50 Key Concepts in Theology

The Trinity
The unique Christian view that God consists of three ‘persons’: Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.
The Christian doctrine of a three-fold God is one of the most complex
theological ideas in any religion. The doctrine says that God is both unified
and composed of three distinct ‘persons’: God the Father (the creator); God
the Son, (Jesus Christ); and God the Holy Spirit. As the Athanasian Creed
asserts: ‘We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity … For there is
one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one.’
The word ‘Trinity’ does not appear in the Bible, which contains no clear
statement of trinitarian teaching. However, there are numerous scriptural
passages from which the doctrine can be constructed, principally Jesus’
instruction to his disciples to baptise ‘in the name of the Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit’ (Matt. 28:19). The lack of any more direct statement of the
Trinity in the Bible has led some – such as Unitarians, Seventh Day
Adventists and Christian Scientists – to argue that the doctrine of the Trinity
is not biblical, but an invention of the churches. The first known reference to
the Trinity is in the writing of Theophilus of Antioch in the late second
century ad, who mentions ‘the Trinity of God, His Word and His Wisdom’.
The concept of a trinitarian God appears to be logically impossible, and
the Church has traditionally described it as a ‘mystery’ that cannot be
penetrated by mere human logic. Again, as the Athanasian Creed puts it: ‘The
Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit
incomprehensible.’
However, theologians have nevertheless attempted to make sense of the
Trinity as best they can. Tertullian was the first to offer an explanation based
on the idea that God is unified in substance: ‘One substance, three Persons’ –
a slogan that has served well down the centuries. ‘Ontological’ theories have
argued that the three persons of the Trinity are the same in their very being or
essence. ‘Economic’ theories have argued that the persons of the Trinity must
be understood in terms of their role in human history.
Although the problems of trinitarian theology appear to be uniquely
Christian, the fundamental issues can be found in pre-Christian Greek
philosophy, where the question of reconciling ‘the One and the Many’
perplexed the pre-Socratic philosophers and their successors. Parmenides
argued the ‘monist’ position that everything in the world is made up of one

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substance. Heraclitus argued the ‘pluralist’ view that the universe is composed
of many irreconcilable parts.
Christian approaches to the Trinity can also be viewed as tending either
to the monist or the pluralist view. Karl Barth, for example, advocated the
‘monist’ view, emphasising the unity of the Trinity at the expense of the
distinctiveness of the separate persons. By contrast, many contemporary
theologians are now seeing the pluralist potential of the Trinity as a resource
for understanding God’s relationship to our plural and diverse culture.
It is significant that the doctrine of the Trinity is claimed by both liberals
and conservatives as crucial to their theology. Those in favour of an ‘inclusive
theology’ towards people of differing sexual orientations and those of other
faiths, argue that the Trinity shows that God’s essence is ‘relational’ and
always concerned to include the other.
THINKERS
Emil Brunner (1889–1966) argued that the earliest Church had no
understanding of the Trinity: ‘There is no trace of the idea of “three divine
persons in one” in the New Testament … No Apostle would have dreamt of
thinking that there are three divine persons … The mystery of the Trinity
proclaimed by the Church did not spring from biblical doctrine’ (Christian
Doctrine of God).
Colin Gunton (1941–2003) argued in The One, the Three and the Many
(CUP, 1993) that ‘a God who contains within himself a form of plurality in
relation and creates a world which reflects the richness of his being, can
surely enable us better to conceive something of the unity in variety of human
culture.’
Catherine LaCugna (1952–97) has argued that the doctrine of the Trinity
is not an exercise in abstract metaphysics but a question of our practical
relationship with God.
Jürgen Moltmann (1926– ) has argued in The Trinity and the Kingdom:
The Doctrine of God (Augsburg Fortress Press, 1993) that the Trinity
provides the ethical model of radical equality and social mutuality for the
kingdom of God.
Karl Rahner (1904–84) argued that ‘the economic Trinity is the
immanent Trinity, and vice versa’. In other words, God’s relationship with the
world is part of his essential nature.
Maurice Wiles (1923–2005) argued that the doctrine of the Trinity is not

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biblical and not necessary to Christianity.
John Zizioulas (1931– ) argued that God’s very being is tied up with
communion.
IDEAS
Analogies of the Trinity: numerous analogies of the Trinity have been
offered over the centuries. For example: the three sides of a triangle; three
intersecting rings; and the three states of water – ice, steam and liquid. (See
also ‘Psychological and social analogies’.)
The Athanasian Creed: a fourth-century credal statement, principally of
the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation. Despite its name, the
authorship of the creed is not known and is only ascribed to St Athanasius by
tradition.
The ‘economic Trinity’: the roles that the persons of the Trinity play in
relation to human history – for example: creator, redeemer, comforter.
The ‘hierarchical Trinity’: the view, associated with Tertullian, that the
Trinity is a hierarchy, with the Father before the Son, and the Son before the
Spirit.
Homoousios: a Greek word (meaning ‘of the same essence’) used in
trinitarian theology to indicate that the persons of the Trinity are all
essentially made of the same ‘stuff’. The Latin-based term for this idea is
‘consubstantial’.
Hypostases: from a Greek term meaning a distinct, self-supporting entity.
The Trinity is sometimes described as having three hypostases.
The ‘immanent Trinity’: God’s eternal Trinitarian being in himself. (See
also ‘The ontological Trinity’.)
The Latin model of the Trinity: typified by St Augustine, this begins with
the unity of God and works towards an understanding of the persons.
Modalism: a second-century theology that believed that the persons of
the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – were just roles played by one God.
Monism: the view that everything in the cosmos is made of one
substance.
Monotheism: the belief, common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that
there is only one God.
The ‘ontological Trinity’: the view – put forward, for example, by Origen

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– that the persons of the Trinity have the same being (ousia).
Perichoresis (a Greek word meaning ‘going around’, ‘envelopment’): the
idea that the persons of the Trinity ‘dwell’ mutually within one another.
Pluralism: the view that the cosmos is made up of different kinds of
irreconcilable substance.
Polytheism: the belief that there are many gods.
The psychological analogy: proposed by St Augustine, this suggested that
the persons of the Trinity can be compared to the unified state of mind of
someone who is at once the agent of love (the lover), thinking of a love object
(the beloved), and enacting the emotion of love.
The social analogy: the suggestion, dating from the Cappadocian Fathers,
but depicted most famously in the Rublev Icon, that the Trinity consists of
separate persons in society. The Rublev Icon shows the Trinity as three people
sat around a table. Recent theologians (e.g. Moltmann, Pannenberg) have
argued that we must begin with the persons of the Trinity and work towards
an understanding of their unity.
Tritheism: belief in three gods, especially the doctrine that the three
persons of the Trinity are three distinct Gods.
BOOKS
Colin Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many (CUP, 1993)
Catherine LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life
(HarperCollins, 1991)

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