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Tag: theological method

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Published on 14 Comments on Baptism

Baptism strikes me as a good instance of how we all need to have a rich and deep theology.  To answer the question 'Should I baptize my child?' will require some pretty serious considerations of the nature of faith and salvation and church and covenant and OT/NT relations etc.  I hazard to suggest that those who say "You have your theology, I just have my bible" simply couldn't come up with an argument for paedo or credo baptism without some kind of systematic considerations.

You might have guessed (being an Anglican and a covenant theologian) that I believe in baptizing infants in Christian households.  I digress into this issue here in a sermon on Genesis 17.  To put it briefly I believe that OT saints were to circumcize all in their households (on the 8th day) as an entrance into the covenant community.  They were meant to grow up from within that covenant community as full members.  But for that very reason they were urged to inwardly own the outward sign of their belonging and to have a circumcized heart (Deut 10:16; 30:6; Jer 4:4).  Without this they forgo all the benefits of the outward sign and will in the end be treated as not simply uncircumcised but as covenant-breakers - a fearful position to be in.  In this sense I believe in baptizing infants in Christian households.  I do think Col 2:11-12 makes the link between circumcision and baptism though not directly but through Christ.  I believe it is the NT sign of belonging to the covenant people.  In this sense it is appropriate to baptize youngsters, to proclaim the gospel promises over them, to treat them as full members of the church and to urge them as they grow up to own the meaning of their baptism inwardly (a baptism of the heart).  That kinda thing.

Anyway, there's a guy in our congregation who wants to talk through who we should baptize.  Anyone got any suggestions for some good books we could look at?  (From any perspective) 

 

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Published on 27 Comments on The Allah of the Quran is not the God of the Bible

These are thoughts that I've been sharing over at Between Two Worlds on a post called Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammed?

My answer?  Of course not.  Here are some points in no particular order:

1) Let's let Allah define himself:

"He does not beget nor is he begotten." (Sura 112)

The Quran defines the god of Islam explicitly as not the God of the Bible. Let's respect Muslims enough to let them define who their god is. He is not the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We honour their faith by speaking of Allah as another god - that is how Allah defines himself. From our perspective we cannot speak of Allah as anything other than an idol - anything else fails to take Muslim faith on its own terms.

2) Can anyone really imagine the prophets addressing the Edomites, Philistines etc saying 'Yahweh is very much like Baal/Molech/Asherah'??! Never!

The question for the nations is not 'Do you believe in God?' But 'What god do you believe in?' Whether you're evangelizing in north Africa or north America "God" cannot be assumed.  In fact "God" is the least obvious word in our evangelistic encounters.  How on earth do we get to a position where people make it the point of commonality!

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At this point a commenter replied that the 'Baal' analogies do not work because Allah is thought to be 'the transcendent Creator' and not simply a power within the world.  He claimed that a Muslim convert would have to repent of many beliefs but not his belief in 'God as infinite transcendent Creator.'

To this I replied...

3) We don't say "Baal is called 'Lord' and receives worship therefore no convert from Baalism needs to repent of their notions of Lorship or worship."  Of course they will have to repent of all of this.  So then why would anyone claim that a belief in the 'infinite transcendent Creator' is of a different order?  Fundamentally I see this as committing two errors.  It is to say...

A) 'Transcendent Creator' is more foundational to God's being than His triunity.

B) The Muslim means roughly the same as the Christian when speaking of the 'Transcendent Creator'

I strongly disagree with both.

A) i) If God is transcendent Creator you've made Him dependent on creation.

A) ii) It is a position that leads to Arianism. Athanasius complained that Arius' error was to conceive of God as Unoriginate and then to consider trinity. On this trajectory he could never affirm the homo-ousios of One whose being was 'ek tes ousia tw patri' (out of the being of the Father). Similarly if your conversation with a Muslim begins with some 'bedrock' notion of transcendence before introducing them to Jesus it will necessarily mean introducing them to one who is less than the transcendent one. You'll have shot yourself in the foot from the very beginning. Let's not define Jesus out of full deity before we've even begun. We therefore must not begin on the Arian trajectory of affirming transcendent Creator first - Jesus will not come out very well from such a starting point!

B) Only the God who exists as Himself in relations of otherness can actually have a relationship with creation in which we can know Him as transcendent. 'Transcendent Creator' is dependent on trinity (not the other way around). The Muslim account of transcendence is completely confused (as is every unitarian account). Allah is a prisoner of his 'transcendence' - by definition cut off from any relationship with it (whether transcendent or immanent).

'Transcendent Creator' is neither the foundational nor a shared understanding of the living God. And it's not desirable that it should be.

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At this point my interlocutor (rightly) suspected I was denying the possiblity of true philosophical reflection on divinity apart from Christian revelation.  He claimed I was being overly Barthian ;-)   I replied with these points...

4) In terms of theological method, "Christ alone" is not a Barthian novelty!  It's difficult to think of a more crucial verse in the history of the church for theological method than Matthew 11:27: "No-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."

To this let's add John 1:18; 14:6 and Colossians 1:15. To this let's add the continual Scriptural witness that we are blind, dead, enemies of God unable to know Him apart from His Word to us.  (e.g. Ps 14:2; 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:21).  These plain and central truths cannot be evaded by crying 'Barthian'!

5) Nicea's "The Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth" was a deliberate and crucial choice of order. Triunity precedes creation. Of course it does - unless we want to define God as dependent upon creation.

6) Even Jews who have the Scriptures do not know the Father if they reject the Son. (cf ALL OF JOHN'S GOSPEL!)

7) To go over a previous point - there are tremendous Arian dangers of considering 'Creator' more foundational than trinity. Once you have assured your Muslim friend that she really does know God and that the God she knows is definitionally the infinite, transcendent Creator, do you really think you've helped her towards faith in Jesus of Nazareth?? Have you not just given her every reason to reject divine honours (thus defined) being attributed to Christ. Won't she simply thank you for confirming her own doctrine of God which by definition precludes Jesus from being anything more than a prophet??

Athanasius rightly said 'the only system of thought into which Jesus Christ will fit is the one in which He is the starting point.'

The Rock upon which we build is nothing and no-one else but Christ.  Let's be clearer on this whether we're evangelizing Muslims or our friends in the pub.  They do not know God and besides - why would we want to confirm for them a sterile, non-relational doctrine of God in the first place??  Let's tell them, 'The god you had thought existed was not God - let me tell you about the living God who is unlike anything you've imagined.  His name is Jesus and He blows your god out of the water!'

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Published on Leave a comment on Five thoughts on the sermon of creation

1) The sermon of creation is not a minimal thing - it's maximal.  Romans 1:19 'what may be known about God... God has made plain.'  Colossians 1:23 'the gospel... has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.'  Psalm 19:2 'Day after day they pour forth speech.'

2) Our blindness/deafness to this sermon is not minimal either - it is maximal. Note that in Psalm 19 David trusts that the creation daily pours forth speech in intentional evangelism.  In Ecclesiastes 1 his son sees the exact same heavens.  Yet even with all his wisdom, the 'teacher' of Ecclesiastes finds it utterly meaningless.  The circuit of the sun which was such a vivid portrait of the Bridegroom Champion in Psalm 19 becomes, in the eyes of the 'teacher', a futile and meaningless cycle.

Humanity is blind to the things of God (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:21). We cannot judge what the sermon of creation is saying by what we see. We naturally only see what we want to see.

3) The sermon of creation is not a static thing, it's dynamic, it's about movement and action and inter-relation. Literally Ps 19:2 says "Day unto day is a pouring forth of speech; night unto night is a displaying of knowledge." The sequence of day and night and day and night is itself a display of knowledge.  This proclamation involes 'sun, moon and stars in their courses above.'  The sermon of creation is expressed in dynamic action, it does not simply speak to us in static snap-shots of beauty.

So often people simply characterise the sermon of creation as something like "Look at a snow-capped mountain range, doesn't it fill you with awe. Well, now you should direct that awe to the God who is big enough and clever enough to have made it." That is certainly an element to what creation is saying, but it's not what David is drawing our attention to.

Psalm 19 highlights the progression of day and night, the movement of the sun across the sky, the heavens in their courses.   The dynamic sermon of creation tells far better of the Glory of God who is not a static, unmoved deity simply waiting for people to give Him glory. The Living God acts and moves and relates.  And His Glory, according to the Bible, is His Son acting, moving and relating. The theist will think of the sermon of creation in static terms because her god is static. The Christian knows the sermon is dynamic - just like our God.

4) The sermon of creation is 'the word of Christ.'  It is not about abstract qualities of power or wisdom but about the Son.  Of course this is so since Jesus is eternally the image of God (Col 1:15).  There is no revelation that is not in Him.

In Romans 10 Paul asks if any have not heard the word of Christ (v17)?  He answers, of course not and quotes Psalm 19!  The sermon of creation is the word of Christ.  When we examine Psalm 19 we see this to be so.  His example of the sun is a dead giveaway.  This sun is like a Bridegroom Champion who moves from east to west (like the journey the high priest makes from altar to ark) as the light of the world. (Ps 19:4-6; cf Ps 45). Here is a sermon regarding Christ.

Think also of John 12. When Jesus picks up a seed He doesn't say "How pretty and how intelligently designed" - He says "This seed proclaims my death and resurrection and, though this, the life of the world."  The sermon of creation is a gospel word concerning Christ.

5) Finally, the sermon of creation is seen only through the spectacles of the Scriptures (Calvin's famous image).  Ps 19 continues 'The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving/converting the soul.' (v7)  That which left even Ecclesiastes' 'teacher' looking into the meaningless cycle of life and death is that which, through the spectacles of Scripture, becomes the dynamic proclamation of Christ and His gospel.

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Published on Leave a comment on "You and me, we're not so different really…"

There's often a point in the crime drama where the bad guy tells the cop 'You and me, we're not so different really.'  Well there are two baddies in the history of trinitarian theology who really aren't that different: Arius and Sabellius.  Arius was the sub-ordinationist.  He defined the One God such that Jesus could not fit in.  Instead Jesus had to take His place under the One God.  Sabellius was the modalist.  He defined the One God such that Jesus was absorbed in, losing everything that made Him distinctly Jesus.  Instead Jesus was just the mask that the One God wore occasionally.  But you know - Arius and Sabellius weren't so different.  They both had a doctrine of the One God that couldn't cope with Jesus.

It was Jurgen Moltmann who really nailed this in my thinking. Check out this quote from The Trinity and the Kingdom of God:

A pre-conceived doctrine of the One God means "Christ must either recede into the series of the prophets, giving way to the One God, or he must disappear into the One God as one of his manifestations." (p131)

Here are the errors of Arius and Sabellius - and Jesus gets either squashed down or squished in.  The distinct Person of Christ will always lose out when 'the One God' is defined without Him.  Arius will allow Him to be Jesus and not God, Sabellius will allow Him to be God and not Jesus.  But fundamentally these errors are not so different because both prefer a pre-conceived 'One God' to Jesus. 

This leaves us no option but to begin with a doctrine of God that expressly includes the mutual relations of Father and Son.  Nothing else will allow Jesus to be Jesus and God.  Moltmann helped me to see what was at stake in this.  To begin with a definition of God that doesn't already include the distinct Personhood of the Son means either Arius's or Sabellius's error.  And, at the end of the day, they're not so different.

This is why Moltmann says:

...the doctrine of the Trinity is not only the deification of Christ; it is even more the Christianization of the concept of God. God cannot be comprehended without Christ, and Christ cannot be understood without God. If we are to perceive this, we not only have to reject the Arian heresy; the Sabellian heresy must be dismissed with equal emphasis." (p131-132)

Christ will never fit into a 'God' defined without Him.  We must begin with Him or else we will never honour Him properly.  The errors of subordinationism and modalism are simply the result of falling off either side of the wrong horse.  We must begin with Christ.

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Published on Leave a comment on “You and me, we’re not so different really…”

There's often a point in the crime drama where the bad guy tells the cop 'You and me, we're not so different really.'  Well there are two baddies in the history of trinitarian theology who really aren't that different: Arius and Sabellius.  Arius was the sub-ordinationist.  He defined the One God such that Jesus could not fit in.  Instead Jesus had to take His place under the One God.  Sabellius was the modalist.  He defined the One God such that Jesus was absorbed in, losing everything that made Him distinctly Jesus.  Instead Jesus was just the mask that the One God wore occasionally.  But you know - Arius and Sabellius weren't so different.  They both had a doctrine of the One God that couldn't cope with Jesus.

It was Jurgen Moltmann who really nailed this in my thinking. Check out this quote from The Trinity and the Kingdom of God:

A pre-conceived doctrine of the One God means "Christ must either recede into the series of the prophets, giving way to the One God, or he must disappear into the One God as one of his manifestations." (p131)

Here are the errors of Arius and Sabellius - and Jesus gets either squashed down or squished in.  The distinct Person of Christ will always lose out when 'the One God' is defined without Him.  Arius will allow Him to be Jesus and not God, Sabellius will allow Him to be God and not Jesus.  But fundamentally these errors are not so different because both prefer a pre-conceived 'One God' to Jesus. 

This leaves us no option but to begin with a doctrine of God that expressly includes the mutual relations of Father and Son.  Nothing else will allow Jesus to be Jesus and God.  Moltmann helped me to see what was at stake in this.  To begin with a definition of God that doesn't already include the distinct Personhood of the Son means either Arius's or Sabellius's error.  And, at the end of the day, they're not so different.

This is why Moltmann says:

...the doctrine of the Trinity is not only the deification of Christ; it is even more the Christianization of the concept of God. God cannot be comprehended without Christ, and Christ cannot be understood without God. If we are to perceive this, we not only have to reject the Arian heresy; the Sabellian heresy must be dismissed with equal emphasis." (p131-132)

Christ will never fit into a 'God' defined without Him.  We must begin with Him or else we will never honour Him properly.  The errors of subordinationism and modalism are simply the result of falling off either side of the wrong horse.  We must begin with Christ.

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Published on Leave a comment on Let Jesus be Jesus.

Ok, so the last post put forward church life as an analogy of trinitarian life.  More specifically:

'Differently gifted members of one priesthood' is analagous to 'Differently gifted Persons in one Godhead.'

Once this is seen, then we can all breathe a sigh of relief and just let Jesus be Jesus. 

What do I mean by that?  Well let me ask a few questions.  When you read the Gospels, do you ever wonder:

  • Why doesn't Jesus just say 'I am God'?  Why all this 'I am sent...' stuff?
  • Why does Jesus keep saying things like: 'I can do nothing by myself'? (e.g John 5:19,30)
  • How come Jesus sleeps?
  • How come Jesus doesn't know when He's returning?

Do we get worried when we see that Jesus is 'differently gifted' to the One He calls Father??

Well we needn't be.  It is a revelation of His divine nature (and not a concealment) that we see in Jesus such dependence on the Father.  When He says 'I am sent' it reveals His divine nature as the eternal Son of the Father.  When He says 'I can do nothing' it reveals His divine nature as the eternal Servant of the LORD.  When He sleeps it reveals His divine nature as One dependent upon the ever-wakeful Father.  When He says He doesn't know when He's returning He reveals His divine nature as One sent from God.  He waits on the Father's command and does not initiate His first or second coming.

He really can't do anything by Himself.  He really does sleep (He really does die even!)  He really doesn't know when He's returning.  But for all that He is no less divine.   For He belongs to the other Members and in union with their 'giftings' He is a full participant in the communion that is God.

We don't need to assign these differences in Jesus to some 'human nature' locked off from a special sphere of uncorrupted deity.  Jesus' deity is not insulated from these differences, it includes them.  It is the human Jesus who says 'If you've seen me you've seen the Father.'  It is the human Jesus who says 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'  In His differences, even in His complete humanity, He is the living God.  So let's let Him be who He is in the Gospels.  Let's not fit Him into some pre-conceived notions of divinity.  Let's let Jesus be Jesus.

Published on Leave a comment on Theology – the end of the process??

Is “systematic theology... the end process of exegesis and biblical theology"??  Ben Myers writes brilliantly against such a conception.  To imagine that a pure biblical scholar can dispassionately read off the meaning of the Bible through the use of objective interpretive tools is ludicrous.  To imagine that then the systematic theologian comes to co-ordinate these propositions into a logically cogent order is similarly misguided.  As Myers says 'It's theology all the way down.'  Theological pre-suppositions and commitments necessarily guide and shape all Christian activity from exegesis to exposition to pastoral work, to evangelism to hospitality to everything.

And yet the idea that the Bible can be neutrally read is so tempting.  We would love to conceive of revelation as propositions deposited in a handy compendium simply to be extracted and applied.  Yet the Word is a Person.  And His book is Personal (John 5:39).  It's not something we judge with our double edged swords - the Word judges us. (Heb 4:12)

Now Jesus thought the Scriptures were absolutely clear.  He never made excuses for theological error.  He never gave even the slightest bit of latitude by conceding a certain obscurity to the Bible.  He never assumes that His theological opponents have just mis-applied an interpretive paradigm.  If they get it wrong He assumes they've never read the Scriptures (e.g. Matt 21:16,42; Mark 2:25)!  So the perspicuity of the Bible is not in dispute. 

But Jesus tells the Pharisees why they get it wrong - "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God." (Matt 22:29)  And, again, "You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." (John 5:39-40)  They are wrongly oriented to the Power of God and the One of Whom the Scriptures testify - Jesus.  This is not simply a wrong orientation of the intepreter but of the interpretation.  Scripture reading must be oriented by the Power of God to the Son of God.  Within this paradigm - a paradigm which the Scriptures themselves give us - the Bible makes itself abundantly clear.

But this paradigm is an unashamedly and irreducibly theological one.  It is the result of exegesis (e.g. studying the verses given above) but it is also the pre-supposition of such exegesis.  Theology is not the end of the process from exegesis to biblical studies and then to the systematician! 

And yet, I have often been in discussions regarding the Old Testament where theologians will claim an obvious meaning to the OT text which is one not oriented by the Power of God to the Son of God.  They will claim that this first level meaning is the literal meaning - one that is simply read off the text by a process of sound exegesis.  And then they claim that the second meaning (it's sensus plenior - usually the christocentric meaning) is achieved by going back to the text but this time applying some extrinsic theological commitments.

What do we say to this?  Well hopefully we see that whatever 'level' of meaning we assign to the biblical text it is not an obvious, literal meaning to be read off the Scriptures like a bar-code!  Whatever you think that first-level meaning to be, such a meaning is inextricably linked to a whole web of theological pre-suppositions.  The step from first level to second is not a step from exegesis to a theological re-reading.  It is to view the text first through one set of pre-suppositions and then through another.

And that changes the direction of the conversation doesn't it?  Because then we all admit that 'I have theological pre-suppositions at every level of my interpretation.'  And we all come clean and say 'Even the basic, first-level meaning assigned to an OT text comes from some quite developed theological pre-commitments - pre-commitments that would never be universally endorsed by every Christian interpreter, let alone every Jewish one!'  And then we ask 'Well why begin with pre-suppositions which you know to be inadequate?  Why begin with pre-suppositions that are anything short of 'the Power of God' and 'the Son of God'?   And if this is so, then why on earth do we waste our time with a first-level paradigm that left even the post-incarnation Pharisees completely ignorant of the Word?  In short, why don't we work out the implications of a biblical theology that is trinitarian all the way down?  Why don't we, at all times, read the OT as inherently and irreducibly a trinitarian revelation of the Son?

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Published on Leave a comment on 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:

Oneness and Threeness 1

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...

Oneness and Threeness 2

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 .

Oneness Threeness 3b

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.

 

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This is a re-working of an older post on One-ness and Three-ness.

Published on Leave a comment on So what??!

A friend of mine is at Bible college and has been set an essay on trinitarian theology and the difference between east and west.  He emailed me to ask "So what??! I mean realistically what are the implications of the different approaches?"

Here's part of my response.  I have obviously caricatured positions to make a point.   I'm trying to be as stark as possible to drive home the difference.  And the west is obviously not as bad as I've suggested, nor is the east the paragon of virtue.  There are basic things about eastern trinitarianism I disagree with - but not their starting point.  And that's my focus here.  So here is my response:

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Ok, you say 'So what?'  I say - 'So everything!'

De Regnon [who my friend mentioned in his email] is a good lead.  Let me re-phrase his insight:  The west begins with One and then tries to figure out how to get Three.  The east begins with the Three and then figures out how the Three are One. 

Re-read this until you have the distinction firmly in mind...

The west begins with One and tries to get to Three.  The east begins with Three and then gets to One. 

Now between these positions there is all the difference in the world.

If you're eastern you say: "I've met this guy Jesus and He introduces me to His Father and sends His Spirit."  And then, having met the Three Persons in the gospel, you say 'what kind of one-ness do these three Persons share?'  And because you think in this way you can conclude: "These three Persons are *one* because they are united in love." 

So you go to John 17 and you see Jesus saying He wants His followers to be one the same way He and the Father are one.  And then you say "Aha!  The one-ness of the church is loving unity, therefore it stands to reason that the one-ness of Father and Son is loving unity."  And then you remember 1 John 4 and you say with joy: How is God one?  God is love!  God is a loving community of Three Persons. 

And this means that the greatest thing in all reality is love (because God is love).  And it means that reality is relational.  And it means that loving community among disinct people is very important.  One-ness for the east is a loving union of particular Persons who don't lose their individuality (Father, Son and Spirit are all different Persons - they are not one because they are identical.) 

So the east simply says: God is three distinct but totally united Persons loving one another.  Let me flesh out three implications of this:

1) It means that difference, distinction, community, relationship, mutuality, reciprocity and LOVE are all at the very very centre of who God is.  God's identity is not primarily a collection of attributes but a community of love. 

2) Because even the Father, Son and Spirit find their identity in relationships we see that relationship is at the heart of personal identity.  God is who He is because He is love.  God is who He is because of the relationships of Father, Son and Spirit.  Therefore I am who I am because of the relationships I share in.

3) Community is hugely important.  Even in God, different voices are not silenced by one dominant ruler.  Instead different voices contribute to a one-ness that's all about distinct persons working together in love.

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On the other hand the west begins by saying: "we know that God is one.  We know that this one God has all sorts of attributes that go with the 'Creator' job description. So God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, impassible, immutable etc etc."  Then the west says, "Ok we've got the one God, but now in the gospel we meet these three Persons.  So how can the three Persons qualify as this one God?" They figure that since the one God is defined by these attributes then the way these Three are One is by sharing in all these same attributes.  And so they map these attributes identically onto the three Persons.  In this way the distinctions between Persons gets lost.  Every difference is blurred into the one God who is defined not by relationships but by attributes (i.e. He's big and clever).  Three implications of this:

1) God's identity is primarily a collection of attributes - attributes that are about His distance from creation, His difference to us.

2) If God is who He is because of His attributes - personal identity is essentially about *attributes* (about being big and clever).  Therefore I am who I am because of how big and clever I am.

3) Community is not really that important - there's only one voice and will that counts.  Distinctions and difference will get bull-dozed before the all-important one.

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Ok, now that I've laid it out like this, hopefully you can see some of the 'so what' significance??

Let me tease it out by discussing the three implications:

Regarding 1):  In the west, God has been defined as a collection of attributes that place Him at an infinite distance from us.  Now if you go out on the streets and talk to people about whether they're religious, basically (keeping eastern influences out of this) people will say either they do or they don't believe in a distant, uni-personal God who is approximately the 'omni-being' of philosophy.  Whether they believe in "God" or don't believe in "God", the "God" they're talking about is the collection of attributes which the western theologian began with before they examined the gospel!  The god that our western culture has either embraced or rejected is not the God of the gospel!  Instead the "god" of the pub discussion is pretty much the "one God" that the western theologian began with.  And if the bloke in the pub rejects that god - I don't blame him!!  That's not a god who is obviously related to Jesus of Nazareth (or His Spirit or the Father He called 'Abba').  And therefore its not a god who appears to be particularly interested in us - its not a god revealed in gospel love but in philosophical speculation.  Now the cultures shaped by the western church have been shaped by this doctrine of God.  When they accepted "God" it was this "God" they accepted.  When they rejected him, it was this "God" they rejected.

Atheism has basically been the rejection of this god.  People have decided they don't want a distant omni-being over against them and proclaimed his non-existence.  And what people like Colin Gunton are trying to ask is "Would the west have rejected "God" so thoroughly if the "God" they were presented with by the western church was the community of committed love revealed in Jesus?"  The answer still might be yes, but it's an interesting question anyway!

Regarding 2): The question of personal identity.  Well if we go with the west, my identity is all about my attributes.  I need to build up a CV of my big-ness and clever-ness.  That will define me.  But if I go with the east then my identity is about my relationships.  I am who I am because fundamentally I'm in Christ (and what's more I'm a son, a brother, a husband, etc). When I take this seriously, my western status-anxiety can be relieved in a second.  I find liberation from the western drive to prove myself and forge an identity for myself.  I am given identity in the relationships I have (primarily my relationship with Christ). 

Think also of the abortion debate. What is it that defines whether this foetus has personal identity?  Ask a westerner and they'll instinctively answer you in terms of attributes: "This foetus can/can't do X, Y, and Z therefore the foetus can/can't be aborted."  But what if the foetus is a person not because of its attributes but because it already stands in relationships of love?

Regarding 3): The point about community.  Here's a quote from the website: (http://www.christthetruth.org.uk/threepersonsunited.htm)

"...what can we learn about relationships and community from The Relationship? In gender relations, in multi-ethnic society, in equal opportunities policies, in the church, in our families - we are constantly confronted by people who have real and important differences and yet people who ought to be treated with equal respect and dignity. How do we appreciate the differences and uphold the equality? If we treat all in exactly the same way, are we not ignoring the valuable distinctives? This ‘melting pot' approach falls foul of oppression-by-assimilation. The incumbent majority always wins out at the cost of the minorities - they either become like the majority or they die. Do we, therefore, treat specific parties differently in an attempt to give them a leg-up? When this happens stereo-types can be re-enforced by ‘special treatment' and work against the value of equality. Furthermore: who defines the appropriate yard-stick of "success" in a culture? Perhaps it is better to abandon the idea of community altogether and accept along with Margaret Thatcher that there is "no such thing as society."

"Well what can the Trinity teach us? At the heart of reality lies a Community of different but equal Persons who have their own identities constituted by their mutual interdependence. They work together as One. There definitely is such a thing as society. Person-hood can never be considered individualistically but is made up of relationships on which we depend. Within The Community, the Persons freely submit to one another in roles of subordination while never losing their equal status. They do submit to differences in treatment and in function - but they maintain a definite equality of being and uphold one another in bonds of unconditional love. Here is a Community on which to model our own."

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Published on Leave a comment on Nicene Trinitarianism

Much of this is from a comment or two I've made here at Dan Hames' excellent blog.

The trinity is a very old doctrine. See The Trinitarian Old Testament for just how old. But Nicea (by which I mean the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381 which we say in church today) gave us certain terminology that is accepted by both East and West.  Its creed is basic to all Christian churches.  Yet its doctrine of God is a particular one - one that is sometimes unwittingly (sometimes wittingly) side-lined, ignored or opposed.

The first thing to notice is Nicea's doctrine of 'the one God.'  To the untrained eye, it looks like it doesn't have one.  It simply says 'We believe in one God' and then immediately goes on to speak of 'the Father Almighty', 'one Lord Jesus Christ' and 'the Holy Spirit'.  Nicea gives absolutely no definition of the one God except to unfold His being in the description of the Three. No doubt many scholastic theologians (if anachronistically present!) would have inserted quite an extended treatise on the omnis in between "I believe in God..." and "...the Father Almighty". But Nicea doesn't let you force a breach between a description of the One and the Three.  To describe the One is to unfold the Three.

When looking for a doctrine of God's 'ousia' (being), again a typical western theologian may be disappointed.  All we have in the creed is the controversial phrase 'homo-ousios'.  Jesus, the Son, is 'homo-ousion tw patri' (of one being with the Father).  There is not here a prior definition of 'ousia' which is then mapped onto the three Persons.  Let me repeat: There is not a prior definition of 'ousia' which is then mapped onto the three Persons.  Instead we infer what the 'ousia' is from the fact that Father and Son are 'homo-ousios'.

Jesus, in all His difference from the Father, is still homo-ousios with the Father. In His divinity He is 'God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made." Even in His divinity He is 'ek tes ousia tw patri' (out of the being of the Father). There are important differences between Father and Son that are not papered over but rather affirmed by and included in the homo-ousios.

The homo-ousios does not denote three-fold repetition but rather, in TF Torrance's words:

"The Father/Son relationship falls within the one being of God.” (Trinitarian Faith, p119).

Homoousios “meant that the Son and the Father are equally God within the one being of God.” (ibid, p122)

The homo-ousios upholds the distinction (as well as unity) of Father and Son. Remember that you can't be 'homo' with yourself. And it points us to the fact that the Father is Begettor, the Son Begotten. The Father from Himself, the Son from the Father (even according as He is God, contra Calvin but with Nicea!).

There are genuine differences in Persons that in no way compromise their equality of divinity. There is never a time when the Son is not homo-ousios with the Father nor is there a time when the Son is not begotten of His Father. Therefore there is not an ousia of the Father that could ever be separately conceived and then assigned in equal measure to Father, Son and Spirit. Instead the ousia of God is a mutually constituting communion in which Father, Son and Spirit share. The ousia of the trinity consists in three Persons who are 'homo' with one another. While Nicea does not say explicitly that the 'ousia' is the communion of Persons, it points decidedly in this direction. (See Torrance's 'Trinitarian Faith' for more).

All this is to say that distinctions between Father, Son and Spirit are upheld within the divine nature. The divine nature is not a set of pre-determined attributes which are identically mapped onto the Three. The divine nature is constituted by difference, distinction, mutuality, reciprocity - it is a divine life (a dance even!) not a divine stuff.

Compare this with so much doctrine of God in the west.  First an ousia of 'omnis' is determined.  The one God is discussed for 600 pages in terms of 'uncreated Creator'.  And then we face the Three.  What do we then do?  Simply give to each Person this CV of attributes and insist that this is what the Nicene homo-ousios demanded!  On this understanding all difference, distinction, mutuality and reciprocity is banished from the status of deity.  In preference to the lively interplay of Father, Son and Spirit, a 'simple' doctrine of the One (read divine simplicity) is forwarded.  And God's own being is conceived of as a stuff not a life.

Think I prefer Nicea!

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For a sermon of mine on trinity go here.  For some excellent talks by Mike Reeves on the subject go here.

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