Tag: bible

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The Onto-Relational Trinity: Why Your Trinity Diagrams Don’t Tell the Truth About Who God Is

Alex Renner

“One Substance, Three Persons.”

Such is the mantra used virtually across the board in many Western churches when tasked with describing the ontological makeup of God. Purportedly, the Christian God is Trinity: He is one God made up of Father, Son, and Spirit. How this is the case is usually chalked up to “mystery” and “unknowability” (two helpful terms to be sure but usually used as cop outs from further theological reflection). Queue the diagram which supposedly helps with the comprehension of such a mysterious reality:

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Pictured are three circles, each titled with the name of one of the Divine Persons, positioned around a fourth circle entitled “God.” Touching each circle are lines labeled “Is Not” connected at both ends between each person, and between each person and the “God” circle in the middle are lines labeled “Is.”

This diagram is not helpful, and here’s why.

Late theologian John Zizioulas, in his landmark book on Patristic theology and Personhood called Being as Communion, writes:

“The idea took shape in Western theology that that which constitutes the unity of God is the one divine substance, the one divinity; this is, as it were, the ontological ‘principle’ of God. But this interpretation represents a misinterpretation of the Patristic theology of the Trinity. Among the Greek Fathers the unity of God, the one God, and the ontological ‘principle’ or ’cause’ of the being and life of God does not consist in the one substance of God but in the hypostasis, that is, the person of the Father. The one God is not the one substance but the Father, who is the ’cause’ both of the generation of the Son and of the procession of the Spirit. Consequently, the ontological ‘principle’ of God is traced back, once again, to the person.”[1]

What Zizioulas does here, remarkably, is point out that in the theology of the Cappadocian Fathers – the most significant theologians of the Trinity other than Athanasius – the Person acts as the center of God’s substance, and not the idea of “substance” or “Being” as applied to God. In other words, instead of Being holding priority in Trinitarian language – as it did in the Western Church, over time – it should in fact be the Person-in-relation that holds priority, particularly the Person of the Father (who is the Ground, the Unoriginate Originator of the Son and Spirit). There is no fourth circle labeled “God” in God; there is no fourth thing in God in which the three participate. Such a conception – which is exactly what the diagram above is relating – makes Greek ontology, rather than the God revealed in Jesus Christ, prior in Trinitarian thinking. Remarkably, what this correction reaps for Christian theology is that it means Being in God is relational.

God cannot be conceived, the Fathers tell us, except as Being-in-relation, and, hence, Being-in-relation is who the God revealed in Jesus Christ is. There is no such “supreme being” in existence other than the one that Jesus Christ reveals, a claim contrary to the mountain of literature on Western monotheism’s supposed overlapping belief systems. There is no unmoved Mover who can comfortably be ascribed as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That God is the God of the philosophers, but not the Christian God. The Christian God finds His Being in the Person of the Father, who in eternity begets His Son and spirates His Holy Spirit. The Being of the Son and the Spirit, therefore, live as derived-Being, as Being-from, not as Originator-of like the Father. Yet, the Father, too, is Being-in-relation; there was never a time when the Father was not with His Son and His Spirit. The Father, though underived in His Being, is still Being-in-relation and not exclusively Being-in-Himself. All of this lends itself to what Torrance calls a “dynamic” conception of God’s ontology (which is really the biblical conception) rather than a “static” formula as attributed to the West’s thinking following Augustine.

Zizioulas continues, a few pages later:

“The manner in which God exercises His ontological freedom, that precisely which makes Him ontologically free, is the way in which He transcends and abolishes the ontological necessity of the substance by being God as Father, that is, as He who ‘begets’ the Son and ‘brings forth’ the Spirit… For this communion is a product of freedom as a result not of the substance of God but of a person, the Father–observe why this doctrinal detail is so important–who is Trinity not because the divine nature is ecstatic but because the Father as a person freely wills this communion.”[2]

Exactly, sir! Here here! In other words, we must look to the Father as the “fountainhead” – a title the Fathers gave Him – of divinity, the one Paul calls “God” (θεοs) explicitly in all of His Trinitarian introductions. The sense this makes of Paul’s statements cannot be clearer:

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:3)
“Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:3)
“Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:7b)

Like Zizioulas argues, Paul always gives the Father the title “God,” not because (as the Arians believe) He is the only truly Divine Person but because Divinity rightly originates in Him. Jesus Christ is labelled “Lord” and the Holy Spirit “Holy” because of their rightful placement on the God-side of the God-world divide, but within that God-side there exist definite two-way relations which constitute God as Trinity: namely Origination (from the Father to the Son and the Spirit, received by the Son and Spirit), Generation (from the Father to the Son, received by the Son), and Procession (from the Father… to the Spirit, received by the Spirit).

The last significant thing Zizioulas writes in relation to this discussion he writes on page 46:

“The expression ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:16) signifies that God ‘subsists’ as Trinity, that is, as person and not as substance. Love is not an emanation or ‘property’ of the substance of God–this detail is significant in the light of what I have said so far–but is constitutive of His substance, i.e., it is that which makes God what He is, the one God. Thus love ceases to be a qualifying–i.e., secondary–property of being and becomes the supreme ontological predicate. Love as God’s mode of existence ‘hypostatizes’ God, constitutes His being.”[3]

Boom. Zizioulas here articulates what I have found so hard to find the language for: that John’s statement about God as love is not some fluffy though true affirmation of God’s character, but Love is Who He is. Seen in the light of this discussion on God’s relations, John’s statement makes all the more sense. In other words, “God is love” means “God is Trinity.” Therefore, the core nugget of truth at the heart of the Apostolic Christian Tradition – and hence the Gospel – is that God is relational in his very Being of Being, Zizioulas argues, and in Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit we are brought into that very relational heart of God, bid by the Father to become united to the Lord Jesus Christ by faith affected in us by His Spirit. May our theologizing, our communal experience as “eucharistic communities” (his term), and our very lives be shaped by the relational heart of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, who is Trinity.

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 40-41.

[2] John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 44.

[3] John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 46.

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The Trinity Solves Everything: John Webster On Hermeneutics and Theology

Alex Renner

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The late John Webster was a shining example of a well-informed, biblical, and unashamedly Protestant theologian whose integration of Karl Barth’s theological emphases with patristic and Reformational insights made him one of the few theologians (after Torrance) whose writings are actually worth reading. I have only read one other book by Webster, which was his commentary on and summary of one of Barth’s lesser-known Lutheran mentees, Eberhard Jüngel. That is a fun and fascinating book in its own right. Never had I read a full-fledged treatise of his, however; but boy am I glad I did.

Webster’s Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch deserves to sit on the shelves of every serious-minded Christian theologian today. Though some might think it distasteful for its obvious Barthian influence, it does a fantastic job of putting forth a rock solid doctrine of Holy Scripture as grounded in and permeatingly-informed by the telos and centre of all Christian theology: the Christian doctrine of the Triune God. In the first chapter, Webster writes:

“In thesis form, the argument to be set out here may be stated thus: revelation is the self-presentation of the triune God, the free work of sovereign mercy in which God wills, establishes and perfects saving fellowship with himself in which humankind comes to know, love and fear him above all things.”[1]

Since Holy Scripture is the locus of God’s self-revelation, the doctrine of revelation is synonymous with (or, perhaps, goes alongside) the doctrine of Holy Scripture. Every doctrine, though, must flow from and return to the doctrine of God’s Triune Being. Webster’s point throughout his little treatise is to say what Barth says at the beginning of 2/I: that the God referred to in the biblical witness is never separated out and generalized from the uniquely-acting God in Jesus Christ and the history of Israel. In other words, there is no acting or revealing of God apart from His Being in Jesus Christ, i.e., apart from the Being of the Triune God. There is no biblical God apart from the Triune God.

He continues,

“Revelation, therefore is identical with God’s triune being in it’s active self-presence. As Father, God is the personal will or origin of this self-presence; as Son, God actualises his self-presence, upholding it and establishing it against all opposition; as Holy Spirit, God perfects that self-presence by making it real and effective to and in the history of humankind.”[2]

Then:

“The argument so far can be summed up by saying that a Christian theology of revelation becomes dysfunctional when its bonds to the doctrine of the Trinity disintegrate; consequently, that rebuilding a doctrine of revelation is inseparable from attention to the properly Christian doctrine of God.”[3]

Webster spends a significant amount of space in Holy Scripture performing two simultaneous movements. The first is the positive construction of his argument outlined above: that the doctrine of the Trinity is inseparable from any truly Christian doctrine of revelation, Holy Scripture, and the hermeneutical task. The second is the analysis and criticism of the ways in which Modernist thought has crept into the Church’s thinking concerning how we are to engage with Holy Scripture. The reason why this book was written – the reason Webster felt the need to reintegrate or reinstate the doctrine of the Trinity as the central theological paradigm – is that it was his perception that Modernist hermeneutics was hampering the Church’s ability to deal rightly (i.e., Christianly) with its own inspired Text. Such a theological instinct he shared with Barth.

Webster takes the scalpel right to the wart:

“For – to put the matter at its simplest – the tendency of modern intellectual culture to bifurcate [a word Torrance loved to use] the transcendent reality of God and the creaturely texts of the Bible can only be countered by appeal to a Christian doctrine of the trinitarian works of God… Such Christological-pneumatological considerations help prevent the theology of Scripture from being overwhelmed by a burden which has sorely afflicted the intellectual conscience of modern Western divinity (especially Protestant divinity), which continues to haunt us, and for which there has emerged no commonly agreed resolution.”[4]

Webster’s solution? Bring it back to the Trinity. Such has been the Tradition’s answer, and such should our answer be. If we read, like our forefathers in the faith, Holy Scripture as God’s Trinitarian self-revelation – nothing more or less than that – then we will put both the doctrine of revelation and the doctrine of the Trinity in their proper places in regard to our theological speaking.

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 13.

[2] John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 14.

[3] John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 17.

[4] John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 18.

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The Theologian as Church Grammarian

Alex Renner

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In evangelical-theological literature right now, the idea that theologians are “church grammarians” is a hot one. The theologian, this literature says, is one who actively seeks to test, challenge, and refine the Christian church’s language about God so as to bring it in conformity with God’s being as revealed in Jesus Christ. Especially among those evangelical theologians open to the thought-world of figurehead theological thinkers like Barth, Torrance, Webster, et al., this idea holds a central prominence (for good reason). To me, this idea seems thoroughly helpful and downright correct.

See, after Karl Barth, the idea of the theologian as church grammarian has taken on a special role. What Barth did was bring this definition into clearer focus and consideration: to him, theologians of the past understood their task as something more akin to philosophical speculation, rather than as the construction and refinement of theological terminology that served the church’s mission to upbuild the saints and evangelize the world. At the end of the day, the theologian must not think either too little or too much of their task, since they are both 1) unable to speak univocally (i.e., completely in line with the reality) of God, and 2) commissioned by God with doing what point number one rightly claims is impossible: to speak rightly and truly (and humanly) about God as God has so revealed himself to humanity. For Barth, the theologian accomplishes his task when he so conforms Christian language to the God revealed in Jesus Christ that the church is able to rightly understand herself and her mission in light of God’s speech about her. In other words, the theologian is a good theologian when he conforms the church’s speech about God with God’s own speech about himself.

Keith L. Johnson, in his marvelous book about these very issues, writes:

“God himself must show us how to use [our theological language] rightly, and he does so in and through Jesus Christ…. Even as we know the truth about God, we always do so on God’s terms… We can rightly apply [our words about God] to God as long as we do so in line with the way God has done so in Christ. Our thinking and speaking about God will be true if our words correspond to who Christ is, what he has done and what he continues to do within created history. This means that our primary task as theologians is to bring the meaning of the words we use for God into conformity to Christ. We measure each one by his being, actions, teaching and promises… Our task as theologians is to apply the same treatment to every single word we use for God. Doing so is part of the way we ‘take every thought captive to obey Christ’ (2 Cor. 10:5)… As Barth puts it, by guiding our theological language, ‘Jesus Christ himself sees to it that in him and by him we are not outside by inside… He sees to it that what is true in him in the height is and remains true in our depth.’”[1]

Boom. The theologian is the one who takes the scrappily-taped-together wordage of the spiritual soldiers on the ministerial frontlines and fixes it, helping those same ministers see the benefit and coherence of Jesus Christ anew, in the words of scripture, tradition, and contemporary theological insights. May the theologian use herself for the glory of God and the upbuilding of her sisters and brothers.

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Keith L. Johnson, Theology as Discipleship (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 80-83.

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Baptists, Barth, and Holding to Your Tradition

Alex Renner

Karl Barth, if you couldn’t tell, has played a monumental role in the recent refining of my theological speech concerning God and man. Yet, Barth has also helped me think through a special difficulty I perceive many young, low-church Christian men are also wrestling with: a pull towards the high churches (Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, etc.). In my own experience, this (primarily liturgical) pull originated after I dove headfirst into the theological writings of many of the patristic figureheads like Athanasius of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, the Cappadocian Fathers, etc. Learning about the patristic theological vision (centered around things like theosis, a robust Trinitarian theology, a deep sacramentology, etc.) pushed me to rethink the tradition in which I have functioned as a Christian, since what I was hearing from the pulpit was not (wholly) what I was reading in the Fathers.

This crisis event led me to seriously consider (and almost act on) a decision to split with the Baptists. However, as time went on, and my theological readings continued and widened (all while sweating over a decision to leave), I further clarified my stances on certain issues concerning the sacraments, the Trinity, and Christian spirituality generally; surprising to myself, I didn’t come out as someone who would be completely out of place among the Baptist fold. Instead of giving in to the pressure of many higher church apologists today – who ruthlessly pursue young men of other Christian folds in order to usher them into their own “true” church – I decided to meditate further on the implications of discontinuity of belief and practice across Christian history. I also found other Baptists who were wrestling with the doctrinal dizziness of the historic Church, Baptists who were trying to appropriate richer, less-dismissive practices within the wider Baptist culture, and (yes!) Baptists who held a similar love and sympathy for theologians like Barth and Torrance.

Back to Barth. As a theologian constantly exposed to traditions different from his own (as an out-of-place, theologically Reformed instructor in primarily Lutheran universities throughout Germany), Barth was forced to deal with the central claims and distinctives of his own tradition of which he had been previously ignorant. Today, many young men who begin to wrestle with the claims of their own tradition, while simultaneously meditating on the doctrine of the Church past, see jumping overboard to another ship as the only valid option (because of numerous factors like the general rootlessness which young people feel, a quick-and-ready choosiness available to anyone and everyone, and a decidedly individualistic American spirit). For Barth, however, who was daily brought up against the looming Lutheran giants around him, the option of switching traditions was an inconceivable option. Barth, for all the allurements which the traditions surrounding him presented, remained decidedly Reformed. Over time, though, he began to tweak his own tradition’s understandings of its distinctives as he garnered more and more due influence across theological circles, and was criticized for it. Now, I don’t mean to compare myself with Barth as some theological pioneer or hero, but I take comfort in his story which has certain similarities with my own. Barth took the hard way: he stuck with those who had nurtured him in the faith and sought to influence the Reformed church according to problems he perceived needed fixing.

Contemporary (American) Baptists have many theological, ministerial, and liturgical problems. They are by no means guiltless when it comes to their annoying confusion over the significance of central doctrines of the faith (the Hypostatic Union, the Trinity) and their subsequent appropriation of those doctrines for the sole end of holding up their prized elucidation of penal substitution. They have an almost offensive disregard for and ignorant misunderstanding of traditional liturgical forms (although this is changing), and a biblicism that gets much of their language in trouble, especially when its mixed with isolated rural settings in which no one holds them accountable for their theological speaking. Baptists also have a tendency to idolize their leaders, and pastor-worship is by no means a small problem.

On the other hand, Baptists are virtually undisputed in regards to their evangelistic fervor, their love for the poor and the downcast, and their rigid and unflinching passion for the truthfulness of the Bible. As far as ministerial problems go, I would rather have an overdose of these issues than a mediocrity in any one of them. Perhaps the greatest lesson which Barth has imparted to me – other than doctrinal language I have found to be indispensable to a robust and informed theology – is embodied in his acceptance and appropriation of his own tradition. I’ll end with a quotation from the CD which Baptists, for all of their blemishes, firmly hold to heart:

“For who really knows what grace is until he has seen it at work here: as the grace which is for man when, because man is wholly and utterly a sinner before God, it can only be against him, and when in fact, even while it is for him, it is also a plaintiff and judge against him, showing him to be incapable of satisfying either God or himself? And looking back once again, it is the grace of God as mercy pure and simple, as a sheer Yes and Nevertheless, which reveals, and by which we have to measure, how it stands with the man to whom it is granted. It is not independent reflection on the part of man, or an abstract law, but grace which shows incontrovertibly that man has forfeited his salvation and in so doing fatally jeopardized his creaturely being – which reveals his sin and the misery which is its consequence. From the redemption which takes place here we can father from what it is that man is redeemed; from the pure fact of the salvation which comes to man without and in spite of his own deserts we may know the brute fact which he for his part dares to set against God. Because the ‘God with us’ at the heart of the Christian message has to do with that pure fact of the divine mercy, we must not fail to recognize but acknowledge without reserve that we, and those for whom God is according to this message, are those who have nothing to bring Him but a confession of this brute fact: ‘Father, I have sinned.’”[1]

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 6-16.