The Trinity between Athens and Jerusalem

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Schwöbel
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Cappadocian Fathers ◽  
The Trinity

AbstractThis article uncovers the roots of the doctrine of the Trinity in the 'prototrinitarian grammar of discourse on God' of the New Testament and in its Old Testament presuppositions. Contrary to the well-worn thesis of Harnack, it is argued that it was Jerusalem rather than Athens—i.e., the biblical witness rather than Greek metaphysics—that gave rise to the dogma of the Trinity. Greek metaphysics only came in when the early Christians had to express the universality of the truth they claimed for God's self-disclosure through Christ in the Spirit by engaging with Greek philosophy. This was a risky experiment, since it implied a conceptual redefinition that went against the doctrine's original import. It is shown, however, that the crucial link to the biblical witness was re-established by the Cappadocian fathers and subsequently adopted by the Council of Constantinople (381).

Christology—a Jewish view

1971 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-200
Author(s):  
Steven Katz
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
The World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

In this paper I would like to discuss what the Old Testament has to say about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. I take it as agreed that this task is both important and necessary for a real understanding of the New Testament, which by itself, is neither complete, meaningful nor self-authenticating. I do not make any claims to completeness on this crucial topic, but wish only to suggest what I feel are some important points for consideration. I want to discuss the three persons of the Trinity separately, beginning with the Father, then proceeding to the Holy Spirit and then to the Son. My remarks about the Father will be brief. I only wish to make the point that the Old Testament as well as the new Testament is fully aware of God's Fatherhood and alive to the reality that God loves mankind. It is clear that Israel has a special place as indicated by such passages as Exod. 4.22 where God addresses Israel saying: ‘Israel is my first born son.’ Yet at the same time it is basic to an understanding of Old Testament thought that God is the Father of the other nations of the world, though they are not the ‘first born’. This is a cardinal position of Old Testament theology and is based on the belief, given expression in Genesis, that all belongs to and was created by God.

The Vocabulary of the Septuagint and the Church Fathers

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Gilles Dorival
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Ex Nihilo ◽  
Hapax Legomenon ◽  
Creation Of Matter ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

The role of the Septuagint in the building of the Christian identity during the first Christian centuries is more important than it is generally said. The word ‘testament’ or ‘covenant’, for example, comes from the Septuagint, via the New Testament. The Greek and Latin liturgies are filled with references to the Septuagint. The same is true in the case of the Christian spirituality: for instance, the concept of the Christian life as a migration comes from the Septuagint. The Christian hermeneutics is indebted to the Greek Bible: even if knowledge of the allegorical method comes from the Greek philosophers (and Philo), support could be found for it in the verses of the Greek Bible. Finally, the theological vocabulary of the Christians was founded upon the Greek Bible. For instance, in the case of the doctrine of the Trinity, the word ‘person’ comes from the Septuagint. Furthermore, some passages of the Greek translation gave rise to theological interpretations which are not possible on the grounds of the Hebrew text. In Gen 1:2, the Septuagint reads ‘the earth was invisible and unorganized’ and this came to be quoted both in support of the creation of matter ex nihilo. In Exod 17:16, where the Hebrew has a difficult hapax legomenon, the Greek speaks about the ‘hidden hand’ with which the Lord makes war against Amalek; this ‘hidden hand’ played a role in the Christian doctrine of the Logos, which is hidden in the Old Testament.

Psalm 2:7 and the concept of περιχώρησις

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-229
Author(s):  
Michael Straus
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The One ◽  
Psalm 2 ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Trinity

AbstractThis article takes as its springboard the well-known text of Psalm 2:7, in which the Psalmist – presumably David, king of Israel – refers to himself as a ‘begotten’ son of God by virtue of his Lord's decree. The article first explores various linguistic and theological options as to the identity of the ‘son’ to whom the passage refers; and analyses the relationship between that son and the one who is stated to have begotten him. In this context, the article addresses ways in which the passage more generally sheds light on the relationship between God and Israel, including through analysis of a number of fluctuating usages of singular and plural terms in the Old Testament to describe that relationship. Second, and against that background, the article examines texts in the New Testament which quote or refer to Psalm 2:7 to see whether they provide a better understanding of the nature of the relationship between the father and the son described in the Psalm; and further to see whether any enhanced understanding of that relationship reciprocally sheds light on the relationship of God the Father to God the Son as revealed in the New Testament. The article then seeks to determine whether these passages, taken as a whole, provide explicit, implicit, or proto-Trinitarian concepts in anticipation of those given fuller expression in orthodox Church doctrine. Finally, the article explores the concept of circumincession, or coinherence, John of Damascus’ highly abstracted and nearly poetic effort at the close of the Patristic era to provide an extra-biblical explanation of the relationship between the Father and the Son as well as the relationship among the three members of the Trinity. The article concludes by finding that his attempted articulation, and quite possibly all such efforts, will ultimately fail, leaving intact the mystery of the Trinity as one escaping, or rather surpassing, conceptual analysis.

The Trinity and the New Testament – a Counter-Challenge to Dale Tuggy

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-199
Author(s):  
William Hasker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

Dale Tuggy argues that my trinitarian views are in conflict with the theology of the New Testament; the New Testament, rather, is unitarian.  I show several flaws in this argument, and point out the New Testament evidence that eventually led to the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Forgotten Dimensions of Holiness

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-146
Author(s):  
James E. Robson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Divine Presence ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law

AbstractThis article explores a sometimes forgotten dimension of divine holiness, divine holiness as love. It starts by reflecting on an apparent incongruity between the New Testament summary of the law, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself ” (Lev 19:18) and that verse’s context in Leviticus, where a more probable summary is the call, “Be holy for I, YHWH your God, am holy” (Lev 19:2). It examines the significance of the conjunction of Lev 19:2 and 19:18, and argues that it is appropriate to speak of love as a dimension of divine holiness. In the main part of the article, which looks at the Old Testament more widely, including Exodus, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Hosea and the prayer life of Israel, divine holiness as love is evident on closer examination in three ways: holiness and self-disclosure, holiness and saving activity, and holiness and divine presence.

Erasmus’s Biblical Project

2016 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-635
Author(s):  
Henk Nellen ◽  
Jan Bloemendal
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Greek Text ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Immediate Response

The history of the immediate response on and later reception of Erasmus’s ‘New Testament Project’ is an eventful one. The Project consisted of three innovations in biblical scholarship: the first printed edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, a revised version of the Latin Vulgate, and a philological commentary that accounted for the many textual changes the translator had made. The article discusses the polemics Erasmus’s edition provoked immediately after publication in 1516, and sheds light on the influence his Project exerted in later centuries. Special attention is given to biblical passages that played an important role in the discussions on the doctrine of the Trinity, such as Rom. 9,5; 1 Joh. 5,7–8 (the famous Comma Johanneum), and 1 Tim. 3,16. In questioning these passages as convincing, irrefutable proof-texts of Christ’s divinity, Erasmus made himself vulnerable to accusations of reviving Arianism, an old anti-Trinitarian heresy.

Spirit

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale B. Martin
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian View ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

When the subject is the Christian view of the holy spirit, it is even more difficult to find an orthodox doctrine of the spirit if the Bible is read only through the method of modern historical criticism. Read historically, the Bible does not teach a doctrine of the trinity, and the Greek word for “spirit,” pneuma, refers to many different things in the New Testament. Moreover, the pneuma was considered in the ancient world to be a material substance, though a rarified and thin form of matter. Yet those ancient notions of pneuma may help us reimagine the Christian holy spirit in new, though not at all unorthodox, ways. The spirit may then become the most corporeal person of the trinity; the most present person of the trinity; or alternatively, the most absent. The various ways the New Testament speaks of pneuma—that of the human person, or the church, of God, of Christ, and even of “this cosmos”—may provoke Christian imagination in new ways once the constraints of modernist methods of interpretation are transcended. Even the gender of the spirit becomes a provocative but fruitful meditation for postmodern Christians.

‘The Old Has Gone, the New Has Come’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant Macaskill
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Human Potential ◽  
Wisdom Literature ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
The New Testament

This chapter considers in greater detail the personal disruption central to the New Testament accounts of Christian cognitive identity. It focuses on the authors’ conviction that they participate in a new eschatological reality that is centred on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. This conviction acknowledges the necessary limits of the human potential to know God apart from his own deliberate and concrete self-disclosure in the person of Jesus. Such limits involve both earthly finitude and the distortive power of sin. The chapter involves a particularly close engagement with scholarship on the ‘apocalyptic Paul’, which has rightly identified these epistemic elements in the apostle’s thought, but has frequently failed to recognize the continuing importance of the Old Testament to Paul’s moral theology. The continuing significance of the Old Testament to Paul’s thought, particularly the wisdom literature, is important to Christian theologies of intellectual virtue.

The Christadelphians and the Doctrine of the Trinity

2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-176
Author(s):  
Julian Clementson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Popular Language ◽  
The Trinity

This article, by a former Christadelphian, asks how evangelicals can help Christadelphians understand the doctrine of the Trinity. After a brief introduction to the Christadelphian community and a survey of its doctrine of Christ and the Holy Spirit, we evaluate that doctrine with reference to the New Testament and to systematic considerations. We conclude that neither dogmatic formulae nor popular language used to describe the Trinity are helpful to Christadelphians, and that there are more constructive alternatives. We see that both Christadelphians and trinitarians need to compare their faith, not simply with the ancient creeds, but ultimately with the earliest Christian experience implied by the New Testament use of trinitarian language.

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