The Transfiguration of the Trinity

Abstract

Theology has undergone enormous transformations in its history, some perhaps as consequential as philosophy has undergone, and some often of comparable depth, for it is only a dead theology that is an unchanging theology. The deepest transformations in our theological history have occurred in our understanding of God, as witnessed by the enormous transition from a Neoplatonic to a neo-Aristotelian understanding of God; while Aquinas could integrate these disparate poles, that has subsequently proven to be impossible. In primitive Christianity there are already very different enactments of God, as in Paul and the Fourth Gospel, and already profound controversy as in Paul’s assaults upon his opponents, and perhaps the deepest of these opponents was a primitive Christian Gnosticism. This is quite possibly the original expression of Gnosticism, and with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi documents we became aware of how deeply Christian ancient Gnosticism is, and once Gnosticism is accepted as a genuine expression of Christianity, there are even greater challenges here; perhaps the greatest challenge of Gnosticism is its understanding in its deeper expressions of the ‘self-saving’ of God: a redemption following an original fall of the Godhead, a fall that is for Gnosticism inseparable from creation itself.