Jonathan Edwards's social Augustinian trinitarianism: an alternative to a recent trend

2003 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Studebaker
Keyword(s):  
Recent Trend ◽  
Social Models ◽  
The Social ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Traditional Doctrine

Contemporary Edwards scholars frequently use the threeness – oneness paradigm to interpret his trinitarianism. The threeness – oneness paradigm maintains that the trinitarian traditions and particular theologians within the traditions reduce to an emphasis on either divine unity/substance or plurality/persons. Eastern Cappadocian trinitarianism and Western theologian Richard of St Victor use the social analogy and represent the threeness trajectory. The Western Augustinian tradition uses the psychological analogy and represents the oneness trajectory. Amy Plantinga Pauw's writings are the most thorough interpretations of Edwards's trinitarianism in terms of the threeness – oneness paradigm. She concludes that Edwards employed both the psychological and social models of the trinity. She argues that Edwards's genius lies in his ability to draw on both the psychological and social models of the trinity. In contrast, I maintain that the threeness – oneness paradigm is an overgeneralized understanding of the trinitarian traditions and, as such, unsuitable as a template to interpret Edwards's trinitarianism. Moreover, Edwards did not employ two models of the trinity, but one – the Augustinian mutual love model. Edwards's use of the Augustinian mutual love model reflects his continuity with the dominant Western Augustinian trinitarian tradition and early Enlightenment apologetics for the traditional doctrine of the trinity.

scholarly journals Adam Pastor, Antitrinitarian Antipædobaptist

1917 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 73-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Henry Newman
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Church Membership ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Traditional Doctrine

The intellectual, social, and religious upheaval of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of which the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolution were phases, along with the decidedly skeptical tendency of the Scotist philosophy which undermined the arguments by which the great mysteries of the Christian faith had commonly been supported while accepting unconditionally the dogmas of the Church—together with the influence of Neoplatonizing mysticism which aimed and claimed to raise its subjects into such direct and complete union and communion with the Infinite as to make any kind of objective authority superfluous:—all these influences conspired to lead many of the most conscientious and profoundly religious thinkers of the sixteenth century to reject simultaneously the baptism of infants and the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. Infant baptism they regarded as being without scriptural warrant, subversive of an ordinance of Christ, and inconsistent with regenerate church membership. Likewise the doctrine of the tripersonality of God, as set forth in the so-called Nicene and Athanasian creeds, involving the co-eternity, co-equality and consubstantiality of the Son with the Father and the personality of the Holy Spirit, they subjected to searching and fundamental criticism.

Supreme harmony or supreme disharmony? An analysis of Amy Plantinga Pauw's ‘The Supreme Harmony of All‘: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards

2004 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-485
Author(s):  
Steven M. Studebaker
Keyword(s):  
Social Model ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Social Models ◽  
Psychological Model ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Trinity

Amy Plantinga Pauw's ‘Supreme Harmony of All’ is the first book-length treatment of Jonathan Edwards's trinitarian theology. She argues that his trinitarian thought embodies the emphases and polarities of the Western psychological model and the Eastern social model of the trinity. Throughout the book she details his doctrines of the immanent and the economic trinity in the contrasting categories of the psychological and the social models of the trinity. She recommends his ‘cobbled’ approach as the only effective way to construct a contemporary trinitarian theology. In contrast, I argue that Edwards consistently used the Augustinian mutual love model. Furthermore, he developed social themes within the mutual love model. His usefulness for contemporary trinitarianism is not to suggest an eclectic method of appropriating conflicting conceptualities, but to challenge the common assumption that Western Augustinian trinitarianism is inherently monistic and must be transcended by recourse to the Eastern trinitarian tradition.

Hermeneutisch relevante triniteitsleer: De bijdrage van Ingolf U. Dalferth aan de trinitarische renaissance

2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-116
Author(s):  
Hans Burger
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
Social Doctrine ◽  
The Social ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Trinity

Discussions concerning the trinitarian renaissance often focus on the social doctrine of the trinity. However, this renaissance was originally also of hermeneutical significance, as demonstrated in the work of Ingolf U. Dalferth. In the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s Spirit discloses God’s presence to us and affords us new orientation in this light. The main problem of Dalferth’s contribution is the lack of hypostatical weight of the Son. As a result, the renewal of human subjectivity in Christ is neglected.

The Plight of the Relative Trinitarian

1988 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy W. Bartel
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Traditional Doctrine

According to the Law of Non–Contradiction, no statement and its negation are jointly true. According to many critics, Christians cannot serve both the orthodox faith and the Law of Non–Contradiction: if they hold to the one they must despise the other. And according to an impressive number of these critics, Christians who cling to the traditional doctrine of the Trinity must despise the Law of Non–Contradiction. Augustine's statement of this doctrine poses the problem as poignantly as any.

Polytheism and Christian Belief

2020 ◽  
pp. 170-184
Author(s):  
Michael C. Rea
Keyword(s):  
Christian Belief ◽  
New Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Social Trinitarianism ◽  
The Trinity

Christian philosophers and theologians have long been concerned with the question of how to reconcile their belief in three fully divine Persons with their commitment to monotheism. The most popular strategy for doing this—the social trinitarian strategy—argues that, though the divine Persons are in no sense the same God, monotheism is secured by certain relations that obtain among them. It is argued that if the social trinitarian understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity is correct, then Christianity is not interestingly different from the polytheistic Amun-Re theology of Egypt’s New Kingdom period. Thus, social trinitarianism should be classified as a version of polytheism rather than monotheism.

The Social Model of the Trinity and Its Critics

1993 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Gresham
Keyword(s):  
Christian Theology ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
The Social ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Further Development ◽  
The Trinity

One of the analogies used by the Cappadocian Fathers and other early theologians to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity was the social analogy in which Father, Son and Spirit were likened to three human persons. Beginning with Augustine however, Christian Theology, particularly in the Western Church, shifted away from the social to the psychological analogy. Augustine found analogies to the Trinity in all of creation but the clearest analogy to the Trinity, in fact its unique image, was the human soul. The divine image was not found in the union of three persons but in the unity of three activities, remembering, knowing, willing in the individual human soul. The social analogy reappeared in the twelfth century in Richard of St Victor's argument for the existence of three persons in God based on the premise that supreme charity required shared interpersonal love. Though some of Richard's insights were taken up by Bonaventura, the impact of his trinitarian theology was overshadowed by the dominant influence of Thomas Aquinas with his masterful use of the psychological analogy to probe and illuminate the inner being of the divine Trinity. Following Aquinas's further development of Augustine's psychological analogy, the interpersonal approach of the social analogy all but disappeared from subsequent trinitarian theology. Even with a later shift away from the Augustinian-Thomistic model, modern theology retained its unipersonal image of the trinitarian God.

The Social God and the Relational Creation

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-108
Author(s):  
Michael L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Social Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

Although Lewis’s emphasis on the Incarnation is well known, his emphasis on the doctrine of the Trinity is less well known because it is less concrete, more subtle, and expressed in his creative imagery. The theme of God as “the Great Dance”—borrowed from Gregory of Nazianzus—is communicated through an image of dynamism and movement rather than a static, inert object. To imagine the Trinitarian God as the Great Dance is to say that the inner life of God is social and relational, seeking to draw the rest of creation into that Dance which has been going on in God forever. The idea of the social Trinity is a backdrop for seeing human redemption not so much in juridical and legal terms but in terms of the Self-Giving, Self-Living Life at the heart of reality seeking to live and grow in our lives. How, then, could those who participate in that Life of unending beatitude not experience and reflect joy, love, and peace?

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document