Creation and the Trinity

Abstract

THE DOCTRINE of the Trinity will be elaborated and defended here in a way that demands philosophical theology. It will be maintained that the doctrine stems from both revelational and speculative roots, and that its defense must appeal to and acknowledge both. The argument will put forward a set of speculative notions that articulate an abstract metaphysical theory of creation. Then the traditional conception of the Trinity will be related to the speculative categories, first in general, and later with reference to certain dilemmas crucial to the orthodoxy of the Trinitarian formulations: for instance, economic versus immanent Trinitarianism, modalism and monarchianism, the distinction between creating and begetting, and so forth. At the end it will be apparent, in outline at least, that the particularities and unique claims of the Trinitarian doctrine that stem from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ can be given general and critical, though not particular and demonstrative, articulation in the notions of the creation theory. That is, the speculative theory says only general things about the Trinitarian persons and unity; but it says general things that are liable to particular specification by precisely the elements exhibited in the historical revelation. A general defense of this connection between revelation and speculation is a topic for another essay. But a word can be said here about the advantage of such a connection. Speculation can make no claim to prove a revelational thesis. Yet it can exhibit the fact that the revelational claim is neither contradictory nor unintelligent by articulating the general features of the claim in an abstract and consistent set of categories. Most arguments against revelational doctrines (such as the Trinity) do in fact try to show the doctrines self-contradictory or unintelligent. Furthermore, the speculative interpretation of a doctrine rooted in revelation relates