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Always Already Trinitarian
(Or, How Evangelicals are Profoundly Trinitarian Whether They Know It or Not)
1 Corinthians 2:12
Nicky Cruz
Reality comes first, and understanding follows it. If you want to cultivate the ability to think well about the Trinity, the first step is to realize that there is more to Trinitarianism than just thinking well. Specifically, the starting point for a durable Trinitarian theology is not primarily a matter of carrying out a successful thought project. Christians are never in the beggarly position of gathering up a few concepts about God and then constructing a grand Trinitarian synthesis out of them. Christians are also not in the position of pulling together a few passages of Scripture, here a verse and there a verse, and cobbling them together into a brilliant doctrine that improves on Scriptureâs messiness. Instead, Christians should recognize that when we start thinking about the Trinity, we do so because we find ourselves already deeply involved in the reality of Godâs triune life as he has opened it up to us for our salvation and revealed it in the Bible. In order to start doing good Trinitarian theology, we need only to reflect on that present reality and unpack it. The more we realize that we are already compassed about by the reality of the gospel Trinity, the more our Trinitarianism will matter to us. Evangelicals in particular should recognize that we have everything we need to think about the Trinity in a way that changes everything.
The Trinitarian Theology of Nicky Cruz
Nicky Cruz is famous not for his Trinitarian theology but for having been the warlord of a violent street gang called the Mau-Maus in New York City in the 1950s and for the dramatic story of his 1958 conversion to Christianity. At the center of his conversion story was a confrontation between this hard-hearted, knife-wielding teenage gang leader and a young preacher who brought the simple message that Jesus loved him. It was a confrontation, that is, between The Cross and the Switchblade, as that young preacher David Wilkerson would put it in a book about his Times Square ministry. Nicky Cruz would retell the story from his own point of view in his 1968 biography, Run Baby Run. Against the dark background of his young life as a victim and a victimizer, Cruz tells about forgiveness, the power of Jesus Christ, and how he was set free from soul-crushing loneliness. That dramatic turnaround is the story Nicky Cruz is famous for. There is not a word about the Trinity in it. Looking back, Cruz would say, âI came to Jesus because I knew He loved me, and still didnât know anything about God.â
But in 1976 Cruz wrote another book to describe what he called âthe single most important fact of my Christian growth.â The book was The Magnificent Three, and the fact that had become central to Cruzâs Christian life by that time was the Trinity:
The Magnificent Three is Nicky Cruzâs personal testimony to the power of the Trinity in his life. It never sold like Run Baby Run, but it is vintage Nicky Cruz, from the chapter about the salvation of a drug addict named Chico, to the healing of a nameless prostitute, to the chapter about Cruz being ambushed by rival gang members a few weeks after his conversion. As a theologian whose specialty is Trinitarian theology, I have several hundred books about the Trinity on my shelves, but only one of them includes a knife fight: the one by Nicky Cruz. âDynamite! A real turn-on!â say the publishers in a prefatory note. âNicky lays it on you with his hard-hitting straight talk. You are there with himâin the tenement, in the jail.â
Cruzâs testimony to his experience with the Trinity is indeed powerful. He praises the three persons in turn, beginning with several chapters about Jesus as his âmagnificent saviour.â He especially emphasizes Christâs presence, reality, and power to save. Cruz has already told us, âWhen I first became a Christian, I knew nothing about anything. So far as the things of God were concerned, I was a totally ignorant man. I knew nothing. But Jesus reached me despite my ignorance of Him.â In these chapters he tries to look back and describe that strange knowledge he gained in his first encounter with Jesus, before he had learned any details. In prose that turns to prayer, Cruz says:
This is the heart of Cruzâs message, and he moves effortlessly from the language of prayer to the language of invitation, directing his readers to the presence of Christ: âHe wants to forgive you of your sin. He wants to heal you of your sickness. He wants to keep you from anxiety and fear and guilt. He wants to free you from every kind of bondage. And He is there with you now to do it. He is a wonderful, magnificent Saviour!â
But this intense focus on Jesus does not keep Cruz from celebrating âthe Magnificent Father,â whose fatherhood âis not simply a figure of speech.â God is not our father merely in a âuniversal and impersonalâ sense of having created us but âalso in a new, personal, special kind of fatherhood that is reserved for born-again Christians only. He is my Father not just because He created me but now also because He adopted me as His child! I am His creature, but more than that I am His adopted son!â Cruz is no less eloquent and impassioned about God the Fatherâhis fatherly intimacy, his protection, his generosity, and his disciplineâthan he is about Jesus.
Nicky Cruz does not say very much about how his experience of Jesus and his experience of the Father are related. But when he turns to the third person, âthe Magnificent Holy Spirit,â he begins tying the three together in one unified view of salvation. He accomplishes this by pointing out the absolute necessity of the Spiritâs work in bringing us into contact with the Father and the Son:
In what sense is the ministry of the third person necessary? The Spiritâs work is necessary because he is the one who actually brings us into contact with the Son and the Father. It does not take away from the Father and the Son to say that their work depends on the work of the Spirit. As Cruz argues, though Jesus died for us and the Father forgives us, we need to ask ourselves, âBut why did you come to Jesus in the first place?â and answer, âBecause you were drawn by God the Holy Spirit.â
In the work of the Spirit, the purposes of God are fulfilled, and all the salvation, forgiveness, and fellowship are realized.
Nicky Cruz is famous for preaching a simple gospel message in a way that is relevant to street-hardened young people. He is not famous for his Trinitarian theology, and it might even seem incongruous to highlight him early in a book about the doctrine of the T...