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2

GOD IN RELATION TO US

In this chapter we shall first examine briefly three simple yet profound descriptions of God – a task which will introduce us to the biblical vision of the Holy Trinity and prepare us for the biblical study in chapters 4 to 11.  Then, so that we shall not be reading and studying the Bible in a vacuum, we shall turn to examine the origins of the ecclesial doctrine/dogma of the Holy Trinity as this was developed in the early and medieval church and recorded later in the confessions of faith of the Protestant churches of the Reformation.  To know the ecclesial dogma will help us both to appreciate the biblical vision of the Holy Trinity and the concept of the development of doctrine.

The three simple yet profound statements concerning God all appear in the Johannine writings of the New Testament and, upon examination, yield a lively conception of God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

John, the evangelist, reports that in his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well Jesus said, "God is Spirit" (John 4:24).  Too often this has been taken out of context and made to

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mean such things as "God is a Spirit – one among several" or "God is invisibly present everywhere and can be approached anywhere at any time howsoever we will."  It has also been seen as a slogan for pantheism.  Yet, it appears in a context where we read that "those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth" (4:24).

If we inquire concerning the identity of the God who is Spirit, then the answer provided by the text of the same conversation is, "the Father," whose "only Son" is Jesus.  "The hour is coming, and now is," said Jesus, "when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him" (4:23).

Some people of a philosophical disposition have supposed that the statement "God is Spirit" is a metaphysical and ontological definition of the eternal nature of the invisible deity.  Though God (according to philosophical theism) is eternal, uncreated Spirit, the meaning here has less to do with eternity and more to do with space and time.  "God is Spirit" is the same general kind of statement as two others found in 1 John, which we shall examine below.  They are "God is light" (1:5) and "God is love" (4:8).  In all three statements it is God in relation to us, God acting with respect to us, which is being affirmed.  John is telling us how the Father really is, or truly acts, toward us in history and on a Person-to-person basis.

Jesus is not attempting to speak of God-as-God-is-in-himself in his eternity.  His message is of God as God-is-toward-and-for-us; the Father is the One who gives the Spirit (John 14:16), and it is in and by the Spirit that the Father relates to human beings as his creatures.  Therefore, "God [the Father] is Spirit" in the sense that, as the invisible God, he makes himself known through the medium of the Spirit, whom he actually sends into the world.

True worship also is in the sphere of "Spirit."  Human beings who worship their Creator and Lord must worship "in spirit [Spirit]," as those who are reborn by water and the Spirit (John 3:5) and who have been baptized with that baptism in the Spirit of which John the Baptist spoke (John 1:33).  It is necessary that they worship in this way, for no other approach is acceptable to the Father.  Genuine worship must be prompted, energized, and brought to fulfillment by the presence and sanctifying power of

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the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit worship by human beings remains merely a human activity which has no guarantee of reaching the Father.

And there is a further necessary component! True worship is also "in truth."  John’s Gospel makes it very clear that the Spirit and the Word (the Son) exist and work in perfect harmony in God’s economy of grace.  Jesus as the Word (1:1) is also the Truth (14:6), who reveals the very reality of God (8:45; 18:37).  In fact, the Spirit is "the Spirit of truth" (14:17; 15:26; 16:13) in his relation to the Word made flesh, Jesus, the Son.  And Jesus is the Truth, who reveals the Father, who does the will of the Father, and who makes access to the Father possible for sinners by his sacrificial death as the Lamb of God.  He is the Son of the Father who becomes the man of flesh and blood.  Further, as Jesus told the Samaritan woman (4:26), he is the "I am" without any predicate – the "I am," Ego eimi = Yahweh of Exodus 3:14ff, and of Isaiah 41:4 and 43:10 (see further John 6:20; 8, particularly vv. 24, 28, 58; 13:19; 18:5-8).  Thus true worship must be offered to the Father through (i.e., according to the Truth which is) Jesus and by/in the Spirit, who is given by the Father and who rests upon and takes from the Son.

It would be false to conclude from John 4:23-24 that worship must only be spiritual, confined to the heart, and without any outward expression of form or ceremony.  The apostolic church worshiped through the ministry of Word and Sacrament; and it is highly probable that John 6:53-58 refers to the Eucharist as a primary means of worship.  To worship in Spirit and in Truth is to worship the Trinity by the Trinity.  Those who believe on the name of the Son, and who are born from above by the Spirit, worship the Father through the Son and in the Spirit.  And they do so because the Father, through the Son and by the Spirit, has not only created them but also revealed himself to them, as the God who gives eternal life because of his Son’s perfect obedience unto death.

The contrast of light and darkness is found in many religions.  This is entirely what we would expect for they are such obvious-

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ly contrasting symbols of the good and the evil. In terms of Christianity, the advent of the Logos, the only Son of the Father, was the coming of light into the world (John 1:4-9; cf. Matt. 4:16; Luke 2:32) – the light shining in darkness. Jesus is "the light of the world" while God, the Father, is "light."

This is the message we have heard from him [Jesus Christ] and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.  If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth; but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:5-7).

Obviously the Lord our God as the true and only God is of necessity and always light both in himself as the transcendent God and in his relations with the world as its Creator and Redeemer.  It is the latter which is in view here.  The whole context of 1 John makes it clear that "God as Light" is not a philosophical, speculative statement about the being and nature of deity but is a declaration of God’s relation to the world as Revealer and Savior.

In the Old Testament light is used to symbolize truth in contrast to error, and righteousness in contrast to wickedness (see Ps. 36:9; 119:130; Isa. 5:20; Micah 7:8).  Thus in Hebrew terms to say that "God is light" is to confess that he is absolute in his glory, in his truth, and in his holiness.

The Father is light, the incarnate Son is the light, and believers are called to live and walk in the light and have fellowship one with another and with the Father through his only Son. But, we ask, how is this walking and fellowship possible?  John answers, "You have been anointed by the Holy One" (1 John 2:20; cf. v. 27); that is, you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit.  For one to see the light, to have the light shine in his heart, and to walk in the light, he needs the illumination of the Holy Spirit of light.  In other words, light shines upon and within him from the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit.  Therefore, what the psalmist prayed (36:9) – "In thy light do we see light" – is wonderfully fulfilled.

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The word love is often on the lips of modern people.  Yet rarely does it have that meaning communicated by the Greek word agape, or even the word philia (the loving feeling of friendship).  When we read that "God is love" (1 John 4:8) it is the word agape which describes God.  God is love in that he wills that which is the best for his creatures and he commits himself wholly to achieving this end.  Further, it is not only that God is the source of love but that all of his intentions and activity are loving. We read in 1 John 4:7-12:

Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God.  He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

In this paragraph the verb (agapeo) and the noun (agape) occur fifteen times.  The logic of love is very obvious.  God, who is the Father, is love in that he sent his only Son into the world to be the propitiation/expiation for human sins.  "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).  Yet, God’s love is not merely a past determination to do good which was completed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  God is still love in that his Son, Jesus Christ, was raised from the dead and is alive forevermore willing the good of mankind, believers in particular.  Further, God is still love in that he abides in those who believe.  "By this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us" (1 John 3:24).  The Holy Spirit dwells in the souls of the faithful, and it is by his inspiration and power that love is perfected in them and believers are enabled to love one another, thus fulfilling the command of Christ.

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The Father loves the Son; the Son loves the Father; and the Spirit is the presence and expression of the love of the Father and the love of the Son.  The Father loves the world and sent his only Son into the world; the Son also loves the world and gave himself as a propitiatory and expiatory sacrifice for the sins of the world; the Spirit brings the love of the Father and the Son into the hearts of those who believe, so that they may love God and one another.

Reflecting upon this theme of "God is love," Paul K. Jewett writes:

Beyond the love of John 3:16 is the eternal love that God is in himself. Before all worlds [ages] he is the Father who loves the Son (John 3:35) and the Son who loves the Father – in the Spirit. God, then, from all eternity, is the One-who-is-for-Others in himself; that is, he is a Trinity of holy love.  And as such he reveals himself. In creation he becomes the One-who-is-for-others-outside-himself, namely, his creatures.  In redemption he becomes the One-who-is-for-sinful-others, namely, his people whom he restores to fellowship with himself.  Thus the eternal fellowship of the divine, trinitarian life grounds God’s fellowship with us to whom he gives himself in love as our Maker and Redeemer.¹

So it is that the church has never been able to divorce what is called the ontological or immanent Trinity from the economic Trinity for God in himself is holy love and God turned outward from himself toward us is also holy love.

From the evidence provided by the examination of these Johannine texts, we can make certain preliminary judgments concerning the identity of God, who is known, worshiped, and served by Christians.

First of all, God (theos) has a name and that name is "the Father."  In the Gospel and letters of John, it can be claimed that "God" means "the Father" on virtually every occasion where it occurs in the text.  One exception is perhaps the exclamation of

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Thomas the Twin addressed to the resurrected Jesus: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28)

If God is "the Father" then the question arises, "Of whom is he the Father?"  The answer is clear.  The Father has an "only Son," who has been with him "from the beginning" as the Word, who became man, Jesus of Nazareth.  The Son reveals the Father and his will.  To see the Son is to see the Father.  In order to know the Father and to receive his gift of eternal life, one must believe in the Son.  The Son is both the Revealer of the Father and the Way to the Father.  He comes from the Father, and he returns to the Father for "us and for our salvation" (Nicene Creed).

In John’s Gospel (chaps. 14–16), the Holy Spirit, who is sent into the world by the Father for the sake of the Son, is described in personal terms (as he who dwells within the disciples, teaches them, and bears witness to and glorifies Jesus).  In these chapters, together with chapter 17 wherein is the high priestly prayer of Jesus, we are given a wondrous revelation of the identities and relations of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In summary we may say that to speak of God is to speak of "the Father."  To speak of God is also to speak of "the Father and his only Son."  Further, to speak of God is to speak of "the Father, his only Son, and his Spirit, who is also the Spirit of his Son."

There is a movement of grace (creation, revelation, salvation) from God toward the world – from the Father through the Son and in/by the Spirit; and there is a movement of grace (faith, love, obedience) from the world to God – to the Father through the Son and in/by the Holy Spirit.

What, of course, is not decided, by the inspired presentation of God in relation to us as the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit in the Johannine texts, is whether the Son and the Holy Spirit just as equally possess divinity as does the Father.  Obviously in what we may call the divine economies of creation, revelation, and redemption the Father is first in order and the Son and the Holy Spirit are subordinate – that is they are second and third in order.  Since the Father sends the Son and also sends the Holy Spirit there is a natural and logical priority of the Father.  The authoritative answering of the question as to the

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precise, metaphysical or ontological relation of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit to each other had to wait several centuries for the deliberations of the ecumenical councils of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381).

The full exposition of the ecclesial, ontological doctrine of the Trinity did not occur overnight.  It took a long time and developed in contrasting but essentially complementary ways in the East and West after the production of the creeds of the councils of Nicea and Constantinople.  The major difference between East and West is the addition to the commonly held Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) of the filioque in the West in the early Middle Ages.  This is the teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds both from the Father and from the Son, as from one principle.  In contrast, the East insisted that the Holy Spirit proceeded not merely from the Father, but from the Father alone.  However, the East allowed the explanation that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father through the Son" both within the eternal, essential, and immanent Trinity (God as God is in himself) and in the divine work of creation, revelation, redemption, and deification (God as God is toward us – the economic Trinity).

Let us begin our reflections on the development of the ecelesial doctrine of the Holy Trinity with the notion of God as the Pantokrator.  This is the word which appears in the first sentence of the Nicene Creed and which we translate as "the Almighty."  It is a dynamic word meaning "God the Pantokrator does everything": that is, the one Lord God is the supreme, universal actively ruling Power over all things.  The reference is to an actuality of power and to the fact that the divine action is universal in its scope, extending over the whole world of nature, and including under its dominion all processes whatsoever, cosmic or historical.  So God, the Father, is for Christians the Pantokrator as he is also the Creator of heaven and earth.

In the pre-Nicene period of the early church it was customary to refer to God as the Pantokrator in terms of "the Monarchy."  This was because in the hellenistic religions to teach the divine Monarchy amounted to defending the logically unim-

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peachable proposition that only One can be the Almighty.  So the early Christians saw an opportunity in the language of their time to proclaim important truths concerning both the identity of God and the relation of God to the cosmos.  Yet, in so doing, they raised a major question. Is the Monarch the Godhead (the divine nature) or the Father, or the One (Jesus the Christ) who is called "the Lord"?

Following the lead of the New Testament, the answer given in the second and third centuries was that the Monarch is truly "the Father" and, more specifically, "the Father within the Trinity."  Certainly the Father has absolute, divine authority over creation (as the Nicene Creed was to declare), but logically prior to this rule and within eternity the Father is the Monarch in relation to the Word and the Holy Spirit.  The eternal Son and the eternal Spirit, distinct from each other and distinct from the Father, are nevertheless both within the divine eternity and also in their external missions into the cosmos "subjects" of the Monarch, the Father.  However, the early fathers also insisted that this doctrine does not imply the inferiority of the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Rather it points to "holy order" within the eternal Godhead.

Such talk, however, could easily lose its way and thus run the risk of encouraging the idea that the Son and the Holy Spirit were in some sense less divine than is the Father.  In fact, as is well known, Arius propagated such an idea in Alexandria and this eventually led to the calling of the Council of Nicea (325) by Constantine the Great.  The major concern of this first ecumenical council of the church was to make it as plain as possible that Jesus of Nazareth, while being personally distinct from the Father, possesses the Godhead (is truly God) in the fullest sense.  That is, he is fully God by derivation and in the possession of communicated deity, but truly divine and equal to the Father with a derived equality.  Or, put another way, God because he is homoousios (of identical essence or substance) with the Father and God because he is eternally begotten of the Father.

The council rejected the attractive possibility offered by Arianism of a simple monotheism with the doctrine that Jesus was the highest of creatures and the uniquely adopted Son of the God, the Father.  The bishops present at Nicea knew that the

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testimony of the Gospels and the experience of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in his church led them to one conclusion only – Jesus is "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, and consubstantial with the Father."

It is important for us to note that the homoousion was neither a new truth nor a new revelation from God.  What this teaching did and does is to reduce the multiplicity of scriptural truths concerning who Jesus is into the unity of a single affirmation: that the Son is consubstantial with the Father is the sense of everything that the Scriptures declare concerning the Son.  However, to use such language is to state the truth of the Scriptures in a new mode of understanding.  There has been a transition from a mode of understanding that is primarily descriptive, relational, historical-existential, and interpersonal (i.e., what Christ is to us) to a mode that is definitive, explanatory, absolute, and ontological (i.e., what Christ is in himself).

The full, ontological doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and with the Son had to wait until the Nicene teaching of Jesus Christ had been appropriated by the church during the fourth century, and for the theological clarity of the teaching of the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa) concerning the Person of the Holy Spirit to be received.  So the Creed of the Council of Constantinople (381) declares that the Holy Spirit is to be worshiped and glorified with both the Father and with the Son.

We recall that what the early church had to avoid at all costs were two deviations from the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  One was modalism which maintained the unity of God at the cost of denying the reality of the Three Persons in the One Godhead.  That is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were/are merely three modes of the one God’s self-revelation.  The other deviation was tritheism, the teaching that the Three Persons do not share one Godhead but are Three related but different Gods.  The Father is the superior divinity and the Son and the Holy Spirit are lesser divinities.  Certain forms of Arianism were in essence forms of tritheism.  Authentic trinitarianism may be seen as a delicate balancing act between modalism and tritheism.

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In the East the formula which most clearly conveyed the doctrine of the Trinity was "three divine hypostaseis in one ousia."  The origins of this go back to the use of the word homoousios (of identical substance) in the Nicene Creed (325).  The ousia in this Nicene formula is the substance (deity, godhead) of the Father and the Son.  It is what philosophers call the deutera ousia, the specific essence, not different but identical in two individuals of the same species.  After the Council of Nicea, it was a relatively straightforward move (though complicated by historical circumstances) to confess that the Holy Spirit is also homoousios with the Father and with the Son.  Thus the Trinity is Three Persons each of whom possesses in entirety the one Godhead, the identical ousia.

In its literal sense the word hypostasis is "understanding"; in its active sense it means "that which gives support" and in its passive sense it means "that which lies beneath."  As used in both Christology (see the definition of the Council of Chalcedon of 451 on the Person of Christ) and in Trinitarianism, the active sense is the one being used.  So there are three hypostaseis but only one ousia (where ousia is being used in the passive sense as the one essence shared by the Three).

In order to clarify the distinctions between the Three Persons and at the same time affirm that there is one God, the Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth century spoke of the internal relations within God as God-is-in-and-unto-himself.  What differentiates the Three is their mutual interordination, expressed by the three particularities of agennesia, gennesis, and ekpempis (ingeneration, generation, and promission).  Further, they applied to each of the Three the phrase tropos hyparxeos, meaning "mode of existence."  Thus the whole Godhead is in its concrete totality instantiated in each of the Persons, paternally in the Father, filially in the Son, and pneumatically in the Holy Spirit.

"Mode of existence" was applied to the particularities that distinguish the Three Persons, in order to express the conviction that in the three hypostaseis one and the same divine being/essence is presented in objective and permanent expressions, though with no variation in divine content.  Therefore, the em-

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phasis from the Cappadocians is on the triplicity of objective presentation rather than on the unity of essential being, even though the latter is never denied.  (In modern times Karl Barth has used the expression tropos hyparxeos [usually translated in his works as "mode of being"] to speak of each of the Three because he believed that the modern meaning of the word "Person" had moved too far from its original meaning.  It is, however, difficult in prayer to address a "mode of being"! Further, Barth speaks of God as being "One Person" in Three "Modes of Being."²)

To clarify what the Cappadocians had taught concerning the relations of the Persons within the Trinity, an anonymous theologian made use of the word perichoresis (coinherence).  It served to describe the mutual interpenetration and embracement of the Three Persons through the possession by each, in his own proper way, of the totality of the one, divine ousia.  Soon it became part of the language of orthodoxy.

The developed Eastern doctrine of the Trinity, making use of these technical terms, is found in the eighth-century book, On the Orthodox Faith by John of Damascus (d. 749) and has passed into the divine worship of the Orthodox Churches.  Anyone who wishes to seek to understand the Orthodox doctrine of the Blessed, Holy, and Undivided Trinity is advised to go to the latter source and carefully read the Liturgies of St. Chyrsostom and St. Basil.

In the West the significant expositions are associated with the names of Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas, and the statement of orthodoxy is "three divine personae in one substantia."  Here substantia (philosophically substantia secunda) is the equivalent of ousia, for it is substance considered in abstraction from its determination to the individual: this is, strictly speaking, what is also called natura and essentia.  Then, also, persona (meaning the concrete presentation of an individual) is the equivalent of hypostasis.

A further key word, whose meaning was developed by Augustine, is relatio (relation). In Aristotelian logic relatio is "acciden-

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tal," but Augustine lifted it out of the subclass of accidents to make relatio to occupy the same level as substantia.

So Augustine taught that the Three Persons are identical in terms of their substance and distinct from each other through the different relations in which they stand to their substance.  Everything that belongs to one Person belongs to the other Two (wisdom, truth, goodness, etc.), but what differentiates them is their relations – paternity in the Father, filiality in the Son, and procession in the Holy Spirit.

The relations of the Three Persons to the one divine ousia are themselves expressed in terms of their relations to one another – paternity, filiation, spiration; and the different ways in which each of the Persons is actually God arise solely from the processions within God – from the generation of the Son and from the spiration of the Holy Spirit.  Put another way, Godhead can exist only paternally, filially, or by spiration; Godhead is to be found nowhere but in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae supplied further clarification of God-as-God-is-in-himself.  He showed that there are in God two processions – the generation of the Son and the double procession of the Spirit (from the Father and the Son).  Then there are four relations – paternity, of the Father to the Son; filiation, of the Son to the Father; spiration, of the Father and the Son, as one principle, to the Holy Spirit; and procession, of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son.  Further there are five notions ("proper ideas for knowing a divine Person") – unbegottenness (innascibilitas) and paternity for the Father; common spiration for the Father and for the Son; and procession for the Spirit.

In both the East and West there is the clear statement of Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity within the Godhead. In the East the Unity is expressed by the coinherence of the Three Persons in each other, while in the West it is expressed through the real identity of the divine nature with the Three Persons.

In terms of God-as-God-is-toward-us, the Father is made known through the Son, and the Son is made known by the Holy

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Spirit.  However, there is no fourth divine Person to make the Holy Spirit known.  This is because he is the locus, as the Son is the agent (not the object), of revelation.  The divine movement is from the Father through the Son and in the Spirit and the creatures’ response is to the Father through the Son and in the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is experienced by creatures like the air they breathe, that is by his effects, rather than like a visible external object.

So the traditional Western structure of liturgical prayer is offered to the Pantokrator, the transcendent Father "through Jesus Christ our Lord, thy Son, who livest and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever, Amen."  In contrast, but not in disagreement, the classic Eastern liturgical prayer ends with the words: "For unto thee are due all glory, honor and worship, to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages.  Amen."

Obviously the words hypostasis and persona are technical terms and do not carry modern notions of either an individual morally responsible decision-maker or such a person viewed as having a personality.  So when it is said today that God is personal or when a claim such as "God may be more than personal, as we know personality, but he cannot be less" is made, the reference is not to the technical word "person" and thus to the Persons of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; rather it is to a divine attribute, which is an aspect of the one, divine nature and is therefore common to all Three Persons.  The use of the word Person (hypostasis, persona) in the technical sense within classical theology is not to characterize what the Three Persons have in common; it is to establish and to emphasize their different modes of possessing the common, divine ousia/substantia.

One of my teachers during the early 1960s, the distinguished theologian, the late Dr. Eric Mascall, delighted to teach the classic, orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and wrote:

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that God is Trinity – that in a profound and mysterious way there are three divine Persons eternally united in one life of complete perfection and beatitude – is not a piece of gratuitous mystification, thrust by dictatorial clergymen down the throats of an unwilling but helpless laity, and therefore to be accepted, if at all, with reluctance and discontent.  It is the secret of God’s most intimate life and being, into which, in his infinite love and generosity, he has admitted us; and it is therefore to be accepted with amazed and exultant gratitude.³

So the church has looked to the Trinity, saying, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen."

Regrettably, however, there have been long periods in the history of the church when the doctrine of the Trinity has been taught in the universities and seminaries in such a way as to divorce it from worship, piety, and practical theology.  Especially was this so within the Roman Catholic Church during the period when theology followed the Scholastic method of the Middle Ages and seminarians were apparently taught that the doctrine of the Trinity is only the doctrine of the ontological or immanent Trinity.  It seemed to be merely speculation concerning God-as-God-is-in-himself with little reference to God-as-God-is-toward-us!

Further, as Karl Rahner has pointed out in his influential book, The Trinity (1970), the decision made by Thomas Aquinas and those who followed him (e.g., Roman Catholic as well as Protestant scholastics from the seventeenth century) to discuss first the Unity of God (De Deo uno) and then, having established this to deal with God as Trinity (De Deo triuno), had a big impact upon the way the doctrine of the Trinity was received within the church. It came generally to be held that the numerical unity of God was the primary assertion concerning God and thus the doctrine of the Holy Trinity took second place.  Thus a "unitarian" mind-set was developed by the way the doctrine of God was studied in the universities and seminaries in the West.  Further, theologians tended to discuss the unity of God, next the attributes of God, and only then God as Trinity.  So even the

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attributes came to be thought of as attributes of the divine nature rather than of the Three Persons.

If we ask what role the doctrine of the Trinity had in theological systems in modern times (i.e., from 1800 when the Enlightenment began to affect Protestant theology to 1930 when neo-orthodoxy became a vital force), we find that there were three fundamental possibilities. In traditional theological circles, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, the traditional doctrine was seen and presented in textbooks on systematic theology as the direct deliverance of an authoritative Bible (or an authoritative Bible and holy Tradition).  It was taken for granted that the doctrine was there in sacred Scripture in a full yet (philosophically) imprecise form and thus there was need for a clarification of it by the Fathers at the Council of Nicea and Constantinople, in later medieval councils, and by scholastic theologians.

In liberal theology, beginning with Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl, the traditional, scholastic doctrine was regarded as not essential to the expression of the Christian Faith, although it might perhaps be useful.  So it was not often mentioned; alternatively the doctrine in some form was treated in an appendix to systematic theology, as in Schleiermacher’s famous book on theology, The Christian Faith.

Finally, in the refined atmosphere of philosophical theology, influenced by Hegel, the doctrine of threefold Reality was released from its biblical roots and expounded as a metaphysical truth, more or less independently of the Christian revelation.

However, since the great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, gave great prominence to the doctrine of the Trinity in his monumental Church Dogmatics (published in German at Zurich as Kirchliche Dogmatik from 1932 to 1967), study of this subject by theologians has much increased, but not usually by the methods used in the nineteenth century.  Within the renewal of interest in this doctrine as central to Christian Faith, two types of approach may be discerned from the 1930s through to the 1960s.

The first treats the doctrine as a necessary "synthesis" of several fundamental elements of the record of Revelation in the Bible and of Christian experience of God.  These include the received monotheism of the Old Testament, the belief in Jesus as Incarnate God, the worship of Jesus Christ in the churches, and

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the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in human souls.  Here the doctrine of the Trinity is the completion of the doctrinal system, the ultimate doctrine of faith, and the necessary safeguard of the truth of Christianity.  An example of this approach is Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity (1944).

The second (and here we place Barth himself) treats the doctrine not as the completion but as the first item of Christian theology.  That is, the concept of God as Trinity is an immediate implication of the Revelation to which Scripture witnesses and points.  It is, therefore, the first principle of all Christian faith and thought and life.  In God’s self-revelation (and here is intended God as Creator, Revealer, Redeemer, and Judge) there is made known to the eyes of faith the Three – God, the Revealer; God, the Revelation; and God, the Revealedness.  God, who is the Lord, makes himself known as the One who is the Father (Revealer), the Son (Revelation), and the Holy Spirit (Revealedness).  So Barth expounds this doctrine of the Trinity in the Prolegomena to his Church Dogmatics.

When we examine books published since the second World War, in the wake of Barth’s decisive description of God as Holy Trinity in Self-Revelation, we notice that the vast majority belong, as we would expect, to what is usually called historical, dogmatic, and systematic theology.  These studies certainly usually notice the biblical evidence and often reflect upon it, but they are not primarily exercises in what in academia is normally called biblical theology.  Rather, their aim is to formulate or investigate the way the church has believed, taught, and confessed the Blessed, Holy, and Undivided Trinity, or to propose new or revised ways of so doing.  For example, a recent book, entitled God in Three Persons (1995), written by the evangelical Baptist theologian, Millard J. Erickson, fits into this general category.  So also does another recent book, The Triune God: A Biblical, Historical and Theological Study (1994), by an Irish Roman Catholic theologian, Thomas Marsh.

For Roman Catholic writers such as Marsh it is not Barth as such but Barth via Rahner, with Rahner’s own particular questions and insights, which determine the treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity.  The thesis which Rahner proposed, and which has been much discussed as a protest against the scholastic tendency

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of the textbooks for Catholic seminarians to equate the doctrine of the Trinity with only the immanent or ontological Trinity (thereby neglecting the economic Trinity), is: the "economic" Trinity is the "immanent" Trinity and the "immanent" Trinity is the "economic" Trinity.  If this means that we can say nothing of "God-as-God-is-in-himself-as-Holy Trinity" then, as we shall see, the thesis is overstated. Further, if it means that God as the One God became in eternity a Trinity of Persons for the purpose of becoming the Creator of the world, then it is false.  However, if it means that the Lord God, whom we know through his self-revelation as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is identical with the God who is eternally in himself the Holy Trinity, then it is an acceptable thesis.

When we inquire as to books on this topic, which are strictly within the area of biblical studies, we find that there are very few books dealing specifically with the doctrine of the Trinity as this is actually presented in, or implied and suggested by, sacred Scripture.  Perhaps the best known of these is Arthur W. Wainwright, The Trinity in the New Testament (1962), which we shall examine, along with several other approaches, in the next chapter.

Erickson, Millard J., God in Three Persons. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995.

Fortman, Edmund J., The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972.

Hapgood, Isabel F., comp. and trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church. Englewood, N.J.: Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese, 1983.

Jewett, Paul K. God, Creation & Revelation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.

Kelly, J.N.D. The Athanasian Creed. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1964.

------. Early Christian Creeds. 3rd ed. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972.

------. Early Christian Doctrine. 5th ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978.

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Marsh, Thomas. The Triune God: A Biblical, Historical and Theological Study. Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third, 1994.

De Margene, Bertrand. The Christian Trinity in History. Still River, Mass.: St. Bede’s, 1982.

Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vols. 1–3. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1972–1978.

Prestige, G.L. God in Patristic Thought. London: William Heinemann, 1936.

Rahner, Karl. The Trinity. New York: Herder & Herder, 1970.

Toon, Peter. Yesterday, Today and Forever: Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity in the Teaching of the Seven Eucmenical Councils. Swedesboro, N.J.: Preservation, 1995.

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