Month: August 2008

Off on holiday now for 9 days.  Some frivolity is about to be posted automatically by the blog.  If you want something more theological to chew on, here's a few older posts on the trinity issues that have been coming up recently.

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Avoiding a Fourth

No (good) trinitarian theologian wants to have a fourth thing - a divine substance considered apart from the Three Persons.  But it's important to be aware that this error (effectively having a quaternity) has two versions.  There is a vulgar quaternity and a more insidious one.

The vulgar one looks like this:

 

Here is the "shamrock" trinity - three bits growing out of an underlying stuff.  In practice this is, roughly, how many unthinkingly view the trinity.  Such a vulgar quaternity is rightly rejected by theologians.  It can be seen immediately that the 'Godness of God' is considered at a completely different level to the three Persons in their roles and relations.  What makes God God is fundamentally impersonal attributes that may be expressed in the Persons but not constituted by their mutual inter-play.  So we can safely reject this version of things.

But I find that many theologians, having rejected the vulgar quaternity, congratulate themselves prematurely.  There is also the insidious quaternity to be dealt with.  There is another way of having a fourth...

Fundamentally this error consists in conceiving of the one God separately to a consideration of the three Persons in communion.  Recently I read a theologian say "God is both one and three - both a person and a community."  This is an example of the insidious quaternity.  One-ness and Three-ness are laid side by side to uphold a belief in the equal ultimacy of one and three.  Yet the one-ness of God is conceived of as a uni-personal one-ness - that is, it is separately considered to the multi-personal three-ness.  One and Three were not mutually interpreting truths but instead the 'one God' is thought of in non-communal (that is, non trinitarian) terms.

This is the approach taken by by so many doctrine of God text books where De Deo Uno (on the One God) is addressed prior to De Deo Trino (on the Trinity).   Yet, unless the two section are integrated at the deepest levels then there is grave danger of a fourth thing - i.e. "God plus Trinity" or "God apart from Trinity."

When this theological method is followed, often (not always but most times) section one unfolds such that the Three Person'd interplay takes no meaningful part in the discussions of the attributes.  Yet, typically, these attributes are asserted to be the virtue by which God is God.  On this view it is still possible to discuss the 'Godness of God' without reference to the perichoretic life of the Three.  Here One-ness and Three-ness are considered to be non-competing perspectives on the same God.  This effectively means that it is possible to speak in non-triune terms about the living God.  'God', then, is not the same thing as 'the Three Persons united in love'.   

This is also a quaternity.  Just a more insidious one.

And the only way I can see to avoid this fourth thing is to side with the Cappodocians: God's being consists without remainder in the Three Person'd perichoresis .

 

The one-ness of God is not a simple divine essence but the very unity of the Three.  The being of God is not an underlying substance (contra the vulgar quaternity).  But nor is it a separately conceived essence (contra the insidious quaternity).  Rather God's being is the very communion by which the Three are One.   

Trinity is not a perspective on the one God.  Rather the only God there is is trinity.  And the only way to conceive of Him is in triune terms.  'God' is 'Trinity'.  Unless this strict identity is maintained a fourth enters in.

Thus we must never conceive of the one God in any other terms than trinitarian ones.  (Re-write the text-books!).  God's being is in His communion (to use Zizioulas's phrase).  His One-ness is in His communion.  And (let's not forget) His Three-ness is in His communion - the Three are only who they are in this eternal perichoresis.   To put it another way: God is love.

Therefore let's guard against a 'fourth' whenever it threatens.  Let's reject the vulgar quaternity, but let's also reject the insidious quaternity.  And if people call us 'extreme social trinitarians' or 'tritheists' or whatever, let them.  The dangers on the other side are far greater.

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Now... Two great questions we asked of this post when it was originally put up.

First, How do we avoid seeing 'love' as a fourth?

My answer:

I guess there's inevitably a third kind of ‘fourth' (if that's not too confusing). But I hope it's a benign fourth. By that I mean, there will always be some virtue by which you conceive of the Three as belonging together. What I'm suggesting is that the one-ness is an already inherent unity *of* the Three rather than a one-ness brought in to unify the Three.

When we study the Persons, this involves us unavoidably in the communion by which the Persons are who they are. (The Son is Son because begotten by the Father etc etc). So on my view, the Three are Three by the exact same virtue that the Three are One - their mutually constituting eternal relations. In this way love is really not outside the Persons any more than the Persons are outside the Persons. They themselves have their ‘hypostasis in ekstasis'. They are who they are in going outside themselves and into the Others. There is not a glue in between the Persons called ‘love' (that would start to look like a fourth) but rather (mysteriously) they are IN one another! And to this mutual indwelling we give the name perichoresis and say that this is the virtue by which they are One. But really we haven't introduced an added element to the Three. This perichoresis is intrinsically part of who the Three are already. One-ness (on this view) is simply a description of how we find the Three (that is, that they are united).

On the other hand, the kind of (cancerous) fourths I'm opposing are ones where the virtue by which the Three are One is gained by looking apart from the Three. On these views it is possible to speak of the One God without speaking of the Persons in their mutual relations. One-ness is not at all the unity of the Three but something else (subsistence in the simple divine essence or whatever). This is most certainly a cancerous fourth.

I guess it boils down to this: I'm proposing a one-ness *of* the Three. I'm opposing a one-ness underneath or apart from the Three. One-ness for me is a description of who the Three are. One-ness for many western trinitarians seeks a unifying concept beyond the Three.

The great virtue of the eastern methodology is that the answers to the three key trinitarian questions are all the same:

By what are the Three divine? The relations in which they stand to one another.
By what are the Three distinct Persons? The relations in which they stand to one another.
By what are the Three One? The relations in which they stand to one another.

The eastern trinitarian never looks away from the Three to discuss either deity, difference or one-ness. All trinitarian theology is then descriptive of how we find these Three in the Gospel. Therefore there is no foreign concept of one-ness to be brought in apart from what we find studying the Three in the Gospel.

Wish I could articulate better "what is this earth thing called love?" (as the Star Trek alien would say), but I think ‘hypostasis in ekstasis' is about as good as it gets in theology! It's not an extra thing added to the being of the Persons but the very essence of their out-going, inter-penetrating, self-emptying existence. And it's this "Person-in-outgoingness" that defines who the Persons are *and* what the Oneness is.

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The second question was two-fold.  It asked whether we shouldn't just see inseparable operations as that by which the Three are One.  It also questioned the eastern emphasis on incomprehensibility.

My answer:

Inseparable operations *is* communion/perichoresis/mutual-relations as seen in God's economic activity (that is His outward works in creation-redemption). You're right to mention ‘asymmetry' in this as the cause of the ‘outflow' of these relations into creation. So the Father always works through the Son and by the Spirit. The initiation is with the Father, the execution is with the Son, the empowering and perfection of it is with the Spirit. Again, everything God does is from the Father, through the Son and by the Spirit. This is the inseparable operation of the trinity and it is simply the outflow of the mutual life of the Persons.

Thus to say ‘inseparable operations' is *not* to say ‘we encounter only a singularity in creation and redemption'. It is, rather, to say ‘we encounter the Three working in perfect unity.' The doctrine of inseparable operations is often cast as "we only see one, but behind that one there are Three." That is the very opposite of the case. A true doctrine of inseparable operations says "we see Three in the economy, but they are utterly united in these acts."

Therefore I'll have to disagree with your statement:

"from the outside we receive grace from the one God, without the trinity being clear until we can actually be drawn into that divine community when Christ came in the flesh"

So I don't think it's a case of ‘from the outside' seeing only One and then getting drawn into Three. Instead on the outside we see Three and then by the ‘two hands of the Father' (Irenaeus' phrase) we get drawn into the triune life (which is a life of one-ness - not singularity but communion).

You have, though, identified my chief beef with the eastern side:

"They seem to especially concerned about the incomprehensible nature of God, which seems to make it quite difficult to talk about trinity in the way you do."

Yes indeed. This is the problem with the east (which I've hinted at elsewhere). They are not really sold on the whole "The economic trinity reveals the immanent trinity" - which, for me, ought to be a basic tenet of revealed theology. For me, and more usually for the west, what you see in God is what you get. If He's revealed as Father sending Son and Father *and* Son sending Spirit, then that's a revelation of the deepest depths of the triune life. For the east, they have the immanent trinity lying mysteriously behind the economic trinity. What you see aint necessarily what you get.

So it's not a case of east = good guys, west = bad guys. It's a case of being mature enough to take the best of both. From east I take the methodology of Three first. From the west I take the maxim "the economic trinity is the immanent trinity."

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Off on holiday now for 9 days.  Some frivolity is about to be posted automatically by the blog.  If you want something more theological to chew on, here's a few older posts on the trinity issues that have been coming up recently.

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Oneness and Threness

I remember a friend asking me what I thought God was doing before the creation of the world.  I answered "They were enjoying one another."  He looked very quizzical and then said, "....Oh! You mean the Trinity!" I remember thinking "Well yes, what god were you thinking of?"

Yet many will think of God in ways that are divorced from the lively interaction of Father, Son and Spirit.  What about you?  How do you think of God's pre-creation life?  His OT activity?  His work in providence?  His divine attributes?  Do you naturally and enthusiastically conceive of these as the out-flow of the mutual relations of Persons?  Is your account of these shaped by triniarian inter-play?  Or do you try to conceive of these as, to all intents and purposes, unitarian activities to which we add trinitarian nuances (when we discuss salvation).   

Another way of asking this is - how do you think about the relation of Oneness and Threeness in God. 

Is it like this?  (Forgive the very amateur graphics/formatting)

 

Here, Oneness is defined as the substrata - the substance of God underlying the Persons.  The fundamental truths about God are cast in unitarian terms.  To this is added multi-Personal considerations.  Is this how you consider the interplay of Oneness and Threeness?

Or what about this view:

Here Oneness and Threeness are laid side by side.  We consider 'De Deo Uno' and De Deo Trino' but separately.  We can even subscribe to phrases like "the equal ultimacy of the One and the Three."  Yet what we mean by this is a commitment to hold two fundamentally incommensurate doctrines of God together.  It can even foster a refusal to let the Threeness of God define the Oneness.  Here the One God is not constituted by the relations of the Three - Oneness is something else (divine simplicity, aseity etc etc).  And the Three do not find their particular identities in the Oneness communion.  No.  Instead Oneness and Threeness remain unco-ordinated.  It's a tri-unity by forcing One and Three together not because the 'tri' and the 'unity' mutually inform one another. 

But what about if we saw things like this...

 

Here the Oneness is precisely the mutual relations of the particular Persons.  And these particular Persons find their identity in the communion that is God's Oneness.  "God's being is in His communion" (John Zizioulas).  The Three are three in their Oneness (not considered apart from it).  The One is one in the Threeness (not considered apart from it).

This is truly a trinity.  Here the 'tri' and the 'unity' are maintained from precisely the same perspective.  Here is a real 'equal ultimacy of the One and the Three.'

 The benefits of such a perspective?  Many - I hope to blog on many more in the fulness of time.  But for now (since we're in the middle of a series on mission) - we see that our doctrine of God, whether considering 'De Deo Uno' or 'De Deo Trino' is always a doctrine of the interplay of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It is always an investigation of the economy of salvation in which the Three are disclosed.  It is always 'Gospel' theology.  The God of missions is a Gospel-alone God who is served in the world by a Gospel-alone mission.

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