Trinitarian doctrine the ‘primary resource against idolatry’
By Robert P. Mills, The Layman Online, October 27, 1999
The doctrine of the Trinity is “the Church’s primary resource against idolatry,” said a British theologian at a Presbyterian theology convocation sponsored by the denomination’s Office of Theology and Worship held Oct. 20-23 in Charlotte, N.C.
Colin GuntonHowever, said Colin Gunton, professor of systematic theology at Kings College in London, Western Christianity “is poised on a knife-edge between making three Gods and making the differences between the persons of the Trinity disappear. Our tradition has tended to stress the unity of God to the detriment of the distinctions of the Trinity.”
Ellen Charry of Princeton Theological Seminary later emphasized the importance of the language we use in discussing the Trinity, saying she would not “use inclusive language exclusively” because of her concern that “the wholesale use of inclusive language denies the trinity and leads to Arianism and perhaps has the implication of polytheism.”
The convocation “We Believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life” was focused on the third article of the Nicene Creed, which discusses the Holy Spirit and the Church. The event, which repeated the next week in San Francisco, was built around extended times of worship. At the opening worship service, Gregory Busby, pastor of Charlotte’s First United Presbyterian Church, preached on Joel’s prophecy “I will pour out my Spirit on all people.”
The Triune God
The themes of the Triune God, one essence and three persons, and the constant presence of the Holy Spirit were prominent throughout the convocation.
To help keep modern Christians “from falling off the precipice in either direction,” Gunton drew on the work of such earlier theologians as Iraneus, Basil of Caeserea and John Calvin, who has been called “the theologian of the Holy Spirit.”
Gunton explored the person of the Holy Spirit as fully God and as a fully distinct person of the Trinity and the action of the Holy Spirit in the world. Of the former he observed that “If we listen to Scripture there is very little difficulty accepting that the Spirit is divine.” Of the latter he noted “we’ve notoriously neglected the work of the Spirit in our life and thinking. That’s why we need as clear as possible a model for our understanding of the Spirit.”
Gunton insisted that “it is this God – Father, Son and Spirit – that Christians worship in distinction from all other objects of worship,” noting that we worship in a world where “there are lots of candidates for divine status. Two in particular are the self and the earth. But there is no God within, only a mess. The self is a problem, not a solution.”
Leanne Van DykOne baptism
Picking up on the themes of the Trinity and mistaken objects of worship, Leanne Van Dyk, associate professor of Reformed theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Mich., said she liked to “observe the way church folks talk about God.”
She noted that one responsibility of pastors and Christian educators is “to correct faulty understandings of God … not to get the answers right on an exam but to grow into the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ.”
Van Dyk said her task at the convocation was “to think of salvation from the perspective of the Spirit. This is what the [Nicene Creed’s] phrase ‘one baptism for the remission of sins’ refers to – understanding salvation from the perspective of the Holy Spirit.”
Baptism, said Van Dyk, “is the dramatic, visible model of salvation from the perspective of the Holy Spirit. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, baptism “unites us to realities including forgiveness of sins, union with Christ. Baptism dramatically and visibly acts out salvation from the perspective of the Holy Spirit. Baptism is the drama of our incorporation into the community.”
In a question and answer session following her talk, Van Dyk observed that theology and Christian doctrine represent “our best human efforts, guided by Scripture, tradition and the Holy Spirit, to put the deep things of God in human language. I stand on the Trinity with a good deal of passion. I tell my students that the two distinctives of the Christian faith are Trinity and Incarnation.”
Greg LovePromise and Peril
In an elective session, Greg Love, assistant professor of theology at San Francisco Theological Seminary, addressed the “Promise and Peril of Recent Interest in the Holy Spirit.”
Love said this recent interest had helped us better understand God’s will in terms of sovereignty and human freedom by reminding us that “the human Jesus was able to resist temptation because at every moment in the wilderness he relied on the power and comfort of the Holy Spirit.” This interest also emphasizes the presence of God in our daily lives, which “confirms what people in AA have known for a long time: that the Spirit is present with power that enables human transformation.”
Citing the works of contemporary theologians such as Marcus Borg and Jurgen Moltmann, Love said a major peril of the current interest in the Holy Spirit was the tendency to move from their (very different) understandings of panentheism, the belief that everything is in God, to pantheism, the belief that everything is God and God is just another name for everything.
Miroslav VolfThe Church
Speaking on the convocation’s final morning were Miroslav Volf, professor of theology at Yale Divinity School and Ellen Charry, associate professor of systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Volf, in his lecture “One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church,” said that the church “does not seek to draw attention to itself, but points to Christ as the way to God the Father. The church sent by Christ does not cry out with self interest.” He described the church as “the form of experience of salvation, for salvation is not self-centered but centered on God” and insisted that if the church was to make an impact on society it must have “the courage to remain misfitted as it pursues its proper interests in the world.”
Asked about the mission of the church, Volf replied, “The mission of the church is to call people to Christ and to call people to become members of the church. Salvation is communal in the Christian tradition. Therefore the proclamation does entail inviting people to become members of the church.”
The church, he added, also has “a mission toward the society, even if parts of that society don’t become members, to transform society to the reign of God. [But] it would be a false dichotomy to say that we are just about transforming society, not about calling people into the church.”
Trinity and the Christian Life
Charry, the final lecturer, drew together a number of the convocation’s themes as she discussed the pastoral function of Christian doctrine in her lecture “Trinity and the Christian Life.”
“When I think about what it means to be a Christian in this culture,” Charry said, “I’m particularly concerned about the children, because the children are not in very good shape. I want to offer you a vision of how the Christian doctrinal tradition can be an instrument of Christian spiritual formation.” Noting that this might be the “most controversial” feature of her talk, Charry said “I will be tempering my use of inclusive language for the sake of the children who need the power of the whole doctrine of God.”
She expressed concern that children’s self-concepts are being “primarily shaped by entertainment and the Internet rather than adults and other sources of tested wisdom. … Suspicion of tradition alienates children from sources of safety.”
She noted that Scripture and the Reformed theological tradition give us “an alternative framework for shaping a self-concept.” But, she declared, for the church to make such resources available to its own children “would require the church to dissociate from the culture and actively reclaim its own voice and identity. This is very difficult for mainline churches to do.”
Christian identity, Charry said, does not come “from experience or biology.” Rather, it comes from our baptism into the life of the Triune God. “Baptism becomes the drumbeat to which Christians march, the beacon that offers security and hope. … Baptism means that one is never alone but always accompanied by the Holy Spirit and indeed by the Trinity.”
Children, she declared, have a right, with all the dangers around them, “to envision themselves in the very center of the Trinity, with the Trinity surrounding and protecting them so that they are never alone.”
Sacramental actions are so important, Charry said, because we need material signs to counter the material signs of the culture. Children need to touch and taste the reality of God grafted into their very bodies. Christians are made holy, “set aside for a special purpose by the Holy Spirit, set into the Trinity for life in this world and the next.”