The Trinity is not our social program(me)
At that place are moments of the year which all preachers dread. Maybe 'dread' is likewise strong a discussion; but at that place is a definite sinking of the shoulders as we, once more, think about finding something new to say on the occasion of the major festivals. Christmas and Easter are, of grade, the regular challenges—yet in both biblical stories in that location is so much rich textile that finding a new insight or angle isn't that hard. Where dread really does descend is as we approach Trinity Lord's day.
Fortunately for usa, there has been a remarkable revival in Trinitarian thinking in the concluding 70 years or so—and then nosotros no longer need to feel like Robbie Coltrane inNuns on the Run ('The Trinity is like a clover.' 'What, you hateful it is green?'). In the opening chapter of his excellent exploration ofThe Quest for the Trinity, Stephen Holmes traces the shape of this revival. If the scholasticism of the centre ages had made the doctrine of the Trinity speculative and obscure, the rationalism of the 18th and 19th centuries had (in effect) rejected the doctrine as implausible. Karl Barth rejected this rationalist approach, and aimed to reinstate the Trinity every bit the eye of Christian theology.
Barth was, famously, not interested in natural theology; he too took decisive leave of the intellectual tradition of Schleiermacher. He insisted on the priority and particularity of revelation in identifying the God of the Christian tradition— he chose, that is, to write a church dogmatics. As Barth himself says, 'The doctrine of the Trinity is what basically distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God as Christian…in contrast to all other possible doctrines of God'. (p four)
(Incidentally, this might suggest that Trinity Sunday is the nearly important, most distinctively Christian, Lord's day of the whole year. So, no force per unit area…) Holmes goes on to trace the evolution of thinking nearly the Trinity, through the Cosmic Karl Rahner and the Greek Orthodox bishop John Zizioulas. Rahner's key dictum was that 'the "immanent" Trinity is the "economic" Trinity and the "economical" Trinity is the "immanent" Trinity'. In other words, whatever it means for God to be Trinity in godself ('immanent') is expressed faithfully past how God is revealed in God's dealings with the world ('economic')—there is no need for further speculation about aspects of the Trinity which are not revealed there. Zizioulas' bookExistence every bit Communion looks at the development of patristic idea on the Trinity—then famously argues that the Trinity provides the blueprint for human relationships in the redeemed customs of the church.
Holmes and then looks at the influence of Barth, Rahner and Zizioulas on Pannenberg and Moltmann and the farther reflections of liberation theologian Leonardo Boff and Croatian Miroslav Volf. This line of thinking leads to the ideas ofperichoresis, the common relationships between the 'persons' of the Trinity in a community of love, and the model this offers not simply for the church, but for humanity made in the epitome of God. If you take studied theology, you will be familiar with this thought; if you take not, the chances are that you will have heard this idea expressed in a Trinity Sunday sermon at some point (though you might not take known where it came from). In improver to the ideas of the 'immanent' Trinity (God as he is in himself), the 'economic' Trinity (God every bit he is known through his interaction with the world), we then accept the 'social' Trinity (God in human relationship with himself every bit a model for human being relationships).
Only Holmes points out that in that location is something of a problem in this mode of moving from the relationships within the Trinity to relationship betwixt people, every bit shown by the radically different conclusions theologians come up to near the implications of this movement.
For Zizioulas, the monarchy of the Father, every bit cause of the Son and the Spirit, leads to a monarchical view of the role of the bishop, and they strongly hierarchical, and tightly ordered, church building. For Boff,perichoresis is the decisive principle, and it is completely mutual and symmetrical. (p 26)
Then the life of the Trinity is either egalitarian, or it is hierarchical, depending on your viewpoint. The sceptical reader might, at this point, wonder whether this doctrinal discussion is little more than a projection of the theologian's prior viewpoint on to the blank screen of speculation near God'southward inner life. But the discerning reader might also recognise Zizioulas' hierarchical conclusion in some other, rather surprising, context. Conservative evangelicals have likewise read hierarchy in the human relationship between Begetter and Son, and since 'the head of every woman is human, and the caput of Christ is God' (1 Cor 11.3) then the hierarchical ordering within the Trinity is expressed not and so much in the specific hierarchy of the bishop over the people but more often than not in the hierarchy of men over women. In this way, debates most gender roles and women's ordination are elevated to central questions virtually the nature of God, and are therefore 'chief'. Information technology is odd that this argument tin can always be practical to ministry but, rather than to society in general, though mayhap not as odd equally evangelicals being in logical debt to a Greek Orthodox bishop.
In response to the latter move, Kevin Giles has set out a review of what orthodox understanding of the Trinity looks like, under nine headings. Noting that patristic exposition of the Trinity understood the three 'persons' equally acting inseparably, having ane will, and ruling equally one (which, incidentally, makes the idea of one 'person' of the Trinity doing things to another 'person' in atonement rather problematic), he carefully reflects on the questions of ordering and subordination.
In becoming incarnate in history, the Son of God did non cease to be God in all might, majesty, and authority, but he did "empty himself," have the class of a servant, and become the second Adam to win our salvation by going to the cross.
This means that not everything that is truthful of Jesus Christ in his earthly life and ministry—specifically, what is creaturely in him— tin can be read back into the eternal or immanent Trinity. The Son continues as God and homo after his resurrection, merely in returning to heaven, his humanity is exalted and glorified, and he rules as the one risen and ascended Lord and equally the Mediator of our salvation. We rightly, therefore, brand a contrast between the Son's earthly ministry building "in the form of a servant," or, equally Reformed theology calls it, his "state of humiliation," and his heavenly reign as Lord and Male monarch, in all might, majesty, and authority, in "the form of God," or, equally it is called in Reformed theology, in his "land of exaltation."
Giles goes on to make the more general conclusion that the life of the Trinity does not offering us a programme for human relations.
The way in which the three divine persons chronicle to i another in eternity is neither a model for nor prescriptive of human relationships in the temporal globe. God's life in heaven does not set a social agenda for human life on earth. Divine relations in eternity cannot exist replicated on world by created man beings, and fallen beings at that. What the Bible asks disciples of Christ to practise, both men and women, is to exhibit the love of God to oth- ers and to give ourselves in self-denying sacrificial service and self-subordination, as the Lord of glory did in condign one with us in our humanity and dying on the cantankerous. In other words, the incarnate Christ provides the perfect example of Godly living, not the eternal life of God.
Specifically, appealing to the doctrine of the Trinity, a 3-fold perfect divine communion, to support either the equality of men and women or their hierarchical ordering, is mistaken and to be opposed.
It is interesting that, in opposing hierarchical deductions from the Trinity, he is also opposing egalitarian deductions from the Trinity—not considering of the conclusion reached, only because of the methodology involved.
In some other splendid volume on this,Trinitarian Theology for the Church, Mark Husbands offers a more detailed critique in a similar management. In his affiliate 'The Trinity is non our social program' (sic), he points out that at that place is one obvious reason why the relations within the Trinity cannot model relationship betwixt humans: he is God, and we are non! It is not possible to relish both the distinctions ofhypostasis but the unity ofhomoousios considering humans are not divine. I might be made of similar substance to my swain human beings, but I am not of1 substance in the way the Father, Son and Spirit are. To make the social Trinity a model for human society is to collapse the separate between creator and creature, which cannot be done even with the assist of the Orthodox idea of theosis. Rylands supports his case by going back to the Cappadocian fathers, in detail Gregory of Nyssa, and looking carefully at what they actually said. It is peradventure worth adding that, if the Trinity did provide a model for gender relations, we should have three genders and not two.
Where does all that go out us on Trinity Sunday? That is probably the occasion for a separate post. But returning to the 'economical' Trinity might not be a bad place to go. We experience God every bit transcendent, as Male parent over all. Nosotros experience him every bit involved in the world, as the Son who came to redeem us. And we experience him as present with us, immanent and empowering, by the Spirit. God's speech to us and his missional cocky-involvement in his cosmos are indispensably Trinitarian. At that place is probably enough there for a sermon or two.
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