Rediscovering the Self-Disclosure of the Triune I AM: Table of Contents of Series in Narrative Trinitarian Theology

Table of Contents

Volume I: Homeward Bound (Part 1): Preparing to Sail upon the Sea of Revelation under the Banner of Trinitarian Orthodoxy

Preface (Gambling On the Life-Shaping Narratives of Human Destiny)

Introduction (Gazing out across the Sea)

Part I: Boarding the Ship of ‘Faith Seeking Understanding’  

Division I:  Heeding the Call to be a Seafarer of Revelation

   Chapter 1: Eternity Beckons Humanity to take a Homeward-Bound Voyage away From a Dying World

A: Ocean of Despair that Separates Mortal Humans from the Shores of Eternity

B: Dawning of Humanity’s Living Hope of going Home to Eternity

 Chapter 2: Heavenly Boarding Call of Eternity Resounds from Harbor of Christian Doctrines 
            A: First Call: Personal Cost to Return to Humanity’s True First Love                  
            B: Second Call: Unconverted Occupants of the Harbor setting aside a Pretense of Faith 
            C: Third Call: Warning to Persevere in Life of Entrusting Faith in Arms of Divine Romance

Chapter 3: Stepping onto the Dock of Trinitarian Dogma intent on Setting Sail

A: Docks of Dogma within the Harbor of Christian Doctrines

B: Exploring these Docks to Arrive at the Dock of Trinitarian Dogma

Chapter 4: The Boarding Call to set Sail from the Dock of Trinitarian Dogma 

A: First Reason: Pursuing Our Eternal Destiny to Intimately Know the Triune I AM

B: Second Reason: Exploring Depths to Distinguish Triune Relations of the God-relationship

C: Third Reason: Mandatory Call to Proclaim Good News from Across the Sea

Division II: Introducing the Vessel of Philosophical Theology

Chapter 5: Finding a Suitable Ship of ‘Faith Seeking Understanding’ to Board 

A: Introducing the Ship of Philosophical Theology

B: Introducing the Ship of Theological Philosophy

C: Distinguishing this Ship from others as the One best Suited for our Voyage

Chapter 6: Biblical Case on Reason as Auxiliary to Faith Seeking Understanding

A: Reason not Necessarily Antithetical to Faith in Revelation

B: Demarcating Reason’s ‘Autonomous’ Limits without Revelatory Meekness

Chapter 7: The Proper Role of Passionate Reason on this Ship

A: Call of Eternity Beckons us to Re-evaluate our View of Reason

B: Trusting in Grace-Infused Logic to gain Knowledge of Revelation

Chapter 8: Surveying the Proficient Configuration  of our Sailing Vessel 

A: Touring the Ship’s Mechanics and the Navigational Equipment Onboard

B: Making Headway by the Revelatory Wind of the Spirit

Part 2: Preparing the Ship and Crew for Departure

Division I: Raising Anchor from the Dock of Trinitarian Dogma

Chapter 9: The Anchor that Keeps our Ship from Departing  

A: Held up by Unitarian Protests against Sailing under the Banner of Trinitarian Orthodoxy

B: Exploring the Docks of Trinitarian Dogma that stray too Close to Tri-Theism

Chapter 10: Examining the Monotheistic Paradigm Presented in our Nautical Charts 

A: Probing the Strict Affirmations of Monotheism in the Old Testament

B: Probing the Strict Affirmations of Monotheism in the New Testament

Chapter 11: Hoisting Anchor by Harmonizing Biblical Monotheism & Trinitarian Dogma

A: Biblically Exhibiting the Tri-Personally Singular (Mono-to-Mono) God-relationship

B: The Substantial Oneness of the Triune I AM: The Divine Tabernacle of Infinity

Division II: What lies ahead in our Voyages together out at Sea

Chapter 12: Maiden Voyage of Chronicling the Triune I AM’s Self-Disclosure

A: Chronicling our Creator’s Self-Disclosure in the Story of Finitude

B: Heading Home by a Chronological Route with a Panoramic View of Revelation

Chapter 13: Briefing the Crew on the Pending Preliminary Voyages out at Sea 

A: Explaining the Prerequisite for the Crew to First Embark on Preparatory Expeditions

B: Training in the Subjective Methods of our Voyages centered on the God-Relationship

Concluding Remarks on the Summons of Eternity

A: Personal Petition to Join the Crew in our Pending Departure

The Enigmatic Concept of Infinity for Finite Human Beings (Thought Experiment of the Trace of Infinite Being Imprinted on the Human Mind)

Try attempting to think of the implications that before you came into existence you did not exist. There existed a world in which you were non-existent, whether there or anywhere else. Now try to conceive that beyond the individual origin of your existence lies an ultimate point of origin for all finite existence. Now attempt to conceive what lies beyond each of these points: your beginning on the one hand and ‘the beginning of finitude’ on the other hand. As you attempt to bring to mind the point of origins of finite being from super-finite being you will realize that an infinite abyss of darkness now lies before your mental perception, as what your mind can possibly bring to mind suffers increasing degrees of conceptual shortages and inadequacies. Your memory, your conceptual perspicacity, and your imagination will all fail to come to your aid in such a mental endeavor of striving to catch a glimpse of the realities revolving around the origin of all finite being. Now attempt to try to go beyond this line of demarcation between finite being and the infinite abyss of originless, which represents what existed before the ultimate beginning of finitude, being that lies beyond it. No finite creature, no matter how intelligent, could accomplish such a mental feat that involves attempting to go beyond this line of Infinite-finite demarcation. You would realize that the fog of enigma lying before your mind’s eye becomes thicker, due your inner vision being thrown into paradoxical confusion brought upon by the thought of an originless being.

Let us now try a more personal approach to this thought experiment. Try to conceive the concept of the origin of your existence by going as far back as you can through the file drawers of your life. As you trace your way back, you will realize that the more you go back the more empty the drawers become. You will ultimately come to drawers that merely contain a sparse number of baby pictures in them, but for the most part they are empty. These drawers particular lack genuine images from a first person perspective but merely memories of pictures taken of you when you were a child between the time of your birth and up to a few years of age. Now beyond these drawers of the first years of your life as a finite being lie one last drawer. As you mentally try to open this drawer, you find that it is completely empty, as your memory lies barren of any concrete depictions of the duration of your existence up to your birth. Even the attempt to open this drawer causes discombobulation within your mind, as you come to terms with the apparent ontological emptiness of your existence that now lies before your mind’s eye. Now there actually might be a picture of a computer image of you as a baby in the womb, but such an abstraction does not suffice as an actual ontological impression of your finite existence. So ultimately the first drawer of your existence as the finite being that you are lies completely empty. You have reached the point of origin of your existence, yet as you proceed to filter through the files from front to back contained in this last chapter, the void that lies before you begins to overwhelm and consume your thoughts.

Now meditate on this conundrum of conceiving the mysterious origins of your existence as a finite being, by continually reinforcing in your mind the implications of your existence actually having a beginning. For instance, meditate on the fact that before this beginning, you did not exist at all. Now think to yourself, what happened before I came into existence and where was I when this happened? Ask yourself further, “did I actually not exist at one point?” By necessity such enigmatic questions will lead to confusion, for we perceive of our existence as falsely originless. This false perception results because we have become so habitually used to conceiving our existence as part of a continual continuum made up of day after day, as our self-consciousness seems to have no beginning nor end, seeing as we seem to live in the moment as part of an infinite past and an infinite future. Yet we know within our innermost being that indeed we do have a beginning, and that we have merely deceived ourselves into thinking of ourselves as a quantitatively finite being. This becomes very clear what we come to terms with our lack of self-sufficiency and our mortality, as well as realizing that we utterly lack qualitative degrees of infiniteness due to our inescapable contextuality and our existential finitude. Now try to abstract from this finite continuum of your self-consciousness in attempting to bring to mind those points along the continuum that lie closest to the point of origins of your existence as a finite being. Strive to go further to what lies before your point of origins and ultimately what lies before the point of origins of all of finitude. Doing so will cause the thoughts of your mind to twist in upon themselves. Even though finitude is all that you know, you come to realize how little you actually understand the enigma of finite existence.

The Ocean of Despair that Separates Mortal Humans from the Shores of Eternity

I increased my possessions …  I did not restrain myself from getting whatever I wanted … Yet when I reflected on everything I had accomplished and on all the effort that I had expended to accomplish it, I concluded: “All these achievements and possessions are ultimately profitless – like chasing the wind! … So I lamented to myself, “The benefits of wisdom are ultimately meaningless!” … Alas, the wise man dies – just like the fool … So I began to despair about all the fruit of my labor for which I worked so hard on earth …  What does a man acquire from all his labor and from the anxiety that accompanies his toil on earth? For all day long his work produces pain and frustration, and even at night his mind cannot relax!

(Eccl 2:4-23)

Even if a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, but cannot enjoy his prosperity –  even if he were to live forever …  if he should live a thousand years twice, yet does not enjoy his prosperity. [He will eventually] die! All of man’s labor is for nothing more than to fill his stomach – yet his appetite is never satisfied! … It is better to be content with what the eyes can see than for one’s heart always to crave more. This continual longing is futile … For no one knows what is best for a person during his life – during the few days of his fleeting life – for they pass away like a shadow

(Eccl 6:1-12).

Imagine a metaphoric scenario of a person who does not believe there exists a way of escape from our human mortality in this dying universe. While we imagine this scene, we should keep in mind the view point depicted in the verses of Ecclesiastes at the beginning of this section. Passages from this text depict what the limits of human understanding expresses concerning the apparent hopeless and transient fatalism of all mortal humanity[1]. The person we imagine, consequently, does not believe in the possibility of humanity passing into eternal life within an undying universe. Imagine that this person as a woman who sees herself as a castaway, who before she embraced this disposition of unbelief once spent sleepless nights in her youth gazing out from the shoreline of the Land of Darkness. She lingered here longing for another world and a savior to sweep here away to this paradise. Let us back track in time to see her painstakingly trying to make out what lies beyond the chaotic waves of transience and futility. These waves crash to and fro across the tumultuous scene that lies before her. She dares not go further, seeing as just a few yards in front of her tumultuous waves crash about in the ocean’s shallows that lie filled with sharp jagged rocks jutting out from the water.

Amidst the turmoil that unsteadies her hopeful gaze, she tries to make out what lies beyond this chaotic scene. Her searching gaze, however, never discerns anything except a pitch-black void of emptiness. In her desperation, she becomes so exhausted to the point that the hope within her seems to be dashed to pieces among the roaring collision of these waves against the rocks of despair. The content of her once dream-filled vision of an eternally blessed future now becomes filled with an ominous black-hole that bids her to step into despair. This hopelessness pierces her soul with the empty void of meaninglessness that appears to inescapably await every mortal bound to the shores of a dying world. Worse yet, would it be for her when she realizes that this grim darkness of ultimate desolation edges closer inland. Such a realization produces in her mind a vision of an hour glass. She imagines the hour glass of temporality counting down to the expiration of not just her life, but of all life in this dying world. She witnesses firsthand the cold chill permeating a soul realizing its inevitable fate of extinction. She comes face to face with the fate foreshadowed by the stories she has heard before about the periods of catastrophe and wide-spread extinction on planet Earth. She realizes how the stories that she has been taught in the real world present her with a factual accounting for the existence of humanity and the world she inhabits that leaves out the possibility of escaping mortal transience and the gone-wrongness in this world.

She now sees that these intelligent stories explaining to her the factual human situation are a flat out denial of fulfilling her inner aspirations of inhabiting the ideal world of her dreams. These stories explain as normal what she inherently knows as the gone-wrongness of this world and the people around here. They even justify what she sees as the gone-wrongness of humanity, selfishness, as normal animalistic instincts that have gone far to shape our materialistic and consumeristic society, as well as motives our superficial judgments of ourselves. Consider even the tendency to treat people and relationships as commodities. Not only that, but she notices that these stories account for reality apart from the existence of a higher Being, e.g. a Divine Creator. With the acceptance of these educated narratives, all sorts of doors shut in her mind of possibilities that once filled her thoughts, imagination, and dreams regarding the possibility of the existence of the Divine.

Such thoughts gave rise to the possibility of making a way of escape from the gone-wrongness and transience around her, so that her childhood dreams could come true. But now these narratives come to negate the possibility of receiving a truly meaningful destiny, an eternal purpose that she was made for; the possibility of receiving truly unconditional love, acceptance, and belonging that cannot be found among mutable people prone to selfishness and fickle emotions. In view of such possibilities, she had once hoped she could receive revelation of how exactly she was created as distinctively beautiful, in spite of what others, the norms of societal expectations, or even the norms of science may say. She had even imagined that someday she could walk through a door that led to a ‘library’ where she could find answers to all of her deeply personal questions that revolve around her individual existence, such as why she exists and who she was meant to be. Here she imagined meeting a Heavenly Father in a type of workshop where she could receive from Him a guide to rightly living out her life, seeing as He was the One who made her, as the apple of His eye, His “princess”.