Trinitarian Language Research Articles

An Exercise in Liberal Biblical Theology (Keynote Address)


 
 
 This essay was presented at the “Who is my Neighbour? Theological Education in the Global Villiage of the 21st Century” symposium hosted by the McGill School of Religious Studies in the Fall of 2022. It offers an accessible set of reflections on how a liberal biblical theology can help people connect with the content of the Bible in ways that speak to their lived experience, thereby allowing the heart of the Bible to become more familiar and more widely accessible. In modern society, where the letters G-O-D seem like antiquated fiction and where the church has often failed to adequately and meaningfully explicate the Bible in ways that people can connect with, such a sound, gracious liberal biblical theology can be a source of renewal for both Liberal Protestantism and Christian theological education. To demonstrate this I will undertake an exercise in liberal biblical theology, contrasting the traditional Trinitarian language used by G. B. Caird (1951) to explore the unity of the New Testament with more accessible theological language, language arrived at by drawing from the work of Ralph Harper, Samuel Terrien, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eric Fromm, Howard Thurman, and Robert Frost. 
 
 

Listen with the Ear of the Heart: Music and Monastery Life at Weston Priory by Maria S. Guarino

Reviewed by: Listen with the Ear of the Heart: Music and Monastery Life at Weston Priory by Maria S. Guarino Karl Isaac Johnson Maria S. Guarino Listen with the Ear of the Heart: Music and Monastery Life at Weston Priory Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020 214 pages. Paperback. $34.95. American Catholic liturgical life after the Second Vatican Council is woefully understudied in the academy outside of theology. In particular, ethnographies—fieldwork-based studies of human beings—are rare. Maria Guarino's Listen with the Ear of the Heart: Music and Monastery Life at Weston Priory, a study of the guitar-playing Benedictine monks of Weston, Vermont, is a rare example of such ethnography. The reader learns many unexpected things about the Weston monks—their tastes, their goals, their origins—and is left questioning the usual narratives of post-Vatican II American Catholicism. However, Guarino herself does not reflect on these insights completely, as her monograph does not fully interpret her fieldwork. Guarino writes that her Catholic upbringing, with folk music and guitars instead of organs, was the inspiration for this project (ix), and that she sought to study some of the pioneers of the modern "folk Mass" liturgical style, the monks of Weston Priory. Though she writes that the book is not about "determining what sorts of music are best or most appropriate for liturgy" (xi), her liturgical tastes and opinions pop up throughout, sometimes [End Page 95] intrusively. Guarino adopts a reflexive ethnographic style; a positive trend in ethnomusicology for the past thirty years. But Guarino's reflexivity can be overbearing. Chapter one is more about her personal perspective (sixteen pages) than outlining historical, liturgical, and scholarly contexts (five pages). She briefly describes Weston musical style—quiet, non-metrical, poetic (21)—but focuses more on her own reaction to the style and how it did not fit her preconceived notions. Her liturgical tastes emerge in the text when she is confronted with styles she does not prefer. This is most evident in chapter two, the weakest part of the book. When the Weston brothers confess their love of Gregorian chant (38), she visits the chanting monks of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, a Québécois monastery. What follows is a bizarre account: she writes that she feels "alienated" by the organ and the "institutional church," thanks to her "anti-institutional populism" (51); she recoils at the singing of a Marian hymn (56); and she dismisses modern chant practice as "not ancient, revived, don't forget," (57). An ethnographer should describe foreign experiences without judgment, attempting etically to adopt the perspective of those she studies—with a sensitivity that chapter two lacks. Guarino's touching accounts of her interviews with the Weston monks show her deep relationships with them and unearth heretofore unknown perspectives on their liturgical revolution. The monks corroborate her idea that they are liturgically innovative: they eschew the usual gendered trinitarian language for the terms "Creator, word, and spirit of new life" (70), and they readily admit the influence of hippie and folk music of the 1960s (87). However, the monks admire Gregorian chant (66) and did not drop it because they had an ideological stance against it: it was simply too difficult for them (81); neither do they have anything to say against Latin. Guarino's preconceived notions of liturgical change remain despite these confessions: to her, the pre-conciliar Mass was "mumbled," the laypeople were ignorant, and the council opened a "floodgate" of liturgical creativity (82). This reinforces a common misunderstanding that prior to Vatican II, there had been no investment in lay comprehension and participation [End Page 96] in Mass. The monks confide in her that they never intended to start a liturgical revolution; they simply created music that was practical to them. But she still ascribes to them a rebelliousness and pioneering bent that they themselves eschew. The interviews with the Weston monks, which demonstrate the relationships necessary for good ethnography, are the greatest strength of the book, though one wishes she had attempted to interview the monks of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac as well. Her descriptions of the Weston grounds and the profound but mundane experiences of...

And Then There Was Zoom: A Catholic Theological Examination on the Development of Digital Youth Ministry

Although some youth programs have found significant success in expanding their ministerial outreach through the use of digital technology, a significant question remains: can spiritual communion among youth remain flourishing in isolation or outside the ‘brick and mortar’ walls of the church? The following paper is a practical theological analysis focused upon defining digital youth ministry and the theological underpinnings that provide a framework for its development. Sketched out through the lens of American Catholicism, this paper will especially make use of the sacramental and Trinitarian language of ‘communion’ and accompaniment in framing its exploration digital youth ministry and how it can keep young people engaged through periods of isolation caused by crises like that of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tertullian on the Trinity

Abstract Tertullian is often portrayed as a prescient figure who accurately anticipated the Nicene consensus about the Trinity. But when he is examined against the background of his immediate predecessors, he falls into place as a typical second-century Logos theologian. He drew especially from Theophilus of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus of Lyons. At the same time, Tertullian did introduce some important innovations. His trinitarian language of ‘substance’ and ‘person’, rooted in Stoic metaphysics, offered the church a new way to be monotheistic while retaining the full deity and consubstantiality of the Word. Tertullian also significantly developed the concept of a divine oikonomia, God’s plan to create and redeem the world. The Son and Spirit are emissaries of the Father’s will—not ontologically inferior to him, yet ranked lower in the way that the sent are always subordinate to the sender. For this reason, Tertullian denied that a Father/Son relationship was eternal within the Trinity, seeing it rather as a new development emerging from God’s plan to make the world. Such temporal paternity and filiation distances Tertullian from the eventual Nicene consensus, which accepted instead the eternal generation theory of Origen. While Tertullian did propose some important terms that would gain traction among the Nicene fathers, he was also marked by a subordinationist tendency that had affinities with Arianism. Tertullian’s most accurate anticipation of Nicaea was his insistence on three co-eternal and consubstantial Persons. Historical theologians need to start admitting that Tertullian was a far cry from being fully Nicene. Rather, he offered a clever but still imperfect half-step toward what would become official orthodoxy..

A linguagem trinitária de Novaciano

A proposta deste artigo é analisar alguns elementos da linguagem trinitária no pensamento de Novaciano (200), suas contribuições e suas lacunas, que demonstram a escassez da própria linguagem sobre o mistério trinitário, no ambiente em que se encontra, e sua busca em dar uma resposta às heresias que fervilhavam ao seu redor. Trata-se de uma linguagem metafórica, poética para exprimir o que ele denomina de inexplicável ao discorrer sobre a transcendência divina. Pretende-se verificar a utilização dos conceitos cristológicos e pneumatológicos no desenvolvimento da semântica do mistério trinitário em sua Obra De Trinitate, demonstrando a influência de Tertuliano (155), e a relevância de sua teologia da Trindade para a elaboração da linguagem referente ao mistério de Deus no mundo ocidental.

Re‐imagining Divine Simplicity in Trinitarian Theology

AbstractThis article reconsiders the relationship between divine simplicity and trinitarian theology based on historical and systematic grounds. I first show that in its early emergence, simplicity was not understood as posing intuitive incompatibilities with the development of trinitarian language. This provides good reason to question the assumption that incompatibility of this kind exists between simplicity and Trinity. I then argue that simplicity deeply enriches the doxological dimension of trinitarian theology. Divine simplicity forces us into the habit of questioning our understanding of the Trinity based on concepts that we are familiar with. As a result, it magnifies our sense of the Trinity's ‘super‐abundant richness’. I conclude that trinitarian theology will lose a great deal of its doxological potential if we give up the doctrine of divine simplicity.

A linguagem trinitária de Gregório de Nissa

O artigo estuda a linguagem trinitária de Gregório de Nissa, denominado Padre da Igreja, intelectual do período patrístico do século IV. Analisa a linguagem do ponto de vista do seu desdobramento naquela época, o conflito entre os aspectos linguísticos de Nissa e Eunômio e sua relevância no confronto com a linguagem teológica atual e a religação dos saberes.

A Study of Ritual Hermeneutics about Trinitarian Language in the Light of Cross-Cultural Hermeneutics

A Study of Ritual Hermeneutics about Trinitarian Language in the Light of Cross-Cultural Hermeneutics

Orthodox Ventriloquism in the Pseudo-Ephremic Sermon on Palm Sunday

ABSTRACTOne important objection against accepting the authenticity of the Syriac Sermon on Palm Sunday as being from the hand of Ephrem the Syrian, is the use of explicit Trinitarian language in lines 426–431 of the sermon. This section of text forms part of the unit that consists of lines 418–447 in which Israel is criticized for rejecting their ‘King’ in the desert (at Sinai), and the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus are criticized for rejecting ‘the Son of the King’ in Jerusalem. A close reading of these lines suggests that the part where the Holy Spirit and the Trinity are mentioned might constitute a later, ‘more orthodox’ interpolation into the original text. These lines disturb the original parallel and clash with the poetic quality of the original. The article considers the possibility that the sermon, without this interpolation, might after all have been written by Ephrem himself.

Thinking the Trinity as Resource for Feminist Theology Today?

Thinking the Trinity as Resource for Feminist Theology Today? Hannah Bacon Introduction—the challenge of imagining God in feminist theology The Christian feminist imagination continuously stands in need of healthy and hopeful ways of thinking about God. To do justice to all bodies and to honor all flesh, feminist thinking about the Christian God needs first and foremost to be a “generous” kind of theology, a theology which does not seek to contain or confine God and which does not consequently limit women or men to static, predefined, designated symbolic, material, or social spaces. Thinking about God must be generous in its imaginings so that it allows for the fluidities, multiplicities, ambiguities, complexities, and diversities of women and men's embodiments to be theologically theorized, valued, and embraced. This article proposes that thinking God as Trinity provides an important resource for feminist theology on this basis. Crucially, it questions the value of (mainly Western) feminist theology's often exclusive focus on the language question (“how do we speak rightly about God?”). God‐talk, it is argued, does not connote the full extent of the problem surrounding the Trinity and, to this extent, can never be the sum of the solution. Although related to God‐talk, God‐thought requires further attention within the feminist community, and in this article, I debate what such a focus might contribute to the Christian feminist imagination. I begin by asking “where has God gone in feminist theology?,” noting a distinct lack of sustained scholarship on this doctrine in feminist thought. Responding to two probable reasons for the paucity of feminist scholarship—the abstract nature of Trinitarian theology and the sexist nature of Trinitarian language—I propose that we use Christology as a lens through which to think God as Trinity. This unites oikonomia with theologia, confirming that the mystery of salvation is revealed in the incarnation and the sending of the Spirit is inseparable from the mystery of God. Rather than following common practice within contemporary Trinitarianism of constructing a social model of the Trinity which relies on speculative knowledge about the immanent life of God, uniting oikonomia with theologia situates the starting point of Trinitarian reflection in the material revelation of God in the economy of salvation, in particular, I suggest, with the incarnation of God in the body of Jesus. Through a process of reading “back” from the incarnation to the Trinity—a move which I maintain is justified on the grounds that there is no God outside the God revealed in the history of salvation—I propose that the triune God cannot be God without the flesh. The ramifications of such imaginings for feminist theology are subsequently addressed. Thinking God as Trinity, I argue, provides a theological resource for thinking about intersectionality and for affirming the fluidities and ambiguities of identity. It also establishes self‐giving as a primary feature of God's identity. Although daring to embrace within a feminist context, self‐giving as modeled here becomes a potentially subversive feature of Christian praxis, prophetically calling into repentance the colonizing and homogenizing agendas of phallocentrism. Thinking God as Trinity thus, I conclude, provides an invaluable resource for affirming the diversities and complexities of identity and for locating the value of all bodies within the vast, fleshy, and abundant life of God. Where has God gone in feminist theology? Abstraction and sexism in the Trinity The doctrine of God is not a common area of discussion within the contemporary theological arena, especially within contemporary feminist thought. Rather surprisingly, there has been relatively little feminist scholarship dedicated to a sustained discussion of the Trinity. Although, of course, there are texts which do provide such a treatment—Catherine LaCugna's God For Us, Elisabeth Johnson's She Who Is, Karen Baker‐Fletcher's Dancing with God, for example—full‐length feminist discussions of this doctrine are not commonplace. Given the expansive, global, and multifaceted nature of feminist theologies today, this raises questions about the doctrine's relevance for women across a number of divergent geographic, social, economic, and material contexts. Certainly, we are led to ask why the space attributed to this doctrine seems minimal when compared to that of other areas such as...

Meditations of the Heart: The Psalms in Early Christian Thought and Practice. Essays in Honour of Andrew Louth. Edited by ANDREAS ANDREOPOULOS, AUGUSTINE CASIDAY, and CAROL HARRISON

Andrew Louth is one of the most perceptive Christian minds of our time. His spiritual journey from Anglicanism into Orthodoxy, and more recently into the Orthodox priesthood, has represented a long quest for intellectual and spiritual authenticity. The issue for him has always been how to be both a scholar and a disciple; how to live Evagrius’ maxim that the theologian is the one who truly prays, the one who prays is a theologian. This has not been a journey that has taken place in solitude. The sixteen essayists in this volume are Orthodox, Anglican, and Roman Catholic and represent a world of study, friendship, prayer, and collegiality. It is always difficult to pick out particular gems from such a rich collection, especially when the authors have interpreted their brief in very diverse ways. The essays which stick closest to the title are perhaps the most satisfactory, demonstrating the seminal role of the Psalms in the development both of Christology and the language of prayer. Rowan Williams offers a densely argued and rewarding exploration of the interpretation of Psalm 45, showing that different and sometimes conflicting perspectives contributed to a Trinitarian language which was both dogmatic and prayerful—of all the essays this one most closely mirrors Andrew Louth’s theological agenda. In the same spirit is a fine essay by John A. McGuckin on Origen’s bold appropriation of the Psalms as the place in the Old Testament in which the Logos could be heard to speak most directly. The Psalms were as close to the heart of revelation for Origen as John’s Gospel or the Pauline epistles. Norman Russell takes as his text Ps. 81:6, ‘I said, you are gods, sons of the most high’, and shows the part it played in the theology of Gregory Palamas and his opponents: the issue here is how human beings participate in the divine nature; and whether this is to be understood as a reality in this life or as a reward in the next.

The Christadelphians and the Doctrine of the Trinity

This article, by a former Christadelphian, asks how evangelicals can help Christadelphians understand the doctrine of the Trinity. After a brief introduction to the Christadelphian community and a survey of its doctrine of Christ and the Holy Spirit, we evaluate that doctrine with reference to the New Testament and to systematic considerations. We conclude that neither dogmatic formulae nor popular language used to describe the Trinity are helpful to Christadelphians, and that there are more constructive alternatives. We see that both Christadelphians and trinitarians need to compare their faith, not simply with the ancient creeds, but ultimately with the earliest Christian experience implied by the New Testament use of trinitarian language.

The Ecological Significance of God-Language

Against the tendency to reduce trinitarian language only to Father-Son categories, an ecological theology requires the retrieval of the tradition that understands the Trinity in categories of Wisdom and Logos. These concepts have always been linked to creation theology and are open to ecological theology. New Testament hymns, several Church Fathers, and Wolfhart Pannenberg provide resources for such a theology. Pannenberg's theology of the Word as the divine principle of creaturely self-distinction can be understood in light of Bonaventure's concept of divine Wisdom as self-expressive for a contemporary theology of creation.

Metaphysics and Morals in Marius Victorinus' Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians (review)

Reviewed by: Metaphysics and Morals in Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians Michel René Barnes Stephen Andrew Cooper. Metaphysics and Morals in Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians. American University Studies, Series V, Vol. 155. New York: Peter Lang, 1995. Cooper’s book is in three parts: an introduction, a translation of Victorinus’ Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians, and an “analysis” of what Victorinus has to say (a commentary on the Commentary). The introduction confused me as to the intended audience of the work: on the one hand Cooper remarks (accurately) that his work fills a need among “English only” readers, but on the other hand, Cooper does not translate material in any foreign language, modern or classical, that he quotes as he goes along. The net effect is that the introduction will alienate some of those whom Cooper would want to read the translated text. Cooper’s acquaintance with Victorine scholarship is vast, and he has several helpful judgements to offer on this literature. His grasp of primary scholarship is less impressive: too often Cooper cites Hadot when a fresh encounter with Porphyry, Cicero or Liberius seems called for. Our sense of Latin (especially Italian) theology in the mid fourth century is now much more complex than it was when Hadot wrote (in 1971) the excellent Marius Victorinus: Recherches sur sa vie et ses oeuvres, not to mention Hadot’s early studies dating from the nineteen sixties. When Cooper wants to document Victorinus’ baptism, he footnotes Hadot, who only told us that the baptism happened. (No one addresses the very important question of who actually baptized Victorinus.) Cooper is so focused on the “metaphysical” reading of Victorinus that he fails to consider the doctrinal reading available in R. P. C. Hanson’s The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God which would have offered both different specifics, such as the date for that baptism (355 versus 357) but, more importantly, an alternate understanding of Victorinus’ comments on verses 1.1–2, for Hanson’s understanding is anchored more substantially in the trinitarian polemics of the mid fourth century. I appreciated Cooper’s concern for the details of Latin phrasing evident in the “analysis” section of the book, but I was not happy with the information conveyed in the introduction. Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Ephesians is an important resource to have in English translation for several reasons. First, Victorinus’ commentaries on Paul’s epistles mark the first wave of that explosion of Latin commentaries on Paul so distinctive to the late fourth century and which eventually will include works by Ambrosiaster, Tyconius, Pelagius and Augustine. Moreover, in most [End Page 678] cases these commentaries reflect a different style or school of exegesis than one typically sees in Greek literature, with less interest in allegory and more interest in an almost tedious (if not painful) word for word exposition based, it seems, upon Latin rhetorical habits exemplified by Cicero and Quintillian. Despite this fact, the Commentary on Ephesians in particular reveals a Latin doctrine of pre-existent souls that “fall” into material bodies as well as trinitarian language that could easily be from Origen. Augustine scholars will especially search Victorinus’ Pauline commentaries as possible sources for that later author. Victorinus’ commentaries also reveal ways in which Paul’s letters were polemical platforms for the trinitarian and christological disputes of the late fourth and early fifth centuries. There are many reasons to be happy for a modern translation of Victorinus’ Commentary on Ephesians, but none of the reasons I can imagine include the discovery of any “metaphysics and morals.” There is precious little “metaphysics” in Victorinus’ commentary, especially when compared to Against Arius. And what metaphysics there is tends more to be Stoic rather than Neoplatonic. The “moral” character of Victorinus’ Commentary is not quite so invisible as the metaphysical, but even so one is not bulldozed by this as a central concern in the text. I suspect that the title reflects Cooper’s need to declare that Christian metaphysics need not preclude Christian morality (but even support it!), since there are those who still see metaphysics or morality as mutually exclusive options for...

One God and Trinitarian Language in the Letters of Paul

One God and Trinitarian Language in the Letters of Paul

On the Trinity

In the debate over trinitarian language, the fact remains that terms such as Father or Son are heard as referring to males To forge a doctrine of the Trinity for today, the question we need to ask is, “What would be an emancipatory retrieval of Christian speech about God as Triune?”