really pay attention to in Christianity. Sawyer is certainly right that for many Christians today that if the Trinity was proven false, their church services and worship style would be little changed if any. We are often mere monotheists, confessing Trinitarians but practicing Arians.

Of course, we do lip service to the Trinity, but that’s where it usually ends. The only other time we open up the Trinity box is when Jehovah’s Witnesses come by so we can beat them up with it and win in a battle that we don’t often see the importance of and then the Trinity goes back on the shelf. Sawyer wants us to see the Trinity as a life-changing doctrine.

In our modern secular world, we can often view God through a scientific lens where He often plays no active role in our universe except for an occasional miracle. This is why deism is such a possibility for so many people. The universe can run on its own power with laws of nature being active. God is not really necessary. The universe is just a big machine.

Go back to the past and in fact to many other traditions today like the Orthodox church and the Trinity is a living reality to them. We can make many statements about God that would be easily agreed to by a Muslim or a Jew. To some extent, this is understandable. There is no philosophical argument that can prove the Trinity. If we have just reason alone, we can get so far, but the problem is we often act like reason alone has got us as far as we can go.

Instead, the Trinity is to show us what God is like mainly through Christ. Christ doesn’t appease an angry side of God. Christ shows us what the Father Himself is like. If we think the Father is eager to judge us, then we have to ask why Jesus doesn’t seem the same way. There is no dark side of God. What you see is what you get. When you look at Jesus, you see what God is like.

Sawyer also shows that we can have those false views of God such as the kind of name-it, claim-it God or the God who is eager to smite us all. To some extent, we all have these ideas of God at some time in our lives I suppose. It has been rightly said that whatever your idea of God is, it is inadequate. Still, we should strive for as truthful a view as possible.

Sawyer also says that this has often led to a certain moralizing in our walk. Holiness can become a burden when it needn’t be because we are trying to appease the angry God. There is no problem with being moral, but the issue is did Jesus really come to establish a new morality, or did He come to give us God? By all means, He showed us a better way, but did He not show God as well?

When we look at our theology, it is too easy to not have it really be informed by Jesus. The God of the philosophers is tempting to stick with, but the God revealed in Christ is a huge step forward. Too many of us are too tempted to stick with all the omni traits, which we should not deny, and just leave it at that instead of interacting with the whole theological picture.

There isn’t as much in defense of the Trinity here against objections, but that’s fine. There is some grounding of the idea and how it contrasts with Rabbinic thought and about what happened in the Arian controversy, but I think the whole of the work doesn’t seek to defend the Trinity as much as it seeks to show why the Trinity matters. This is indeed something that we need restored to the church today.

The only major area I think I’d disagree with is that Sawyer does seem to hold a higher view of The Shack than I would like. It’s quite interesting that one of the main reasons I didn’t like that book was because of the way it treated the Trinity. If you are like me, you can still get a lot out of this as it doesn’t play a major role in the book.

I hope a book like Sawyer’s is appreciated. The church needs to reclaim the revelation that has been given in Christ. Our doctrine has become largely about morality and such instead of really about a revelation of who God is so that He can often seem just as distant to us as He would have been before the revelation of Jesus. There is a better way.

In Christ,
Nick Peters