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Trinity and Salvation
How does the doctrine of the Trinity relate to the doctrine of salvation?
How will errors in one area affect our appreciation of the other? Here is a meandering discussion of
some of the issues!
Matthew 11:25-30
– A Foundational Text
25 At that time Jesus said, "I praise you,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things
from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26 Yes, Father, for this
was your good pleasure. 27
"All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the
Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and
those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and
burdened, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am
gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and
my burden is light."
The Father-Son relationship may appear in verse 27b as an
impenetrable circle of divine fellowship: the Father knowing the
Son and the Son knowing the Father. Those on the outside – the wise and learned – are left
decidedly ‘out of the loop.’
Jesus is hidden. God is
hidden. And the gates of heaven
are shut. Yet Jesus reveals a way
in to the very life of God (27c); more than this, Jesus is the
way in. As He reveals His Father
so He grants an entrance into the Father-Son relationship. ‘Little
children’ are made truly so as they find their heavenly Father in the
Son.
Such access to the Father-Son relationship does not merely give us
a new theological vocabulary. To
come to the Son is to become children of God, to receive true rest (v28)
and our true Lord (v29). Knowing
God in His Triune relations – i.e. as the Father is revealed by the Son
and in the Spirit
– is to be saved by Him. The life of the Father, Son and Spirit
is disclosed in salvation; and salvation is to enter the Triune life. Thus our doctrines of trinity and
salvation can never be kept in isolation.
To think only of ‘salvation’ is to play the ‘wise and learned’
(v25) who witness the work of Jesus (v20-24) and yet never acknowledge
His true Person. Such ‘learned’
people lose, not only the trinity, but salvation too! On the other hand, if it were possible
to think only of ‘trinity’ and not of salvation, one would have to
deny the truth that Jesus of Nazareth (and Him alone, v27) reveals
the triune life. Such a
‘theologian’ would be cast adrift from any anchor in the actual life of
God and be left with mere metaphysical speculations. Again, we see that such a theologian
has lost both salvation and the trinity! Thus ‘Trinity’ and ‘salvation’
must be kept together.
Yet this is not simply to say that our doctrines of trinity and
salvation are simple correctives for one another; as though a
doctrine of salvation comes to the rescue by ‘earthing’ our supposedly
abstract trinitarian formulations, or as though the doctrine of the
trinity comes to the rescue by ‘propping up’ our flagging insistence upon
the divine agency in salvation.
That is far too piecemeal an understanding.
Instead, we must allow ‘trinity’ and ‘salvation’ to explain one
another. As Matthew 11 insists, the life of the Father, Son and Spirit is
unfolded to us,
- by grace
alone (that is, by divine initiative – He ‘chooses’
(v27)),
- through faith
alone (that is, not by ‘wise and learned’ methods but
only to those who would receive the revelation like ‘little
children’ (v25)),
and
- in Christ
alone – He is the one revelation of the Father (v27).
Once we have said this – and to deny it is to deny, not only the
foundations of the reformation, but also creedal orthodoxy
– then we will seek our doctrine of the trinity nowhere else than in
God’s saving approach towards His world. Or, to put it another way…
The Economic Trinity reveals the Immanent
Trinity
This statement, known often as ‘Rahner’s dictum’,
encapsulates Karl Rahner’s criticisms of any theology which attempts to
describe God ‘in Himself’ in advance of, and abstraction from, His
revealed ways in the economy of salvation. Rahner’s dictum is merely a restatement of the point made
above concerning Matthew 11: God is known in Christ and by the Spirit
(the economy). In Christ and by
the Spirit we are caught up into the Father-Son relationship of mutual
knowing (the immanent). Apart
from this economy, the immanent trinity is ‘hidden’ no matter how ‘wise’
or ‘learned’ the theologian.
Beginning with the One or the Three?
Rahner developed his dictum as part of a
criticism of western theology’s prior examination of the One God, to the
detriment of the Three Persons. He
points to Augustine’s seminal treatment of the trinity in terms of, first
De Deo Uno, and then De Deo Trino, saying,
“It looks as if everything which
matters for us in God has already been said in the treatise On the One
God.”
This, of course, undermines fundamentally the
economic’s revelation of the immanent.
In the economy we meet the True God, yet the economy is the
interaction of the Three. Colin
Gunton comments on Augustine’s decision to begin with ‘the One’:
“The result is that salvation history
comes to appear irrelevant to the doctrine of God.”
Whether Augustine is guilty of all the problems of which Rahner,
and much more, Gunton, accuses him,
it cannot be denied that an approach which begins with ‘the One’ has been
followed in the west. The systematic theologies of our day
proclaim a great deal about God’s attributes of holiness, power, wisdom
etc., in advance of and, often, in abstraction from, a treatment of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The
impression given is that the substantium or essence of God not
only underlies the three Persons, not only that this essence is itself
impersonal, but also that this essence is somehow more accessible
epistemologically. (see diagram
below)
The danger of this kind of theology
is felt wherever Rahner’s dictum is ignored or minimized. The
consequences run in both directions:
On the one hand, running from trinity to salvation we fall into a
rationalistic form of Pelagianism. Here it is imagined that an approach to God is
possible, if not in full then in part, through reason. If the divine nature is defined
attributively, then to grasp the attributes is, in some sense, to lay
hold of God. If this impersonal essence
is the fundamental substratum of God then a person may know God,
even some of the deepest things of God, without any faith in Christ,
without any possession of the Spirit, without any comprehension of the
Father’s loving paternity. To
think of such ‘knowledge’ as ‘true’ even if ‘non-salvific’ does not
rescue this position from the error of semi-Pelagianism. If this ‘knowledge’ is to be, in
any sense, co-ordinated with a saving knowledge of Christ, that is to
commit the kind of Thomistic synergism between nature and grace which is
ruled out by the great ‘Alone’s of the reformation. This is not a ‘way of salvation’ to
which we can assent.
On the other hand, running from salvation to trinity, if the substratum
of God underlies the Persons, and if that is considered to have priority,
then our doctrine of God remains insulated from any and every event in
which we actually encounter God.
Our economic dealings with the Three Persons are one thing –
dynamic, personal, distinct – but His immanent being as ‘the One God’ is
quite another – static, impersonal, undifferentiated. Since we have assumed the priority of
this ‘One God’ we are left in the uncomfortable position of concluding
that we do not actually know God!
More than this, God’s so-called ‘revelation’ is not of
Himself. In fact the ‘revelation’
given in the economy comes between ourselves and God and we would do well
to look behind it to the real God.
This was the surprising trajectory of thought for Gilbert
Bilezekian, writing in 1997 on ‘Subordination in the Godhead.’
Bilezekian rejects what he sees to be dangerous Arian tendencies within
an evangelical trinitarianism that posits the eternal subordination of
the Son to the Father. What is so
shocking, yet so inevitable given his presuppositions, is his readiness
to write off the economy as truly revealing God.
The incarnation is, apparently, “not business
as usual for the Trinity.” In
fact it is “an unprecedented and unrepeatable dislocation within the
Trinity.” In fact, we are not to draw any conclusions about the
immanent Trinity even from the names ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ nor from the
eternal generation of the Son.
Bilezekian must maintain this since in the economy all that we see
is subordination. The Son is
definitionally the obedient Son and this obedience is just what He points
to as revealing not only Himself but His Father. If this does not teach us the true
nature of the Godhead, what will?
Unfortunately, for Bilezekian, his teacher is an abstract notion
of ‘absolute’ oneness.
“…the participation of each person of the
Trinity in the ultimacy of divine oneness is absolute… The
doctrine of an absolute Godhead requires that all its members be
absolute.”
When Bilezekian began without the economy, he began, inevitably, with
a pre-formed notion of oneness which, it must be said, bears more
resemblance to Plato than Scripture. Unfortunately he has preferred the
‘absolute Godhead’ to the actual Persons who, by their mutual relations
of gift and receipt, offer and response, command and obedience, actually
form the Godhead. He has
attempted to ‘look behind the back’ of the economic trinity and, far from
catching a glimpse of the ‘real God’ has in fact caught only the
reflection of his own faulty presuppositions.
This, in turn compromises greatly our doctrine of salvation. Bilezekian has fought to protect a
notion of the Son’s full ontological equality with the Father apart
from his incarnate ministry.
This has meant he has defined this equality in terms that make it
near impossible to affirm the equality during the Son’s incarnate
ministry. Thus, with Arianism avoided in eternity,
the big issue remains, what do we say about the One on the cross? Is He not supremely demonstrating His
obedience to the Father? And is
this not the moment when we most need the fullness of Deity working
salvation for us?
Here we appreciate Jurgen Moltmann’s point that Modalism and
Arianism are not so different. If the absolute unity of God is made
the fundamental criterion for our doctrine of God, either Christ is
subsumed into the ‘absolute oneness’ and all distinctions are dissolved,
or Christ sinks down into the line of the prophets as one who is
decidedly other than the One God.
Either way, the ‘absolute oneness’ is preferred to the actual One
in Whom the true Deity dwells.
Moltmann’s insight is crucial: “The intention and consequence of
the doctrine of the Trinity is not only the deification of Christ; it is
even more the Christianization of the concept of God.”
It is preceisely this which is missing from Bilezekian. Rather than find his concept of God in
the revelation of the Son, he maps a pre-existing concept of God onto the
revelation of the Son and thus obscures both ‘God’ and ‘Christ’.
Here we see an issue in microcosm which was
fought (and won) most decisively at Nicea.
The Significance of Nicea
When Arius proclaimed an utterly unique,
unknowable, undifferentiated, incommunicable, eternal and transcendent
doctrine of God, his assumptions ruled out, a priori, any idea
that ‘the Son’, as another ousia or hypostasis, could ever
be conceived of as the same nature.
Yet, to the Nicene fathers, the oneness of being (homoousios)
between Jesus and His Father was the very ground of all revelation and
salvation.
In terms of revelation, as Matthew 11
proclaims, ‘all things’ are committed to the Son by the Father and the
relationship of ‘knowing’ which they share is a mutual one. From this we infer that the Son is as
integral to the Father’s being as the Father is to the Son’s. Thus they share a mutual existence –
and since this existence is one of ‘knowing’ and since, as Irenaeus used
to say, only God can know Himself, then this mutual existence is a divine
one. It is on this account that
we can be sure that knowledge of the Son is truly knowledge of the Father
and not simply an ascent to some kind of penultimate being. A point of revelation exists that is
in the divine being. Without such
a point, we would be cut adrift into a completely speculative or
apophatic theology.
As to salvation, there are many things that we
could say, yet for now let us note again the implications of Matthew
11. As Jesus proclaims rest for
our souls He does not say ‘Go to God’ but ‘Come to me’. He offers a salvation, which in Bible
terms is always ‘from the LORD’ (e.g. Jonah 2:9). Thus His integrity as
One able to effect such salvation is at stake and can only be vindicated
by establishing His identity as One authorized to offer it. There cannot be a Gospel of salvation
without an ontology of the Saviour.
In Thomas Smail’s words: “… the nature of the authority of Jesus,
the effectiveness of his atoning work, his ability to confer the Holy
Spirit upon others, require us to see him in a relationship with God that
is not simply functional, involving his action but that is ontological,
involving his being. Operation
implies being, a verb requires an appropriate subject. In order to do what the Gospel affirms
that he does, he needs to be the one that the Gospel affirms he is.”
In declaring the Son ‘homoousios with
the Father’ the Nicene fathers taught that the Father/Son relationship
was not that of a divine absolute Being with another, lesser being. Rather “the Father/Son relationship
falls within the one being of God.” Homoousios “meant that the Son
and the Father are equally God within the one being of God.”
Since the Father and Son are said to be homo,
i.e. ‘together’ or ‘in solidarity’, both the unity and the distinction of
the Persons is maintained.
It is a safeguard against both Arianism and Modalism – heresies which, as
we have seen, are quite close to one another.
Since Arianism and Modalism are both opposed by
the homoousios it is fair to think that the doctrine of God being
upheld by homoousios is not that of the ‘absolute oneness’ at the
heart of those heresies. In fact
a moment’s reflection will assure us that the undifferentiated, simple
monad who Arius called ‘God’ can in no sense be called ‘the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’
once the homoousios is pronounced. The homoousios does not simply elevate another deity
into equal status with the ‘Absolute One’ – how could it? The homoousios declares
heretical any doctrine of God which does not define the divine ousia
in terms able to accommodate three divine Subjects, distinct but united.
Beginning with the Three
This was the issue seen so clearly by the
Cappodocian fathers. In the
aftermath of Nicea they realised that neither the ousia nor the
concept of ‘oneness’ were ‘obvious’ theological truths. Whilever the Arians took these terms
for granted they ‘smuggled in’ with them an ontological content that is
completely at odds with the Gospel revelation. We need, therefore, an account of ousia and of
‘oneness’ which is manifested in the economy, i.e. one that is unfolded
in the relations of the Persons.
In their development of the idea of perichoresis, the
Cappodocians found just such an account.
St John of Damascus’
put it like this: “By virtue of their eternal love they live in one
another to such an extent, and dwell in one another to such an extent
that they are one.”
Perichoresis, to use the analogy inherent in
the word, is the eternal ‘round-dance’ of the Three in which they give
to, and receive from, One Another their very life and being. These mutual, indwelling relations not
only express the interactions of the Persons, but they constitute
ontologically the Persons and, in so doing, form the one being of God.
In Colin Gunton’s
words: “The ousia – general being – of God is constituted without
remainder by what the persons are to and from each other in eternal
perichoresis… God is what he is only as a community of persons.”
Thus, the eternal dance of the Trinity is not
simply something that the Persons decide to join, nor does the dance
exist without them. Rather, the
Persons are who they are only because they are involved in these mutually
constitutive relations. The Son
is the Son only because of that eternal relationship to His Father etc,
etc. There is no question of the
Son ‘leaving the Band’, so to speak, to enjoy a ‘solo career’. The Son without the Father and the
Spirit ceases to be who He is. In
this way the oneness is protected while giving full weight to the
distinctive threeness.
If this is so, how
does it affect our doctrine of salvation? Ultimately it means that salvation is not deliverance into
some realm external to God, but is a participation in the divine nature
itself (2 Peter 1:4). This participation is a “participation through the
Spirit in the Son’s communion with the Father.”
We are invited into the dance! To
know this loving fellowship is to know the width, length, height and
breadth of the fullness of God. There is no knowledge or experience of
the Godhead to be had beyond or beneath the relations of the Persons for
the ousia is not to be found in impersonal attributes but in
loving communion.
Our salvation, as a reconciliation to God
Himself, is a fully personal experience.
Moreover, our experience of the Persons in their distinct identities
should be central to our experience of the Gospel. Our fellowship with God Himself
is the goal of the Gospel, not the attainment of a favoured status
external to Him. Thus grace is not
a substance to be transmitted from God to man (and therefore a medium
of exchange to be marketed or purchased). Instead, grace is the self-giving of God Himself in His Son
and by the Spirit. Such an
understanding immediately cuts across many wrong understandings of grace
(and by implication, of works).
Now we will examine the act of God in which He
manifested His grace…
The Cross
Julian of Norwich famously said, “When I saw
the Cross, I saw the Trinity.”
Yet before we explore the riches of such a sentiment, let us first deal with
the objection, often given, that to see the cross is to the see a denial
of the Trinity.
This objection is most often given with respect
to a penal substitutionary account of the crucifixion.
The argument goes that it is inconceivable for
Jesus, who is definitionally homoousios with the Father, to be
involved in a transaction whereby the Father metes out ‘destructive,
divine judgement’ on Him as a passive, suffering recipient.
The great problem with such a mis-reading of
penal substitution is that it assumes an ‘either-or’ which can only be
the result of a faulty doctrine of the trinity. The ‘either-or’ that is presumed is
that either Christ persuades God by His propitiatory death (in
which case the Son is the subject, the Father is the object) or God
punishes Christ who Himself is innocent (in which case the Father is the
subject and the Son is the object).
Yet a proper account of the triune relations must make clear that
‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself’ (2 Cor 5:19). In
their mutually indwelling relations, they were united in the one work in
which they were both Subject and Object. Christ was crushed by His Father
yet, also, He lay down His life of His own accord. The Father was satisfied by the
propitiation of His Son,
but, also, set Him forth as the propitiation.
To oppose penal substitution on the grounds
that it breaks the homoousios betrays a mistaken view of the
trinity. The ‘oneness’ of Father
and Son (as we have already seen above) is not the ‘oneness’ of a single,
undifferentiated Subject. Rather
it is the being in communion of Persons who have real, ontological
distinctiveness that are upheld even in that same communion which forms
the ‘oneness’. Thus the homoousios
is not broken when we see the different Persons performing different
roles at the cross. Instead we
see that the Three are involved differently but are united in the one
work of redemption.
As to their common concern for justice, the
Father metes out His divine judgement on sin, crushing the One who
‘became sin’
while the Son remains on the cross,
offering up His life as the Lamb of God. As to their common motivation in love
for the world, the Father demonstrates His love in giving His only
begotten Son;
while the Son demonstrates His love by giving Himself for us. The Persons are not identical, their
roles are not identical, yet in their mutual relations they accomplish
the one divine work of salvation.
“It takes the Trinity
to make sense of the atonement.
The interplay between the Father, Son and Spirit in the
relationships that distinguish and unite them is the only context within
which the events of Calvary and Easter can be rightly understood.”
Having established this great truth, we can
affirm positively that what Christ did for us at Calvary was, in truth,
the work of God. Thus “in light
of the doctrine of the Trinity we must see that in the person of Jesus
Christ, God himself was incarnated, endured the full burden of our penalty
and is therefore the proper basis for the redemption of anyone who is
subsumed under him. The
redemptive task was not accomplished by a third party entering the fray
between the Father and the sinner, but it was the marvellous expression
of the love and grace of the Triune God… The whole structure of the
redemptive plan is inextricably connected with the truth of the Trinity.”
Conclusion
The economy of salvation – that is, the
revelation of the Father, in the Son and by the Spirit – has truly
revealed the inner life of God. Since
we can know God truly, having in Christ a point of access which is both
in God and in our humanity, then we are assured that the God of eternity
really is the God of the Gospel.
There is no dark deity behind the back of Jesus. Instead we can, with confidence,
believe that our heavenly Father is every bit as much ‘for me’ as the
Gospel shows Jesus to be. More
than this, I can, right now, enjoy the divine fellowship, in Jesus and by
the Spirit, which constitutes the very life of God. Such an account of our salvation is
simply an exposition of the life of the Triune God. And such an exposition of the Triune
God is simply an explanation of the Gospel of salvation. Only when ‘trinity’ and ‘salvation’
are thus mutually co-ordinated is the good news seen in all its goodness.
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