Abstract
This article considers the ambiguous translatability of the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The theme of the Trinity, as a central Christian doctrine, is brought into conversation with the so-called ‘translatability thesis’ regarding Christian history, which has been particularly expounded upon by Lamin Sanneh and Andrew Walls. Does the translatability of the gospel also imply the translatability of the Trinity, or is the equation not that straightforward? In answering this question, specific reference is made to early church formulation and controversy surrounding the theme, as well as attention to specific attempts at translation or interpretation in the modern and contemporary forms of Christianity. The article acknowledges the problematic nature of Trinitarian translatability and concludes that such translatability is nonetheless possible as long as a static conception of Trinitarian doctrine could be avoided.
Highlights
Christianity’s vulnerable monotheismLamin Sanneh, the recently deceased Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School, was well known for a highly influential publication on the so-called process of vernacularisation, which results from and coincides with scriptural translation in the missionaryindigenous encounter in Christian history
I have purposefully entitled my article, the translatability of the Holy Trinity, to indicate the ambivalent responses that could be given to such a theme, if framed as a question
With the early church having given such enormous weight to the correct formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, and with the subsequent theological tradition in Christian history broadly agreeing with the centrality of a Trinitarian conception of God, it seems inevitable that if the Gospel is infinitely translatable so is the Trinity
Summary
Lamin Sanneh, the recently deceased Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School, was well known for a highly influential publication on the so-called process of vernacularisation, which results from and coincides with scriptural translation in the missionaryindigenous encounter in Christian history. The African context, as we have noted, knows monotheism, but the http://www.hts.org.za idea of God as Trinity is a completely new concept It follows, that African theology should – with urgency – carefully and systematically Christianize the African sense of the Great Muntu. If we believe that the incarnate Logos, translated, provides the necessity for a Trinitarian confession, as the early Christians did, it would follow that the Trinity would become translated in one way or another into World Christian contexts, even if the original parameters surrounding the debate of early Trinitarian formulation no longer exist or even make sense to contemporary believers. This is a radically different conception of the Trinity than the confessional emphasis of the early church, or of the Reformed tradition, for that matter, but within an understanding of translation as incarnation, a Trinity expressed in worship rather than confessed as a matter of individual belief seems like a fair example of translatability
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