Divine Temporality, the Trinity, and the Charge of Arianism

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 267-290
Author(s):  
R.T. Mullins
Keyword(s):  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Robust Model ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

Divine temporality is all the rage in certain theological circles today. Some even suggesting that the doctrine of the Trinity entails divine temporality. While I find this claim a bit strong, I do think that divine temporality can be quite useful for developing a robust model of the Trinity. However, not everyone agrees with this. Paul Helm has offered an objection to the so-called Oxford school of divine temporality based on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. He has argued that this form of divine temporality entails Arianism. In other words, divine temporality suffers from an inadequate doctrine of the Trinity. In this paper I shall first articulate the so-called Oxford school of divine temporality. From there I shall develop some of the Oxford school’s theological benefits that help flesh out the doctrine of the Trinity, and assuage the charge of Arianism. Then I shall offer an examination and refutation of the Arian charge to divine temporality in order to show that the divine temporalist can maintain a robust Trinitarian theology.

Redefining progress in Trinitarian theology: Stephen R. Holmes on the Trinity

2014 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-20
Author(s):  
Fred Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Divine Attributes ◽  
Classical Theism ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Constructive Work ◽  
Historical Theology ◽  
The Trinity

This essay examines some of the implications for contemporary constructive work on the doctrine of the Trinity if Steve Holmes is correct in his judgments about the direction taken by the recent revival of interest in the doctrine. Holmes raises serious questions about the exegetical basis of the doctrine, and raises the question of what God has revealed in the sending of the Son and the Spirit. Some areas of maximal divergence between the classic tradition and the recent revival are probed, such as the recent lack of interest in the elaboration and defense of divinity unity, and also of the divine attributes as explored by classical theism. Finally, Holmes’s work raises questions about the proper relationships between systematic theology and allied theological disciplines such as historical theology and analytic theology.

Could there Be More than One Almighty?

1993 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. W. Bartel
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

If proof is required that yesterday's scandal can become today's fashion, we need look no further than recent discussions of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Just a generation ago, Trinitarians typically insisted that the members of the Godhead are not distinct persons in any literal sense. But during the past few years, more and more philosophically sophisticated Christians have unblushingly maintained that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not just different persons, but different individuals – that the Trinity consists of three divine beings.

The Doctrine of Appropriation as an Interpretative Framework for Karl Barth's Pneumatology of the Church Dogmatics

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-290
Author(s):  
Adam McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Interpretative Framework

Although Karl Barth is widely recognised as the initiator of the renewal of trinitarian theology in the twentieth century, his theology of the Church Dogmatics has been strongly criticised for its inadequate account of the work of the Holy Spirit. This author argues that the putative weakness of Barth's pneumatology should be reconsidered in light of his doctrine of appropriation. Barth employs the doctrine of appropriation as a hermeneutical procedure, within his doctrine of the Trinity, for bringing to speech the persons of the Trinity in their inseparable distinctiveness. It is argued that the doctrine of appropriation provides a sound interpretative framework for his pneumatology of the Church Dogmatics.

scholarly journals The Trinity in African Christian theology: An overview of contemporary approaches

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teddy C. Sakupapa
Keyword(s):  
Christian Theology ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
African Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Concepts Of God ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
Primary Literature ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

This contribution offers a survey of the modern African theological discourse on the Trinity as a distinctive Christian doctrine of God. It is a systematic narrative review of primary literature on the doctrine of the Trinity in modern African theology with a view to identify main trends, key concepts and major proponents. It is argued that the contemporary African Trinitarian Hermeneutics cannot be understood in isolation from African debates on translatability of concepts of God framed first in terms of the reinterpretation of the theological significance of pre-Christian African concepts of God and subsequently as an outcome of African Christological reflection. The article affirms an apophatic resistance to any tendency to take God for granted as recently advanced by Ernst Conradie and Teddy Sakupapa.

Re-conceiving the Trinity as the Mystery of Salvation

1985 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. LaCugna
Keyword(s):  
Second Step ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Trinity

We began by wondering what it might mean to speak of the immanent and economic threefoldness of God. Rahner's axiom provided leverage on the problem by showing that trinitarian theology is meant above all to be a truth about the mystery of salvation. That is, it is a way of both narrating and conceiving the God who saves and the God who saves.The correspondence between these two emphases presented a hermeneutical problem at two methodological levels, and so the second step was to examine the meaning of the copula in Rahner's axiom in order to decide how we might (a) link up our narrative of God's history with us with God's inner history, and, having answered that, how we might (b) link up our speculation about God's ‘inner’ life with the divine reality. We replied in the case of (a) that the axiom legislates speaking of God by drafting an equivalence between the temporal history of God-with-us and the eternal history of God, and vice versa: the economic trinity is the immanent trinity, and vice versa. In the case of (b) and building on the answer to (a), we proposed an understanding of the trinity as a theological model. The model (trinity of relations) is related to the ‘modeled’ (God-in-relation) both heuristically and ontologically. The theological model of trinity therefore must incorporate imagistic as well as discursive, indirect as well as direct modes of discourse.Finally, we indicated some of the theological and methodological consequences of understanding God as being the ‘God for us’, and of re-conceiving the doctrine of the trinity to be a theological model of salvation.

The Trinitarian Theology of Augustine and His Debt to Plotinus

1961 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-255
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Wassmer
Keyword(s):  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Simple Solution ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Divine Mind ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Trinity

A Very powerful case has been made out for the influence of the Platonism of Plotinus upon Saint Augustine. From the Manichaean simple solution of the problem of evil Augustine was delivered by reading the neo-Platonists and especially Plotinus. It was Plotinus who convinced him that God was a spirit, not a luminous body, and he always remained grateful for this deliverance from the crude fantasies of the Manichaeans. In the two years before his conversion when he was receiving a deeper penetration into Christianity through the sermons of St. Ambrose, he came to know of Plotinus in a very few treatises of the Enneads (certainly I, 6 ‘On the Beautiful’ and quite probably V, 1 ‘On the Three Chief Hypostases’) in the Latin translation of Marius Victorinus. St. Ambrose made a determined effort to apply the principles of Plotinus' philosophy to the clarification of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as against the Arians. The results of such an attempt might not be theologically satisfying but they are interesting. This impact of the mind of Plotinus upon the mind of Augustine was a decisive one because Augustine found a very great area of agreement between the teaching of Plotinus and that of the Scriptures as expounded by St. Ambrose, above all the Gospel of St. John. It was their agreement that God is spirit and altogether immaterial, as Plotinus explains, which liberated him from the Manichaean materialism. Augustine thought that Plotinus' teaching about the Divine Mind was identical with that of St. John about the Divine Logos.

A little while in the Son of God: Austin Farrer on the trinitarian nature of prayer

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 410-424
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

AbstractThis article explores Austin Farrer's contribution to trinitarian theology, arguing that he grounds understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity in the life of prayer. While Farrer nowhere offers a systematic presentation of the believer's experience of the Trinity, an investigation of his writings, particularly his sermons and devotional works, reveals that it is precisely in prayer that he thinks the force of the doctrine is revealed to the believer. Beginning with Farrer's ‘empirical principle’, the idea that to know anything one must exercise one's relation to it, the article attempts to show how the act of praying constitutes a living out of the doctrine of the Trinity. Living in the Son entails an adoption of an attitude of sonship towards the Father, which Farrer describes most succinctly as an ‘active openness of heart’. This filial attitude, which Christ expressed humanly throughout his life, is adopted by believers through the Holy Spirit who, according to Farrer, is not an object of direct experience. In this, his trinitarian understanding of prayer differs from Sarah Coakley's, whose reflection on this topic serves as a point of comparison at various places throughout the article. Through Coakley's work, the trinitarian nature of prayer has become a theme in contemporary theology. Thus, this article is aimed at more than simply illuminating a somewhat neglected aspect of Farrer's thought; it is also an attempt to contribute to an ongoing, constructive conversation about the Trinity in the life of faith.

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.

Complexity and Mystery

2018 ◽  
pp. 182-202
Author(s):  
Alister E. McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Complex World ◽  
Limited Capacity ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Gabriel Marcel ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

This chapter examines the limited capacity of human reason to make sense of a complex world, and how this expresses itself in the notion of ‘mystery’. How does being receptive to mystery help us cope with our complex world? The concept of mystery is explored with particular reference to Gabriel Marcel and Austin Farrer, and as this is expressed in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The chapter considers whether a ‘mystery’ is simply a synonym for an ‘irrationality’, or whether it can be seen as a recognition of the limits placed upon the human mind to grasp a vast and complicated universe. What are the scientific and theological consequences of the limited capacity of the human mind? How can we expand our grasp of reality?

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