The Trinity

Overview

Recall questions on the biblical roots of the Trinity and how the doctrine is defended, relation and perichoresis, the inadequacy of analogies, the filioque dispute, Barth's modes of being and Rahner's rule.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Where do Christians find the biblical roots of Trinitarian belief?

   Model answer

   Not in a single statement, since the word Trinity never appears in the Bible. Christians point to strands that had to be held together: the firm Jewish insistence that God is one; Jesus addressing God as Father and being identified as Son at his baptism, where the Spirit also appears; John's prologue identifying the Word with God and as the agent of creation; Jesus' promise of the Spirit as another advocate; the closing commission of Matthew naming Father, Son and Spirit together in baptism; and Paul's threefold blessings.

2. 2

   If the doctrine is not stated in scripture, how do Christians defend it?

   Model answer

   By arguing that it is the conclusion the biblical material forces, not an addition to it. The early Church found itself worshipping Jesus and praying in the Spirit while refusing to abandon monotheism, and the doctrine names the only way it found of saying all three things at once. Critics, including some Unitarian Christians and Muslim and Jewish commentators, reply that this is later Greek metaphysics imposed on a Jewish faith.

3. 3

   How does the notion of relation distinguish the three persons?

   Model answer

   The persons are not distinguished by having different attributes, powers or degrees of divinity, since each is fully God, but purely by their relations of origin: the Father is unbegotten, the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds. Being Father just is being related to the Son. This is designed to keep three persons without three gods, because what makes them distinct is precisely their relation to one another rather than any separate substance.

4. 4

   Explain perichoresis and the work it does in Trinitarian doctrine.

   Model answer

   Perichoresis is the mutual indwelling of the three persons, each wholly in the others without merging or confusion. It guards unity: the persons are not three parts of God, or three regions of a divided being, and their action outside themselves is one action. Modern social Trinitarians have used it to model human community as persons constituted by relationship, though critics warn against reading a political programme off the inner life of God.

5. 5

   Why are the usual analogies for the Trinity considered inadequate?

   Model answer

   Because each fails in a predictable direction. Water as ice, liquid and steam, or one person filling three roles, describes modalism, in which the persons are only appearances of a God who is really one. Three leaves of a shamrock, or three people sharing a nature, drifts towards tritheism. Augustine's psychological analogies, such as memory, understanding and will in one mind, or the lover, the beloved and the love between them, keep unity better but make the persons look like faculties.

6. 6

   Outline the filioque dispute.

   Model answer

   The Western Church added a clause to the creed saying the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; the Eastern Church holds that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. Orthodox objections are both procedural, since the West altered a creed agreed by a council of the whole Church, and theological, since they argue the addition confuses the persons and makes the Father less clearly the single source. It remains one of the historic causes of the East-West division.

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