The Trinitarian Renaissance: Some Examples
The Trinitarian Renaissance: Some Examples
The foundations for a revival of interest in the Trinity were laid by Karl Barth and others in the period before the Second World War. Since then, there has been a remarkable surge of interest in developing trinitarian approaches across the life and thought of the church. Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants alike have been involved in the exploration of the trinitarian geography of faith. The importance of this development was emphasized by the British theologian Colin Gunton, one of the most important advocates of the “promise of trinitarian theology”:
Because God is triune, we must respond to him in a particular way, or rather set of ways, corresponding to the richness of his being. [...] In turn, that means that everything looks – and, indeed, is – different in the life of the Trinity.
In bringing this chapter to a close, it therefore seemed appropriate to note some of these approaches, partly to emphasize the interconnectedness of theological themes and partly to note their importance and utility for the life and witness of the church. The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) declared the doctrine of the Trinity to have “no practical relevance,” finding it questionable in terms of both its rationality and its usefulness. On both counts, contemporary theologians seem to disagree.
What follows is simply a noting of some important recent developments, rather than a detailed exploration of their themes. We begin by considering recent developments in the theology of mission.
A Trinitarian Theology of Mission
There has always been a recognition that the doctrine of the Trinity has a role to play in the outreach of the church. However, much Christian theology of mission prior to the Second World War was Christocentric, focusing on the identity and claims of Jesus of Nazareth. For example, the theologian and missionary bishop Lesslie Newbigin (1909–98) was initially strongly Christocentric in his thinking about the nature of the church, and its mission. His One Body, One Gospel, One World (1958) can be seen as a classic statement of this position. However, deeper reflection on the doctrine of the Trinity, and further experience of church life in India, began to bring about changes in Newbigin's thinking. His Relevance of Trinitarian Doctrine for Today's Mission (1963) can be seen as a landmark in his thinking, marking a transition to a more rigorously trinitarian understanding of mission.
Others also made important contributions to this development. In the early 1960s, the Dutch missiologist Johannes Hoekendijk (1912–75) set out some fundamental objections to the prevailing themes of the Christocentric basis and ecclesiocentric agency of mission. In their place, he offered a theology of mission with a trinitarian basis, seeing the world – rather than the church – as the primary location of God's work. Prevailing approaches to missionary theology, he argued, were “bound to go astray” since they revolved around an “illegitimate center” – the church rather than the world. This radical reorientation would come about, he argued, by the development of a consistent and thorough trinitarian theology which recognized God's work in the world ahead of explicit missionary activity.
Such a shift of thinking was evident at the 1966 Geneva Conference on Church and Society, which adopted a trinitarian basis for its work: “We start with the basic assumption that the triune God is the Lord of his world and at work within it, and that the Church's task is to point to his acts, to respond to his demands, and to call mankind to this faith and obedience.”
These developments require much fuller statement for an appreciation of their significance to an understanding of Christian mission. Yet it is clear that a new awareness of the intellectual richness of a trinitarian vision of reality was of no small importance in creating and sustaining this approach to mission. Trinitarian missiology is presently a very significant and productive paradigm for the mission of the church. These approaches are, however, not without their difficulties or critics. While Newbigin is clearly supportive of the trinitarian revival that is taking place within western theology, he nevertheless expresses concern at points. Might this emphasis on the Trinity lead to a dilution of such critically important notions as the “universal lordship of Christ”? Might a new framework displace, rather than energize, traditional approaches to mission? This debate is likely to continue.
A Trinitarian Theology of Worship
It is clear that there is a link between the way in which Christians worship and the way in which they think. Worship – or “doxology” – and theology are increasingly being seen as two sides of the same coin. Since the close of the twentieth century, much attention has been paid to the theology of worship, almost entirely on the basis of a trinitarian foundation. The origins of this trend are often traced to Geoffrey Wainwright's Doxology (1984), which argued that the only way of making sense of Christian worship was to approach it from a trinitarian perspective. Christians worship the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Wainwright worked through the implications of this insight, demonstrating the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity in making sense of worship but also showing how the doctrine could enhance the Christian experience of worship.
Similar ideas were developed by others. James Torrance (1923–2003) noted how many Christians tended to worship God in an essentially Unitarian manner, as if worship were simply a human activity directed toward God. In his Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace (1996), Torrance explored the difference that a trinitarian framework made to worship, most notably through the mediation of Christ and the enablement of the Holy Spirit.
A trinitarian geography of worship is now deeply embedded in theologies of worship, and, at a more popular level, works written to enable Christians to enhance their experience of worship. However, in other respects, awareness of the trinitarian dimensions of worship is, if anything, in decline. A survey conducted by Asbury Seminary found that, of the 72 worship songs most used between 1989 and 2004, none explicitly referred to the Trinity or the triune nature of God, and only three of the songs explicitly referred to, or named, all three persons of the Trinity. The contrast with more traditional hymns is striking.
A Trinitarian Theology of Atonement
The theology of atonement is concerned with making sense of the death of Christ. The framework of many modern accounts of the atonement was shaped by Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033–1109) in the eleventh century; Anselm developed an approach based on Christ making satisfaction to God (pp. 259–61). This approach has been criticized, from a trinitarian perspective, by Colin Gunton. In his Actuality of Atonement (1989), Gunton argues that Anselm's theory presents the atonement as a transaction between God the Father and God the Son. Christ bears the penalty of sin on behalf of sinful humanity, and makes satisfaction to the Father. Gunton argued that this is a bipolar approach which ignores the fundamental themes of a trinitarian theology. Gunton argues that a trinitarian approach to the atonement interprets Christ's atoning sacrifice as an eternal activity within the divine life in which the Father and the Son reciprocally give themselves to each other and to the world. Gunton is adamant that trinitarian considerations cannot be added on later to existing theologies of the atonement; they need to be presupposed and explored from the outset.
Gunton's approach was developed further by the Swiss theologian Georg Pfleiderer (born 1960), who argues for an integrative theory of atonement which incorporates the plurality of biblical models, images, and ideas. Making wise use of the rich range of metaphors employed in articulating the atonement, Pfleiderer argues for a trinitarian framework which both coherently contains and effectively exhibits these metaphors. Thus, atonement as victory is correlated with the work of the Father; atonement as justice with that of the Son; and atonement as sacrifice with that of the Holy Spirit.
A Trinitarian Ecclesiology
The resurgence of trinitarian thinking that was such a distinctive feature of late twentieth-century theology is clearly having an impact on ecclesiology. Traditionally, the church has been described as the “body of Christ” and is often identified in essentially Christological terms. For example, the first-century writer Ignatius of Antioch (c.35–c.110) declared that “where Christ is, there is also the catholic church.” However, since the Second World War, there has been a growing tendency to conceive the church in terms of the Trinity. The Orthodox theologian George Dragas (born 1944), for example, places particular emphasis on the trinitarian foundation of ecclesial identity:
The nature of the Church is to be understood as the Church of the Triune God. The Holy Trinity is the ultimate basis and source of the Church's existence and, as such, the Church is in the image and likeness of God. This being in the image of the blessed Trinity constitutes the mode of the Church's existence, which, in fact, reveals her nature.
Such approaches are also found echoed in Protestant thinking. The Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf (born 1956) developed a similar approach in his After Our Likeness: The Church in the Image of the Trinity (1998). For Volf, a trinitarian approach to the identity and mission of the church demands prior engagement with the doctrine of the Trinity. Volf thus distinguishes his own Protestant position from that of Catholicism and Orthodoxy by offering critiques of the approaches to the Trinity set out by Joseph Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI, born 1927) and John Zizioulas (born 1931). According to Volf, Ratzinger and Zizioulas, who emphasize the unity of the Trinity, tend to see local congregations as inferior to the church as a whole. In Volf's view, the Trinity is to be seen as a community of equals, pointing to the ecclesiological conclusion that local congregations have a valued place in the life of the church as a whole.
Other instances could easily be cited of ways in which a trinitarian framework has been found to be illuminating and constructive in recent years. For example, it has been used to develop coherent and defensible approaches to other religions – as in Raimon Panikkar's trinitarian account of religious experience (Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 1973), Mark Heim's trinitarian theology of multiple religious ends (The Depth of the Riches, 1999), Gavin D'Costa's trinitarian theology of religions (The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity, 2000), and Amos Yong's pneumatological theology of religions (Discerning the Spirit(s), 2000). Each demands full exploration in its own right; collectively, these works point compellingly toward the intellectual possibilities opened up by a trinitarian framework. We shall consider some of these later in this work, as part of our reflections on Christian approaches to other religions, in Chapter 17.
Having now completed our reflections on the Christian doctrine of God, we may turn to consider the Christian understanding of human nature and divine grace.