New Century Trinity

By David T Williams

What has the ancient doctrine of the Trinity to do with the twentyfirst century? Is it just a fossil from the past, fit only for a museum? Does it have anything to say to modern concerns?
There is currently a revival of interest in the doctrine, but few seek to put it firmly into the modern world. Without this, it will soon be neglected again.
Far from irrelevance, the doctrine of the Trinity has an impact on the relationship of science to Christian belief, to the drive towards sexual equality, to the impersonality of modern life, and other issues.
The book attempts a new presentation of the Trinity that is consistent with the Bible and ancient formulations, but is consistent with the modern world.
Provocative? intentionally so, but with the hope that the doctrine will once again find its place in the centre of Christian belief and practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 7, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469789859

David T Williams

Originally from the UK, where he graduated as an engineer from Cambridge university, David's life was changed when he became a Christian. He then trained as a teacher and went as a missionary to Southern Africa. There he has ministered in schools, hospitals, prisons and churches, often using visual aids as a powerful tool for communicating the Gospel. Since 1983 he has taught systematic theology at the University of Fort Hare, one of Africa's oldest universities, and well-known as the alma mater of Nelson Mandela. He is now a professor there, and not only teaches theology at undergraduate and graduate levels, but has published extensively, both articles and books (see http://www.davidtwilliams.com/). He is married with four grown-up children.

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All Rights Reserved © 2001 by David T Williams

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Contents

1 Irrelevant?

2 Trinity in Context

3 Picturing the Trinity

4 The Dominion of God

5 Geocentricity

6 Patriarchy

7 Impersonality

8 Picturing the Trinity

9 Imaging the Pictures

10 Why Bother?

Sources Cited

About the Author

The doctrine of the Trinity is currently experiencing a revival in interest after many years, even centuries, of neglect. For such a significant teaching, it is gratifying to see many new publications dealing with it.

But we cannot be content just to revisit the ancient arguments on the subject. There has been little attempt to reconsider the topic, and especially little attempt to formulate the doctrine in a way that will communicate to twenty-first century people. The doctrine seems to belong to another world. If this is the case, then the revival in interest will be short-lived.

The burden of this little book is that the ancient idea can find a real home in the new millennium. Many features of modern life are just those that relate to the issues that the Trinity deals with! The modern experience of the size of the universe, the drive towards sexual equality, the impact of science and technology, and others, are aspects that can relate to the understanding of the Trinity.

Trinitarian material pertinent to these issues is examined, and then brought together in a new description of the nature of the Trinity. The Biblical input is supported by a new look at the idea of the vestigia Trinitatis; and it is seen that indeed features of the creation do mirror the new understanding.

Provocative? Intentionally so! The intention is to provoke thought and development of the idea of the Trinity, so that it can once again find a real place in Christian life.

Heretical? Hopefully not! The proposed ideas are new, but do not contradict the ancient formulations. It must be stressed that the intention, just as in the fourth century discussions, is to be thoroughly Biblically based.

I wish to express thanks for permission to reproduce material that has been previously published, albeit in a slightly different form. Material in chapter 5 first appeared in Scriptura, and in Journal of Theology for Southern Africa Material in chapter 9 first appeared in Koers

As with my previous book on the Trinity, Christianity is Trinitarian,my thanks are also due to the University of Fort Hare for the time spent in the research that led to this volume, and for financial assistance given to this project. The author has certainly been enriched in the study of the Trinity, and it is hoped that the University, and society as a whole will also benefit from this study.

The cover:

The ancient Christian symbol of the fish (Greek ichthus: an acrostic for Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Saviour) is repeated three times. All the Persons of the Trinity are equal, and are one God. The three Persons interpenetrate, but each maintains a separate identity.

1 Irrelevant?

The expression of Trinity in context.

I went to a public school in England, which like many of its kind, followed the Anglican tradition. We were issued with a school handbook, which then identified every Sunday in the year according to the ecclesiastical calendar. I could hardly fail to be impressed by the enormous number of Sundays which were identified as so many after Trinity Sunday. The Trinity, it would seem, is important in the Church. Such a perception must be reinforced by the fact that every service concluded with the Trinitarian blessing of 2 Corinthians 13:14.

Yet it was a long time after I became a Christian that I became at all aware of the Trinity. Other doctrines were immediately important; such ideas as the atonement pressed themselves on a student eager to learn something of Christianity. But it was really only when I started to study theology in a serious way that I had to take notice of the Trinity. Up to that time it had been neglected, and this was largely because the Church itself, as it had for the previous millennium and a half, while accepting the doctrine of the Trinity, was effectively ignoring it.

Why such a contrast? Why is, or perhaps was, the Trinity effectively marginalized in practice, while it was ostensibly very important to the Church? Why was it in effect irrelevant to Christian belief? Now since I was at school, and since I became a Christian, the situation has changed to some extent. There has been increasing interest in the Trinity, especially in the academic world, and also, to an extent, in the pew.

There are many reasons for this. In theological circles, interest can perhaps be traced back to Barth, who made the doctrine of the Trinity basic to his theology. He was driven to this by his stress on revelation, so on the experience of God. Today, and in more popular circles, it is probably the charismatic renewal movement, with its stress on the direct experience of the Holy Spirit, that is largely responsible for this, even if the movement has focused on experience rather than reflection. It must never be forgotten that ultimately the doctrine is an attempt to understand experience; as Augustine said, belief was in order to understand (Newbigin 1997:3). The idea of Trinity can then also often be a way of relating current concerns to the Christian faith.

This accounts for the absorbing concern with the Trinity in the early Christian centuries. It was an attempt to understand the nature of God in the context of the incarnation and of the experience of the Holy Spirit. When the Church moved into Greek society, the Trinity provided a solution to the pressing intellectual challenge of the day. In particular it was able to say how God can be at once involved in, and distinct from, the world. Each pole is correct, and had advocates at the day in Platonism and Gnosticism, but the Church, by reference to the Trinity, was able to avoid both extremes (Zizioulas 1985:16). If only the first is accepted, God becomes part of the world, and religion loses power, but if the second, it does not matter if we love God, or that he loves us (Peters 1993:32); religion is irrelevant. The issue is still important, but the doctrine of the Trinity accommodates apparently very different views; Newbigin (1997:6) observes that the individualism of Western culture and the monism of the East are then not exclusive, but complementary, insofar as Trinity means that God is both one and diverse. Indeed, the divergent human religious expressions can then be interpreted as those of aspects of the Trinity (Williams 1999:25). Incidentally, seeing that this study is being done in Africa, it may be noted that inter-relatedness, which is the key African concept in its understanding of the world and humanity, is also an important aspect of the idea of Trinity (Newbigin 1997:6).

However, despite the continuing need to understand experience, and to explain the nature of reality, the Trinity as such is still largely speaking ignored. Why is this? It seems that there are three very basic reasons for the current neglect of the doctrine:

It is difficult! The way in which God can be in one way single, and at the same time threefold is one which has taxed the greatest theological minds. Is it surprising that average Christians quickly feel out of their depth?

It is not explicit in the Bible. For those who want to see the Bible as totally foundational to their faith, it is frustrating that nowhere in the Bible can the doctrine be clearly seen. Our description of the Trinity must always then be derived from the Biblical data; it is always implicit in what the Bible says, and not described directly. So is it true at all? And for those who have a lower view of the authority of the Scriptures, it is even less likely that the Trinity be felt to have any real foundation.

It seems to belong to a different world. A theological student studies the Trinity in the totally foreign world of Greek and Roman philosophy, where the development of the doctrine was influenced by problems of politics and language that are totally alien to today.

BUT (I love to use this word with my students!) If the nature of God is indeed Trinity, it should be vital for any serious Christian to get to grips with the idea at least to some extent. The plain fact is that God has revealed himself, and acted in the world, in a Trinitarian form. This means that we ought to get to grips with the Trinity, and overcome the problems.

Difficulty is not impossibility. Because God is really so different from us, almighty when we are so limited, spiritual when we are material, our words will never be adequate to describe him in an adequate way. But we are used to difficulties like this in ordinary life. What we do is use simile and metaphor. Even if we cannot say what God is, we can make an attempt by suggesting what God is like. With Peters (1993:16), we can insist that although the Trinity is a mystery, this does not mean that it is totally incomprehensible; attempts can be made to describe it, as frequently done in the past. It is certainly inadequate just to affirm aspects that seem incompatible without attempting to reconcile them. What must be repeated is that the doctrine of the Trinity was never intended to be a problem, but a solution!

If there were Biblical texts which described the Trinitarian nature of God, they could not be adequate. Arius’ heresy could only be combated by going beyond the Biblical texts (Peters 1993:48). As soon as God is described, he is limited to that description, and other aspects are liable to get lost. It is for that reason that Barth did not want to use examples of threeness in the natural world to even illustrate the Trinity; Tillich was unwilling to even say that God exists; he felt that this would limit him to our understanding of existence. What the Bible does do is to provide us with our basic data; any understanding of the Trinity, which is not consistent with it, must be wrong. The exercise of reason can only confirm and help to understand, the substance of revelation, but it cannot be legitimate to deny a valid aspect of that revelation.

At the same time it must always be remembered that a full knowledge of the nature of God must by its very nature be impossible because of human limitation and the spiritual and infinite nature of God. There can and indeed must be aspects that are, and probably always will be, unknown to us. Tertullian was quite right in distinguishing between how God reveals himself to us, which can be known, and what he is like in himself, which cannot (the economy and immanence of the Trinity) (Forte 1989:1); after all, God must ultimately be a mystery. Even if part of the reason for theology, as any scientific enterprise, is to seek to understand as fully as possible, the results can never be more than approximate. Indeed, in the early centuries, there was often deliberate compromise for the sake of peace; Studer (1993:243) cites Athanasius’ acceptance of homoiousios and Basil’s not calling the Holy Spirit God.

What the theologians of the early centuries were doing was to describe how they understood the Trinity in their context. The particular form that Trinitarian doctrine took is due to the history of that time (Peters 1993:88). The metaphors that they used were those of their situation, and enabled understanding at that time. We can seek to understand their world, and so why they thought as they did, but their formulations, although quite correct, need not be the best for today, in a very different world. Gunton (1991:163) writes that the classical doctrine of the Trinity is to be understood as a ‘model’, developed in its entirety in the past, which may now be obsolete because the precise form of words in which it was formulated no longer satisfies modern rational criteria or theological developments (his emphasis). This means that we have to look at our context, and try to relate the doctrine of the Trinity to it. There is a constant need for reinterpretation to different cultures, inculturation (Studer 1993:243).

Not that this is at all easy. A study of the doctrine of God, and specifically of the Trinity, immediately produces a set of enigmas.

It has to do with the unchanging nature of God, but a God who can only be understood in changing circumstances. This means that our modern situation and world-view must affect our understanding of the Trinity. Our context affects our theology. This also infers that our theology ought to affect our context, but that is another story; see Williams (1999), where I have tried to suggest how our understanding of God as Trinity should affect the way in which we live in the world.

It has to do with a God who must be beyond human comprehension, but a God who has revealed himself in such a way as to lead to some understanding of his nature. To deal with this, we use metaphor, just as the early Fathers did; but we probably need to use different ones, only those which are readily understood and applicable in our situation.

We are so used to what the Bible says about God that we tend to forget that it likes to use pictures. Sometimes it is obvious, as in the parables of Jesus, or in the descriptions of the book of Revelation, but otherwise it can be missed. It is only when we think a little more about what the Bible is saying that we realize that at the very least we must qualify what it is saying. Can even the traditional names of Father, Son and Holy Spirit be accepted without qualification; are they metaphors (Peters 1993:47), or essential to Christian truth (Jenson 1982:16)? We use the idea of the Father because it is one of the best pictures that we have to describe what the first Person is like, and it has the advantage that it is understood in everybody’s experience. But it can mislead, because the experience of a human father includes aspects that we do not want to apply to God. We want to include the wisdom of a father, but not the superiority that fathers often show. We want to say that God is creator, and that he begets his Son, but not the sexual aspect.

It must be constantly be borne in mind that the Trinitarian picture of Father and Son is itself conditioned by culture. This does not mean that the Trinity itself is locked into a particular culture and so may be discarded, as Hick implies (Peters 1993:28), but because its portrayal is dependent on culture it is subject to misunderstandings. To give one example, African culture fosters respect for parents and naturally treats children as inferior; it is hardly surprising that the Watchtower movement, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, is very popular. In this case, theological subordination is almost inevitable. In contrast, in the New Testament, sons and fathers are seen as equal (Jn 5:18).

And when we become aware that the experience of some children is of a father who repeatedly comes home drunk, and who beats his wife and abuses his children, it is not hard to appreciate why they want to reject a Christianity that stresses that God is a Father. Or perhaps they have a father who is away from home for long periods as a sailor, or migrant labourer, or who works late at a business and is rarely seen by the children? For them, there is a need of a different picture to help them to understand what God is like.

Everyone uses metaphor, but that metaphor must be appropriate. We must take our pictures from the world that we know. We must relate to the concerns that are applicable to our world. We need then to take a hard look at the modern world, and then ask ourselves how the Trinity can be presented to it in a way that will be understood by it. This is quite valid, for just as the first century world, it is one that God made. But if we do not do it, the Trinity will remain firmly fastened into the Greek and Roman world of the fourth and fifth centuries, and will remain inaccessible, misunderstood and irrelevant to the modern world. It is unfortunate that much of the writing on the subject has started from the doctrine as it was put down especially at the council of Constantinople in 381 AD, and has simply sought to justify and explain it.

But must we just be content to repeat the arguments and conclusions of centuries ago? Admittedly, people are not usually very keen to make new explorations, for a couple of very valid reasons:

Firstly, of course, the topic was very exhaustively discussed in the fourth century. As Barth pointed out (Miell 1989:552), it is notoriously difficult to say anything new of the Trinity.

Secondly, the danger of falling into heresy is immense! The path between the heresies of either modalism or tritheism is so fine that almost everyone who dares to say anything on the Trinity is accused of one or the other, and often for good reason. But heresy is not just a bad thing! It has so often prompted thought, and so clarity and better doctrine has been its result.

So let us try a few ideas, very tentatively, and very Biblically, so that we may indeed learn more, and may be helped in our Christian lives, by putting the Trinity in terms that we can understand.

It must be stressed that any thought about the Trinity must be firmly based on the Biblical material. Indeed it cannot be acceptable to

study the Trinity, as is usually done, just based on the thought of the fourth century. Thus Hodgson (1943:111) insists that the source of the doctrine must be the Bible rather than the Fathers of the Church; perhaps in this he is influenced by the fact that he wants to deviate from the traditional teaching in that he is an advocate of a social Trinity, an idea a little different from the absolute unity of the Patristic understanding. Incidentally, although very pertinently, he does also believe that going back to the Bible is done from a desire for empiricism, to trust testable information rather than human opinion (Hodgson 1943:145).

The issue here is whether traditional portrayals of ideas such as the Trinity are to be accepted as continuing to be authoritative by the Church, or whether the doctrine should be continually re-examined. The theologians who battled with the ideas of the nature of God in the fourth century were, as all other people, part of their time, and so there must always be a question as to whether the idea of the Trinity that was produced is still valid for us. Even if it was not excessively influenced by their world-views and presuppositions, and is indeed a faithful reflection of the Biblical information that the doctrine of the Trinity seeks to reconcile, which was their intention (Studer 1993:5), it may not relate to us. Indeed the very terms of Greek philosophy, such as nature and person, sometimes cannot even be expressed in other languages; they are not essential to the Trinity, indeed they were even unknown to the first Christians (Panikkar 1973:41).

It was, after all, a world with a very different concept of authority that formulated the doctrine. God is God, so when he reveals himself to us, he must naturally be seen as a figure of authority. But the fourth century world was one which knew a Roman empire, with an emperor at its head. That was, for them, the natural way of rule; for them it was the only possibility. God would then naturally be understood in terms of an emperor, with subordinate officials. Such a picture of course translated into other areas of life as well, so the family most naturally looked like a little empire, with the strongest, who was the father of the household, in the position of authority. Thus again, the Trinity could be pictured in terms of a family, but a patriarchal one. Any alternative to patriarchy was really not a possibility.

Of course, the dominant polity has changed since the fourth century. Democracy is in fashion, and in the modern world any other political organization is regarded with a measure of horror. People are viewed as essentially equal. Any form of dictatorship must say that it is a transitional arrangement, and will soon be replaced by a more acceptable form of rule, which is assumed to be democratic. Such an attitude must affect thinking on the Trinity. Even if God’s monarchy over the world is not seriously questioned, God’s inner being is assumed to be democratic, with no hint of subordination. It is here that the attraction of ideas of a social Trinity, such as by Hodgson and Boff, become attractive. The latter is in a situation where there is great economic imbalance and where liberation theology is common, so for his situation, a democratic Trinity is particularly attractive as supporting a new political order.

Although people are viewed as equal, the modern world also stresses diversity. Different cultural expression is encouraged, ancient languages are being revived. The growing postmodernism values individuality and the right of each to his or her own opinion. The world values pluralism, whether in culture or opinion. Thus any hint of demanding conformity, so of persecuting those with different beliefs, as was common in the fourth century and throughout the Middle Ages, is condemned (even if a little inconsistently; dogmatism is not an acceptable opinion!). At the same time, and a measure paradoxically, the world is united as never before. Modern transport and communications have created a global village. Although people want a separate identity, they also strive to belong, to learn a world language. In this situation, an idea of God as inherently diverse, but also as united, in short, Trinity, must ring a bell.

Probably the most obvious difference between the modern world and that of the fourth century is the pervasive influence of science and technology. The scientific revolution has affected the way in which the world is viewed in a marked way, and any religious belief must relate to it if it is to be at all acceptable. It is a scientific world-view, with the value placed on empiricism, which has been a major cause of the decline of religion, with its advocacy of beliefs which cannot be verified. A belief such as the Trinity is of course particularly questioned, as not immediately amenable to any scientific investigation. However it is here that Christianity, and even the belief in Trinity, can find acceptance, for Christianity is not just a set of beliefs, but rests on historical events, predominantly the incarnation, and effects, such as the charismatic gifts, which are amenable to historical and other forms of scientific investigation. Thus to a degree, belief in the Trinity, as dependent on the incarnation and sending of the Spirit, becomes acceptable, as scientific. What is however more important is that religious belief, and so belief in the Trinity, is perceived as consistent with the view of the universe commonly accepted today. If this is not the case, it will almost automatically be rejected as absurd.

At the same time, however, recent decades have seen a reaction against the previously almost unquestioned scientism. On the one hand science is often viewed as a failure, even as destructive, as causing environmental collapse and the threat of total nuclear disaster. On the other hand it is saying that it is inherently incapable of finding the total truth about the world. There are paradoxes in physics such as in the quantum theory, the dual nature of light as simultaneously wave and particle, the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, and so on. This has encouraged postmodernism, with its acceptance of the validity of opinion, even if not empirically verifiable. Related to this is the growth in religion, such as in the New Age movement, and the increasing awareness of the influence of the spiritual and non-material on human life and behaviour. It is no surprise that within Christianity, the Charismatic movement has found fertile soil for such rapid growth. This must affect the appreciation of the Trinity.

Nevertheless, the effects of science in technology remain pervasive. Despite the attempts of some small groups, such as