Trinity

The doctrine of the Trinity is central to Christian theology. The part of the doctrine that concerns us here may be stated in these words: although the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are different persons, each is the same God as the other; they are not three Gods, but exactly one God. These words arguably imply a contradiction. For example, if the Father is not the same person as the Son, then the Father is not identical with the Son; thus, if each is a God, there are at least two Gods, which contradicts the claim that there is exactly one God. Analytic theologians have responded to this line of argument and others related to it. Each response aims to model a consistent doctrine of the Trinity, one that provides the resources to reject such arguments while retaining Trinitarian orthodoxy. We can classify these attempts by distinguishing those according to which there is no numerical sameness without identity from those according to which there is numerical sameness without identity. Attempts in the first group tend to raise worries about consistency with orthodoxy. Attempts in the second group tend to raise worries about intelligibility.

Christology—a Jewish view

10.1017/s0036930600012771 ◽

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 ◽

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.

Trinity

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-k105-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Peter van Inwagen

Keyword(s):

Holy Spirit ◽

Essential Element ◽

Christian Theology ◽

Holy Trinity ◽

De Doctrina Christiana ◽

The Holy Spirit ◽

Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽

The Face ◽

The One ◽

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is a central and essential element of Christian theology. The part of the doctrine that is of special concern in the present entry may be stated in these words: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are each God; they are distinct from one another; and yet (in the words of the Athanasian Creed), ‘they are not three Gods, but there is one God’. This is not to be explained by saying that ‘the Father’, ‘the Son’ and ‘the Holy Spirit’ are three names that are applied to the one God in various circumstances; nor is it to be explained by saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are parts or aspects of God (like the leaves of a shamrock or the faces of a cube). In the words of St Augustine: Thus there are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and each is God and at the same time all are one God; and each of them is a full substance, and at the same time all are one substance. The Father is neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit; the Son is neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. But the Father is the Father uniquely; the Son is the Son uniquely; and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit uniquely. (De doctrina christiana I, 5, 5) The doctrine of the Trinity seems on the face of it to be logically incoherent. It seems to imply that identity is not transitive – for the Father is identical with God, the Son is identical with God, and the Father is not identical with the Son. There have been two recent attempts by philosophers to defend the logical coherency of the doctrine. Richard Swinburne has suggested that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be thought of as numerically distinct Gods, and he has argued that, properly understood, this suggestion is consistent with historical orthodoxy. Peter Geach and various others have suggested that a coherent statement of the doctrine is possible on the assumption that identity is ‘always relative to a sortal term’. Swinburne’s formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity is certainly free from logical incoherency, but it is debatable whether it is consistent with historical orthodoxy. As to ‘relative identity’ formulations of the doctrine, not all philosophers would agree that the idea that identity is always relative to a sortal term is even intelligible.

St John, The Trinity, and The Language of the Spirit

10.1017/s0036930600031756 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 41 (4) ◽

pp. 471-484

Author(s):

M. P. Wilson

Keyword(s):

Holy Spirit ◽

Christian Theology ◽

Divine Revelation ◽

Christian Tradition ◽

Material World ◽

Natural Religion ◽

The Holy Spirit ◽

Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽

Two Sides ◽

It would be dishonest not to begin with Austin Farrer, for what follows has grown out of a long-held admiration for that sadly neglected writer. Throughout his life, Farrer was concerned with the role played in our lives by imagination, inspiration and creativity. He saw that creation was shot through with the imprint of its Maker, and in the classical Christian tradition understood the shaping of all life in the material world to be the work of the Holy Spirit. At all levels of creation, inspiration, creativity and spiritual indwelling are the hallmarks of God's activity. For Farrer, natural religion and divine revelation are but two sides of the same coin. The key to all is the point at which they coincide most clearly, namely Jesus. Of Farrer's Christology I have written elsewhere. Such technical discussions are not our present business. Our task is to take the supreme Christian claim about the nature of God, namely the scandalous doctrine of the Trinity, and through the words of St John (whose influence on Farrer's understanding of Jesus was central) try to describe a practical understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit which employs the doctrine of the Trinity as the key-stone of Christian theology and experience.

Could there Be More than One Almighty?

Religious Studies ◽

10.1017/s003441250002254x ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 29 (4) ◽

pp. 465-495 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

T. W. Bartel

Keyword(s):

Holy Spirit ◽

Christian Doctrine ◽

Literal Sense ◽

The Past ◽

The Holy Spirit ◽

Doctrine Of 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.

Religion, ethics and communication in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic - Pharos Journal of Theology ◽

Knowing the Father

10.46222/pharosjot.1021 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

David. T. Williams

Keyword(s):

Holy Spirit ◽

Historical Development ◽

Evolutionary Process ◽

Charismatic Movement ◽

The Bible ◽

Greek Thought ◽

The World ◽

The Holy Spirit ◽

Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽

The emergence of the Charismatic movement has generated a new awareness and interest in the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, but has also brought a realisation that there is a still-neglected Person of the Trinity, the Father. Part of the reason for this lies in the historical development in the doctrine of the Trinity, which led to a belief that external actions of God are not differentiated between the Persons, and also in the fact that the Father only generally acts in the world by Son and Spirit, so has no clear role. It seems natural to attribute creation to the Father, but even here, the Bible sees the Son as the actual creator. Nevertheless, the Father can be seen as the source of the concepts and means behind the material; interestingly there are hints of this in classical Greek thought and other faiths. This is ongoing, perhaps particularly in the evolutionary process of the world. Thus, paralleling the incarnation, the Father is present in the material universe, as its ethos. He can also be seen to be affected by creation, sharing in its nature in his kenōsis, and in its suffering. Creation then inspires a sense of wonder not only from its existence, extent and nature, but from its interactions and underlying concepts; this is worship of the Father. Sin is then when this is overlooked, or when actions disrupt it; these are an offence to the Father.

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

Pacifica Australasian Theological Studies ◽

10.1177/1030570x0702000303 ◽

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.

Adam Pastor, Antitrinitarian Antipædobaptist

Papers of the American Society of Church History ◽

10.1017/s1079902800114056 ◽

1917 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. 73-99 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

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.

‘Another Puzzle is . . . the Holy Spirit’:De Trinitateas Augustine's Pneumatology

10.1017/s0036930611000810 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 65 (1) ◽

pp. 1-16

Author(s):

Najeeb Awad

Keyword(s):

Holy Spirit ◽

Central Place ◽

Written Discourse ◽

De Trinitate ◽

The Holy Spirit ◽

Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽

The Subject ◽

The Church ◽

AbstractIn their study of Augustine'sDe Trinitate, scholars read the fifteen books which comprise this text as a monolithically written discourse on the doctrine of the Trinity. This article is an attempt to examine if it is possible to argue on tenable bases that pneumatology, rather than any other doctrine, is the subject of Augustine's text by showing that the interpretation of the identity and consubstantiality of the Spirit occupies inDe Trinitatea more foundational and central place than just being part of Augustine's discussion on the doctrine of the Trinity. It ultimately suggests that freeing Augustine's text from diachronic prejudices means also wondering if he really wanted to write an additional version of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity which he already followed, or whether he wanted to contribute something new about a relatively neglected doctrine in the faith of the church.

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

10.1017/s0036930611000226 ◽

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 ◽

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.

The Trinity

The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198722380.013.24 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 464-483

Author(s):

Rik Van Nieuwenhove ◽

William Crozier

Keyword(s):

Holy Spirit ◽

The Other ◽

Trinitarian Theology ◽

The Holy Spirit ◽

Mystical Theology ◽

The One ◽

This chapter considers mystical theology as a resource for theology of the Trinity today. It consists of two parts. The first part draws mainly on the Trinitarian theology of St Bonaventure to demonstrate that participation in the life of the Trinity is essential to begin to engage in theology of the Trinity: vision implies participation. The second part provides an example of how the writings of mystical theological authors, such as Hadewijch or Ruusbroec, can assist us in solving systematic theological problems. More particularly, we argue that Ruusbroec’s notion of regyratio (i.e. the Holy Spirit as the principle of the return of the divine Person into their shared unity) can circumvent the problem of ‘Trinitarian inversion’ (which refers to the problematic tension between accounts of the immanent processions, on the one hand, and the sequence of historical missions of the Son and Holy Spirit in the economic Trinity, on the other).