Divine Persons Research Articles

H. Richard Niebuhr's Suggestion Reconsidered: Towards Trinitycentrism as a Trinity-Centered Theology

This article reconsiders H. Richard Niebuhr's suggestion of “a synthesized formula” of the Trinity as an ecumenical theology for the whole church's faith in God. His suggestion seems to go in the right direction for a proper understanding of the triune God. However, Niebuhr unfortunately does not go further in more detail. To take a close look at Niebuhr's analysis of three unitarianisms such as “the Unitarianism of the Father or the Creator,” “the Unitarianism of Jesus Christ or the Son,” and “the Unitarianism of the Spirit” in his 1946 article, this article finds that his choice of theological terms is not accurate but somewhat content with showing some general tendencies of understanding and expressing the doctrine of the Trinity in church history. Niebuhr also maintains that each of three unitarianisms cannot stand alone but they are interdependent with one another. Considering this point, this article suggests that it is better to use terms such as “theocentrism,” “christocentrism,” and “pneumacentrism” for each of the three unitarianisms. Theocentrism refers to a God the Father-centered theology or a Creator-centered theology. Christocentrism refers to a God the Son-centered theology or a Redeemer-centered theology. Pneumacentrism refers to a God the Holy Spirit-centered theology or a Consummator-centered theology. Each centrism shows a different emphasis on each of the three divine persons of the Trinity, but not excluding the other two. And each of those three centrisms has both some strengths and some weaknesses. Therefore, this article argues that it is the better to put some strengths together to maximize them, and to put some weaknesses away to minimize them, while referring to such a synthesized formula as “Trinitycentrism,” as “a Trinity-centered theology.”

Trinitarian Exegesis of the Old Testament

Abstract A number of key Old Testament texts cited in the New Testament are surveyed to determine whether they are amenable to prosopological exegesis (e.g., Dan 7; Ps 45; Ps 110), but in none of these texts is more than one divine figure present, nor do they depict one divine person speaking to or about another divine person. The Christian reader is not required to find the three persons of the Trinity differentiated and assigned different speaking roles in Old Testament texts. However, another mode of Trinitarian reading is credible. The follower of Jesus is not to equate the God of the Old Testament simply with the Father; rather the God of the Old Testament is the triune God, which means that many more Old Testament texts than often thought directly connect to Jesus.

Paul’s Christology in the Corinthian Letters

To explore Christian origins, we need to explore Christology, and to study early Christology, Paul’s Corinthian letters are indispensable. In these letters, Paul spoke of Jesus in various ways: fundamentally as a human who died and rose again; sometimes as Yahweh, the one God of Israel; and somehow in distinction from God. While there are various options for understanding Paul’s discussion, the best explanation is that Paul viewed Jesus as the epiphany, manifestation, human personification, or incarnation of the one God. Paul’s language was consistent with Jewish monotheism, used categories of thought available in both Jewish and Hellenistic circles, and did not explicitly delineate two divine persons or two divine centers of consciousness. Instead, he described one transcendent God who became incarnate. In short, for Paul, Jesus is the God of Israel in self-revelation.

Homo Poeta: Rowan Williams and Poetic Anthropology

AbstractRowan Williams's trinitarian ontology rests on the affirmation of eros within God and the ‘irreducible otherness’ of the divine persons to one another. The divine persons are accordingly conceived in ek‐static terms as ‘giving more than they are’. In the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Spirit we discern the ‘timeless making other that is intrinsic to God's being’. It is this poetics from above that is the ‘fountainhead’ of finite human creativity on Williams's view, and more specifically, the eternal filial reality of the Son as the Art, Image or Sign of the Father. Conversely, his poetics from below begins with a phenomenology of artistic labour and linguistic practice that is acutely alert to the material and temporalized conditions of human making. In this article, I elaborate and defend the coordination and mutual illumination provided by his poetics from above and from below which affects a significant reworking of how we imagine the relation between the finite and the infinite. What emerges from this re‐working, I will argue, is a profound, ecstatic and ‘personalist’ view of the material and temporal human creature becoming ‘hypostatic’ via a filial mode of creativity.

Life‐giving Flesh: Deity, Humanity, and the Efficacy of the Atonement – Part Two

AbstractThe life‐giving power of Christ's flesh and the unique efficacy of his atoning death is grounded in the fact that the flesh belongs to a divine person, the eternal Word. The previous article critiqued an attempt to explain the life‐giving power of Christ's flesh by way of a divine suffering on the cross and instead sought to ground the efficacy of Christ's atoning death in the proper and instrumental power of Christ's humanity. This second article argues that the efficacy of Christ's atoning death is grounded also in the infinite worth of the ransom that he pays on the cross. The claim that the infinite worth of Christ's ransom is derived from his deity, which itself does not suffer or die, will be articulated in dialogue with several patristic, medieval, and early modern theologians.

Life‐giving Flesh: Deity, Humanity, and the Efficacy of the Atonement – Part One

AbstractThe life‐giving power of Christ's flesh and the unique efficacy of his atoning death are grounded in the fact that the flesh belongs to a divine person, the eternal Word. Though some theologians have argued that this should be explained by a divine sort of suffering taking place on the cross, this essay briefly critiques the idea of divine suffering in the atonement and proceeds to offer constructive discussion of other ways in which the life‐giving power of Christ's flesh and the efficacy of his atoning death are grounded in his deity. This first requires a consideration of the way in which Christ's humanity is empowered and supported by his deity in his suffering and atoning death, which will be articulated in dialogue with several patristic, medieval, and early modern theologians. A second essay will then elaborate further on the relationship between the efficacy of the atonement and the deity of Christ by discussing the way in which the ransom that Christ pays on the cross derives its infinite worth from his deity.

A Trinitarian Reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s ‘The Windhover’

Abstract The rhetorical and emotional verve of ‘The Windhover’ reflect not the moment of stasis of Christ’s cross but the energy of Trinitarian interrelation in creation. Readings of the sonnet usually foreground the second divine person. Countering such a perspective, this essay rehearses the Scholastic theology and the Scholastically based faith that the poet took for granted in the original moment of experience and in the moment of composition, and so reads the sonnet in a more fully Trinitarian way. For Hopkins the energetic dynamic of love and relation within the Trinity is that into which he is drawn via the creation made through Christ, the Word (John 1:3, Col. 1:16), and as used here the energy of the sonnet form is his response to this. The Athanasian Creed and the ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ are identified as neglected Trinitarian intertexts. Hopkins believed, in Ignatian terms, that Christ ‘labours for me in all things created on the face of the earth’; and so, in the poem, Christ works dynamically through the Holy Spirit, ‘the fire’ (l. 10) who is Love itself, the vector of bird–poet interrelation, engaging him with the windhover and awakening his delight. The sonnet is the poet’s open acknowledgement of the love of the Triune tri-personal God which greets him every moment in the humblest glories of creation.

Where Literalistic Reading Fears to Tread—Logical Consistency between Some Prepositions in the New Testament and the Divine Persons’ Being Consubstantial

In “Early High Christology and Contemporary Pro-Nicene Theology,” Steven Nemes raises a dilemma. Either one may affirm what the New Testament teaches about the Word “through” whom all things were created, or one may affirm that the Father and Son are consubstantial (as the Nicene Creed teaches), but not both. I show that Nemes’s argument begs the question and that Nemes fails to represent how pro-Nicene theologians interpreted such prepositions (for example, “through”) in the New Testament. Contrary to what Nemes contends, there is no inconsistency in believing what John 1:3 teaches and that the divine persons are consubstantial.

Visualization of the Book: Graphic Metaphors in Art Decoration of Ukrainian Church Editions of the Baroque Epoque

The article considers the role of metaphor in the art decoration of 17th–18th centuries Ukrainian editions of church books. It claims that the book art of this period is marked by generous use of symbolic and allegoric visual images which play metaphorical role in general structure of the book. Structural-semiotical exploration of title pages, frontispieces, and illustration cycles in more than one hundred reeditions of Ukrainian church books of 17th–18th centuries enabled us to single out the main types of structure forming visual metaphors. All metaphorical visual images, used in decoration of the church books, transfer the meaning of the book through picturing its author, addressee, or the central theological concept. The image of the author in the tradition of the Ukrainian church book art decoration is inserted in the composition of the title page and frontispiece. It visually presents the church book as a creation of a saint person, inspired by God. The addressee is expressed both by the emblem of a patron, who supported book printing, and by an icon of a divine person to whom the prayer content of the book is addressed. The emblem of a patron is positioned on the title page and/or backside of the title page. It visually generalizes the image of the church book edition, printed due to support of notable person. The icons of a prayer addressee on the backside of the title page, on the frontispieces, or on in-text miniatures, reflect the conceptual idea of a church book as a tool for praying. The main idea of a church book is commonly expressed by symbolic and allegoric compositions. Such compositions, positioned on the title pages and frontispieces, summarize the content of the book by the most unexpected visual images. All the complexity of meanings expressed by images of author, addressee, and theological content, demonstrate the baroque means, which Ukrainian church book editors applied to visualize the church book essence.

A Pentecostal Third Article Theology

Abstract This article proposes a pentecostal theology of the Holy Spirit. It argues that the Holy Spirit plays a central role in the narrative of redemption from creation to eschaton. Indeed, the telos of redemption is the outpouring of the Spirit of Pentecost that culminates in the eschatological promise of the new creation. This eschatological work of the Holy Spirit indicates the Spirit’s immanent identity and agency as the divine person who completes the fellowship of the triune God. It begins with detailing areas of traditional pentecostal theology that prevent the development of pentecostal pneumatology that reflects the central place of the Holy Spirit in pentecostal experience and the biblical narrative of redemption. It then builds the case for a pentecostal pneumatology on the Holy Spirit’s role in the narrative of redemption from creation to eschaton. It concludes with a pentecostal account of the Holy Spirit’s identity in the immanent Trinity. Throughout, it articulates this pentecostal pneumatology considering the classical pentecostal theology of Spirit baptism and traditional Western and Eastern trinitarian theologies.

The Spirit of Pentecost and the Future of Creation

Abstract Studebaker’s overarching thesis is that “the Holy Spirit is the telos of redemption and, therefore, the divine person that consummates the fellowship of the triune God.” This thesis reflects not only the trajectory of current pentecostal scholarship, but the very core of Eastern Orthodox pneumatology that has primed the theological imagination and sacramental life of many Eastern European Pentecostals. This present reflection highlights a few questions that invite further engagement and offers a brief contemplation on three related subthemes within the proposal, pointing to some helpful insights from the Orthodox tradition. These subthemes are the event of Pentecost as the theotic telos of creation; the Spirit and the resurrection; and the redemptive significance of Spirit baptism (focusing on the pentecostal experience of glossolalia and xenolalia).

Inseparable operations and the human operation of Christ

AbstractThe recent recovery of the teaching that the three divine persons share one operation in their outward works raises the question of whether or in what sense the human operation of Christ belongs to the Son alone. My thesis is that all three divine persons move and support the Son's human operation while the Son alone is the proper subject of his human operation. In order to substantiate this thesis, I will consider two main issues: (1) the relationship between divine movement and human energy and (2) the relationship between nature and person in Christ's human action.

Shared intentionality and divine persons: explorations in empirical psychology and ramified natural theology

Shared intentionality and divine persons: explorations in empirical psychology and ramified natural theology

Foundational Principles for an Organically Constituted World

ABSTRACT Alfred North Whitehead years ago proposed an organismic approach to physical reality in which the constituent parts of physical entities co-constitute the governing structure of the entity even as the structure constrains the ongoing activity of the constituent parts. In this article, the author proposes that such an organismic approach to reality would be strengthened if one employs a systems-oriented methodology to a Trinitarian understanding of the God-world relationship. The structure of the divine life-system would influence the independent mode of operation of the cosmic process and the mode of operation of the cosmic process would affect the divine persons.

St Cyril of Alexandria and the Council of Nicaea

AbstractIn commemorating the Council of Nicaea, we are not looking solely at the document that it produced, nor simply the words contained in a manuscript, but the lived tradition that produced it and continues to refine our understanding. This article will therefore explore how in the century that followed the Council of Nicaea, St Cyril of Alexandria, in seeking to combat Nestorianism, in which Christ is asserted to have had distinct human and divine persons, and Mary denied the status of Theotokos (mother of God), argued not on the basis of the literal wording of the Creed of Nicaea, but on the lived tradition that produced it and continues to refine our understanding of it.

LITURGICAL DRAMA AND THEATRICAL ARTS

At the first stage of Christianity spreading the Church has banned theatre show. That’s about writes Aurelius Augustine in his work “Confessions”, where on the background of continued dialogue with God, before us is opened solilokvium (lat.: soliloquium – solo – himself, alone, loqui – to speak), which uses Augustine. It should be noted that such form was assumed in the Literature or theatre performances of that time. This represents the analogy of ancient theatre form, which was used by playwrights to make familiarize with audience, certain development event. Blissful Augustine believes that what is developed on the stage and the experiences of audience – the despair on the stage, the grief appeared in the spectator and tears on the composed, this is some kind of sin and God’s banishment from you. The main postulate of early medieval thinkers, mainly ecclesiastics was ignorance of theatre shows and announcement of theatre actors and creators as sinners. Later, the church itself, for attracting crowds of people, with aim of domination on the parish, used and created not only theatre shows, but its “sketch” – liturgical (liturgy – Greek. liturgy – the main Christian religious rite: liturgy times) drama, which is based on the Biblical stories. As Maximus the Confessor writes: “The liturgy is Christian drama. It is the transition of spirit from potential state to action and is directed towards eidos, as the ultimate goal, to full implementation of telos – the whole, visible and invisible world to Christ’s coming out of the body. And the mythos, we can say, the scenario of Christ, is the St. Letter”. The liturgical drama for Maximus is: a) ritual, the reality “trimmed” with divine character, which is connecting really existing – God in the Christ’s divine personality the man – the church – the world; b) Drama, which plot is the St. letter, as Christ’s body and that it exactly in this drama the St. letter as a potential – body, is becoming Christ’s eschatological body; c) also theurgy activity, aimed at human transferring to God.

The Same God Who Works All Things: Inseparable Operations in Trinitarian Theology by Adonis Vidu

Reviewed by: The Same God Who Works All Things: Inseparable Operations in Trinitarian Theology by Adonis Vidu John Baptist Ku O.P. The Same God Who Works All Things: Inseparable Operations in Trinitarian Theology. By ADONIS VIDU. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2021. Pp. xix + 352. $50.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-8028-7443-6. Adonis Vidu’s The Same God Who Works All Things: Inseparable Operations in Trinitarian Theology defends the principle of the “hard inseparability” of the operations of the three divine persons (xv). That is, in any action performed by God in the created order by way of efficient causality, all three divine persons act together inseparably. If this were not the case, then not all three persons would be fully divine, because God would act in the world without one or two of the persons acting. Vidu develops this theme through nine chapters, building on or critiquing the Fathers of the Church, conciliar teachings, Thomas Aquinas, and modern authors. Since it is more recent authors who abandon the principle of hard inseparability, they in particular will be subject to critique. Vidu observes that the principle of hard inseparability is suggested by the Scriptures (xiv), and in his first chapter he pursues “a biblical theology of inseparable operations” (1) in five steps. After a word on Jewish monotheism (1-11), he shows that Scripture identifies Jesus and the Spirit with the God of Israel (11-23) and equates Jesus with the creator (23-31). He then considers the inseparability of Christ and the Spirit (31-36) and examines the works of the Trinity in the Gospel of John (36-49). Vidu argues, especially from the Pauline corpus, that Christ and the Holy Spirit are God, and that therefore they must have one same agency as God, with the Father and with each other. For instance, he notes that both Christ and the Holy Spirit are recognized as the YHWH of the OT who has returned to his people—a compelling insight (16). The fact that Christ and the Spirit do divine things, such as forgive sins, shows that they have divine being and must therefore act inseparably (19). For Vidu, the strongest possible biblical support for the principle of inseparability is the identification of Christ with the creator, since the act of creation cannot be delegated to a creature; Christ must then simply be YHWH (23). Regarding the inseparability of Christ and the Spirit, Christ works through the Spirit; he is empowered by the Spirit and then gives the Spirit to us (35). In the Gospel of John, Christ is not speaking of mere delegation when he says in 5:19 that he does whatever the Father does (37). In chapter 2, Vidu ponders the rise and decline of the idea of inseparable operations in four sections on the Fathers (53-63), Augustine and Aquinas (63-74), Christ’s two wills and two operations (74-82), and contemporary theology (82-89). Vidu documents the defense of the principle of inseparability by Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers in their responses to heresies. He then turns to Augustine’s and Aquinas’s accounts of appropriation and the divine missions for assistance in articulating the harmony between personal distinction and inseparable unity. In appropriation, we attribute something that is common to all three persons to just one distinct person, based on a real affinity between that common attribute and a property [End Page 162] of that person; for instance, we appropriate wisdom (which describes all three persons) to the Son, since he alone proceeds (from the Father) by way of knowledge (71). In the missions of the Son and the Spirit we have all three persons producing a created effect that signifies only one distinct person, because only one person is the exemplar of that effect. For instance, since the Son alone proceeds by way of knowledge, the gift of wisdom that comes with grace signifies the Son alone (72-73). With respect to Christ’s two wills and two operations, Vidu argues that the Trinitarian principle of inseparability helped resolve the question of the number of wills and operations in Christ, because the number of wills and operations is determined...

HUMAN CREATIVE POTENTIAL AS A DRIVING FORCE OF MODERN SOCIETY

The statement of basic materials. The concept of creativity is multifaceted, which is why it is studied in different ways. But we should pay attention to the philosophical aspect of creativity. Because it is philosophy that reveals the phenomenon of creativity in terms of ontological content and the generation of something new. Plato emphasized that the fruit of God's creativity is the world order, which is based on divine contemplation, which in turn is revealed as reasonable in the process of human creativity. This idea was developed as “creation out of nothing”, which justified the idea of the divine creation of the world in the realm of pure spirit. It should be noted that philosophers of the Middle Ages considered the concept of creativity in two aspects: theistic and pantheistic. The former is based on the understanding of creativity as the command of a divine personality - God is the creator of the world and man, and he not only created the world but also controls it through divine providence. The latter aspect of creativity is based on the Platonic understanding of creativity as the mind contemplating itself. Creativity is a social phenomenon; it is not possible without a carrier, that is, an individual or society as a whole. An individual, in turn, reveals himself or herself through creativity; he or she has a certain creative potential, capabilities that establish his or her ability to create. In addition, creative potential is an important resource for creative activity. It is also important to take into account that creativity can be considered on different scales and in different spheres of human activity. The concept of a “creative person” means not only the presence of creative potential, but also the ability to use this potential to implement creative ideas. Thus, an individual's ability to transform the surrounding reality, i.e. the socio-cultural environment, is possible only if he or she has creative potential. Creative potential, in its turn, is characterized by a combination of creative abilities, peculiarities of creative thinking and internal resources of a person. It should be noted that creativity and creative potential are key success factors in areas where creative approaches are required, such as science, philosophy, art, etc. It is important to support and develop people's creative abilities so that they create new ideas and products that will change the world around us. Thus, the contradictions that arise between society and individuals in solving social problems can be overcome by actualizing the creative potential of the individual.

Christ's Body Keeps the Score

Recent findings in neuroscience and psychology indicate that “the body keeps the score” of PTSD. Concurrently, trauma-informed theology to date has deployed pneumatology to explain how God experiences trauma in the Christian narrative of salvation. Yet, in Christian theology the divine person of the Holy Spirit has no assumed human body. This raises an important question as to whether a body is needed for God to keep the score of posttraumatic stress in a manner consistent with neuroscience and how this might shape one’s account of trauma in Christian soteriology. In this article, I take an analytic science-engaged approach to assess the viability of dominant proposals in trauma-informed theology which deploy trauma theory to assert God’s experience of trauma and explain this experience with exclusive reference to pneumatology. After reviewing clinical and scientific research on the neuroscience of PTSD which has been neglected in these approaches, I argue that Christology is a more obviously fitting locus for suggesting God’s experience of trauma within Christian soteriology than the person of the Holy Spirit. I conclude that since the body keeps the score of trauma from a scientific perspective, Christ’s body keeps the score of trauma from a science-engaged theology perspective.

Prov 8:22ff in Early Christian Statements on the Relation of Origin of the Son from the Father: The Case of Justin, Athenagoras, and Theophilus

The article analyses the quotes of Prov 8:22–25 and references to this passage in three early Christian theologians of the 2nd century, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras of Athens, and Theophilus of Antioch. It examines the way how the three authors employ the present Biblical passage in their expositions concerning the relation of origin of the Son of God (Word and Wisdom) from God the Father. It argues for Prov 8:22 as a witness of the pre-existence of the Word–Wisdom and of the Word as the ‘Beginning’ of all creation, and it attempts to find hints at Prov 8:25 in the statements in which the three Christian authors employ the verb ‘to beget’ (γεννᾶν) and the noun ‘offspring’ (γέννημα) as the terms for coming forth of the second divine person.