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Father, Son, And Holy Spirit (Relationships, Roles, And Relevance) Order Printed Copy
- Author: Bruce A. Ware
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About the Book
In "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," author Bruce A. Ware explores the relationships, roles, and relevance of the three persons of the Trinity within Christian theology. He examines how each member of the Trinity interacts with one another and with humanity, providing a deep theological understanding of this fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. This book offers insights into the importance of the Trinity in the life of believers and the implications of this belief for daily living.
David Brainerd
Born to a farming family in Haddam, Connecticut, Brainerd soon turned his aspirations to the clergy and a life of study. The early death of his parents, combined with a naturally melancholy personality, caused him to be morose and to fixate on the brevity of life, so that his religious life was characterized by prolonged depressions punctuated by ecstatic experiences of God. He began to study for the ministry at Yale College in 1739. During his first year he showed signs of the tuberculosis that was to end his life prematurely. During the following year, the New Light preaching of George Whitefield and other itinerants such as Gilbert Tennent and James Davenport gained many adherents at the college, including Brainerd, and he became involved in a separate church founded by students. In November 1741 he was reported as saying that one of the local ministers who was a college tutor had “no more grace than a chair.” Determined to snuff out the New Light among the students, the Yale Corporation, led by its rector, Thomas Clap, expelled Brainerd for refusing to make a public confession.
Officially barred from the ministry, Brainerd nonetheless became an itinerant preacher, filling pulpits of New Light sympathizers throughout New England and New York. In the process he gained the admiration of many clergymen, including Jonathan Dickinson, a Presbyterian minister of New Jersey and commissioner of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. Dickinson in 1742 first proposed that Brainerd become a missionary. To prepare himself, in 1743 Brainerd went to work with John Sargeant, missionary to the Stockbridge Indians. He was ordained by the Presbytery of New York in 1744. From 1743 to 1747 he ministered to the Indians in western Massachusetts, eastern New York, the Lehigh region of Pennsylvania, and central New Jersey. At the New Jersey Bethel mission (near Cranbury), he achieved his most notable successes. Out of his experiences here came the publication of two installments of his journals that described both the revivals among the Delaware Indians and his own spiritual turmoil and exultation.
Brainerd preaching to the Indians for all of his zeal, however, Brainerd’s constitution could not stand up to the hardships of wilderness living. In April 1747, seriously weakened by tuberculosis, he left New Jersey for the home of his friend Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he died in October.
In 1749 Edwards published An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd, drawn from Brainerd’s extensive diaries and supplemented by Edwards’s own commentary. Edwards sought to portray Brainerd as a model of Christian saintliness who manifested his faith in good works and self-sacrifice, expurgating many passages that recorded Brainerd’s depressions and enthusiasms. Over the centuries, this work has achieved international fame, has gone through countless printings, and has inspired many missionaries in pursuing their call.
Minkema, Kenneth P., “Brainerd, David,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 84-5.
This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.
The Cross and the St. Louis Cardinals
What does Jonathan Edwards have to do with baseball? It relates to how he saw the world. The technical term is typology — the mechanism of his God-entranced vision of all things. He explains, God does purposely make and order one thing to be in agreeableness and harmony with another. And if so, why should not we suppose that he makes the inferior in imitation of the superior, the material of the spiritual, on purpose to have a resemblance and shadow of them? We see that even in the material world God makes one part of it strangely to agree with another; and why it is not reasonable to suppose he makes the whole as a shadow of the spiritual world? . . . ("Images of Diving Things," A Jonathan Edwards Reader, [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], 16). Edwards saw it in the experience of walking down a hill, in the diet of ravens, and in the life of silkworms. And sports fans just saw it in the 2011 World Series. The World Series, Really? What made this Series so great wasn’t the mere fact that I love the St. Louis Cardinals and they won. It was the whole manner of how it happened. It's the fact that the Cardinals were trailing 10.5 games on August 25. They had no chance of making the playoffs, it seemed. It was the time to start looking at next year—the time when the "maybe-next-season" wishes are reluctantly announced. But then they started winning. Their late-season success allowed them to slip into the playoffs on the final game of the season. That was amazing enough. Then they beat the league-best Phillies. Then the potent Brewers. And then there they were—like out of no where—in the World Series. Learning from Edwards, let’s keep tracking the "agreeableness and harmony" that goes much deeper than America’s pastime. The Cardinals were the underdog, if there ever were one. They shouldn't even be in the playoffs, not to mention in the World Series competing against the repeat American League champion Texas Rangers. Every commentator wrote them off — "it was nice they made it this far, but they just aren’t championship caliber." Weakness Exposed When Texas won two in a row to take a 3-2 series lead, we expected that the Cards would finally fold. And during Game 6, when they came down to one out and one strike away from losing — twice! — hopes were dashed for Cardinal Nation. The consoling began, remembering the season really should have ended in September, that they really didn't have a World Series-quality team, that it's time again to start the "maybe next season" concessions. The team’s weakness at last was seen as weakness, and the dream of winning the World Series was confronted with the reality that things really don't happen this way. It was like a Friday afternoon wake-up call from Golgotha. But wait a minute. Isn’t this the way all the best stories go? Cue Edwards. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, but it could have been a stallion leading an unbeatable legion of Jewish revolutionaries. He could have been taller, a handsome king that looked more like a Disney prince instead of a Galilean peasant. There could have been no agony, no cross, no tomb. There could have been, but there wasn’t. When Hope Seems Lost And this was God’s design — in his universe, there is more beauty when victory rises out of weakness. The morning shines brighter after a tumultuousness night. The glory is greater at the end of three silent days, when the Lamb has been slain, when all hope seems lost. That’s where this World Series was pointing. Game 6 made this clear. The Cardinals were finished. It was over. Over. Well, over until David Freese's two-run triple in the bottom of the 9th, then Berkman's RBI single in the 10th, then Freese's walk-off homer in the 11th. Almost too good to be true. Like an out-of-breath Mary flinging open the disciples’ door to announce an empty tomb. Then Game 7 came, and the Cards won that one, too. It was an unforgettable Series, one that reaches deep into the human soul, resonating with the imprint of our Creator and reminding us why the good stories are, well, so good. Article by Jonathan Parnell
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