50 Key Concepts in Theology
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50 Key Concepts in Theology - Rayment-Pickard
The Trinity
The unique Christian view that God consists of three ‘persons’: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Christian doctrine of a three-fold God is one of the most complex theological ideas in any religion. The doctrine says that God is both unified and composed of three distinct ‘persons’: God the Father (the creator); God the Son, (Jesus Christ); and God the Holy Spirit. As the Athanasian Creed asserts: ‘We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity … For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one.’ The word ‘Trinity’ does not appear in the Bible, which contains no clear statement of trinitarian teaching. However, there are numerous scriptural passages from which the doctrine can be constructed, principally Jesus’ instruction to his disciples to baptise ‘in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’ (Matt. 28:19). The lack of any more direct statement of the Trinity in the Bible has led some – such as Unitarians, Seventh Day Adventists and Christian Scientists – to argue that the doctrine of the Trinity is not biblical, but an invention of the churches. The first known reference to the Trinity is in the writing of Theophilus of Antioch in the late second century ad, who mentions ‘the Trinity of God, His Word and His Wisdom’. The concept of a trinitarian God appears to be logically impossible, and the Church has traditionally described it as a ‘mystery’ that cannot be penetrated by mere human logic. Again, as the Athanasian Creed puts it: ‘The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.’ However, theologians have nevertheless attempted to make sense of the Trinity as best they can. Tertullian was the first to offer an explanation based on the idea that God is unified in substance: ‘One substance, three Persons’ – a slogan that has served well down the centuries. ‘Ontological’ theories have argued that the three persons of the Trinity are the same in their very being or essence. ‘Economic’ theories have argued that the persons of the Trinity must be understood in terms of their role in human history. Although the problems of trinitarian theology appear to be uniquely Christian, the fundamental issues can be found in pre-Christian Greek philosophy, where the question of reconciling ‘the One and the Many’ perplexed the pre-Socratic philosophers and their successors. Parmenides argued the ‘monist’ position that everything in the world is made up of one substance. Heraclitus argued the ‘pluralist’ view that the universe is composed of many irreconcilable parts. Christian approaches to the Trinity can also be viewed as tending either to the monist or the pluralist view. Karl Barth, for example, advocated the ‘monist’ view, emphasising the unity of the Trinity at the expense of the distinctiveness of the separate persons. By contrast, many contemporary theologians are now seeing the pluralist potential of the Trinity as a resource for understanding God’s relationship to our plural and diverse culture. It is significant that the doctrine of the Trinity is claimed by both liberals and conservatives as crucial to their theology. Those in favour of an ‘inclusive theology’ towards people of differing sexual orientations and those of other faiths, argue that the Trinity shows that God’s essence is ‘relational’ and always concerned to include the other. THINKERS Emil Brunner (1889–1966) argued that the earliest Church had no understanding of the Trinity: ‘There is no trace of the idea of “three divine persons in one” in the New Testament … No Apostle would have dreamt of thinking that there are three divine persons … The mystery of the Trinity proclaimed by the Church did not spring from biblical doctrine’ (Christian Doctrine of God). Colin Gunton (1941–2003) argued in The One, the Three and the Many (CUP, 1993) that ‘a God who contains within himself a form of plurality in relation and creates a world which reflects the richness of his being, can surely enable us better to conceive something of the unity in variety of human culture.’ Catherine LaCugna (1952–97) has argued that the doctrine of the Trinity is not an exercise in abstract metaphysics but a question of our practical relationship with God. Jürgen Moltmann (1926– ) has argued in The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (Augsburg Fortress Press, 1993) that the Trinity provides the ethical model of radical equality and social mutuality for the kingdom of God. Karl Rahner (1904–84) argued that ‘the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and vice versa’. In other words, God’s relationship with the world is part of his essential nature. Maurice Wiles (1923–2005) argued that the doctrine of the Trinity is not biblical and not necessary to Christianity. John Zizioulas (1931– ) argued that God’s very being is tied up with communion. IDEAS Analogies of the Trinity: numerous analogies of the Trinity have been offered over the centuries. For example: the three sides of a triangle; three intersecting rings; and the three states of water – ice, steam and liquid. (See also ‘Psychological and social analogies’.) The Athanasian Creed: a fourth-century credal statement, principally of the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation. Despite its name, the authorship of the creed is not known and is only ascribed to St Athanasius by tradition. The ‘economic Trinity’: the roles that the persons of the Trinity play in relation to human history – for example: creator, redeemer, comforter. The ‘hierarchical Trinity’: the view, associated with Tertullian, that the Trinity is a hierarchy, with the Father before the Son, and the Son before the Spirit. Homoousios: a Greek word (meaning ‘of the same essence’) used in trinitarian theology to indicate that the persons of the Trinity are all essentially made of the same ‘stuff’. The Latin-based term for this idea is ‘consubstantial’. Hypostases: from a Greek term meaning a distinct, self-supporting entity. The Trinity is sometimes described as having three hypostases. The ‘immanent Trinity’: God’s eternal Trinitarian being in himself. (See also ‘The ontological Trinity’.) The Latin model of the Trinity: typified by St Augustine, this begins with the unity of God and works towards an understanding of the persons. Modalism: a second-century theology that believed that the persons of the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – were just roles played by one God. Monism: the view that everything in the cosmos is made of one substance. Monotheism: the belief, common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that there is only one God. The ‘ontological Trinity’: the view – put forward, for example, by Origen – that the persons of the Trinity have the same being (ousia). Perichoresis (a Greek word meaning ‘going around’, ‘envelopment’): the idea that the persons of the Trinity ‘dwell’ mutually within one another. Pluralism: the view that the cosmos is made up of different kinds of irreconcilable substance. Polytheism: the belief that there are many gods. The psychological analogy: proposed by St Augustine, this suggested that the persons of the Trinity can be compared to the unified state of mind of someone who is at once the agent of love (the lover), thinking of a love object (the beloved), and enacting the emotion of love. The social analogy: the suggestion, dating from the Cappadocian Fathers, but depicted most famously in the Rublev Icon, that the Trinity consists of separate persons in society. The Rublev Icon shows the Trinity as three people sat around a table. Recent theologians (e.g. Moltmann, Pannenberg) have argued that we must begin with the persons of the Trinity and work towards an understanding of their unity. Tritheism: belief in three gods, especially the doctrine that the three persons of the Trinity are three distinct Gods. BOOKS Colin Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many (CUP, 1993) Catherine LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (HarperCollins, 1991) |
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