On Classical Trinitarianism (eBook)

Retrieving the Nicene Doctrine of the Triune God

Matthew Barrett (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
832 Seiten
IVP Academic (Verlag)
978-1-5140-0035-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Modern theology claimed that it ignited a renaissance in trinitarian theology. Really, it has been a renaissance in social trinitarianism. Classical commitments like divine simplicity have been jettisoned, the three persons have been redefined as three centers of consciousness and will, and modern agendas in politics, gender, and ecclesiology determine the terms of the discussion. Contemporary trinitarian theology has followed the spirit of this trajectory, rejecting doctrines like eternal generation which were once a hallmark of Nicene orthodoxy and reintroducing subordinationism into the Trinity. Motivated by the longstanding need to retrieve the classical doctrine of the Trinity, theologian Matthew Barrett brings together Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox scholars to intervene in the conversation. With over forty contributions, this ecumenical volume resurrects the enduring legacy of Nicene orthodoxy, providing a theological introduction that listens with humility to the Great Tradition. In On Classical Trinitarianism, you find contributions from a wide range of scholars, including: - Katherin Rogers - Andrew Louth - Gilles Emery - Steven Duby - Gavin Ortlund - Adonis Vidu - Carl Trueman - Matthew Levering - Fred Sanders - Scott Swain - Karen Kilby - Amy Peeler - Thomas Joseph White - and more!The distinct yet united voices of On Classical Trinitarianism summon the next generation to move past modern revisionism for the sake of renewing classical trinitarian theology today. Together, they demonstrate that Nicene orthodoxy can endure in the modern world and unite the church catholic.

Matthew Barrett is professor of Christian Theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the editor-in-chief of Credo Magazine, and Director of the Center for Classical Theology. He is the author of the award winning book, Simply Trinity: The Unmanipulated Father, Son, and Spirit, as well as the author of The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. He is currently writing a Systematic Theology. He is the host of the Credo podcast, where he talks with fellow theologians about the retrieval of classical Christianity today for the sake of renewing the church.

Inhalt

Foreword by J. Todd Billings

Acknowledgments

The Nicene Creed: Or the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, AD 381

Introduction: The Prospect and Promise of Classical Trinitarian Theology
Matthew Barrett
Part 1: Retrieving Nicene Trinitarianism

1. Ante-Nicene Trinitarianism: From Confession to Theology
Donald Fairbairn

2. The Nicene Creed: Foundation of Orthodoxy
Christopher A. Hall

3. The Beginnings of a Pro-Nicene Trinitarian Vision: Athanasius of Alexandria on the Activity of the Son and the Spirit
Amy Brown Hughes and Shawn J. Wilhite

4. Hilary of Poitiers, on the Unity and Distinction of Father and Son: A Pro-Nicene Reading and Use of John 5:19
Carl L. Beckwith

5. The Cappadocians and the Maturity of Nicene Vocabulary
Stephen Hildebrand

6. Maximos and John Damascene: Mid-Byzantine Reception of Nicaea
Andrew Louth

7. Augustine of Hippo: Will the Real Augustine Please Stand Up?
Keith E. Johnson

8. Anselm of Canterbury: Faith Seeking Trinitarian Understanding
David S. Hogg

9. Thomas Aquinas's Appropriation of Pro-Nicene Theology of the Trinity
Gilles Emery, OP

10. Creedal Critics or Creedal Confessors? The Reformers and the Reformed Scholastics
J. V. Fesko

11. A Fading of the Trinitarian Imagination: The Fight for Nicene Confessionalism in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Michael A. G. Haykin
Part 2: Trinitarian Hermeneutics and Nicene Dogmatics

12. The Incomprehensibility of the Holy Trinity
Ronni Kurtz

13. Trinity, Creatures, and Hermeneutics: Accounting Properly for both Theologia and Oikonomia
Richard C. Barcellos

14. The Unity of God and the Unity of the Economy
Steven J. Duby

15. Perfect Being Theology and Classical Trinitarianism
Katherin A. Rogers

16. Trinity and Divine Simplicity
James E. Dolezal

17. Three Persons, One Will
Stephen J. Wellum

18. Trinity and Aseity
Gavin Ortlund

19. The Immutable and Impassible Trinity—Part 1: The Biblical Teaching and Early Patristic Thought
Thomas G. Weinandy

20. The Immutable and Impassible Trinity—Part 2: The Early Councils, Further Theological and Christological Developments, and Soteriological and Pastoral Implications
Thomas G. Weinandy

21. Trinity and Love
Matthew Levering

22. The Unbegotten Father
John Baptist Ku

23. Only Begotten God: Eternal Generation, a Scriptural Doctrine
Charles Lee Irons

24. Only Begotten Son: The Doctrinal Functions of Eternal Generation
Fred Sanders

25. No Impassibility, No Eternal Generation: Retrieving a Pro-Nicene Distinctive
Matthew Barrett

26. The Procession of the Spirit: Eternal Spiration
Chris R. J. Holmes

27. The Spirit's Procession Revealed in the Spirit's Mission: An Augustinian Account
Adonis Vidu

28. Three Agents, One Agency: The Undivided External Works of the Trinity
Scott R. Swain

29. Trinity and Appropriations: Meaning, Practice, and Significance
Josh Malone
Part 3: The Renewal of Nicene Fidelity Today

30. Social or Classical? A Theological Dialogue
Michael Allen and Matthew Barrett

31. Three Versus One? Some Problems of Social Trinitarianism
Stephen R. Holmes

32. Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity
Karen Kilby

33. Is There Obedience in God? Nicene Orthodoxy and the Eternal Procession of the Son in Aquinas and Barth
Thomas Joseph White

34. Renaissance or Revision? Metaphysical Departures from Classical Trinitarian Theism
Craig A. Carter

35. Are Evangelicals Nicene Trinitarians? Evangelicalism's Debt to Social Trinitarianism
D. Blair Smith

36. Reforming the Trinity? The Collapse of Classical Metaphysics and the Protestant Identity Crisis
Carl Trueman

37. The Need for Nicene Exegesis: Eternal Functional Subordination's Hermeneutical Innovation
Amy Peeler

38. The Need for Nicene Dogmatics: Eternal Functional Subordination's Dogmatic Inadequacy
Glenn Butner

39. The Trinity Is Still Not Our Social Program: The Trinity and Gender Roles
Samuel G. Parkison

40.

Textauszug

1

ANTE-NICENE
TRINITARIANISM

FROM CONFESSION TO THEOLOGY

DONALD FAIRBAIRN

AS WE LOOK AT the trinitarian thought of the earliest Christian centuries, there are two perspectives that are common but very problematic, approaches that we should take care to avoid. The first approach reduces the fourth-century trinitarian teaching to a formula, “one essence in three persons,” and regards the history of trinitarianism primarily as the emergence of that formula and the defense of the idea that God can be one in essence and three in persons.1 In contrast to this approach, we need to recognize that as important as the concepts of essence and person are, trinitarian theology is not fundamentally about concepts at all. It is most fundamentally about the Father, Son, and Spirit to whom the concepts point, and we need to look at the early history of that theology with that fundamental concern in mind.

The second problematic approach assumes a sharp dichotomy between the trinitarian doctrine of the fourth century and the earlier teaching of the New Testament (which, this view claims, contains no notion of the idea that Jesus or the Holy Spirit is God), and thus treats the first three centuries as a story of what went wrong.2 I suggest that this view gets the tenor of early Christianity precisely backward. Jews in the first century, steeped in the monotheism of the Old Testament, had little expectation that the Messiah would be divine, although arguably they should have had such an inkling! What pushed the disciples and others toward the affirmation of the Trinity were the words and actions of Jesus himself, and especially the foretold and yet still unexpected fact of Christ’s resurrection. The New Testament documents, inspired by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, are themselves the beginning and source of the trinitarian confession. Far from a doctrine that emerged later through the imposition of Hellenistic thinking on a Judaic New Testament, the Trinity is a doctrine that would have been inconceivable without Jesus’ own testimony, his resurrection, and the resultant New Testament witness that Jesus is Lord. Absent such witness, there would have been no Christian trinitarianism.

In contrast to these problematic approaches, we should recognize that ante-Nicene trinitarian theology grew out of the nascent church’s affirmation, based on the New Testament, that Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are God just as the Father is God. In the second century, this affirmation led to the production of statements that were creed-like in character and served as precursors of the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds. Over time, these affirmations raised questions about how to make room for the Son and the Spirit within strict monotheism. Certain ways of relating the persons to one another were deemed inadequate, labeled heresies, and addressed in light of Scripture and the church’s emerging tradition based on Scripture. Of these heresies, Gnosticism (including its subset or sibling, Marcionism) and modalistic monarchianism (also known as Sabellianism) were the most pressing, and three major thinkers in the late second and early third centuries—Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen—headlined the list of theologians responding to them. In the process, these thinkers and others began to develop the vocabulary that would later become standard in trinitarian theology.

In this chapter I shall briefly survey these developments in ante-Nicene trinitarianism, and we shall see that the basic shape of the church’s trinitarian confession emerged quickly and remained very stable. At the same time, these early developments constituted a movement from simple confession of faith in the three persons to actual theology articulating how the persons are related, how there can still be but a single God, and so on. These early developments set the stage for the greater reflection, significant conflict, and striking consensus that would be articulated in fourth-century Nicene theology.

SETTING THE STAGE FOR TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY: SECOND-CENTURY CREED-LIKE STATEMENTS

In spite of its unequivocal affirmation of monotheism, the earliest church was led in the New Testament to confess that this one God has a Son and a Spirit about whom we can and must make the same affirmations. John 1:1 tells us that the Word was not only with God, but also was God. Paul affirms that for us, there is one God, the Father, and in the same sentence he adds that there is one Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 8:5-6). Paul further affirms that no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3), thus associating the Spirit with God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Baptismal formulas (Matthew 28:19) and benedictions (2 Corinthians 13:14) include the Son and Spirit with God the Father. As the church reflected on how to include Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in its monotheistic understanding of God, it moved in the second century from what could be called an epistemological approach to an ontological one.

Beginning with epistemology. How do we know that the Son and Spirit are to be included in our confession of the one God? We know primarily because of the life, teaching, death, and especially resurrection of Christ. Paul tells the Romans that it was through the resurrection from the dead that Christ was declared to be the Son of God with power (Romans 1:4). Accordingly, the earliest postbiblical creed-like statements focused on Christ’s life, death, and resurrection as the epistemological basis for our recognition and confession that he is God.3 For example, Ignatius of Antioch, writing circa 107, affirms of Christ:

He is truly [άληθῶς] of the family of David with respect to human descent, Son of God with respect to the divine will and power [κατὰ θέλημα καὶ δύναμιν], truly born of a virgin, baptized by John . . . truly nailed in the flesh for us . . . in order that he might raise a banner for the ages through his resurrection for his saints and faithful people, whether among Jews or among Gentiles, in one body of his church.4

This focus on the events by which we know that Christ is God means that the emerging confession of the Trinity is intimately bound together with the saving actions of Christ’s life. One cannot claim that the Trinity is irrelevant to Christian life, since the very way we know that Jesus is God’s Son depends on the events of his life, chronicled for us in Scripture for our salvation. At the same time, this tight connection between how we know Christ is God’s Son and the fact that he is God’s Son means that the church had not yet considered what that sonship implied about divine life apart from the incarnation. In this passage, Ignatius calls Christ “Son of God with respect to the divine will and power,” a phrase that could be taken to mean that by his will, God chose to create a person whom he would call “son” in some sense. The use of “will” and “power” to describe the way the Father relates to his Son would later be deemed problematic. This is an issue that Ignatius could hardly have thought of, but it shows the downside of the otherwise positive approach of focusing on the life of Jesus as the means by which we know he is truly God’s Son.

In the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr similarly adopts the life of Christ as his epistemological starting point, but he brings the Holy Spirit into the confession as well. He affirms that we worship “Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. . . . For we have learnt that he is the son of the true God, and we hold him in second place [ἐν δευτέρᾳ χώρᾳ], with the prophetic Spirit in the third rank [ἐν τρίτῃ τάξῃ].”5 Here again, the events of Christ’s life are the means by which we have learned that he is the Son of the true God. What is surely most striking to us about this passage, though, is the use of the phrase “second place” to describe the Son and of “third rank” for the Spirit. We correctly regard this statement as suspicious or inadequate, but the question of what exactly it meant to affirm that the Son and Spirit are God, and thus the issue of their equality with the Father, had scarcely yet arisen.

From epistemology to ontology. Over time, early creed-like statements were reorganized around the persons of the Trinity themselves. An example of this new pattern is preserved in a writing of Irenaeus from ca. 190:

God, the Father, uncreated, incomprehensible, invisible, one God, Creator of all. This is the first heading [primum capitulum] of our faith. But the second heading [secundum autem capitulum] is the Word of God, the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. . . . By the Son’s hand all things have come into being. And at the end of the time, to gather all together and sum up things, he willed to become man among men, visible and palpable, so as to destroy death and show forth life and perfect reconciliation between God and man. And the third heading [tertium autem capitulum] is the Holy...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.10.2024
• Vorwort: Todd Billings
• Verlagsort: Lisle
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
• Schlagworte: classical trinitarianism • Doctrine of God • Eastern Orthodox • Miroslav Volf • nicene orthodoxy • Protestant • Roman Catholic • Social Trinitarianism • Systematic Theology • Theology of God • Trinitarian theology • Trinity
• ISBN-10: 1-5140-0035-0 / 1514000350
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5140-0035-9 / 9781514000359