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THE LITMUS TEST OF TRINITARIAN TALK:  A REVIEW ESSAY

In his recent book, Is There A Meaning in This Text? (Zondervan, 1998), K.J. Vanhoozer makes two incisive methodological points regarding the nature of biblical commentaries. He makes a comment and asks a question: “The crisis is largely epistemological...In short: Does a biblical commentary invent or does it discover?”

Perhaps inadvertantly, Vanhoozer the hermeneut trips into the complex world of systematic theology with this hermeneutical tension. For here, the worlds of biblical studies and systematic theology meet and kiss. They do so because as Anselm of Canterbury rightly asserted, all theological discourse is an exercise in fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding or intelligibility.

The point of contact, then, is this: All human discourse concerning the divine operates between the Scylla of discovery and the Charybdis of invention. The latter alone is humanity merely aping at its own image. And yet, the former alone—without invention—runs the greater danger. Discovery, real discovery, discovery of that never-before-seen-or-heard requires imagination in order to give it voice. Without doubt, the task of discovery is impotent without imagination. The Johannine Prologue with its defying recognition of Jesus the human as the divine Logos, the Nicene homoousion with its stupefying claim of divine equality between the Father and Son—both stand as testimonials to the relationship between discovery and imaginative invention. Love ‘em or leave ‘em, we can’t live without them!

The four books on review are an interesting case in hand. All are, in different ways, exercises on the above tension raised by Vanhoozer. The subject matter of all four centers around various aspects of a trinitarian theme. We can expect, then, some sense of discovery as the trinitarian hermeneutic on the biblical text is articulated. Yet we can also detect different levels of invention as this heuristic tool is used to unlock subsequent issues. It is the latter point that is of interest. All four authors provide a master-class in orientation. That is, each offers a methodological window into the way in which one specific tenet of faith acts as a means of unlocking (describing and/or imagining?) attendant aspects of that same reality.

Perhaps, then, it is best to begin with W.S. Johnson’s contribution to the Columbia Series in Reformed Theology, The Mystery of God: Karl Barth and the Postmodern Foundations of Theology (Westminster/John Knox, 1997). With Johnson, there is no escaping from the real character of the theological task. Its subject matter is God, ultimate mystery; therefore, its content is very fragile. For Barth and Johnson, theology is a rational wrestling with Mystery. Thus far, we are privy to a Protestant version of what the Orthodox describe as the hidden or apophatic dimension of our task. And so, with Barth, Johnson reminds the serious inquirer that God can never be “boxed” or “centered” according to our own conventions. And as Barth’s legacy to the Enlightenment churches of the First and Second worlds matures so we discover the long-discarded law of trinitarian predication: It is God who defines us, not the reverse. Consequently, our everyday language has to be purged of all its mundane connotations if is to give proper invention to the divine in our imagination and thus describe its reality.

This is not to say, however, that God is not real. Quite the opposite. This God, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, is only known by grace, as we experience and encounter him in the same Jesus Christ. The content of the theological task is very much real. It is Johnson’s desire to remind us that the true nature and identity of God means that he cannot be contained within the limits of one basic perspective. And this is the whole thrust of the modern project. Thus, it is here, interestingly, that Johnson locates Barth within the postmodern context precisely because Barth’s God cannot be reduced to the modernist obsession with one-dimensionality. It is our understanding of this event—of Jesus Christ—that must be subject to continuous inquiry and revision. This much we discover and celebrate.

Yet there is another level of discovery, here. For too long Barthian studies has reified Barth the modernist. McCormack’s 1995 commentary on Barth (Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936 [Oxford University Press]) amply presses the modern nature of Barth’s theology. Not so for Johnson’s reorientation of Barth. By both appealing to the cardinal tenet of orthodox theology (the doctrine of the Trinity) as well as removing the Divine as an object of inquiry, Barth indeed provides a postmodern foundation for theology.

The Barthian legacy spills over into D.G. Bloesch’s, Jesus Christ: Savior and Lord (InterVarsity, 1997). With Bloesch our focus moves from Mystery to a more articulated certainty: a movement from that which is unknown concerning the Divine to the One whose presence unpacks and makes God discoverable and known. In terms of depth and style we move towards a more easily read and accessible theology. The first part of the book focuses on Bloesch’s understanding of Jesus Christ. The subject matter follows an aristocratic tradition that can be traced back to the Fathers, Apologists, and Apostles. Along the way Bloesch’s own orientation is made clear: He is the continuing elder-statesman for what he describes as an “evangelical catholicity.” Here, a robust evangelical theology is married to a more confessional tradition (thus the catholicity). And rightly too, for as Bloesch astutely surmises, it is only what we hold as confessional communities that “may provide the basis for a revitalized Christianity in the future” (13). Here, the reader will discover little that is invented, although the absence of discussion concerning the human and divine natures makes an interesting caveat, a given rather than an omission. Yet, Bloesch uses his evangelical catholicity to cut through more recent “inventions” and return to a more orthodox (and in more than a few cases Barthian) position. He perhaps spends too long on the Virgin birth but given his unashamedly frank starting-point “from above” this will hardly come as a surprise. What will surprise some is Bloesch’s antagonism to what he describes as the heresy of kenoticism.

The second half of the book undergoes a shift in perspective as it engages with the doctrine of atonement. And rightly so, for christology cannot be understood properly or fully apart from redemption. It is here that Bloesch moves comfortably into the orbit of invention in three major areas. They are (1) a development of his own understanding of objective atonement with subjective faith, (2) his preference for a gospel-law-gospel reading of the nature of atonement, and (3) his argument for the progressive Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is perhaps in this last area that Bloesch displays best his theological creativity and reminds the reader that while God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, it is the Spirit who brings salvation into reality through the church. This ecclesial dynamic is left largely unpacked by Bloesch and highlights the fact that missing from his theology is the more explicit narration of how things actually work. Certainly, in relation to the nuts and bolts of ecclesial existence we need to look elsewhere. Therefore, it is helpful that the third book under review orientates us in this direction where the trinitarian orientation takes on an ecclesiological perspective.

As one of the more recent advocates of a trinitarian ecclesiology M. Volf seeks to unpack what an understanding of the Trinity might mean for our understanding of Church. In many ways, this book marks Volf as a serious contributor to theology in the third millenium and reinforces the impact Barth continues to have on third generation scholars. With Volf, too, we move into a more nuanced presentation of the tension between discovery and invention.

After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1998) is a master-class in both orientation and imagination. In orientation, it is a bold attempt at unpacking what our understanding of the Trinity might mean for the Church. The imaginative element, on the other hand, occurs in the way Volf seeks to highlight his own free church position. Dialectically, Volf present two foils with which he will establish, somewhat successfully I have to state upfront, his own thesis. Thus, in order to throw his own trinitarian ecclesiology into relief Volf present two partners, the Roman Catholic Cardinal J. Ratzinger and the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Pergamon, J. Zizioulas. 

If systematic theology has shifted from the dull propositionalist perspective that still haunts Reformed theology today to a more centrist approach where one’s theology operates from an identifiable core belief, then this book reveals how one tenet of faith impacts others. With Ratzinger, Volf shows how the bete noire of Latin theology, the priority of the divine substance over the relations, gives assent to the belief that the universal church has priority over each individual church. This, in turn, leads to and justifies a hierarchical churchmanship. Clearly, orientation determines far more than is imagined. Equally, however, an altogether different but nevertheless similar modus operandi takes place in the trinitarian ecclesiology of Zizioulas. While Volf praises Zizioulas’ distinction between the relations and the substance as well as his understanding of the way in which the Eucharist makes the whole church present in each individual church, it is the priority given by Zizioulas to the Father within the divine relations that concerns Volf. Such a trinitarian orientation gives license to a hierarchical ecclesiology. 

In part two Volf turns his attention to developing his own free church trinitarian ecclesiology. Here the protégé of Moltmann unpacks his social trinity as a means of overcoming the hierarchical impasse of both Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiologies. If the church is to image the Trinity then it is best to be one which is constituted by equal and perichoretic notions of personhood. In this way, not only is the abuse of power curtailed, but an ecumenical space is created particularly for those churches traditionally deemed schismatic at best and “heretical” at worst by the major players. While this is no easy read, it is a significant book and will repay any time spent on it.

Thus far we have moved from divine mystery to the one in whose face it is revealed to the corporate body that comes into being through baptism into the triune name. To conclude at this point, however, would be to miss the whole point. After all, as Hauerwas and Willimon remind us, the coming of Christ has cosmic implications (Resident Aliens [Abingdon, 1989] 24). The question is, then, just what are they? It is with relief that we turn from abstracted visions of the Trinity to consider the more mundane question of what it all means in the here and now. As Oliver O’Donovan reminds us, “Man ‘s life on earth is important to God; he has given it its order; it matters that it should conform to the order he has given it” (Resurrection and Moral Order [2d ed.; Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1994] 14). 

Johnson, Bloesch, and Volf all, to various degrees, offer some content to this order. However, it is with the Mennonite, T. Finger and his book, Self, Earth & Society: Alienation & Trinitarian Transformation (InterVarsity, 1997) that we conclude. The book is the expansion of a 1993 essay that appeared in Evangelical Review of Theology and its main purpose is to “examine the interconnection among...psychological alienation (of oneself from one’s deepest self), ecological alienation (of technological civilization from its nonhuman environment) and social alienation (of individuals and groups from each other, from social institutions and from their social potential” (9). In turn, Finger identifies two broad categories of alienation with which he will construct his critique. One is the conflictive perspective that accepts that conflict is par for the course and therefore the need is to find a means of holding conflicting parties together. Another is the organismic which assumes that there is an underlying harmony that simply needs to be discovered.

The strength of Finger’s thesis lies in the way he engages in critical conversation with contemporary culture. Here is a public theology that dialogues with the major assumptions, worldviews, and values operative in the discussion. The orientation lies in exposing the false structures that lead to contemporary experiences of alienation. In terms of trinitarian application Finger is weaker in detail. In all fairness to Finger he attempts to construct a theological response that deals critically with the “Jesus Seminar,” the result of which is that the explicitly trinitarian dimension is less explicit than one might desire.

Having said this, it is this last book that grabs attention most, not only because it scratches at an itch with which every human being can identify and every budding ministerial candidate should work through before being let loose on fellow homo sapiens, but also because it “earths” the trinitarian enterprise.

At a time when it is vogue to talk trinitarian, it behooves the confessing church to return to first principles. The doctrine of the Trinity is a doctrinal development carved out of centuries of christological debate. It is a theologoumenon on something more significant: the coming of God in Christ to redeem a fundamentally loved but flawed world. If there is anything with which to fault the trinitarian excess that abounds in our contemporary dogma it is that the primary aim of the doctrine of the Trinity is to shed light on the character and nature of the God who redeems and make whole through the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification of Jesus Christ. This is the discovery worth selling everything and buying the Good News. If our imagination and invention clarify this then we are indeed involved in the quest of faith seeking intelligibility. It is the litmus test of trinitarian talk. And it is also the stamp and seal set against each of the books under review, each doing so cum laude.

By Graham McFarlane, London Bible College.