The unfinished business of Trinitarian theorizing

Choice Reviews Online, 2011

Over the last decade there has been a resurgence of writing on the Trinity, indicating a renewal of ideas and debate concerning this key element of Christian theology. This introduction challenges the standard account of a decline and revival in Trinitarian theology, taking into account recent, alternative readings of the theological tradition by Lewis Ayres and Michel Barnes amongst other scholars. By clearly analysing the scope of these new approaches, the authors establish the importance of a considered understanding of the Trinity, resisting the notion of separating faith and reason and identifying theology's link to spirituality. Their account also eschews the easy stereotypes of Western Christianity's supposedly more Unitarian approach, as opposed to the more Trinitarian view of the East. Offering an overview of the main people and themes in Trinitarian theology past and present, this book thus provides an accessible, comprehensive guide for students and scholars alike.

Journal of Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies, 2019

From beginning to end the Scriptures vigorously reveal a God who is one. With equal emphasis, these same scriptures communicate a God who is three. It is the aim of this paper to demonstrate that Holy Scripture’s portrayal of God is Triune; consisting of three persons—namely, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—who are distinct, yet perfectly unified. This definition will be represented as (1) consistent between the Testaments, (2) demanded by the New Testament, and (3) confirmed by the Early Church.

Journal of Reformed Theology, 2009

During the fi nal decades, there has hardly been a doctrinal topic that aroused so much theological refl ection and discussion as the doctrine of the Trinity. Numerous articles, books, and collections of essays have been published by theologians from all major Christian denominations in which the continuing meaning and relevance of this doctrine is explored and substantiated. Since in the 20th century Karl Barth and Karl Rahner put the theme on top of the theological agenda after ages of trinitarian oblivion, we seem to have collectively moved towards an era of what has come to be known as the 'trinitarian renaissance.' Th is renaissance-or revival, as it is also sometimes called-is not restricted to the doctrine of the Trinity as such, but tends to aff ect the overall scheme of how Christian theology is being done. When the doctrine of the Trinity is what binds most Christians together, then how should it infl uence Christian faith and theology as a whole? How should it infl uence, for example, the way in which we conceive of the church, or our anthropology, or even our understanding of the sacraments? Such questions are far from idiosyncratic by now. All in all, the rebirth of trinitarian theology is generally seen as "one of the most far-reaching theological developments of the [20th] century" (Stanley J. Grenz).

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 2004

Classical Christian faith is agreed around the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.1 Although the Creed in its variations never explicitly gives the formula, it has been summarized with Tertullian’s simple description of tres personae, una substantia—or, in Greek theology, three hypostaseis and one ousia. Of course, the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople intended as much to protect the mystery of God as to delimit and define catholic belief. Thus, in guarding divine mystery, the Creed provides a certain latitude regarding how God as Trinity is to be perceived, evidenced by the two streams of Eastern and Western trinitarianism. Extraordinary carefulness should and does mark divergencies around this central dogma of Christian faith. Nevertheless, conceptions of how God is God in “Godself ” have often been distant from Scripture and effectually created an immanent Trinity discussed among theologians quite different from that to which the average Christian relates. The purpose of this pa...

This Paper argues that the doctrine of the Trinity has an internal coherence in that it is grounded in the unitive being of the triune God as subject and that the doctrine of the Trinity is logical in its positing of a relational basis for the divine life, without which the principle of relationality remains logically underived, and that the doctrine of the Trinity is called for by the scriptural evidence, because it corresponds to the witness of the relation of ontological togetherness between Jesus Christ, the Father and the Holy Spirit with which we are encountered in the biblical narrative itself.

TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology, 2022

Whether Trinitarianism is coherent depends not only on whether some account of the Trinity is coherent, but on which accounts of the Trinity count as "Trinitarian." After all, Arianism and Modalism are both accounts of the Trinity, but neither counts as Trinitarian (which is why defenses of Arianism or Modalism don’t count as defenses of Trinitarianism). This raises the question, if not just any account of the Trinity counts as Trinitarian, which do? Dale Tuggy is one of very few philosophers to give explicit definitions of Trinitarian (versus Unitarian) theology. But they are no mere formalities. They are essential to his central criticisms of both historical and contemporary forms of Trinitarianism. In this paper, I offer my own definitions of Trinitarian and Unitarian theology, contrast them with Tuggy’s, and argue for the superiority of my definitions to Tuggy’s. If Trinitarianism and Unitarianism are what Tuggy says they are, the outlook for Trinitarianism is bleak indeed. If they are what I say they are, Tuggy’s central objection to Trinitarianism fails. To show what is at stake in these pairs of definitions, I examine a doctrine much neglected in Analytic Theology, but central to Nicene Trinitarianism—the Monarchy of the Father.