Who Do You Say That I Am?

Abstract

What do we mean when we say God? This is the question that I faced when a female, Muslim student who had enrolled in my class on Trinity persisted in asking, “What about the Father?” Her question made me stop. It was, after all, a good question. What about the First Person of the Triune God? It is the same question I faced when invited to write this chapter on God. “Oh, you mean a chapter on the Trinity,” I pressed, “because to say ‘God’ is to refer to the Triune God.” Indeed, theological discourse had swung on its cogitating pendulum from a time in which God was split between de Deo uno and de Deo trino to a time in which, at least in the Western Church, the Triune God was considered barely at all. The turn of the twentieth century, particularly with Karl Barth and Karl Rahner, saw a renaissance in Trinitarian theology, and since then there is no lack of material on the subject. Theology, it seems, is back on a tri-theological footing in its talk about God. I wanted to make sure I did not inadvertently go back to the uno–trino split. The editors of this collection looked at me, puzzled, and explained that they already had a chapter on Trinity in the first volume of this series. Thus their invitation was for a chapter on the First Person of the Trinity—except that no self-respecting feminist would have invited me to write about “the Father.” Indeed, any postmodern, postcolonial, constructive, or contextual theologian worth their salt would probably hesitate to take on this assignment.