The exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity in The
Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy (New York:
Morehouse Publishing, 1994) begins with this observation: “The Christian teaching
regarding the doctrine of the Trinity should not be as daunting and
intimidating as many have made it appear…Christians can learn more about the
Trinity without comprehending its mystery.” C. FitzSimon Allison observes that
it is important to note to which problem or question the doctrine of the
Trinity is the answer.
The problem is called “the one and the many.” It is not unique to Christianity. Everyone, everywhere and always, has had to struggle with this problem…simple solutions to the one and the many sacrifice the diversity and individuality of the many for an imposed and tyrannical unity of the one, or sacrifice the unity (family, nation, business, club, or church) for the sake of the pluralism and diversity of the many.
The author does recognise later on that the Trinity is not
merely an answer to a philosophical question but also, maybe we should say
first of all, to the way God has revealed himself.
The crucial question is not “Is there a God?” but “What kind of God do we have?” The faithful Christian answer is: the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whom we know by the Holy Spirit.
Thus, the Trinity is essentially God’s name: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, one God…As it is clear that the New Testament teaches nothing of three gods, it is equally clear that there are significant distinctions between Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. They are distinct, they are related, and they are one. How can this be so?
In other words, God’s witness about himself demands that we
think of God as tri-une and this leads to a doctrine which presents us also
with an answer to the problem of “the one and the many” – an answer that claims
that neither disunity nor uniformity has the (first or) last word. “The
teaching concerning the Trinity does not proceed from philosophical concerns
but from the saving experiences of God’s action as recorded in scripture.”
The different ways in which this teaching has been denied or
betrayed amount to stressing the unity at the expense of the distinctiveness.
Most commonly the three-in-one paradox was resolved by merging the “three” as
mere temporary modes into the “one.”
“Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God” is simply explained by them as the Father temporarily manifesting himself as the Son and at other times as the Holy Spirit. It is like one person being a spouse, mother, and insurance executive. One objection was noticed immediately….If it were the Father who was manifest as Jesus, then…it was in fact the Father who was crucified.
Because a person can take any number of roles, not merely
three, an analogy which may better illustrate this heresy is the appearance of
H2O as ice, water, and steam (although children who have not yet been cured of
their curiosity by education may wonder where snow fits in here).
A second, and to my mind even more serious because inescapable,
objection is that such teaching pretty much excludes serious reflection on the
interrelationships of the three. If this teaching had won the day, we could
think of Jesus Christ only as a temporary manifestation of God, a role he played
for a while, rather than the eternal image of God.
If this were so, you or I may be so unlucky as to reach that judgment seat on a day that God has a headache and is playing a very different role from the one we’ve seen in Christ….
To believe in a god whose action in Christ is not his everlasting divine nature is to be bereft of any final confidence that God is the same as God’s self-revelation in Christ.
“If God is known only in modes or roles…then we cannot know
God or be known by God, on the deepest levels” but we would know that he is not
Love because prior to the creation of the universe there would have been no
love between persons.
