The Problematic God of Western Theology

Before reading this post, I suggest you read the previous post entitled "The Subordination of the Doctrine of the Trinity."

The following post brings together much of the material that has been presented in previous posts by articulating the problems associated with the Augustinian-Thomist-Western doctrine of God. The post is long but I believe it is vitally important to our understanding of the problems in the Western doctrine of God.

Split Between Faith and Reason

There are a number of serious problems with the Western doctrine of God. The first problem with the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God is a "false disjunction" between faith and reason. While Jesus and the Spirit are known by faith in the apostolic witness revealed in Scripture, the One God, that is, the supreme substance, is known by speculative reason rooted in pagan Greek philosophy (Rahner, 1997:ix).

The Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of God implies that the One God of substantialist metaphysics is the "real" God and is known differently from the Triune God revealed historically in the incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit (oikonomia). As a result, the Augustinian-Thomist tradition has created a split between faith and reason and left the Western Church with two competing sources of knowledge of God, each tending to discredit the other (Gunton, 1990:35). These two versions of God are incompatible, for each posits a distinct but dissimilar view of the nature of God and God's relationship to the world. The One God of the philosophers, that is, the God of reason and natural theology, is the immutable, impassible God of all determining power who is unaffected by the troubles here below. The Triune God revealed in Scripture and known by faith is the God who stoops to interact with creation (cf. Hos 11:4) and whose power is subordinated to his essential nature of love (Pinnock, et al, 1994:18ff).

This split view of God leaves the Church with profound questions: Is the Christian God like the God of the philosophers ‒ remote, aloof, and disengaged? Or is the Christian God the Triune God of grace and mercy revealed in salvation history who freely and lovingly engages creation? In opening an epistemological chasm between the One God and the Triune God, thereby creating a split between faith and reason, the Augustinian-Thomist tradition has left the Western Church with the same question posed to T. F. Torrance (1992:59) by a dying young soldier on the battlefield: "Is God really like Jesus?"

Epistemology and Methodology

As evidenced above, many of the problems in the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God are epistemological and methodological, as can be seen by a comparison to Eastern Patristic theology. The pre-Augustinian Fathers of the Eastern Greek tradition begin their thinking about God with revelation; they do not attempt to describe God ad intra. Rather than offer a "philosophy of being," their primary concern is to explain how we may speak of the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ (Metzger, 2005:52). Whereas the Augustinian-Thomist approach to the doctrine of God begins with an emphasis on the unitary substance of God, only thereafter to consider the Triune Persons, the Eastern theologians of the early Greek-speaking Church begin their doctrine of God by considering first the Triune Persons as revealed in salvation history and only thereafter reflecting on the intradivine substance (ousia) (cf. Gonzales, 1987:335; Grenz, 2004:8, 9). While the Western approach emphasizes nature over person, the Eastern approach emphasizes person over nature (LaCugna, 1991:11).

Moreover, in the Eastern approach to the doctrine of God, the divine persons in relationship among themselves constitute the being (ousia) of God. The being of God is simply what the persons are, one to another; that is, for God to "be" is simply to be the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in their intradivine relations to one another (Gunton, 2007:86). On the other hand, Western theologians, who typically begin their articulation of the doctrine of God based on the substantialist metaphysics of natural theology, tend to talk of three "subsistencies" in the divine being, as though the divine persons exist within the being of God rather than constituting that being. To say, however, that the divine Persons are merely subsistencies in the being of God seems to imply that the being of God is different from the persons. In other words, the Western tradition implies that the being of God is something that underlies the divine persons rather than being constituted by them. Thus, in Western theology, following Augustine, the being (ousia) of God appears to be a substratum, a fourth "something," that underlies the Father, Son and Spirit (Gunton, 2007:87). This presents the Church with an epistemological problem: If the essence of God is different from the Triune Persons, that is, if God is different from God's historical self-revelation in Christ and the Spirit, then Christians are faced with the question, "Who (or what) is God and how do we know?"

Another major problem with the Augustinian-Thomist approach is methodological. Because the identity of God is not rooted primarily in the biblical witness to the incarnate Son and the gift of the Holy Spirit, but is found in rational speculation on the substance (ousia) of God based on Greek philosophy, the Western practice of describing the unitary substance as "God" is liable to making God's redemptive self-disclosure as Father, Son and Spirit subordinate to the essence (ousia) of God. Because this approach begins with substantialist metaphysics, derived from human ideas of what is appropriate for a perfect being to be (dignum deo) (Sanders, 2007:295, n29), the Western tradition suggests that Jesus and the Spirit are to be interpreted in terms of the pre-understanding of the attributes of the divine essence (e.g., immutability and impassibility) rather than in terms of God's self-emptying love for the world revealed at the cross.

The Significant Influence of Pagan Philosophy

Another problem with the Augustinian-Thomist-Western doctrine of God is the ever-present influence of pagan philosophy. According to Bloesch (1995:205, 206), the history of Western Christian thought is marked by a "biblical-classical synthesis," particularly conspicuous in Augustine and Aquinas, wherein the "ontological categories of Greco-Roman philosophy" have been united with the "personal-dramatic categories of biblical faith." LaCugna (1991:3, 4) accurately asserts that, in many respects, the "Christian" doctrine of God is secular, because it is derived more from philosophy than from God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. She describes the root of this non-soteriological doctrine of God as the "metaphysics of substance": the pursuit of God in his internal, intradivine relations largely considered apart from God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son and the gift of the Spirit. Colin Gunton (2007:39), a rather outspoken critic of Augustine, argues that "Augustine either did not understand the Trinitarian theology of his predecessors, both East and West, or looked at their work with spectacles so strongly tinted with Neoplatonic assumptions that they have distorted his work." Similarly, Moltmann (1993:10-12; 16, 17) is rightly critical of the Thomist emphasis on divine substance derived from Greek philosophy and articulated in the classic "five ways" to knowledge of God (cf. Aquinas, 1989:12ff), wherein the unity of God is given primary consideration with the result that the Trinity is finally explicated only within the framework of the one, divine substance. Moltmann argues that such a rational philosophical approach to the nature of God based on natural theology becomes a "prison" for biblical statements about the nature of God; that is, the scriptural witness to God as revealed in the incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit is constrained by an alien view of God developed from natural philosophy. Moltmann (1993:149) succinctly but accurately summarizes the all-important distinction between the methodological approaches to the doctrine of God: "If the biblical testimony is chosen as point of departure, then we shall have to start from the three persons of the history of Christ. If philosophical logic is made the starting point, then the enquirer proceeds from the One God."

The Compromise of Sola Scriptura

In the Augustinian-Thomist tradition, an alien framework of Greek metaphysics has been given equal place with Scripture in the development of the Western doctrine of God. This syncretic mixture of pagan and biblical thought compromises one of the hallmark principles of the Reformation: sola scriptura. When the doctrine of the One God is separated from the self-revelation of God as Father, Son, and Spirit, then reflection on the nature and character of God becomes merely a matter of philosophical speculation. When theologia is divorced from oikonomia, the biblical witness to God's involvement in the world in the history of Israel and the incarnation of Christ is rendered irrelevant for understanding the transcendent eternal nature of God. This means that rationalist speculative theology on the intradivine nature of God can operate on its own, unsupported by a thorough investigation of Scripture (exegesis). Therefore, while the Reformation principle sola scriptura might still be applied to the divine economy (oikonomia), there is apparently one area where the principal does not apply: "the immanent Trinitarian constitution of the divine being" (Schwöbel, 1995:7).

In the Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of God, natural theology, based on the rational speculation of Greek metaphysics, is the starting point for the doctrine of the One God, while revealed theology, as embraced by the community of faith, is the basis for the doctrine of the Triune God (Torrance, 1980:147, 148). Latin theology has promulgated a union in Western Christian thought between pagan Greek philosophy and biblical revelation that has been taken for granted for centuries, while only recently coming into question. In the Augustinian-Thomist tradition, the biblical revelation of the Father, Son and Spirit is subordinated to a view of God derived from natural philosophy. Consequently, as my friend theologian Robert Lucas notes, the Western Church, while intending to faithfully adhere to the Reformation principle, sola scriptura, at least in its Protestant manifestations, is unconsciously reading Scripture through an alien grid that emphasizes the oneness and unity of God with comparatively little consideration given to the distinctiveness of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit or to the communion of fellowship shared among the Triune Persons of the Godhead. The Trinity is removed from the practical concerns of Christian life and worship and is relegated to the status of a puzzling conundrum whose incomprehensibility is taken as axiomatic. Finally, and most importantly, As my friend theologian Baxter Kruger notes, abstract philosophical reflection on the inner nature of God considered apart from the scriptural witness to salvation history means that Jesus Christ ‒ the One by, in, for, and through whom all things exist (Col 1:16, 17) ‒ is left out of the formulation of the doctrine of God.

In summary, the Western doctrine of God arises from a confluence of two very different streams of thought: 1) natural theology largely derived from the substantialist metaphysics of pagan Greek philosophy and 2) revealed theology based on Holy Scripture. According to theologian Robert Lucas, because the scriptural witness of God as Father, incarnate Son and Spirit has been thoroughly polluted by an alien stream of thought, the Western Church for centuries has unconsciously allowed the presuppositions of pagan philosophy to drive its "biblical" understanding of God.

Loss of Relationality in the Doctrine of God

Because the Latin emphasis on the unitary substance seems to portray God as an "isolated, passionless monad," thus obscuring both the inner relationality of the Trinity and God's loving relationship with creation, contemporary Trinitarian theologians largely eschew the Western emphasis on the metaphysics of substance wherein the divine essence is said to "stand under" (L. substantia) the divine Persons (Cunningham, 1998:25).

The emphasis on the unitary substance of God and the concomitant loss of relationality in the Western doctrine of God can be traced to Augustine. Because of his intense sensitivity to the suffering involved in human relationships, Augustine developed a permanent dislike for interpersonal models of the Godhead. Given the Neoplatonic presupposition that God is utterly simple with no shadow of plurality, Augustine has great trouble positing real relationships, that is, diversity, in the Godhead. For Augustine, the Father is God in respect to substance, yet he cannot say that God is Father in respect to substance because that would make relations an aspect of the being of God, an assertion that is in conflict with divine simplicity (Sanders, 2007:83, 84).

Moreover, Augustine fails to properly define "person," understanding the term to mean simply "relation." Constrained by the Aristotelian "substance-accident" dualism, Augustine gives relations in the Godhead secondary place to the divine unity (ousia) so that relations are understood logically but not ontologically, that is, as something that constitutes the being of God (cf. Thompson, 1994:129). Because Augustine is unable to make claims about the being of the particular persons of the Godhead, the Father, Son and Spirit tend to disappear into the all-encompassing oneness of God (Gunton, 1990:44, 45). In short, while Augustine understands the unity of the persons, he fails to sufficiently grasp the diversity, thus bequeathing to the Western Church a doctrine of God that barely masks an underlying modalism (cf. Gunton, 2007:86, 87).

Following in the tradition of Augustine, the Fourth Lateran Council and Thomas Aquinas formalized the Western habit of privileging unitary substance over the diversity of the Triune Persons. In relegating the concepts of person and relationship to secondary status in the doctrine of God, the Western tradition has further contributed to the separation of theologia and oikonomia by subordinating God's tripersonal self-revelation to a substantialist doctrine of God derived from rational presuppositions.

Practical Unitarianism

Closely related to the loss of a relational concept of God is the issue of practical Unitarianism. LaCugna (1991:6) rightly argues that an ontological distinction between God in se and God pro nobis, that is, God in his eternal intradivine nature (theologia) and God for us as revealed in salvation history (oikonomia), is inconsistent not only with the biblical witness to God's redemptive acts in history but also with early Christian Creeds and doxology. This separation of God in his eternal intradivine nature (theologia) from God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia), most particularly obvious in Aquinas' separation of the two treatises, De Deo Uno and De Deo Trino, can only result, she argues, "in a unitarian Christianity, not a Trinitarian monotheism."

In a similar vein, Moltmann (1993:17) sees in the Thomist approach not only an undue emphasis on the unity of God but also a reduction of the triunity of God to the One God. As he rightly asserts, "The representation of the Trinitarian Persons in a homogenous divine substance, presupposed and recognizable from the cosmos, leads unintentionally but inescapably to the disintegration of the doctrine of the Trinity in abstract monotheism." Moltmann seems to suggest that, given the Western emphasis on the ontological priority of unitary substance, the distinct persons of the Triune Godhead disappear into an undifferentiated ontological "soup," leaving the ordinary believer with a Unitarian view of God.

Following LaCugna and Moltmann, we may assert that the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God, wherein God in his inner being (theologia) is considered apart from God as revealed in Christ and the Spirit (oikonomia), is not commensurate with God's self-revelation in Scripture nor with the Apostles' or Nicene Creeds, both of which are set in an unmistakable Trinitarian framework, nor with Christian prayer and worship, wherein Father, Son and Spirit have been historically worshipped as God. In addition, the Augustinian-Thomist emphasis on the unitary substance of God makes the Trinity appear to be a mere addition to the doctrine of God, thus reducing Christian belief and piety to practical Unitarianism, as evidenced by Rahner's (1997:10, 11) lament that the doctrine of the Trinity is irrelevant in the lives of most Christians, who are, in fact, "almost mere 'monotheists.'"

Pastoral Concerns

The Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of the One God has only minimal connection to the incarnation of Jesus Christ. In the Western Latin tradition, Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity have been virtually divorced, so that the life and work of Jesus is disconnected from the Trinity. Accordingly, there is only an "accidental relation" between the economy of salvation (oikonomia) as revealed in Scripture and the eternal triune being of God (theologia) (Thompson, 1994:22). There are clear pastoral concerns attached to the separation of theologia and oikonomia when the "bond of being" between the incarnate Son and the Father is torn asunder in our doctrine of God. Any disjunction between the being of Jesus and the being of God disrupts the message of grace contained in the Gospel, introducing anxiety into the hearts of many Christians who fear there may be a dark, inscrutable, arbitrary deity hidden behind the back of Jesus "before whom in our guilty conscience as sinners we cannot but quake and shiver in our souls" (Torrance, et al, 1999:16).

A truly Christian doctrine of God (theologia) must be rooted in the economy (oikonomia) of salvation, particularly the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The vital importance of a Christological approach to the doctrine of God is ably demonstrated by a series of questions posed by T. F. Torrance (1995:134):

What kind of God would we have, then, if Jesus Christ were not the self-revelation or self-communication of God, if God were not inherently and eternally in his own being what the Gospel tells us he is in Jesus Christ? Would "God" then not be someone who does not care to reveal himself to us? Would it not mean that God has not condescended to impart himself to us in Jesus Christ, and that his love has stopped short of becoming one with us? It would surely mean that there is no ontological, and therefore no epistemological connection between the love of Jesus and the love of God ‒ in fact there would be no revelation of the love of God but, on the contrary, something that rather mocks us, for while God is said to manifest his love to us in Jesus, he is not actually that love in himself.

Torrance's questions illustrate the important truth that thinking about God that does not begin with Jesus Christ leaves us uncertain about God's care, concern and love for the world. The Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God implies that God in his eternal, inner being may be different from God as revealed in his acts in salvation history. Hence, Christians cannot be certain that God as revealed in the incarnate Son and Holy Spirit is the same as God "really" is in his inner-most being. This immediately raises a soteriological concern for the Church: "Is Jesus' death on the cross really the act of God on our behalf?"

Summary

Contemporary Trinitarian theologians, led by Barth and Rahner, have been highly critical of the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God, wherein the doctrine of the Trinity is separate from and subsequent to the doctrine of the One God. The Western bifurcation of the doctrine of God into a major treatise on the unitary substance (ousia) of God, followed by a relatively minor appendix on the Trinity, makes it appear that everything important to say about God is said in the first treatise, while God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history is subordinated to a position of little importance in the development of the Western doctrine of God. This schizoid split in the doctrine of God has created a false disjunction between faith and reason in the mind of the Western Church, burdening the Church with two competing, incompatible and often confusing versions of God: the immutable, impassible God of substantialist metaphysics and the world-engaging, compassionate God revealed in Jesus. Moreover, the Western emphasis on the unitary substance of God, presupposed by natural theology, has led to the disintegration of the doctrine of the Trinity and created a practical unitarianism or mere monotheism in the worship and practice of many Christians. Finally, the Western emphasis on the unitary substance of God raises the issue of knowability by appearing to make the divine essence the "real" God, while subordinating the Triune Persons to the unitary substance of God. Because the Father, Son and Spirit are interpreted in terms of the pre-understanding of substantialist metaphysics, many Christians are burdened with concerns for their salvation, uncertain that God is really like Jesus.

(Next post circa August 15, 2009.)

References

Aquinas, T. 1989. Summa Theologiæ: A Concise Translation (edited by T.S. M^cDermott). Allen, TX: Christian Classics. 652pp.

Bloesch, D.G. 1995. God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 329pp.

Cunningham, D.S. 1998. These Three are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. 368pp.

Gonzalez, J.L. 1987. A History of Christian Thought (vol 1). Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. 400pp.

Grenz, S.J. 2004. Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress. 289pp.

Gunton, C. 1990. Augustine, the Trinity and the Theological Crisis of the West. Scottish Journal of Theology, vol 43, pp. 33-58.

Gunton, C.E. 2007. The Barth Lectures (transcribed and edited by P.H. Brazier). London: T & T Clark. 285pp.

LaCugna, C.M. 1991. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. 434pp.

Metzger, P.L. (ed). 2005. Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic Theology. London: T & T Clark. 225pp.

Moltmann, J. 1993. The Trinity and the Kingdom (translated by M. Kohl). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. 256pp.

Pinnock, C.H. et al. 1994. The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 202pp.

Rahner, K. 1997. The Trinity: Introduction, Index, and Glossary by Catherine Mowry LaCugna. New York, NY: Crossroads. 122pp.

Sanders, J. 2007. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 384pp.

Schwöbel, C. (ed). 1995. Trinitarian Theology Today. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 176pp.

Thompson, J.R. 1994. Modern Trinitarian Perspectives. Oxford: OUP. 165pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1980. The Ground and Grammar of Theology: Consonance Between Theology and Science. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1992. The Mediation of Christ. Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard. 126pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1995. The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church. London: T & T Clark. 345pp.

Torrance, T.F. et al. 1999. A Passion for Christ: The Vision That Ignites Ministry (edited by G. Dawson & J. Stein). Edinburgh: Handel Press. 150pp.

The Subordination of the Doctrine of the Trinity

In the last few posts we have examined how the doctrine of the Trinity was relegated to the status of a relatively minor appendix to the doctrine of the One God in Western Christianity. In order to refresh our memories, let's do a quick review to get our bearings and then move on to new material.

As a result of the theological controversies of the 4^th century, particularly the Arian controversy (see my posts, "Arians are not Skinheads" and "Athanasius contra Mundi," both from 11/08), theologians began to focus on the eternal, intradivine nature of God (theologia) considered apart from God's self-revelation in the history of Israel, the incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit (oikonomia). To answer their Arian critics, the Fathers were forced to consider the eternal nature of God in order to defend the fully divine nature of the eternal Son. Nevertheless, their focus on God ad intra (God in God's eternal divine nature) resulted in a reduced emphasis on God ad extra (God in relation to the world). In technical terms, a conceptual gap was opened between theologia (the eternal intradivine Being) and oikonomia (God's self-revelation in time and space). After the 4^th century, theologians in both the Greek Eastern Church and the Latin Western Church focused more and more attention on theologia so that God's self-revelation in history (oikonomia), particularly in the incarnate Son, became less and less important in the formulation of the Christian doctrine of God. To put it in a raw and simple form, after the 4^th century, Jesus, the incarnate Son, was largely left out of the picture in the portrayal of the Christian God, particularly in the Latin West.

Again, to review, here's what happened. Augustine, the Father of Western Christianity, developed an innovative approach to the doctrine of the Trinity. His innovations were related to his inability to grasp the significance of divine relationality as developed in the Cappadocians' doctrine of the Trinity (see my posts "A Cup O' Cappadocian," parts 1 & 2, posted 1/09) as well as his commitment to Neoplatonism (see my post, "The Wedding Cake Cosmos: Augustine & Neoplatonism," posted 2/09). As a Neoplatonist committed to divine simplicity, Augustine had great difficulty in conceiving relationship as an aspect of the Godhead. Hence, Augustine emphasized the unitary essence of God rather than the diversity of persons of the Godhead that had been the focus of Cappadocian trinitarianism. As Colin Gunton has noted, Augustine made divine "substance" the "real" God so that the divine persons were reduced to mere "subsistencies" in the essence of God. The unitarian substance became a "fourth something" that appeared to underlie the divine persons. (Note: "Subsistence" literally means "to stand under."). The Father, Son and Spirit were submerged into a vague and mysterious ontological soup of substance. Because of the anti-material bias of his Neoplatonism (i.e., matter is evil), Augustine turned away from God's self-revelation in time and space to look for "vestiges" of the Trinity in the human mind or soul. In turning inward to the human psyche, Augustine turned away from God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son and Holy Spirit in order to develop his doctrine of God. In short, Augustine separated theologia and oikonomia. He developed his doctrine of God apart from God's redemptive self-revelation in Jesus and the Spirit.

Augustine's emphasis on divine substance considered apart from God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history as Father, Son and Spirit became standard practice in the theology of the Latin West. In the 12^th century, Thomas Aquinas, like Augustine, turned away from God's redemptive self-revelation in salvation history to develop his doctrine of God based on the observation of the cosmos. Following Aristotle, he argued that a cause (God) can be known from its effects. Aquinas then took the unprecedented step of dividing his doctrine of God into two parts. First he developed a major treatise on the One God (De Deo Uno) derived from human reason and the observation of empirical phenomena (see my post, "Tommy A. and the Western Split," 3/09). He used various rational methods to arrive at a concept of God as infinite, immutable, impassible, omnipotent, omniscient, etc. (see my post, "How to Make a Western OmeletGod," 4/09). Only after he had developed his doctrine of the One God based on the substantialist metaphysics of Aristotle did Aquinas finally get around to his comparatively minor treatise on the Trinity (De Deo Trino). As the Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner is famous for noting, Aquinas makes it appear that everything worth saying about God is said in the treatise on the One God so that the doctrine of the Trinity seems nothing more than a minor, unimportant appendix to a thoroughly developed doctrine of the One God. As Catherine Mowry LaCugna has noted, Aquinas introduced the paradigmatic separation of theologia and oikonomia. Aquinas developed his doctrine of the One God (theologia) apart from God's redemptive self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia).

In the centuries following Aquinas, medieval Latin Scholasticism focused more and more on the intricacies of the divine substance so that the doctrine of the Trinity was hardly studied in the universities of medieval Europe. Because God's self-revelation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit was so obscured, coupled with the loss of an appreciation of the full humanity of Jesus, the persons in the pews were compelled to turn to the more human saints for solace.

The medieval bifurcation of theologia and oikonomia was carried on by the Protestant Scholastics of post-Reformation Europe and enshrined in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646). T.F. Torrance boldly and rightly declares that the God of Westminster theology is "not distinctively or essentially Christian." To be sure, the God of Westminster theology appears more related to the substantialist metaphysics of Aristotelian paganism than to the biblical God who stoops to save his creation. In the 19^th century, Charles Hodge, a well-known Protestant (Calvinist) theologian wrote a three-volume, 2,300 page systematic theology wherein only four pages are dedicated to the doctrine of the Trinity. As is apparent, in Western Latin theology, the doctrine of the Trinity was gradually relegated to the status of an unimportant appendix to the doctrine of the One God (or what Baxter Kruger calls the "omniGod.") This was the state of the Western doctrine of God until the 20^th century.

This ends our review. Let's move on from here with new material. I think you will like it!

In the 20^th century, Karl Barth (Protestant) and Karl Rahner (Roman Catholic) were the first to launch significant critiques of the Augustinian-Thomist approach to the doctrine of God. Both theologians rejected the centuries-old Western habit, formalized by Thomas Aquinas and developed in post-Reformation Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, of bifurcating the doctrine of God, as though the doctrine of the One God could be explicated rationally, based upon the presuppositions of pagan Greek metaphysics, while the doctrine of the Trinity was developed separately and subsequently on the basis of the biblical witness. Rahner (1997:17, 18) argues that the Augustinian-Thomist method of developing first a treatise based on the "unicity of the divine essence" results in an articulation of the One God that is philosophical, abstract, and hardly refers to salvation history. As Karl Barth argues, this is tantamount "to splitting the fundamental concept of God" (Torrance, 1996:10, 11).

The basic split in the Western concept of God caused Barth to attack the division of theology into "natural" theology and "revealed" theology (Torrance, 1980:147, 148). Barth repeatedly emphasized the inappropriateness of developing a doctrine of God from the speculative metaphysics of natural theology. According to Barth (1959:36):

The God of the Christian Confession is, in distinction from all gods, not a found or invented god or one at the last and at the end discovered by man . . . But we Christians speak of him who completely takes the place of everything that elsewhere is usually called "God," and therefore suppresses and excludes it all, and claims to be alone the truth.

For Barth, we can bring no presuppositions to our knowledge of God, for God is his own presupposition. God is not an object we discover through our own reasoning; God is a subject who, in sovereign freedom, chooses to reveal himself in the incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit (Busch, 2004:67-72; cf. Torrance, 1970:121ff). Barth rightly argues that a doctrine of the One God based on natural theology and a doctrine of the Triune God based on revelation creates a "schizoid state of affairs" in the foundation of theology (Torrance, 1980:148).

Other Trinitarian theologians have followed Barth and Rahner in their critique of the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God. T. F. Torrance (1996:8, 9) argues that separating the doctrine of the One God from the doctrine of the Triune God gives expression to a "deistic disjunction" between God and the world that is far removed from God's self-revelation in both the Old and New Testaments "as the God whose covenant love undergirds the whole creation and embraces all humanity with his mercies." Thompson (1994:20) argues that by starting with the One God derived from abstract speculation, the Augustinian-Thomist tradition subordinates the Trinity to a preconceived understanding of God. Likewise, Gunton (1990:35) asserts, following Rahner (1997:17), that everything worth saying about God appears to be given in the treatise, On the One God. Because the doctrine of the Trinity is relegated to a comparatively minor appendix to the doctrine of the One God, Gunton argues, God's triune self-revelation seems irrelevant to the Western doctrine of God, with the result that God in se (theologia) appears to be conceivably other than the God made known in space and time as Father, Son and Spirit (oikonomia). Finally, and perhaps most persuasively, Schwöbel (1995:5, 6) argues that in the Western Latin approach to the doctrine of God, wherein the Trinity is separate from and subsequent to the doctrine of the One God, Trinitarian reflections appear as an adjunct to a thorough exposition of the One God, leaving the impression that Trinitarian statements are not significant for reflection on the nature and character of God. The threefold self-revelation of God in the economy of salvation (oikonomia) appears to be merely a "complicating factor" or a "mystery" that clouds what is already established about the unity of God. The Thomist separation of the One God from the Triune God leaves the impression that all that is important to be said about God is said in the treatise on the One God, while God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ and in the history of Israel, as attested in Scripture, seems relatively unimportant in the Latin Western development of the doctrine of God.

Nevertheless, Schwöbel (1995:6, 7) continues, if a Trinitarian understanding of God is to be constitutive for Christian faith, then the doctrine of the Trinity must not be relegated to the status of a mere "appendix" to the doctrine of the One God. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity must be the "gateway" through which all theological exposition about God must pass, so that all our speech about God, including all our theological doctrines, is grounded in God's triune self-revelation as Father, incarnate Son and Holy Spirit.

References

Barth, K. 1959. Dogmatics in Outline. New York, NY: Harper & Row. 155pp.

Busch, E. 2004. The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth's Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 302pp.

Rahner, K. 1997. The Trinity: Introduction, Index, and Glossary by Catherine Mowry LaCugna. New York, NY: Crossroads. 122pp.

Schwöbel, C. (ed). 1995. Trinitarian Theology Today. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 176pp.

Thompson, J.R. 1994. Modern Trinitarian Perspectives. Oxford: OUP. 165pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1970. The Problem of Natural Theology in the Thought of Karl Barth. Religious Studies, vol 6, pp. 121-135.

Torrance, T.F. 1980. The Ground and Grammar of Theology: Consonance Between Theology and Science. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1996. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons. London: T & T Clark. 260pp.

How to Make a Western OmeletGod (in Three Easy Steps)

Hello again, everyone! Before we start cooking' up our Western omeletGod, I want to call your attention to a new article of mine that was just published in The Plain Truth magazine. I'm really excited about the article because it's the feature article in the current edition. It's a tongue-in-cheek critique of the really bad question sometimes heard from more than a few pulpits: "If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" Check it out. You'll find it in the right-hand column of this blog under "Articles."

Now then, ya'll. Let's put on our tall chef's hats, sprinkle a little flour on our noses, adding a smidgen of bacon grease under our arms to make us smell pretty, and stir up a Western omeletGod. Here we go!

Today we are going to discuss what my friend, theologian Baxter Kruger, calls the "omniGod." For this post, I decided to change the terminology a bit and call it the "omeletGod." The recipe is the same so it won't hurt to play around a little. If you have grown up under the influence of the Western (Latin) Church, as have most readers of this blog, you will be familiar with the omeletGod: the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and generally unpleasant God of Western theology. This God is infinite, ineffable, immutable, impassible and inscrutable. This God is to be approached with extreme caution because this God is unfriendly. This God does not readily invite us to the kitchen table for cookies and milk. In fact, we can never be certain that this God even likes us. (Some extremists would even say this God hated most of us even before we were born! I'm serious. I was taught this kind of gar-bage in a seminary class not that long ago.)

Have you ever wondered where the nasty, distasteful omeletGod comes from? How did the Western Christian church develop a recipe for God that features something so unsavory as its chief ingredient? If you've read this blog for a while, you won't be surprised to discover that the omeletGod was first cooked up in the olive-oiled skillets of ancient Greece. Isn't it strange that every time we start talking about the God of Western Christianity, we soon find ourselves in the tangled web of Greek metaphysics? Go figure!

Let's set the stage for further discussion of the omeletGod with a great quote from Colin Gunton, one of my favorite theologians: My boy Colin (2002:3) writes:

It is one of the tragedies - one could almost say crimes - of Christian theological history that the Old Testament was effectively displaced by Greek philosophy as the theological basis of the doctrine of God, certainly so far as the doctrine of the divine attributes is concerned.

I think that quote speaks pretty clearly, don't you? Notice that Gunton mentions the attributes of God. "Attributes" are those characteristics that philosophers have ascribed or "attributed" to God based upon human ideas of what is "proper" for God to be like (dignum deo). Infinity, immutability, impassibility and omnipotence are some of the standard "attributes" of God, according to Western theology. Gunton, like many others, is arguing that the attributes of the Western "Christian" God are derived more from Greek (pagan) philosophy than from the Bible. That is a sad but highly accurate commentary on the version of God with which most of us have been burdened.

As we have discussed before, the Greeks posited a great cosmic dualism: the divine is way up there―aloof, alone, isolated and uninvolved; we are way down here in this world of dirt, separated from the divine by a great ontological chasm. The divine is good, the material world is evil; thus, there can be no interaction between the two, for relation with the world would "taint" the divine. As Gunton (2002:6) argues, herein lays the key to the entire problem of the so-called "attributes" of God. The Greeks have located the divine in a realm that stands in opposition to, or is a negation of, the world.

The Greeks thought of God as unknowable and ineffable, so far beyond the capabilities of human thought and language and so far removed from earthly concerns that we could say nothing positive about God. All that remained was to say what God is not, a method known as the "way of negation" (via negationis). Proclus, a student of Plotinus, the Neoplatonist who heavily influenced Augustine, argued that we cannot predicate anything positively of the "ultimate Principle"; we can only say what it is not, because "it stands above all discursive thought and positive predication ineffable and incomprehensible" (Gunton, 2002:14). In short, the idea underlying the "way of negation" (via negationis) is that in describing the divine, we can only say that God is essentially what the world is not.

So how do we use "negative" theology to formulate a list of the "attributes" of God? It works like this: I look around and see a world that stands in opposition to the divine (according to Greek thought). I see that this world of evil is finite; therefore, God, who is perfect and totally removed from this world of dirt, must be not finite, in other words, in-finite. I see that the world is mutable (changeable); therefore, God must be not mutable, that is, im-mutable (unchangeable). I see that there is suffering (passibility) in the world; therefore, God must be im-passible. It's really quite simple: I look at the world around me, with all its flaws and imperfections, and assert that God is "not this."

Pseudo-Dionysius (5th C) introduced the "negative way" (via negationis) into Christian theology. Other theologians followed suit, including the great Medieval Latin scholar, Thomas Aquinas, known in this blog as Tommy A. Here's what our boy Tommy did: he added some ingredients to the Western omeletGod that he picked up from the renowned Greek chef, Aristotle. As we saw in the last post ("Tommy A. and the Western Split") Aquinas sought to "prove" the existence of God, as well as describe the general characteristics of the divine nature (ousia), via the "five ways," a series of cosmological proofs for the existence and nature of God. By way of review, here's how it works: Tommy A. looks at the world around him and the first thing he notices is objects in motion (effects). So he puts on his thinking cap and commences to cogitate. Tommy reasons that 1) objects in motion ultimately require a Prime Mover to initiate the first move; 2) the existence of cause and effect requires a First Cause; 3) the existence of contingent beings (effects) requires a Necessary Being; 4) degrees of perfection (effects) require that which is ultimately Perfect, and 5) the design in nature (effects) can be explained only by a Designer (McGrath, 2001:245-247). You'll note that the "five ways" are all variations on a common theme, sort of like Fernando Sor's "Variations on a Theme of Mozart." (Any classical guitarists out there?) The principle behind this method is that a cause can be known by its effects. In other words, knowledge of God (cause) can be derived from observation of the created order or cosmos (effects). In short, these cosmological "proofs" are developed using the "way of causality" (via causalitatis): a cause can be known by its effects. When it's all said and done, Tommy's version of God is a re-hash of the "prime Mover" of Aristotelian metaphysics. God is basically the first cause, the necessary being, the perfect being, the cosmic designer, yada, yada, yada.

In addition to the "negative way" imported into Christian theology by Pseudo-Dionysius and the "way of causality" just described, Tommy added another set of ingredients to his Western omeletGod: the "way of eminence" (via eminentiae). The principle behind the way of eminence is the "denial of limits." Here's what Tommy did: Once again, he looks at the world around him and sees that people have power and knowledge, although in limited amount, as well as the limited ability to be in only one place at a time. So he simply applies all these things to God but removes the limits. In other words, Tommy cogitates that God does not have limited power as we do; so he removes the limitations of human power and says that God is all-powerful, that is, God is omnipotent. Ditto with knowledge. God is not limited in knowledge as we are; God has all-knowledge, that is, God is omniscient. Ditto again with the removal of the limitation of presence. Tommy contends that God is omnipresent.

OK, troops. Let's sum up, because this isn't rocket science. All we've done in these three methods or "ways" is look at the world around us and say God is not this, or God lacks these limitations, or God is the ultimate cause of all these effects. No big deal.

Now then, ya'll. Here's where the fun starts. Let's take all these ingredients from the Western recipe for a doctrine of God and make a Western omeletGod. Do you still have on your tall chef's hat? Good! Here we go! First we have to stoke up the wood stove till the fire's really blazing, then get out the bacon grease and slick down the heavy black cast iron skillet. While the skillet is getting hot, we'll crack open a half dozen eggs, then chop up some green peppers, onions and mushrooms and search the cabinets for the salt and pepper. With luck, we may even find some Louisiana hot sauce somewhere around the kitchen. OK. That's all done and the bacon grease is hot and starting to smell oh so fine. So let's carefully pour in the eggs and start adding the ingredients to make a good'ole Western omeletGod in three easy steps.

• Step 1: First, we add the ingredients from the "way of negation" (via negationis). We'll throw in some infinity since God is not finite. Then we'll add some ineffability since God is not known by human comprehension. Then we'll throw in that ever-present pair of ingredients known as impassibility and immutability since God (supposedly) does not change or suffer.
  
• Step 2: Now we add the ingredients from the "way of causality" (via causalitatis). We throw in a first cause, a prime mover, a cosmic designer, and a necessary being.
  Admittedly, this step is not as fun as the others.
  
• Step Three: Now we add the ingredients from the "way of eminence" (via eminentiae). Like step one, this one is really easy. We grab a handful of this and that, carefully removing the imperfections, and throw it all in the skillet, adding to our omelet some hefty handfuls of omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence.

Now, let's carefully fold the egg over all these ingredients and let the stove and skillet do their work. . . . . . Presto! There it is. In just three easy steps we've cooked up a Western omeletGod. Let's grab a spatula and lift this heavy baby onto one of our finest plastic plates. There we go. Now grab a fork and let's dig in! I'll bet this thing is going to be great. After all, our recipe comes from a long tradition of great Western chefs. Here we go: Aaggghhhh! This thing doesn't taste right! It's yucky and awful and I'll bet if we eat it all, it's going to make us all sick!

Yikes! What did we do wrong? We must have left something out. Let's review our ingredients and see where we went wrong. We started by adding infinity, ineffability, immutability, and impassibility. OK. That's all standard for a Western omeletGod. No problem there. Then we added some of those ingredients that Tommy A. borrowed from Aristotle. Let's see: there was a first cause, a prime mover, a designer . . . OK. That all seems pretty standard. Then we added those hefty handfuls of omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. Maybe that's where we went wrong. Perhaps we put in too much of the heavy stuff. Still, something is missing from our Western God omelet.

Wow! Silly me! I just figured it out. No wonder this thing tastes like a fried inner tube from my grandson's bike tire. We left out the most important ingredients of all. How dumb can we be? We left out the Father, Son and Holy Spirit! No wonder this omelet tastes so bad.

And there, friends and neighbors, is the problem with the Western doctrine of God. God's triune self-revelation in salvation history has been utterly marginalized (see previous post: "Tommy A. and the Western Split") in favor of a one-sided doctrine of the One God whose characteristics (attributes) are developed solely from rational reflection on the cosmos. Western Christians have been burdened with a doctrine of God that has been developed apart from God's self-revelation in time and space as the God who saves. The Western omeletGod gives us no reason to believe that God is for us, for it is a recipe for a doctrine of God developed apart from God's redemptive activity in salvation history.

It is vital that we teachers and preachers play our part in the ongoing call to bring the Western Church back to the trinitarian vision of God shared by Irenaeus, Athanasius, Hilary, the Cappadocians and others. Only when we understand that God's trinitarian self-revelation in time and space is a redemptive, salvific revelation of the eternal nature of God whose essential being is love will the Western Church finally be freed of its bondage to the omeletGod.

Well, folks, we made an omelet using the ingredients of the Western doctrine of God and found that it didn't taste so good. I guess that's what happens when you leave the most important ingredients out of the recipe. I don't know about the rest of you chefs out there, but I'm throwing away my recipe for a Western omeletGod and I'm going to look for a cook book that's got some Jesus in it! Amen.

(Next major post circa, June 15, 2009. See you then!)

References

Gunton. C. E. 2002. Act & Being: Toward a Theology of the Divine Attributes. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. 162pp.

Tommy A. and the Western Split

In our recent post on Augustine and Neo-Platonism (see "The Wedding Cake Cosmos"), we saw how the doctrine of the Trinity began to be conceived apart from God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. You remember don't you? Failing to understand the Cappadocian emphasis on the diversity of Persons in the Triune Godhead, Auggie turned inward to look for "vestiges" of the Trinity (vestigias trinitatis) inside his own head and developed an innovative approach to the doctrine of God that emphasizes the unitary essence or "substance" (ousia) of God largely considered apart from God's triune self-revelation in salvation history.

Centuries after the time of Augustine, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 marked a milestone in trinitarian dogma in the Latin West due to its detailed, precise articulation of the nature of God (Olson & Hall, 2002:62). The council defined faith in God as belief in "only one true God, eternal, infinite (immensus) and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty and ineffable, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: three persons indeed but one essence, substance, or nature entirely simple" (O'Collins, 1999:148). The council stood in the Augustinian tradition of trinitarian reflection by describing God as one divine substance, absolutely simple in every way, and unchanging, that is, unaffected by history (i.e., impassible). The council described the Triune Persons as "nothing more than distinct relations within the divine substance distinguished only by their differing relations of origin with regard to one another" (Olson & Hall, 2002:62, 63).

Latin theologians of the High Middle Ages, concerned with the "logical intricacies" of the immanent Trinity (i.e., God in God's eternal transcendent nature), sought to round out Augustine's trinitarianism by addressing intellectual questions that had been left unanswered (Grenz, 2004:10). The philosophy and logic of Plato and Aristotle were given equal place alongside Scripture in medieval speculation about the transcendent of God (cf. Olson & Hall, 2002:51, 52). Stop! You may want to read that line again! Apparently, God's triune self-revelation as attested in the history of Israel, the incarnation of the Son, and the gift of the Spirit (oikonomia) was little more informative than non-biblical Greek metaphysics in the Western doctrine of God.

Since Lateran IV, especially in the Latin West, there has been a tendency to begin with and emphasize the unity of the divine substance while neglecting the divine persons as a Triune community of reciprocal love. Some critics have argued that by placing a strong priority on the unity of God to the detriment of God's triunity, Lateran IV effectively dogmatized the division of the doctrine of God that would become standard procedure in the Latin West, beginning with one of the major players in the development of Western thought regarding the doctrine of God: the Dominican friar, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).

In order to understand where Tommy A. was coming from, we must realize that the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, had been newly rediscovered in the Latin West. Aristotle was all the rage in the High Middle Ages in Europe. Everyone was wearing T-shirts with his picture on them. At every cocktail party, theologians and philosophers, well-oiled with good Single Malt Scotch (pardon the redundancy), huddled near the fire, puffed their pipes and debated the fine points of Aristotelian metaphysics. In those days, if you didn't know the difference in "efficient" and "material" causality, you just weren't with it, Dude! This is the philosophical milieu in which Tommy Aquinas went to work. We're not here to put the brother down; we just want to note the kind of water he was swimming in.

In his Summa Theologiæ (1266-1273), a classic work of Western theology, Thomas split the doctrine of God into two parts: a thorough exposition of the one God (De Deo Uno) followed by a treatise on the Trinity (De Deo Trino). Methodologically, Thomas followed Augustine by examining first the unity of the divine "substance" (ousia: essence, nature, being), only afterwards to articulate the "deployment" of the divine substance in the Trinity of persons (LaCugna, 1991:146). Aquinas attempts to understand God, not by beginning with God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ (revealed theology), but by beginning with the unity of the divine substance considered in terms of the philosophy of Aristotle (cf. Allen & Springsted, 2007:103-110). Since Aristotle was everyone's hero at the time, I guess it just made sense to frame a "Christian" doctrine of God in terms of pagan metaphysics! Am I missing something?

Aquinas sought to "prove" the existence of God, as well as describe the general characteristics of the divine nature (ousia), via the "five ways," a series of rational (not revealed) cosmological proofs for the existence and nature of God initially derived from Aristotle (Aquinas, 1989:12ff; Moltmann, 1993:10ff; Allen & Springsted, 2007, 103ff). Thomas reasoned that 1) objects in motion ultimately require a Prime Mover to initiate the first move; 2) the existence of cause and effect requires a First Cause; 3) the existence of contingent beings requires a Necessary Being; 4) degrees of perfection require that which is ultimately Perfect, and 5) the design in nature can be explained only by a Designer (McGrath, 2001:245-247). The principle behind this method is that a cause can be known by its effects (Aquinas, 1989:11, 12). In other words, knowledge of God (cause) can be derived from observation of the created order or cosmos (effects) (Allen & Springsted, 2007:104). Aquinas' five ways of cosmological proof start from the general phenomena of the world and inquire about their ultimate foundation; that is, the cosmological proofs start from the finitude of the world and contrast this with infinite Being (Moltmann, 1993:12). After each proof, Thomas asserts "et hoc dicimus Deum" ("and this we call God") (cf. Aquinas, 1989:12-14; M^cGrath, 2001:245-247). Note that for Aquinas, it is the divine essence or substance (ousia), deduced from the five ways of cosmological "proofs," that is to be called God, not the Triune Persons.

Based upon the "five ways" derived from Aristotle, here is the description of God that Thomas ends up with: "The divine nature is the moving, causing, necessary, pure and intelligent Being for being that is moved, caused, possible, intermingled and ordered" (Moltmann, 1993:12). Wow! Now there's a God you can relate to. Not! As my homey theologian Baxter Kruger often says, who wants to hang with a God like that? By the way, did you notice anything missing in that description of God?

We may rightly question if Aquinas is correct to assert "and this we call God." Aquinas bases his conclusions about the nature of God on rational (not biblical) presuppositions of what it is "proper" for God to be like (dignum Deo) (Sanders, 2007:295, n29). According to Greek metaphysics, any deity worthy of the name must be immutable, impassible, omnipotent, etc. (We'll get more of this in the next post.) Unfortunately, conclusions about God based on pagan philosophical presuppositions are more descriptive of Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover" (the aloof, alone, arelational deity of Greek thought) than the scriptural portrayal of the dynamic, passionate, self-emptying God who engages and is affected by creation (cf. Pinnock, 2001:70, 71).

Moreover, the epistemology (How do we know?) and methodology (Where do we start?) of Aquinas' approach is subject to question. Thomas develops his ideas of what God must be like rationally, quite independently of God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia). In short, Thomas derives his description of God from reason rather than revelation (Pinnock, 2001:70). Thomas' cosmological approach is far different from the approach of our boys Athanasius and the Cappadocians, who started with God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia).

O.K. Hang on to your hats! We're coming to the part where Thomas does something entirely new in the Western doctrine of God: Drawing upon his starting point with the cosmological proofs of the existence and nature of God, Aquinas divides his doctrine of God into two parts: De Deo Uno (On the One God) and De Deo Trino (On the Triune God). He then writes first a lengthy treatise on the One God (De Deo Uno) wherein he articulates the essence of God (De Deo Uno) in terms of natural theology, that is, investigation into the divine nature solely in terms of human reason and empirical observation. When he finally gets around to his subsequent treatise on the Trinity (De Deo Trino), the description of the Triune Godhead is philosophical and abstract with little relation to God's self-revelation in salvation history (Rahner, 1997:16, 17; cf. LaCugna, 1991:145).Thomas is the first theologian to divide the doctrine of God in such a manner (Rahner, 1997:16, 17). Notice what's happening already: Thomas does not begin his articulation of the doctrine of God with the Triune Persons as revealed in redemptive history; instead, he begins with a rational explication of the unitary essence (ousia) common to all three persons (Aquinas, 1989:14ff).

In dividing the doctrine of God into two parts, wherein the unity of God is considered first, with the triunity of God explicated in preconceived terms of the divine substance, Thomas dubiously achieved what is frequently described as "the paradigm instance" of the separation of theologia (God in God's eternal transcendent nature) and oikonomia (God as revealed in salvation history in the incarnate Son and Spirit), thus hardening into dogma what had begun in Augustine (LaCugna, 1991:145, 147, 148). Get that point! Aquinas has split apart the doctrine of God; he has separated consideration of God's eternal transcendent nature from God's triune self-revelation in time and space! His method of beginning with the divine essence or substance is a clear departure from Scripture, early creeds, liturgy and Greek patristic theology (LaCugna, 1991:147). Aquinas' doctrine of God is neither historical nor Christological. It has the transcendent "essence" or "substance" of God as its subject, so that God's self-revelation in salvation history is not an essential dimension or the explicit foundation for knowledge of the Trinity. Hence, the entire structure of the Summa emphasizes the priority of theologia over oikonomia. Given Thomas' starting point in God himself (in se), the economy of redemption in salvation history is not the primary basis for his doctrine of God (LaCugna, 1991:147-150).

Let's sum up: Thomas begins with speculation on the abstract substance (ousia) of God, considered in terms of Greek metaphysics, not in terms of the biblical revelation of God as Father, Son and Spirit. He then writes first a major treatise on the One God (De Deo Uno), that is, the essence or substance of God wherein the divine nature is described rationally, that is, in terms of what humans may think is "proper" for God to be. (As if we would know!). Only after that does he get around to his treatise on the Trinity (De Deo Trino). Even then, his trinitarianism is abstract and philosophical and bears little connection to God's triune self-revelation in salvation history.

To continue: For both Augustine and Aquinas, the one, common divine substance or essence of God was considered the foundation of the trinitarian persons and was, hence, logically primary in comparison (Moltmann, 1993:16). Augustine begins with the divine substance and only secondarily considers the triunity of God. For Aquinas, the divine substance, which could be abstracted from the triune persons, is what is to be called "God," not the three persons or any one of them (Moltmann, 1993:16). Thus, both Augustine and Thomas divide the doctrine of God by beginning with the unitary substance and only secondarily considering the doctrine of the Trinity in light of the preconceptions of substance ontology (i.e., "substantialist metaphysics). This methodological bifurcation of the doctrine of God has prevailed since in Western theology (Rahner, 1997:16).

The Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God has had considerable consequences for the doctrine of the Trinity in Western theology. In the textbooks of both Roman Catholic and Protestant theology, the doctrine of God has been divided into a treatise on the one God followed by a treatise on the Trinity (Moltmann, 1993:17). Only after the doctrine of the one God is fully explicated is attention given to God's triune self-revelation in salvation history. This methodological bifurcation makes it appear that everything that really matters in the doctrine of God is said in the first treatise on the one God while the treatment of the Trinity is locked away in "splendid isolation" and "devoid of interest" (Rahner, 1997:17). Don't make the mistake of thinking all this only happened in medieval Roman Catholicism: In Protestant circles, the systematic theologians Charles Hodge and Louis Berkhof both devote hundreds of pages to the explication of the existence and attributes of God before even considering the Trinity (Letham, 2004:4). Believe it or not, Charles Hodge, one of the great representatives of Calvinism, devotes only four pages to the doctrine of the Trinity in a work of systematic theology that comprises three volumes and nearly 2,300 pages (Grenz, 2004:229 n 55). Unreal!

As the bifurcation of the Western doctrine of God became rigid in medieval scholasticism, the treatise on the unitary substance of God (De Deo Uno) evolved into "natural theology," that is, philosophical speculation on the divine nature and attributes, based on pure reason, and developed rationally apart from revelation. As the Western doctrine of God was disconnected from God's self-revelation in salvation history, Christology and Pneumatology became irrelevant to the doctrine of God when the medieval philosophical speculation of natural theology was at its height (LaCugna, 1991:10, 11). Moreover, the treatise on the Trinity was relegated to secondary status and regarded merely as a formal treatment of intradivine processions, persons, and relations, so that, finally, in the seminaries of post-baroque Catholicism, the doctrine of the Trinity was hardly studied at all and regarded as not essential to Christian faith (LaCugna, 1991:167, 168). Moreover, the marginalization of the doctrine of the Trinity impacted not only theology but doxology as well. The complexities of medieval Latin theology helped to precipitate the demise of the doctrine of the Trinity in the West because the doctrine could no longer be related to the concerns of popular piety and religious experience (Grenz, 2004:13). Thus, one of the consequences of the medieval scholastic emphasis on the unity of God understood from natural theology was the marginalization of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Latin West (LaCugna, 1991:167).

Do you see what has happened? With the Augustinian-Thomist-Western emphasis on the unitary "substance" of God ("substantialist metaphysics") considered rationally in terms of human ideas of what is "proper" for God to be (immutable, impassible and generally unavailable), the doctrine of the Trinity fell along the wayside. God's Triune self-revelation in redemptive history was marginalized and no longer considered particularly relevant in the Western doctrine of God. By the time you get to more recent Protestant theologians like Berkhof and Hodge, the doctrine of the Trinity is still marginalized. The result of all this for most Christians is a fear and dread of the "hidden God" that lies "behind" God's self-revelation in salvation history. This is the God we are not sure of, the God we fear may not be like Jesus. The existential angst in the hearts of many Christians is the inevitable result of the Western bifurcation of the doctrine of God, wherein G-O-D (Baxter Kruger) has been considered apart from God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son and the Spirit. In short, the Western tradition has failed to allow Jesus to reveal the Father (cf. John 1:18).

Thomas Aquinas' bifurcation of the doctrine of God contributed to the relegation of the doctrine of the Trinity to the status of nothing more than an uninteresting, rather puzzling appendix to the doctrine that has little to do with theology or Christian piety. The situation remained thus until the early 20^th century when Karl Barth roared, "Nein!" Things are getting better, but we have a long way to go in restoring the doctrine of the Trinity to its proper place as the foundational doctrine from which all Christian dogmatics must be explicated.

P.S. Look for next major post April 30. I hope you can join me then!

References

Allen, D. & Springsted, E.O. 2007. Philosophy for Understanding Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knox. 267 pp.

Aquinas, T. 1989. Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation (edited by T.S. M^cDermott). Allen, TX: Christian Classics. 652pp.

LaCugna, C.M. 1991. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. 434pp.

M^cGrath, A.E. 2001. Christian Theology: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 616pp.

Moltmann, J. 1993. The Trinity and the Kingdom (trans by M. Kohl). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. 256pp.

Pinnock, C.H. 2001. Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 204pp.

Rahner, K. 1997. The Trinity: Introduction, Index, and Glossary by Catherine Mowery LaCugna. New York, NY: Crossroads. 122pp.

Sanders, J. 2007. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 384pp.

Articles for the Season of Lent

Hello Everyone,

As we enter the time of year when the Church has traditionally emphasized the Cross of Christ in its preaching and teaching, I want to refer you to two articles I have written that may be of interest to you, especially at this time of year. The first is a new article, just published, and is entitled, "The Judged Judged in Our Place." The article is developed from ideas that came to me when reading through a section by the same name in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics IV.1. The second article, "The Humility of God," was published at this time last year. This article is inspired by Barth's statement that "it is just as Godlike to be humble as to be exalted." Both these articles have been published in the Plain Truth Magazine. They are written for a general audience (non-theologians), so I hope you will read them and share them with others. To read the articles, look in the right-hand column of this page and click on the appropriate title under "Articles."

The Wedding Cake Cosmos: Augustine & NeoPlatonism

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. The Apostle Paul (Col 2:8)

The Christian doctrine of God is a "hybrid of two organisms": Greek philosophy and biblical thought. Colin Gunton (2003:2)

In many respects, the Christian doctrine of God is secular, constructed out of philosophy, not out of the self-revelation of God in Christ. Catherine Mowry LaCugna (1991:3).

The Roman Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner (1970:10, 11), rightly lamented nearly forty years ago that most Christians are "mere monotheists," not in the sense of believing in one God, but in the sense of believing in a unipersonal cosmic "monad." He argued that the doctrine of the Trinity was practically irrelevant in the lives of most Christians. He went so far to say, I believe correctly, that "should if the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged." That is a strong indictment of the relative unimportance of the doctrine of the Triune God in Western theology and piety. With today's post I want to begin a series of articles that trace the eclipse of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Western Church.

For sixteen hundred years, from the time of Augustine until the early 20^th century, the doctrine of the Trinity has been little more than a relatively minor appendix to an already developed doctrine of the "One God." The relegation of the doctrine of the Trinity to minority status in the Western doctrine of God is directly related the influence of pagan metaphysics on Christian thought. As my friend, theologian Robert Lucas puts it: the Western doctrine of God is a confluence of two very different streams of thought: Greek philosophy and Holy Scripture, with the result that the "Christian" doctrine of God has been thoroughly polluted by an alien stream.

As Bloesch (1995:205) notes, "the history of Christian thought shows the unmistakable imprint of a biblical-classical synthesis in which the ontological categories of Greco-Roman philosophy have been united with the personal-dramatic categories of biblical faith." This synthesis of Greek and biblical thought was conspicuous in Augustine and Aquinas (Bloesch, 1995:206). The God of the classical-biblical synthesis is described negatively as infinite, immutable, impassible, incomprehensible and eminently as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. This is the distant, aloof, inscrutable deity that Baxter Kruger succinctly describes as the "omniGod," or simply G-O-D. Many Christians may be surprised to know that the omniGod developed, not from the scriptural attestation of God as Father, incarnate Son and Holy Spirit, but from Greek metaphysics. To be sure, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and others have been given equal place alongside Holy Scripture in formulating the Latin-Western doctrine of God.

As we shall see, Augustine, the Father of Western Christianity, was enamored with NeoPlatonism. Thomas Aquinas, another of the great "Doctors" of the Western Latin Church, developed his doctrine of God within the framework of the metaphysics of Aristotle. No malevolent intent is attributed to either of these Christian saints. They were simply swimming in the philosophical waters that surrounded them. Yet in developing a doctrine of God that is rooted in Greek metaphysics, they turned away from God's threefold self-revelation in redemptive history. In short, as Robert Lucas often says, they have failed to allow Jesus to reveal the Father. In so doing, they have left the Western Church with an uninvolved God who watches us from a distance―aloof, alone, and unmoved by our plight. The inscrutable omniGod of the Western-Latin tradition is very different from the self-abnegating, stooping (cf. Hosea 11:4), compassionate God revealed in Holy Scripture, particularly in its attestation to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God and loving Savior of the world (see Pinnock, et al, 1994; Pinnock, 2001; Sanders, 2007).

So let's lighten up the tone a bit and travel back in time to the late 4^th century to see how the Good News of God's adoption of humanity into the joyful circle of Triune life, so passionately proclaimed by Irenaeus, Athanasius and the Cappadocians, was distorted into the awful proclamation of the omniGod. To do that, we must start with Augustine.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is known as the Father of Western Christianity. Like it or not, if you grew up in the Western Church, he's yo daddy! (You knew I couldn't stay serious forever!) Auggie is probably the major player in the development of the Western doctrine of God. His great work, De Trinitate (On the Trinity), written over a twenty year period (399-419), is not only a classic in Western trinitarian thought but also determined the course that Western trinitarian theology would follow, so that later differences between Western and Eastern trinitarian theology can be traced to this work (Gonzales, 1987:328).

Here's the deal about Auggie. For whatever reasons, he initiated a new approach to the doctrine of the Trinity. While there's nothing wrong with originality, when it comes to the doctrine of God, we do well to pay attention to what all our predecessors had to say. Auggie, however, didn't do that. Rather, he failed to appropriate many of the developments in trinitarian thought that had preceded him as far back as Origen in the early third century (Gunton, 1997:39). In fact, Auggie was largely blind to the achievements of Athanasius and the Cappadocians (Jenson, 1997:111). I think Auggie rejected Athanasius and the Cappies because he didn't understand what they were saying. Part of the problem may be that Auggie spoke and wrote Latin and was not well-versed in Greek. You think!

Anyway, grab hold and follow this: Augustine did not fully comprehend the Cappadocian formulation, mia ousia, tres hypostaseis (one substance, three persons) never quite understanding what the Cappadocians meant by hypostasis (Jenson, 1997:111). Instead of translating the term as "person," Augustine translated it as substantia (substance) (Gonzales, 1987:330). In De Trinitate (Gonzales, 1987:330 n11; cf. Augustine, 1991:196), Augustine writes of the Cappadocians:

They indeed use also the word hypostasis; but they intend to put a difference, I know not what, between ousia and hypostasis: so that most of ourselves who treat these things in the Greek language, are accustomed to say, mian ousian, tres hypostases, or, in Latin, one essence, three substances [unam essentiam, tres substantias].

The essential point to note is that Auggie failed to fully comprehend the Cappadocian distinction between ousia (substance) and hypostasis (person). Look again at what he said: they (the Cappies) intend to "put a difference, I know not what, between ousia and hypostasis." So Brother Auggie wrongly translates hypostases as "substances" (substantias) and gets the notion that the Cappies must have been a bunch of wild-eyed polytheists who believed in three gods (three "substances"). I'm not putting Brother Auggie down here; there was a lot of confusion in those days in translating technical terms back and forth between Latin and Greek. Nevertheless, Auggie fails to fully appreciate the Cappadocian distinction of personhood within the deity itself, for in his translation (wherein hypostasis is equivalent to substantia), to do so would amount to tritheism (Gonzales, 1987:330). In short, Auggie seems at a loss to how to articulate the distinctions in the Godhead. In fact, as he himself said, he merely uses the word "person" in order not to remain silent (Augustine, 1991:196).

Auggie seems stuck on the idea of the indivisible unity of God, and as a NeoPlatonist, he would have to be (see below). So whereas our boys the Cappies tend to take as their point of departure the diversity of the persons or hypostases, and from there move to the unity of essence or ousia, Augustine begins from the essential unity of God and moves to the distinction of persons (Gonzalez, 1987:330). Some, perhaps many, would argue that Auggie never quite gets there and leaves the Western Church with an essentially modalistic view of God (God as one person, not three). Let me say all that more simply: the Cappies start with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Auggie starts with the unitary substance of God and, arguably, never really makes it to the Triune Persons.

But what really separates Auggie from his predecessors is that he refuses to grant the importance that the diversity of persons had for the Cappies. Auggie's manner of understanding divine unity and simplicity leads him to reject every attempt to speak of God in terms of what he must have regarded as a triple being (Gonzales, 1987:330). Thus, unlike his trinitarian predecessors, Augustine insists on starting with the unity of the divine substance rather than the diversity of persons as revealed in the economy of salvation as Father, incarnate Son, and Spirit. Augustine's failure to appreciate the Cappadocian distinction within unity is the result of his unfailing commitment to the Greek philosophical presupposition that the Deity is metaphysically simple; that is, no sort of self-differentiation can be posited in the Godhead (cf. Jenson, 1997:111). Read all that again, my homeys, this is BIG! Auggie's method of starting with the unitary substance (essence, nature) rather than the Triune Persons would become standard practice in the Western doctrine of God.

So what is going on with Brother Auggie. Why is he so committed to emphasizing the unity of God while only secondarily considering the diversity of personhood within the Triune Godhead that was so clearly appreciated by Big Basil and the two Gregs, not to mention the gunslinging Athanasius? To answer that question, we gotta' light our pipes (cigars if you are female), pour a brandy, kick back and do a little philosophizin'. And that brings us to none other than NeoPlatonism (finally!), the revival of Platonic philosophy represented especially by Plotinus (ca. 205–270), the last of the great Platonic philosophers.

Plotinus is big-time important to a discussion of Augustine's doctrine of God, for although Auggie was committed to the Lord Jesus Christ, he was deeply influenced by Neoplatonism, which, even in his mature years, he used to interpret the Bible (Pinnock, et al, 1994:80; Pinnock, 2001:69). As the Roman Catholic philosopher Étienne Gilson (2002:47) notes, Augustine boldly undertook to solve the problem of how to express the God of Christianity in terms borrowed from Plotinus. Look at that again. Already in the late 4^th century, the "Christian" doctrine of God is being packaged in a pagan wrapping, and that unseemly gift has been slipped under all our Christmas trees.

Plotinus referred to the Divine (the ultimate transcendent principle) as the "One," an impersonal, simple, absolute unity without the shadow of plurality (Allen & Springsted, 2007:57) and to which no multiplicity or division can be ascribed (Copleston, 1962:465). (Wake up, Brothers and Sisters! The lights ought to be coming on already!) In order to maintain the Greek philosophical insistence on an ontological gap between the One and the created order, Plotinus posited a series of emanations, wherein each succeeding "level" of emanation possesses less ontological significance, that is, less "being," than the prior level (Allen & Springsted, 2007:50). The material world, existing in time and space at the "lower" end of the emanational chain of being, possesses the least degree of ontological significance and is regarded as evil (Tarnas, 1991:85). (Don't miss that last point: the world is evil, per Plotinus!). As part of the material world of multiplicity, human beings have less ontological significance (less "being" or "reality") than the One. The essential point is that in the Neoplatonic philosophy that underlies Augustine's thought, the greater the unity, the greater the "being" or "reality." Thus, as an indivisible unity, the One has greater being or reality than the distinctions (the many) that emanate from it.

Let's unpack all that high-browed talk for a moment. We've talked before about the ubiquitous ontological divide that characterizes Greek thought, the spiritual-material dualism of the ancient world. You remember: God is "way up there," aloof, alone, arelational and uninvolved; we're "way down here" and "never the twain shall meet" cause God don't dirty his hands with dirt; or so said the Greeks! So how do you get from God to the world? You posit a bunch of layers between the divine and dirt (the Gnostics did the same thing), "layers of being" that actually emanate from the One. You've seen the layers on a wedding cake. That's how Plotinus envisioned the cosmos. God is at the top layer and you "descend downward" through other layers, called "Nous" (mind) and World Soul, before you finally get to dirt where we are. Note that with each descending "layer" in our cosmic wedding cake, there is less "ontological significance." In other words, each succeeding lower level has less "reality" than the preceding level, so by the time you get to us all you have is a relatively unimportant world of impermanence, change and flux. With the cosmic wedding cake model, Plotinus keeps the unchangeable divine from being contaminated by our dirty world, insulated from us by the intervening levels of the wedding cake. So the "One" keeps its hands clean and remains unchanged (immutable) and unaffected (impassible) by what goes on down here.

Now let's catch a breath and recap: The One is simple, without the shadow of plurality. So what's the big deal? It means Plotinus and the other Greek philosophers have taken relationship right off the table in their concept of God. Do you get it? Divine simplicity d'q's (disqualifies) diversity of personhood from the git-go. In addition, this means not only is there no diversity (multiplicity) in the Godhead, the divine is also uninvolved with the world (impassible). The divine must remain aloof, alone, arelational and uninvolved, else it would somehow be conditioned by the cosmos and thus no longer immutable. In short, if the God of the philosophers were to engage creation, it would be changed and thus no longer perfect, for change in a perfect being can only be for the worse. You can see what's comin' can't you? How in the hell are you going to develop any decent doctrine of the Trinity with that kind of framework? Gimme a break!

Back to Auggie: In line with the Neoplatonic presupposition that divine unity is ontologically prior to all manifestations of multiplicity (whew!), Augustine begins his articulation of the doctrine of God with the unitary being of God, that is, the essence, or substance (ousia) of God, rather than the threefold manifestation of God as Father, incarnate Son, and Spirit revealed in Scripture (Pinnock, et al, 1994:83, 84; cf. Letham, 2004:3, 4). According to Sanders (Pinnock, et al, 1994:84), "Augustine makes divine substance [essence, nature] rather than the tripersonal God the highest ontological principle. The substance of God is what is ultimately real, not the relationships between the Father, Son and Spirit—let alone the relationships between the triune God and creatures." For Augustine, in strict accordance with Neoplatonism, God is understood as a simple, unitary substance. Again, this paragraph is very important. Do you begin to see how the Triune Persons―Father, Son and Spirit―are going to get lost in all this emphasis on the unitary being of God?

In addition, there is a distinct anti-material bias in Augustine's thought. Augustine does not believe that the world is the kind of place where God's presence can be revealed, even in the humanity of Jesus (Gunton, 1997:33-38). Augustine's suspicion of the material world is reflected in his Christology, wherein he tends to emphasize the divinity of Jesus over his humanity (Gunton, 97:34). This suspicion of the material world is natural for one influenced by the Neoplatonic view of creation as the realm of evil. In his development of analogies of the Trinity (see below), Augustine finds the material world to be the least adequate source of assistance. Book XI of De Trinitate is an argument for the inferiority of the outer world as distinct from the inner rational world to serve as an analog of the Trinity (Gunton, 1997:37). Given the fundamental Greek dualism between the world of spirit and the world of matter, it would be difficult for Augustine, as a Neoplatonist, to imagine the material world as the bearer of the Divine. Hence, under the pressure of the anti-material bias of his philosophical presuppositions, Augustine would be more inclined to articulate his doctrine of God in terms of the metaphysics of substance rather than in terms of the concrete manifestation in space and time of the incarnate ("enfleshed") Son.

Because he achieves an essentially Neoplatonic understanding of God (cf. Bloesch, 1995:205), one may rightly expect a severe bifurcation of theologia (God in his eternal transcendent nature) and oikonomia (God threefold self-revelation in redemptive history) in Auggie's doctrine of God. In brief, Auggie develops his doctrine of the eternal God apart from God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son and Holy Spirit. To be sure, Auggie did not look to the material world to articulate his doctrine of the Trinity. Don't miss the point: Auggie turns away from God's historical self-revelation in time and space (the world of dirt) in order to develop his doctrine of God. Rather than inquiring into the nature of the transcendent God as revealed in Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit, Auggie turns away from God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history to look for analogs of the Trinity in the human mind or soul (LaCugna, 1991:10; cf. Grenz: 2004:9).

In De Trinitate, Augustine articulates a "psychological analogy" of the Trinity that pointed the way Western trinitarian thinking would follow (Gonzales, 1987:334; Grenz, 2004:9). Drawing upon the scriptural revelation of man as created in the image of God (Gen 1:26), Auggie looked for traces or "vestiges" of the Trinity (vestigia trinitatis) in the human mind or soul. In order to show how something can be both one and three, he sought to articulate a doctrine of the Trinity by arguing that the human mind, with its threefold structure of memory, understanding, and will in a unitary whole, mirrors the Trinity (Gonzales, 1987:333, 334). Augustine's predilection for looking to the inner relations of the mind or soul is natural for one influenced by Platonism, wherein the human mind is regarded as a limited reflection of the Divine mind (Allen & Springsted, 2007:74).

In De Trinitate, Augustine develops a method for the self-reflexive contemplation of the image of the Trinity in the human soul (LaCugna, 1991:83). That is, to know God, one turns inward to contemplate the Trinity within. The obvious result of this inward turn, however, is a turn away from God's self-revelation in the saving acts of Christ (Grenz, 2004:9). By positing analogs of the Trinity in the human mind, Augustine develops a conceptual structure of the Trinity that is independent of God's self-revelation in salvation history. This conceptual structure is then used to interpret the doctrine of God as revealed in Scripture (Torrance, 1980:148, 149).

Let's be sure and get that last paragraph: Drawing upon the presuppositions of NeoPlatonism, Auggie turns inward to the human mind or soul to develop analogies for the Trinity. Hence, his conceptual structure for his doctrine of God is developed independently of God's self-revelation in history. He then uses that independent structure to interpret God's self-revelation in history! And no doubt, he and a lot of others who followed in his wake could cherry-pick any number of scriptures to support a doctrine of God largely developed from pagan metaphysics. AAAAGGGHHHH!!! Why didn't somebody tell me this decades ago!

OK. Let's calm down and get back to Auggie. Here's the bottom line: Auggie makes a major epistemological and methodological blunder. Think about it. If I want to know about God, where do I start looking? Inside my own head? No! I look at Jesus! But if I am a NeoPlatonist with a grudge against the material world, I won't be inclined to look toward the flesh and blood Son. Ugh! Instead, I'm gonna develop my thinking about God by turning away from the world of dirt and guts and look inside my own head, where I may dispassionately contemplate the divine mystery. Not only that, as a NeoPlatonist, I am going to emphasize divine simplicity and unitary substance to the point that the Triune Persons get lost in the ontological soup, like three bits of potato sunk in the vichyssoise. Do you see how all this works?

Let's give Catherine Mowry LaCugna, a Roman Catholic scholar, the last word. Augustine's method of turning inward to contemplate the image of the Trinity completely alters the theoretical basis for the economy of salvation by relocating the economy within the human soul rather than in the threefold pattern of God's self-revelation in redemptive history (LaCugna, 1991:10). Even though Augustine may have never intended it, his legacy is an approach to the Trinity (theologia) that is largely divorced from God's self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia) (LaCugna, 1991:102; cf. Grenz, 2004:9).

And that, Brothers and Sisters, has been the problem ever since in the Western doctrine of God. By turning away from God's threefold self-revelation as Father, Son and Spirit, the Western Church, under the influence of pagan metaphysics, has developed a doctrine of the One God that is independent of, and completely overshadows, the Trinity, leaving God's Triune self-revelation as a mere appendix to the doctrine of the omniGod. Instead of allowing Jesus to reveal the Father, the Western-Latin tradition has left us with the inscrutable, immutable, impassible, omnipotent cosmic monster of absolute, unrelenting sovereignty that fills many Christians with dread and terror.

References

Allen, D. & Springsted, E.O. 2007. Philosophy for Understanding Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knox. 267pp.

Augustine. 1991. De Trinitate (edited by J.E. Rotelle; translated by E. Hill). New York, NY: New City Press. 472pp.

Bloesch, D.G. 1995. God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 329pp.

Copleston, F. A History of Philosophy (vol 1). New York, NY: Doubleday). 521pp.

Gilson, E. 2002. God and Philosophy. New Haven, CT: Yale Nota Bene. 147pp.

Gonzalez, J.L. 1987. A History of Christian Thought (vol 1). Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. 400pp.

Grenz, S.J. 2004. Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress. 289pp.

Gunton, C.E. 1997. The Promise of Trinitarian Theology. London: T & T Clark. 220pp.

Gunton, C. E. 2003. Act & Being. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Jenson, R.W. 1997. Systematic Theology (vol 1). Oxford: OUP. 244pp.

Letham, R. 2004. The Holy Trinity. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing. 551pp.

Pinnock, C.H. et al. 1994. The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 202pp.

Pinnock, C.H. 2001. Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 204pp.

Rahner, K. 1970. The Trinity. New York, NY: Crossroads. 122pp.

Sanders, J. 2007. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 384pp.

Tarnas, R. 1991. The Passion of the Western Mind. New York, NY: Ballantine. 544pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1980. The Ground and Grammar of Theology: Consonance Between Theology and Science. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

That's a lot of references for a blog post! I need to get a life. I think I'll go possum huntin' tonight!

A Cup o’ Cappadocian (part 2)

Greetings everyone! Have you had your cup o' Cappadocian today? I thought not. Then sit back and relax while I fire up the espresso machine and steam the milk (2%, of course). And by the way, I'm gonna add a heapin' tablespoon of sugar for one or two of you, 'cause you need it!

Last time, we started talking about those wild and crazy Cappadocians. You remember those brothers, don't you? There's three of 'em: Big Basil and the two Gregs, sometimes known as Basil the Great, Gregory Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzus. These dudes were pretty smart. They described the Triune God as one ousia (substance, nature, essence) in three hypostases (persons). They used the term ousia (oo-SEE-uh) to capture the oneness or unity of the Godhead, that is, what is common to the divine Persons; then they grabbed hold of the Greek word hypostases (hi-PASTA-seez) to capture the diversity or distinctions within the Triune Godhead (the Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Father . . .). According to the "Cappadocian Settlement" of the Trinitarian controversies of the 4^th century, God eternally exists as mia ousia, treis hypostaseis (one substance, three persons). Man, the Cappies knew how to spit out a mouthful in a few words!

But we haven't even started appreciating how smart these brothers were. I guarantee you, all three of them graduated the 6^th grade! If we really want to appreciate their work, we gotta wrap our minds around some Greek philosophy. I know we'd all rather talk about fishin' or football or making biscuits, but we gotta do what we gotta do. So, like it or not, we need to know a smidgen ("a little bit" ) about the philosophical milieu (say what?) in which these boys lived and worked. So pay attention and try not to fall sleep.

In the Hellenistic (Greek) thought of the day, the divine (what the TV preachers call "Gawd") was regarded as an absolute unity, simple in its essence (substance) without characteristics of any kind and not subject to change (immutability). The divine was way up there, all by its lonesome: aloof, distant and unaffected by this world of dirt down here (impassibility). Furthermore, the divine was considered impersonal and arelational (lacking relationship), for relationship in the Deity was a "no-no," because it would compromise the all-important Greek insistence on divine simplicity (more in next post).

Against the philosophical milieu (there's that word again!) of their day, my boys the Cappies launched a philosophical revolution by countering the prevailing tendency of Greek thought, which was to view the divine as a simple undifferentiated essence. Because they began their thinking about God with God's redemptive acts in the economy (oikonomia) of salvation as revealed in the incarnate Son (and the gift of the Spirit), the Cappies found it necessary to clearly articulate the exact nature of the Father-Son relationship (LaCugna, pp. 60ff). In articulating the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son, they challenged the established view of Greek philosophy by giving ontological primacy to person over nature (i.e., substance, essence) (Schwöbel, pp. 52, 53). This may not sound like a big deal, but it is. Don't miss this point: In exact opposition to Greek philosophy, the Cappies give person (multiplicity!) greater ontological significance than unitary essence. This is important; it matters! It means we can start talking about God in terms of persons in relationship rather than in the then prevailing Greek notion of God as unitary (undifferentiated) substance. We don't have to retreat into "substantialist metaphysics" (sounds high falutin' don't it!), lost in deep philosophical contemplation of the divine essence considered apart from God's triune self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia).

You see, the Cappies didn't think about God as simple, arelational substance (Augustine and Aquinas would buy into that big time!). They understood that the Father-Son relationship is an eternal relationship characteristic of God's transcendent Being, not merely a temporary economic (historical) manifestation of the Godhead. Thus, they began their thinking about God in the very un-Greek way of persons in relationship. According to John Zizioulas (a big time Greek orthodox type):

If, therefore, we wish to follow the Cappadocians in their understanding of the Trinity in relation to monotheism, we must adopt an ontology which is based on personhood, i.e. on a unity or openness emerging from relationships, and not one of substance (Schwöbel, p. 52).

Similarly, John Sanders writes:

[The Cappadocians] emphasized divine relationality in their debates with Eunomius, [a neo-Arian bishop] who claimed that God was a simple essence (not composed of any parts) and so the Son and Spirit could not be fully God: God is devoid of internal relations [per Eunomius]. In response, the Cappadocians claimed that the terms "Father" and "Son" referred to the relation between the Father and Son. In so doing, they held that person, not substance, was the ultimate metaphysical category and thus claimed that God was supremely relational. The Father can beget the Son because the Father, as personal, has self-emptying love for another. God is then not alone, in isolation from relationships, but eternally related within the Godhead as Trinity. God is then not an "in-itself," apart from others, but the epitome of love in relation (Sanders, pp. 147-148. Here Sanders closely follows LaCugna, pp. 14, 63-66).

Do you see? Let me recap: Rather than develop a metaphysics of substance based on the Greek philosophical presupposition that God is utterly simple and arelational, the Cappadocians asserted that person is the supreme ontological principle and, in so doing, they understood the Godhead as eternally and supremely relational . Unlike the philosophers, they did not regard substance (ousia) as an abstract principle to be considered apart from the concrete particularities of the divine persons: Father, Son, and Spirit (LaCugna, p. 69; also see previous post). Rather, they saw that the divine persons in relationship among themselves constitute the "Being" of God (Gunton, p. 86). In the Cappadocians' trinitarian ontology, the Triune Persons exhaust the Godhead without remainder. As LaCugna notes, "[T]here is no ousia apart from the hypostases." Gunton (p. 86) asserts , "[T]ogether the persons in relation to one another constitute the 'being' of God. So the 'being' of God is simply what the persons are one to another." God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is no fourth "something," no unknown substance, no substratum, hidden behind or lying beneath the Triune Persons.

To fully appreciate the Cappadocian contribution, we gotta compare their approach to the Augustinian-Thomist-Western approach to the doctrine of God. (We'll get more of the Augustinian-Thomist approach in future posts). Nowadays, just about everyone knows that the Eastern (Greek) theologians begin their articulation of the nature of God with the Triune Persons (diversity) and move from there to the essence (unity) of the Godhead. The Western (Latin) approach is just the opposite: Western theologians, following Augustine (who was deeply influenced by Neoplatonism) and, later, Thomas Aquinas (influenced by Aristotelianism), begin their articulation of the doctrine of God with the unitary substance (essence, nature) of God and from there work toward the Triune Persons (some would argue that they never quite get there). We'll explore why this is so in an upcoming post.

In relation to the Latin emphasis on the unitary substance, Western theology tends to speak of the Godhead as "three 'relations' subsisting in the 'Being' of God" (Gunton, p. 86). I have often tried to picture what the Latin theologians are getting at. To risk the absurd, it sounds like they are describing three eggs. Have you had a fried egg sandwich lately? I'll think I'll have one for lunch. Here's what you do: You break out the salt, pepper, mayo and Bunny Bread, slick down the cast iron skillet with bacon grease, then heat it up till the grease starts smelling oh so fine! Next, you crack three eggs on the edge of the kitchen counter, being careful not to let the egg white drip into the cutlery drawer, then you carefully drop the eggs into the skillet and sort of let them run together and become one big egg with three yokes staring up at you. Notice that the yokes are in the egg but they don't constitute the whole thing. There's a lot of egg white left over, surrounding the yokes. It seems to me that's how Western trinitarian theologians, following Augustine, describe the Trinity. The Persons do not constitute the Being of God; rather, they are just somehow in there ("subsisting" in the Being of God). The problem may be obvious to those of you who remember the previous post. Describing the Godhead as three "subsistences" in the Being of God seems to suggest that the Being of God is something more than the Triune Persons, a fourth "something" that underlies the divine Persons. According to Gunton (p. 87), "If you say that the persons are subsistences in the 'being' of God, then you are implying that the 'being' of God is different from the 'persons'. If something 'subsists' in God then what is this 'being'?" In Western (Latin) theology, it appears that the "real" Being of God remains hidden, lying somehow beyond God's Triune self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia). That thought causes me to shudder, because it means that the "deepest truth" (Baxter Kruger) about God is not fully and accurately revealed in Jesus.

Not to worry, however! Let's look at the Eastern (Greek) approach as articulated by the Cappies, building on Athanasius. If we start with God's self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia) as Father, Son and Spirit, we are immediately thrown into the arena of relationship, for "Father" and "Son" are relational terms: the Father loves the Son in the Spirit; the Son loves the Father in the Spirit. As Baxter Kruger has said often, "To say the name of Jesus is to say the Father's Son." And then we are right into the middle of the Triune Godhead who eternally exists as Father, Son and Spirit. For the Cappies, the Triune Persons, in their perichoretic interrelatedness (relationship!), are the Being of God. The Triune Persons constitute the Being of God, so that there is no unrevealed fourth "something" left over, no "deep truth" about God that is hidden from us. Remember the Nicene assertion that Jesus is homoousios to Patri, that is, "of one substance with the Father." The Nicene Creedal language encapsulates the supremely assuring truth that when we look at Jesus, we see God as God is. Jesus is the self-revelation of God. As he himself said, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." There is no God hidden behind the back of Jesus (Torrance).

So here is a brief comparison of the Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek) approaches to the doctrine of God:

• The West begins with speculation on the unitary substance of God , cast in terms of the substantialist metaphysics of Greek philosophy (speculation on the substance or being of God considered apart from God's self-revelation in salvation history), and subsequently construes the Godhead as three "subsistences" in the Being of God. Hence, Being appears to underlie the Triune Persons. Arguably, by starting with the unitary Being of God, the West never quite makes it to the Triune Persons and ends up with modalism (God as a unipersonal monad). As Colin Gunton (p. 87) says, "[I]f you scratch the surface of many Western theologians you find modalism."
  

  
  

• The East begins with the Triune Persons in relationship and subsequently understands the Being of God as constituted by the Triune Persons without remainder. Thus the Being of God cannot be considered in the abstract apart from the concrete particularities of the Father, Son and Spirit in their perichoretic interrelatedness; there is, therefore, no unknown God hidden behind the back of Jesus. Furthermore, in the Eastern approach, the doctrine of God is intimately united to God's salvific self-revelation in redemptive history in the incarnate Son and the gift of the Spirit (this is especially true of Athanasius, whom the Cappies followed). Note: For a doctrine of God to be biblical, it must be explicated in terms of God's salvific acts for us in the incarnate Son and the gift of the Spirit; that is, God as revealed. Hence, Theology Proper (the doctrine of God) must be united to Soteriology (the doctrine of salvation). This vital connection has been lost in the Western doctrine of God with frightening implications.
  

By giving "person" ontological priority over "substance" (being, essence), the Cappies (following Athanasius) turned upside down the Greek world with its distant, aloof, impersonal and uncaring deity. By beginning with God's Triune self-revelation, Big Basil and the two Gregs developed their doctrine of God in terms of the Father's relationship with the incarnate Son who is homoousios to Patri. Thanks to Athanasius, the Cappies, and many others, we can rest in the profound assurance that in the infinitely loving, compassionate eyes of Jesus, we peer deeply into the heart of the Triune God, who is eternally God for us! Hurray for the Cappadocian Fathers! That's what I'm talkin' 'bout!

P.S. Well be getting to NeoPlatonism, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and substantialist metaphysics in upcoming posts. I know you can't wait!

References

Gunton, C.E. 2007. The Barth Lectures. Transcribed and edited by P.H. Brazier. London: T & T Clark. 285pp.

LaCugna, C.M. 1991. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. 434pp.

Sanders, J.E. 2007. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 384 pp.

Schwöbel, C. (ed). 1995. Trinitarian Theology Today. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 176pp.