Brief Notices

Abstract

BRIEF NOTICES The Doctrine of the Trinity. By CYRIL C. RICHARDSON. New York: Abingdon Press, 1958. Pp. 159. $3.00. The intention of the author of this Protestant study of the doctrine of the Trinity, stated in his Preface, is to give "the leading doctrines of the Trinity as they have developed in the Church's thought, and to raise some basic questions about their validity." The book is an effort to demontrate that although we must make distinctions in the Godhead, they do not fall into a neat three-fold pattern, and that the traditional symbols of Father, Son and Spirit are ambiguous and even troublesome. The author's contention, which is stated explicitly in the Preface, is that Trinitarian doctrines have confused the real issues by admitting arbitrary distinctions in God, while at the same time attempting to reconcile the necessary contradictions by concealed ones. In the initial chapter, which explicitly gives the "point of view" of the author, the value of the " threeness " of the Trinity is questioned on the basis that there is an artificiality about it which breeds confusion. That the author's position is Unitarian is expressly denied, however; for it is not the paradoxical character of the traditional doctrine to which he objects, but rather the threefoldness. He regards it as undeniable, moreover , that God revealed Himself in terms of a "human person" i.e. Jesus of Nazareth. The doctrine is not found specifically in the New Testament; rather, it is a creation of the fourth century Church. If the reader should be inclined to defend the existence of the teaching in the New Testament, it would matter little, for it is claimed that the background of thought from which the New Testament symbols were derived left something to be desired, and that we should seek more satisfactory ways of expressing the "message." In the second chapter the author claims that it is generally assumed that the major problem is " the way in which God can be one person and yet three." He does not clarify by whom this is generally assumed. In lVIr. Richardson's view, however, the fundamental issue is the difference between the Father and the Son, the essence of which distinction is between God's beyondness (Father) and relatedness (Son). The nature of the symbolism clouds this distinction, however. Whereas "Father" gradually came to denote God in His absolute, transcendent glory, yet the title never could be emptied of its original content; the heavenly Father must be related to his children. The name "Father" poses an additional difficulty, 561 562 BRIEF NOTICES in that it implies begetting, or derivation of one mode of being (God liB related) from another mode of being (God as absolute). Why assume any priority? the author asks. Many other problems are said to evolve from this symbolism; e. g., the Father is thought of as Creator, but this seems more fittingly applicable to the Son, who is God in His activity. That the New Testament presents us with the dominant symbols of Father, Son, and Spirit is aBserted in the third chapter. From what has been said it is obvious that this does not mean that there is a Trinitarian doctrine in Scripture, although the existence of these symbols gave rise to the creation of the doctrine which came later. The blending of Jewish and Greek thinking in the New Testament is seen liB a source of difficulty, for, the writer claims, there is a fundamental discrepancy between the Hebrew notion of the Father and the idea of an abstract God who operates by His reason or Logos. Another troublesome idea traceable to Greek thinking is " the fecundity of the absolute " which leads, in Richardson's opinion, to the idea of priority in the Godhead. After the treatment of the New Testament doctrine of the Father, the idea of the Son is considered . Briefly, the thesis offered is that there is an evolution of the notion of the sonship of Jesus in the New Testament. Whereas, Richardson claims, in the Synoptics it means dependence of the man upon his heavenly Father, in St. John's Gospel a truly divine status is given to Jesus...