Doctrine of the Trinity

Transcription

1 Doctrine of the Trinity ST506 LESSON 04 of 24 Peter Toon, DPhil Cliff College Oxford University King s College University of London Liverpool University I begin with a prayer from the Psalms. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be all way acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen. Today we turn our attention to the Old Testament, and I want to introduce that subject by referring to the most famous artistic portrayal of the Holy Trinity in the icon or the holy picture painted by Andrei Rublev, R U B L E V, early in the fifteenth century in Russia. You will realize that he was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church and therefore that background comes into his portrayal of the Holy Trinity. This icon depicts three angels seated around a table on which there is a chalice or a Eucharistic cup. In the background are a house and tree. This icon was inspired as the greatest works of Trinitarian art have been by the narrative in Genesis 18 of the visit of three beings I say three beings in order to include the possibility of both divine and human, depending upon one s reading of that text of the visit of three beings to the home of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham met the strangers outside, and despite not knowing their identity, Abraham called upon Sarah and together they showed these visitors extraordinary hospitality. While the visitors reclined under the oaks of Mamre, Sarah baked bread and Abraham prepared the meal. In the process of sharing the resources of their household, the identity of the visitors was revealed to be Yahweh, Jehovah God, and two angels. Yahweh then promised that the elderly Sarah and Abraham would have a child, Isaac. How fitting it is that hospitality and the quite ordinary setting of a household, even though it was the better kind of household of those days, should have emerged as the inspiration for this holy picture, this icon, and so many other artistic interpretations of the Holy Trinity in Christian history. 1 of 11

2 In Rublev s icon, the temple in the background is the transformation of Abraham s and Sarah s house. The oak tree stands for the Tree of Life, and the position of the three beings is suggested. Although they are arranged in a circle, the circle is not closed. Thus one can have the distinct appreciation when meditating upon this holy picture that one s self is not only invited into this communion, but indeed one s self is already intended to be a part of it. And to this end, we should also not miss the significance of the chalice, the Eucharistic cup in the center, which is within the Orthodox Church the sacramental sign not only of our communion with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, God, but also with one another. You may like to look up in pictures of Christian art that icon and to study it to reflect upon it. Having raised this question of the meaning of Genesis 18, it will be appropriate, I believe, to read to you a part of it so that you can think about it, and maybe you can go to the better commentaries and see what they have to say about it. The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. He said, If I have found favor in your eyes, my LORD, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat so you can be refreshed and then go on your way, now that you have come to your servant. Very well, they answered, Do as you say. So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. Quick he said, get three seahs of fine flour and knead it and bake some bread. And then he ran to the herd and selected a choice tender calf and gave it to a servant who hurried to prepare it. He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree. Where is your wife Sarah? they asked him. There in the tent, he said. Then the Lord said, I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah your wife will have a son. Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure? Then the LORD said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh and say, Will I really have a child now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son. Sarah was afraid, so she lied and 2 of 11

3 said, I did not laugh. But he said, Yes, you did laugh. When the men got to leave, they looked down toward Sodom and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation and all nations on earth will be blessed through him, for I have chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised. And then you can read on in the rest of chapter 18 and then into chapter 19, and what you ll find here is this intriguing presentation of the Lord, Yahweh Jehovah, speaking to Abraham and at the same time the presence of the three men or the three angels or the three beings. It is, indeed, a very mysterious, in the sense of awesome mysterious, account and no wonder that it has been seen as a sign pointing to the reality of God as a unity in Trinity and a Trinity in unity. Let us think a little more about the interpretation of this because it seems to me that the way that the early church and the way that the medieval church, less so from the Reformation onwards, read the Old Testament, is a very important background clue to the development of Christian doctrine and to the use of both typology and allegory in the interpretation of the Old Testament. Now when you go to try to see, first of all, how the Jewish rabbis and the Targums, etcetera interpreted this passage in Genesis 18 and 19, you ll find, and this is well demonstrated if you want to look it up in the book by Arthur W. Wainwright, The Trinity in the New Testament [London: SPCK, 1962; reprint ed., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2001], in the early chapters of that book he deals with the background in the Old Testament and on pages 26 and following, he gives a brief summary of the way in which Judaism interpreted chapters 18 and 19. As I say, you can read it, and what you ll find is that there is this desire among interpreters to reduce this concept of three to one. In other words, there is an attempt to remove what we may call the mystery from this and to reduce it to the encounter of Abraham with his God, Yahweh, with the presence of angels. But as we ve noted, the passage is more intriguing and more mysterious than that simple interpretation. So when you leave behind writers like Philo, the famous Alexandrian Jew, and you turn to the early Christian writers, you find that they begin here to see much more than did the Jewish interpreters, and if, for example, you turn to the two famous Latin 3 of 11

4 theologians, to Ambrose and to Augustine, you ll find that they have rather marvelous presentations of the appearance here of the three persons of the Holy Trinity. For example, Augustine s is found in his book to which I ve already referred, De Trinitatae, On the Holy Trinity, book 3 and section 25 [3.25]. We ve begun with this because, as I said earlier, of all the passages in the Old Testament which have intrigued Christian theologians and Christian artists in their search for hints or betrayals of the Holy Trinity in the Old Testament, it is this passage here. But in modern times, the more usual way of looking for the background to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the Old Testament has been rather plainer. It has been to work with the various concepts that you find in the Old Testament, the concept of wisdom, the concept of Word, that is, the wisdom of God and the Word of God, and the concept of the Spirit of God, and then the portrayal and the concept of the Messiah. And if you read modern books, you find that that s where the emphasis is, but it does seem to me that the early church and the medieval church went on to something very important and very powerful in this typological and sometimes allegorical reading of the Old Testament. What I want to do now is to continue to reflect upon the possibility that there is portrayed in the Old Testament what we may call not only the unity of God, but also a plurality within God. That is, to see whether or not we can see that God in the Old Testament, while being portrayed and presented and confessed as one Lord, one God, is at the same time in a mysterious way, a way that defies explanation but attracts one s reflection, whether or not he is portrayed as having, as it were, within His unity a plurality. So that s where I want to go now, and I want to bring with that most well-known of statements of the faith of the Old Covenant and thus the faith of Judaism, which is found in the book of Deuteronomy in chapter 6 and verse 4 and following, which is normally called the Shema by the Jews. Let me read it to you from the New International Version. Deuteronomy 6, verse 4 and following: Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of 4 of 11

5 your houses and on your gates. Now the words I want us to think about are the ones at the beginning, Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. When you look at the Hebrew words being used here, and I must confess to you at this stage that I have no expertise whatsoever in Hebrew and I rely upon the experts whom I follow, but here we find, if I may put it into half English and half Hebrew, that we read, Hear, O Israel: Yahweh (or Jehovah) our Elohim is Yahweh, a unity. Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our Elohim is Yahweh, a unity. You ll note here, and I m sure that you ve done courses in Old Testament so you re aware of all this, Yahweh or Jehovah is singular, but Elohim is a plural noun. Despite various explanations given by scholars of what this plural form means, that is, Elohim rather than El, no indisputable criterion for choosing one solution as against another has yet been found. And one could translate and be grammatically correct in this way: Hear, O Israel: Yahweh, our Gods (plural) is Yahweh, a unity. By raising this most well-known of Old Testament statements of the unity of God, we have also, as you now have realized, raised the question of plurality within God because of the very fact that this intriguing plural word for God, Elohim, is in fact here in the plural. So now what I want to do is to follow a line of reasoning which I invite you to follow up and to talk with your Old Testament professors about, and it is to develop this idea of plurality within unity, that is, without in any way whatsoever questioning the unity of God, asking whether it s possible to think in some way or another about plurality in God within unity. To help us in this, there are two books, both of them rather short, which I commend to you. You may have to search hard for them because they were published a few years ago. One of them, which I remember reading when I was a theological student in the University of London, what seems now a long time ago, is called A Biblical Approach to the Doctrine of the Trinity by G. A. F. Knight, that is K N I G H T, and it was published from the Scottish Journal of Theology as the first occasional paper associated with the Scottish Journal of Theology [Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967]. The other book is also written by someone from the British side of things, and this one is The Concept of the One and the Many by Johnson. A. R. Johnson, The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of God [1942; reprint ed., Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1961].The one that I am particularly using today is the one 5 of 11

6 by G. A. F. Knight, although if you can get the one by Johnson, then I commend it to you. Now, as I say, I am not an expert in the Old Testament, and therefore I am sitting, as it were, on the backs of these two scholars, but it does seem to me, having read what they have to say and having read what the early Fathers of the church and some of the major medieval divines have to say, that there is something worth pondering and something which is truly worthy of consideration in this idea of plurality within unity. So I now then bring to you some of the information, by no means all, just a taste of the approach by Dr. Knight concerning the idea of plurality in unity, and the part that I want to share with you from Knight is the part wherein he reasons or develops thinking from human nature or from man, made in the image of God, to God. You will see what that means as I now read extracts from him and comment as I go. He begins then from the premise that within the nature of man, who is made in the image and after the likeness of God, there is a unity in diversity and diversity in unity. I haven t time to go into that, but you are all well aware that in the Old Testament, man is presented as a unity, but yet he is a unity of many parts. He is body, soul, and spirit, but yet he is one being, one man. So sitting on that particular foundation and working from that background, Knight then invites us to examine the relationship between a man and his name. Again, I believe that you are well aware that in the Old Testament, the name given to a baby is not merely any name or a name which the parents feel good about, but it is a name which is intended within the intention of God and within that cultural framework to indicate something important or something central to the personality or the vocation or the relation to God of this baby as this baby becomes a man. So, for example, Abram becomes Abraham in his new relation with God. Jacob receives the name of Israel after the famous incident at Peniel. In the same way, Gideon becomes Jerubbaal, Eliakim becomes Jehoiakim, and so on. So you are very well aware of that, and there are many instances in the Old Testament of names being important. Now when you turn to the way that God is self-portrayed in the Old Testament, you find that there is here also this most intimate connection between God as God and His name. He possesses a name. Just as God is presented in the anthropomorphic style of the Old Testament as possessing hands and arms, so also God possesses a name. Moreover, the name of God seems to be as much an alter ego of God as man s name, in the presentation of 6 of 11

7 man s name in the Old Testament, is his alter ego. In the first place, we have a poetic use of the concept in Psalm 20, verse 1, The name of the God of Jacob defend thee. In Proverbs 18:10, The name of Yahweh is a strong tower. So also God is said to act in certain ways for His name s sake. But second, the concept of the name is used in an objective fashion in such phrases as the following: Exodus 20:24, And altar of earth thou shalt make unto me... in all places where I record my name, I will come unto thee and I will bless thee. Deuteronomy repeats and develops this concept on many occasions, where we find for example the phrase, the place which Yahweh, thy God, shall choose to place his name, there is reiterated. The place where he chose to put His name was His, as Deuteronomy 12:5 puts it, his habitation on earth. So the name of God does seem to possess something of what in Latin we call the alter ego, the other I, the alternative I, capital I, of course, of God. So that s one thought. We shall come back to it in a little while. To continue this way of thinking, as we read the Old Testament one is very much aware that the God who there is presented and the God whom we encounter through the sacred narrative is the God who is the transcendent God. God is the holy Other as presented in the book of Isaiah. To Amos, God is the Creator to the ends of the earth. He is the governor and controller of the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Philistines, and the Greeks alike. He that dwelleth in the heavens shall laugh, is one way of presenting the transcendent sovereignty of this God. In fact, so transcendent is this God that even the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. How then can God dwell upon the earth? But will God, indeed, dwell on the earth? Behold, the heaven and heaven of heaven cannot contain thee, how much less this house that I have builded, yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant and to his supplication, O Lord, my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer, which thy servant prayeth before thee this day, that thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place to which thou has said, My name shall be there. 7 of 11

8 And so the writer tells us Solomon prayed in this way at the dedication of the temple (1 Kings 8). We recall that the name represented the essence of what we may call the personality of the living God. The personality of God was above even the heaven of heavens, but yet He was present, He was truly present; in some sense or another His being was present in the temple. God, we may say, and here language fails us, God had extended Himself. God had placed His alter ego in the temple. Or to use modern terms for such pictorial thinking, for so much Hebrew thinking is what we may call pictorial thinking, but to put it in modern terms, in more direct straightforward terms as far as we understand terms, the nature of God is to be conceived in terms of diversity in unity. The same kind of appreciation arises when we study the concept of the Word of God. In fact, when we do, as we shall, we come to a conclusion which is parallel to that of the name of God which we have just briefly looked. The conception of the Word of God as being in a sense the alter ego of God is not difficult to grasp once we realize the objectivity of such anthropomorphic expressions as the arm of God. Isaiah 51:5, Mine arms shall judge the people, says God and on my arm shall they trust. In such a case, God s arm acts for God. While being an independent part of God, yet His arm is God, and we may say the whole of God is present in His arm, though paradoxically, His arm is not the whole of God. You may remember, to have a brief, as it were, excursion here, that the early church father, Irenaeus, who seeks to be very biblical, very Hebraic, if you like, in his theology, makes use of the concept of the two hands of God to present the relation of the Son the Son of God and the Holy Spirit to the Father. But that is to anticipate work we shall do. But back to this concept of the Word of God being, in a sense, the alter ego of God. To illustrate this, Knight makes use of something which we all know about because of its use in comics and in the strips in the daily newspaper. In a children s comic, or even for adults these days, the words that people utter, you will remember, are usually written with a line ringing them round and are connected by another line with the mouth of the speaker. Their words, thereby, have a very objective and solid look about them, framed as they are on the comic strip. You sense that the contents of the frame are now out of the speakers in actuality, that words that came out as thin sounds have condensed like steam into very tangible clouds and that it is now too late to do anything about them. You cannot push the words back into the mouths of the speakers. They have, if you like, solidified, they have become 8 of 11

9 objectified. You can only deal with them now for good or for evil. Using that illustration, which I think is a helpful one, we may say that so also in the Old Testament, once a word coming either from the heart of man or from the living God is uttered, it condenses so to speak and becomes objective; it becomes a thing. There are some well-known examples of this with respect to human beings. When Isaac blesses the wrong son, you remember Genesis, chapter 27, he is unable to recall the blessing and transfer it to Esau. The blessings of Jacob in Genesis 49 and the blessings of Moses in Deuteronomy 33 are effective in their results. Similarly, with the concept of the curse, the word uttered as a curse. It too was objective in nature and transferrable from one person to another. And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son (Genesis 27:13). Or from Numbers 22, verse 6, Come I pray thee, curse me this people before a battle. Now as with man, so with God. You re all familiar with that great text. For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I send it (Isaiah 55:10 11). When God speaks, when the Word of God is uttered, then the Word naturally condenses, to use the word we ve used already, because God can only speak with intent. The Word objectifies itself. It cannot return unto God void but must accomplish that which God pleases. You will remember that in Psalm 105, verse 28, the Word of God is spoken of in a manner which shows it to be objectively independent of God. They rebelled not against his word. Psalm 119, verse 89, Forever, O Yahweh, thy word is settled in heaven. Other passages not only objectify the Word, they reveal it as the living extension of the Living God. Psalm 107:20, He sent his word and healed them. Or Psalm 130:5, I wait for the LORD and in his word do I hope. Or Psalm 147:15, He sendeth forth his commandment upon earth; his word runneth very swiftly. Or the same Psalm 147:18, He sendeth out his word and melteth [in this case the ice]. 9 of 11

10 The concept of God as speaking, as uttering by means of His Word, His very will and purpose, is true, I think we all know, to the whole of the Old Testament. Moreover, it is not even necessary for God to speak His Word. It is sufficient for Him to think His Word or to plan His Word for it to become objectified. We recall Genesis 1:3, And God said [that is, God said within Himself], Let there be light. And there was light. Just as the human word was a living thing, so was the Word of God. It was, if you like, a part of God, the living God, and being part of God, it contained the whole potency of God s will and person in it when it was uttered and became separate from God. And the development of this idea, as we shall see later, is in the famous prologue to the gospel of John, The Word both was with God and was God. And so, says Dr. Knight, We discover that the Word of God, like the concept of the name of God, seems to be another alter ego of God Himself. We are, thereby, confronted with the second aspect of what we have called the diversity in unity, which the Old Testament reveals to us of the nature of God. What we have before us then, says Dr. Knight, are two examples of typically Hebraic metaphysical thinking. But though their thought forms are strange to us, we must recognize that by means of them, the Hebrews are seeking to express what to them was essentially true of their God. That is, that He, their God, is not to be thought of as a mere monad of being or as a mathematical integer is one over against another one. While such thinking may be around us today, and maybe we are guilty of such thinking, that is, thinking of God as a mere monad of being or as a mathematical integer, Dr. Knight has argued, and I think that there is great merit in his argument, that the concept of unity, the concept of oneness, is not of that of the mathematical integer or of the one monad of being. To help us understand this, he gives us the example from Genesis 2, verse 24 where we read, Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh. Now there we have in the oneness there, he says, a clear exposition of diversity in unity being used of man. And then he invites us to go back to Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 4, and to meditate again as we read the Shema, Here, O Israel, Yahweh, thy God, is one Yahweh. And he invites us to study that word one Yahweh. Is it the oneness of a mere monad of being or the oneness of the mathematical one, or is it rather that oneness, that unity, which in the human reality at the level of man is seen in the unity of man and woman in holy matrimony as one flesh? 10 of 11

11 Which is it? I guess you know. It is that same word, that same concept, which is there in the unity of man and woman as one flesh. Thus, God is one, but the oneness of God is a remarkable oneness, for in it there is a remarkable plurality. Now once you try to examine this philosophically, you get into all kinds of headaches through your ratty old... explorations, but the point is that if the Old Testament is the preparation for the New Testament, that if God in His self-revelation in the Old Testament is giving as it were holy clues, holy insights to who He is, then it ought not to surprise us that there are these holy hints, these holy revelations that while God must always confessed as one God, His oneness, His unity, is not a simplistic mathematical unity, but it is a richness in unity, a richness which only is seen when the fullness of the doctrine of God as the Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity is fully revealed. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 11 of 11