the godhead: "mother, child, and womb"
in response to a friend's claim that the traditional conception of the trinity (God the father, son, and holy spirit) can be exchanged for any other instructive "metaphor", i write this:
i appreciate, [friend], your desire to be inclusive and open-minded...demonstrating the very spirit of Christ. i do think, though, that we need to be careful and consistent with our terms. the labels--father, son, and holy spirit--of the trinity aren't metaphors--what is the metaphor of a holy spirit? while our understanding of the persons of the trinity might be sullied by our flawed fathers or sinful sons, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
the trinity represents an organic relationship that is simultaneously unitary and trinary (electrical engineers, stop cringing :)... the mystery of the trinity has been mulled over since tertullian... and it culminated in unitarians and others who found the idea of an ontological trinity unintelligible (moses stuart and w.a. brown, for example). but, we find reference to a trinity of these particular three persons throughout the Bible (the father and son in both testaments, and the spirit first explicitly manifested in acts).
karl barth revived the trinity with some 220 pages on its doctrine in his dogmatics, and presents the three persons in terms of God's speaking: He is Revealer (father), Revelation (son), and Revealedness (holy spirit). (your guess is as good as mine on the office of the spirit..he says the spirit is the very content of the revelation). barth explains their offices in terms of truth revealed (john 1), but doesn't reject or recast the persons of the trinity: they are still father, son, and holy spirit.
at best, there might be room for didactic analogies to the trinity, in light of man's weakness, where analogy refers to an aspectual comparison to reality whereas a metaphor is a wholistic comparison (where the former is meant to explain a relationship in part, the latter in full). historically, people have used analogies such as mist, cloud, rain; intellect, affections, will, (augustine); thesis, antithesis, synthesis, (hegel); subject, object, and subject-object, (olshausen). all of these lack the divine personality inherent in the father-son-spirit relationship. and while mother-child-womb might have value for describing a specific personal relationship in the mystery of the Godhead, it can't replace the specific biblical relationships (see matthew 3.16, 4.1; and all of john, especially 1.18, 3.16, 5.20-22, 14.26, 15.26, and 16.13-15). i really appreciate this explanation, from berkhof's systematic theology (which has a good general discussion of the doctrine of God, and specifically the trinity, pp 82-99) :
The communicable attributes of God stress His personality, since they reveal Him as a rational and moral Being. His life stands out clearly before us in Scripture as a personal life; and it is, of course, of the greatest importance to maintain the personality of God, for without it there can be no religion in the real sense of the word: no prayer, no personal communion, no trustful reliance and no confident hope. Since man is created in the image of God, we learn to understand something of the personal life of God from the contemplation of personality as we know it in man.
in the end, the nature of the trinity is a grand mystery beyond our capacities, but praise God that we can even meditate on Him! in mystery is opportunity, enabling us to share in love the joy of the gospel with others, and to appreciate the personal struggles of others as they wrestle with divine truth: " to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Now this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I may be partaker of it with you." (i cor 9)
let's remember both the unfathomably perfect and the intimately personal nature of the Godhead, and our responsibility to share His love!
(also, thanks [other friend] for making the important distinction between pca and pcusa [which the article somewhat blurred]... the pca def has a rich, biblical, and necessarily Christ-centered theological tradition. i'd wholeheartedly recommend the small pca congregation i've joined in downtown LJ:new life mission church of la jolla.)
i appreciate, [friend], your desire to be inclusive and open-minded...demonstrating the very spirit of Christ. i do think, though, that we need to be careful and consistent with our terms. the labels--father, son, and holy spirit--of the trinity aren't metaphors--what is the metaphor of a holy spirit? while our understanding of the persons of the trinity might be sullied by our flawed fathers or sinful sons, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
the trinity represents an organic relationship that is simultaneously unitary and trinary (electrical engineers, stop cringing :)... the mystery of the trinity has been mulled over since tertullian... and it culminated in unitarians and others who found the idea of an ontological trinity unintelligible (moses stuart and w.a. brown, for example). but, we find reference to a trinity of these particular three persons throughout the Bible (the father and son in both testaments, and the spirit first explicitly manifested in acts).
karl barth revived the trinity with some 220 pages on its doctrine in his dogmatics, and presents the three persons in terms of God's speaking: He is Revealer (father), Revelation (son), and Revealedness (holy spirit). (your guess is as good as mine on the office of the spirit..he says the spirit is the very content of the revelation). barth explains their offices in terms of truth revealed (john 1), but doesn't reject or recast the persons of the trinity: they are still father, son, and holy spirit.
at best, there might be room for didactic analogies to the trinity, in light of man's weakness, where analogy refers to an aspectual comparison to reality whereas a metaphor is a wholistic comparison (where the former is meant to explain a relationship in part, the latter in full). historically, people have used analogies such as mist, cloud, rain; intellect, affections, will, (augustine); thesis, antithesis, synthesis, (hegel); subject, object, and subject-object, (olshausen). all of these lack the divine personality inherent in the father-son-spirit relationship. and while mother-child-womb might have value for describing a specific personal relationship in the mystery of the Godhead, it can't replace the specific biblical relationships (see matthew 3.16, 4.1; and all of john, especially 1.18, 3.16, 5.20-22, 14.26, 15.26, and 16.13-15). i really appreciate this explanation, from berkhof's systematic theology (which has a good general discussion of the doctrine of God, and specifically the trinity, pp 82-99) :
The communicable attributes of God stress His personality, since they reveal Him as a rational and moral Being. His life stands out clearly before us in Scripture as a personal life; and it is, of course, of the greatest importance to maintain the personality of God, for without it there can be no religion in the real sense of the word: no prayer, no personal communion, no trustful reliance and no confident hope. Since man is created in the image of God, we learn to understand something of the personal life of God from the contemplation of personality as we know it in man.
in the end, the nature of the trinity is a grand mystery beyond our capacities, but praise God that we can even meditate on Him! in mystery is opportunity, enabling us to share in love the joy of the gospel with others, and to appreciate the personal struggles of others as they wrestle with divine truth: " to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Now this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I may be partaker of it with you." (i cor 9)
let's remember both the unfathomably perfect and the intimately personal nature of the Godhead, and our responsibility to share His love!
(also, thanks [other friend] for making the important distinction between pca and pcusa [which the article somewhat blurred]... the pca def has a rich, biblical, and necessarily Christ-centered theological tradition. i'd wholeheartedly recommend the small pca congregation i've joined in downtown LJ:new life mission church of la jolla.)
posted by dave at 2:15 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home