The Living and True God, The Mystery of the Trinity by Luis F. Ladario (review)

Abstract

The Living and True God, The Mystery of the Trinity J. Harold Ellens The Living and True God, The Mystery of the Trinity Luis F. Ladario, (New Revised Translation) Miami: Convivium, 2010. 492 pp. pb, npi. Luis F. Ladario is a Spanish Jesuit theologian and a Roman Catholic Archbishop currently serving as the Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith at the Vatican. He has been a professor of theology at the Papal Gregorian University in Rome since 1984. Prior to that he was a professor at the Comillas University hala Madrid, and from 1992 to 1997, he was a member of the International Theological Commission and has been the General Secretary of that commission since 2004. He has published a volume on Theological Anthropology, three volumes on Hillary of Poitiers, one on the Trinity, one on Christology, and one on Jesus as the universal savior. This present volume has 12 chapters. Chapter one is an introduction. It asserts that God as revealer is the primary subject of theology and the Christian idea of God is an original idea, and thus unique. Although trinity is an obscure concept, God‐as‐Trinity is the character at the center of Christian faith. Systematic Theology is a special kind of address to the question of the nature and function of God that differs from Biblical Theology in its constructs and formulae. Chapter two addresses the esoteric distinction and relationship between the Economic Trinity and the Immanent Trinity. This includes the scholastic discussion of the question, explicates the manner in which the OT prepares for the NT articulation of the function of the trinity in revelation, and probes the manner in which this applies to real life experience. Then Ladario moves into Christology and the Biblical Theology of Incarnation. Thus chapter three concerns the divine revelation in the life of Jesus. This author's explication of the theological issues in the orthodox view of Jesus, God the father of Jesus, Jesus as Son of God, God as father of all humans, and what it means that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. In discussing the baptism of Jesus and the voice from heaven that anointed him for his vocation, the author addresses the problem of adoptionism, preexistence, and humanness in Jesus as the incarnation of the Logos. One gets the impression that he prefers the notion of Jesus' adoption into his vocation at his baptism, but he reviews objectively a variety of current views on the issue. Ladario makes quite a large matter of the question of the revelation of God as Trinity in the crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ, interpreting that discussion mainly in terms of his theology of resurrection as revelation. This section on Christology moves seamlessly into the ministry of God as Spirit, conforming to the pattern of the Apostolic Creed. He addresses the specific topics of the Synoptic Gospels and Acts on the one hand, versus the Gospel of John and the Pauline Epistles on the other in explicating the personal nature and relationship of the Holy Spirit to Jesus. A transitional excursus leads Ladario into further discussion of the OT revelation of God as Triune in terms of the role of the Name of God, The Angel of the Lord, and the emphasis of the early Church upon orthodox trinitarian theology and dogma. The excursus sets up the discussion of the ancient church and the theological debates between the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists, the Heresiologists such as Irenaeus of Lyon, and the doctrinal controversies in the Arian Crisis, the Council of Nicaea, Alexandria versus the Syrian Church, and the Eastern versus the Western Church. The expected key figures of the ancient church are all dealt with in detail, person by person, winding up with the Cappadocian Fathers and the finalization of trinitarian orthodoxy. Part two of this volume addresses Systematic Theology and issues dealing with the internal life of God, between the three persons. The themes are those of the Nicene Creed: divine essence, Logos, persons, natures, wills, passion, and cognition. He cites Augustine, Aquinas, Barth, Rahner, and E. Jungel. While his prose are imaginative and highly readable, Ladario's approach is thoroughly scholastic and orthodox...