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DOCTRINE OF TRINITY | SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY | SPECIAL LECTURES | SECULARIZATION AND SANCTIFICATION
CHAPTER V: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ETERNAL GENERATION DOCTRINE
IN THE CONTEMPORARY TRINITARIAN TRENDS
Jung S. Rhee
[Footnotes]
1 Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, tr. Margaret Kohl (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), p. 139.
2 Geoffrey W. Bromiley, An Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pubiishing Co., 1979), p. 16.
3 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1. viii.
4 Fred H. Klooster, The Significance of Barth's Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1961), p. 32.
5 Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1. 350.
6 Ibid., I/1. 382.
7 F. W. Camfield, Revelation and the Holy Spirit; An Essay in Barthian Theology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), pp. 234-239.
8 Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1. 285.
9 Ibid., I/1. 382.
10 Barth, The Holy Ghost and the Christian Life, tr. R. Birch Hoyle (London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1938), p. 5.
11 R. S. Franks, The Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd., 1953), p. 181.
12 Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/I. 196-197.
13 Ibid., I/1. 357.
14 Ibid., I/1. 355, 359.; However, in his article entitled "On Keeping 'Persons' in the Trinity: a Linguistic Approach To Trinitarian Thought," Theological Studies 41 (1980): 547-548, Lawrence B. Porter persuasively suggests three reasons why we must still to keep the term "person" in the trinitarian discussion today: (i) This language preserves and conveys with laudable concision and emphasis the distinctive character of the scriptural revelation of God as pre-eminently and always personal. (ii) There is the apologetic and probative value of such problematic language. The language "persons" is instructively provocative as a challenge to the unitarian images of God common to humanistic and philosophical notions of deity. (iii) It preserves and vitalizes a link between theology and life. As he concludes, though the choice of term may be switched when its connotation is seriously changed, such is not the situation today.
15 Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1. 297. "In our treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity we took the view that the concept 'person' should be dropped in the description of this matter, because in all classical theology it has never in fact been understood and interpreted in the sense in which we are accustomed to think of the term today. The Christian Church has never taught that there are in God three persons and therefore three personalities in the sense of a threefold Ego, a threefold subject."
16 Ibid., I/1. 351. "'Person' as used in the Church doctrine of the Trinity bears no direct relation to personality. The meaning of the doctrine is not then, that there are three personalities in God. This would be the worst and most extreme expression of tritheism, against which we must be on guard at this stage."
17 Ibid., I/1. 355.
18 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 115: "...the term 'prosopon' and 'persona' were admirably suited to express the otherness, or independent subsistence, of the Three....The primary sense of 'persona' was 'mask'...but as employed by Tertullian it connoted the concrete presentation of an individual as such."; pp. 122-123. "One point which seems to be established is that the traditional belief that he spoke of Father, Son and Spirit as three 'prosopa', in the sense of masks or outward appearances, is erroneous. The term 'prosopon', as we have already seen, was used by Hippolytus to signify the otherness, or separate subsistence,...i.e., individual or Person."
19 Barth, Church Dogmatics, I/1. 348.
20 Ibid,, II/1. 297. "There are not three faces of God, but one face; not three wills but one will; not three rights, but one right; not three Words and works, but one Word and work", and "The one God is revealed to us absolutely in Jesus Christ."
21 Ibid., II/1. 284.
22 Ibid., I/1. 351.
23 Plantinga, "The Hodgson-Welch Debate", p. 8.
24 In three ways, it can be explained why he became to be a modalist in the doctrine of the Trinity. (i) he formed his doctrine of the Trinity not by the synthesis of the biblical data, but by the analysis of a statement, which was for him the summary of the whole revelation: "We may sum all this up in the statement that God reveals Himself as the Lord."(I/1. 306); "This statement...as attested by Scripture, we call the root of the doctrine of the Trinity."(I/1. 307); "God reveals Himself as the Lord: in this statement we have summed up our understanding of the form and content of the biblical revelation."(I/1. 314); (ii) he tended to emphasize oneness of the Trinity rather than threeness. Threeness of the Trinity was not really a threat to the Church of Karl Barth, and rather it was unitarianism or monotheism denying the divinity of Jesus and the personality of the Spirit. Therefore, his approach is strange and mistaken.; (iii) he conceptualized revelation as "event". Accordingly, his understanding of the Trinity, which is the analysis of revelation, happens to reflect the idea of the Triune God as "event"(p. 30), and "the singularity of this being of God as event", which entails modalistic idea of three persons as a momentary happenings. As Eberhard Jungel explains, in his The Doctrine of the Trinity: God's Being is in Becoming (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), "Barth's doctrine of the Trinity" was "an attempt to formulate the being of God as event"(p. 28), which was Barth's main concern.
25 Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944); Leonard Hodgson, "The Doctrine of the Trinity: Some Further Thoughts'" Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 5 (1954): 49-55.; Leonard Hodgson "Trinitarian Theology: The Glory of the Eternal Trinity," Christianity Today 6 (1962): 827-829.; However, it is suggested that this social theory of the Trinity has been originated from Tertullian, Athanasius, and Cappadocian Fathers. See William Hasker, "Tri-Unity," Journal of Religion 50 (1970): 7-11; and Plantinga, "Hodgson-Welch Debate," pp. 252ff.
26 For example, Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, tr. Margaret Kohl (New York: Harper & Row, 198l); William Hasker, "Tri-Unity," Journal of Religion 50 (1970): 1-32.; Joseph A. Bracken, What are they saying about the Trinity? (New York: Paulist Press, 1979); Bracken, "The Holy Trinity as a Community of Divine Persons," Heythrop Journal 15 (1974): 166-182, 257-270.; Bracken, "Subsistent Relation: Mediating Concept for a New Synthesis?", Journal of Religion 64 (1984): 188-204.; Daniel L. Migliore, "The Trinity and Human Liberty," Theology Today 36 (1980): 488-497.; Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. "The Hodgson-Welch Debate"; Plantinga, "Gregory of Nissa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity," mimeographed (1984); Plantinga, "Images of God," mimeographed (1984); Plantinga, "The Threeness/oneness Problem of the Trinity," Calvin Theological Journal 23 (1988): 37-53; Plantinga, "The perfect family: our model for life together is found in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit," Christianity Today 32 (1988): 24-27.
27 Plantinga, "Gregory of Nissa and the Social Analogy of the Trinity," p. 190.
28 Ibid., pp. 198, 201.
29 Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, p. 243. n. 43.: "As the history of theology shows, there has never been a Christian tritheist. Even Barth does not name any, although he argues so vigorously against tritheism....The standard argument against 'tritheism' practically serves everywhere to disguise the writer's own modalism."
30 Plantinga, "The Hodgson-Welch Debate", p. 224.: "Meanwhile, for modalist-tending theologians, someone to their pluralist side, even if within some classically accepted boundary, is often called a tritheist."
31 Ibid., pp. 9-10. "...the British-American 'social analogy' tradition of trinitarian theology. Anglican divines have favored the social analogy since World War I(in example, Clement C. J. Webb, God and Personality, 1918), but the tradition did not receive a truly skillful and widely-discussed expression until Leonard Hodgson's 1943 Croall lectures, The Doctrine of the Trinity." However, he does not make Hodgson a genuine social trinitarian: p. 10. n. 21. And indeed Hodgson's theory, as we shall see, mixes social and psychological analogies. But I shall use 'social analogy,' or, alternatively, 'strong trinitarian theory,' for any theory which holds that the Trinity includes three fully personal subjects. In that general sense Hodgson's theory is a social analogy. Though it is true that once Hodgson disvowed his theory not to be a social analogy, it is hardly understandable.
32 Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity. p. 100.
33 Ibid., p. 102.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., p. 143. "It would seem at first sight as though there might be wide divergences between their(Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin) teaching and mine in two directions. First, in their discussions of the filiation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit they include in their doctrinal statements a great deal that I exclude as belonging to the realm of imagination." And, then p. 157. "...and I am of opinion that if St. Augustine, St. Thomas and Calvin were alive to-day they would be glad in this respect to revise what they have written."
36 Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, pp. 164-165.
37 Ibid., p. 164.
38 Ibid., p. 224.
39 Ibid.
40 Leonard Boff, Trinity and Society, tr. Paul Burns (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), pp. 11-16, 111-154. "Human society holds a vestigium Trinitas since the Trinity is 'the divine society.' This idea of the Trinity as the supreme society, the model for any society seeking participation and equality, was sketched out by M. J. Scheeban, and later elaborated by the Belgian theologian d'Eypernon and by Jurgen Moltmann," p. 119.
41 Ibid., p. 91.
42 Ibid., pp. 117-118.
43 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), pp. 41-45, 216-232.
44 Carolyn Osiek, "The Feminist and the Bible: Hermeneutical Alternatives," in Feminist Perspectives on Biblical Scholarship, ed. Adela Yarbro Collins (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), p. 95.
45 Donald G. Bloesch, The Battle for the Trinity: The Debate over Inclusive God-Language (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Publications, 1985), p. xv.
46 Letty M. Russell, Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1985), pp. 11-18, 137-146.
47 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Womanguides: Reading Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), p. xi.
48 Ibid., p. ix.
49 Alan E. Lewis, ed., The Motherhood of God: A Report of a Study Group appointed by the Woman's Guild and the Panel on Doctrine on the invitation of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1984), p. 11.
50 Cf. Roberta C. Bondi, "Some Issues Relevant to a Modern Interpretation of the Language of the Nicene Creed, with Special Reference to 'Sexist' Language," Union Seminary Quarterly Review 40 (1985): 21-22. She contends that the Nicene Creed, affected by the contemporary rise of monasticism, use "the apparently patriarchal language."
51 Naomi R. Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 4-5, 8-9; Feminist theologians prefer the term "goddess" to "god" and develop the goddesses of ancient religions, and even Protestant feminists are very respective to the Roman Catholic tradition of Mary worship. For example, see Joan Chamberlain Engelsman, The Feminine Dimension of the Divine (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1979).
52 The Holy Spirit is sexualized as a feminine divinity, for example, in Erminie Huntress Lantero, Feminine Aspects of Divinity (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Bill Publications, 1973), pp. 17-20. Christians have some gentle and warm feelings of the Holy Spirit, but it may not be assumed as feminine, when we reflect nativity account which says that the Holy Spirit made Mary conceive Jesus. There appears rather masculine role of the Holy Spirit if we have to understand the Holy Spirit as having a sex.
53 Judith Ochshorn, The Female Experience and the Nature of the Divine (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), pp. 136-137.
54 Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), p. 19. "In such a theology[metaphorical theology], no finite thought, product, or creature can be identified with God and this includes Jesus of Nazareth."
55 Rebecca Oxford-Carpenter, "Gender and the Trinity," Theology Today 41 (1984/85): 9.
56 Marjorie Suchocki, "The Unmale God: Reconsidering the Trinity," Quarterly Review 3 (1983): 38-39. She denies the real generation and ontological sonship on the cultural and linguistic assumptions.
57 Deborah Malacky Belonick, "Revelation and Metaphors: the Significance of the Trinitarian Names, Father, Son and Holy Spirit," Union Seminary Quarterly Review 40 (1985): 34, 35, 39.
58 Sandra M. Schneiders, Women and the Word: The Gender of God in the New Testament and the Spirituality of Women (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), p. 27. Here, she is critical to the literalized metaphor(i.e., God the Father, or God the Mother), but feminist ideology proceeds further beyond a simple inclusivism to the literalized metaphor of feminism.
59 Bloesch, The Battle for the Trinity, p. xvi.
60 Roland Mushat Frye, "Language for God and Feminist Language: A Literary and Rhetorical Analysis," Interpretation 43 (1989): 48.
61 Neil Richardson, "The Old Testament Background of Jesus as Begotten of God," Bible Review 2, No.3 (1986): 26-27.
62 Royce Gordon Gruenler, The Trinity in the Gospel of John: A Thematic Commentary on the Fourth Gospel (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, l986), pp. 25-26; Charles G. Dennison, "How Is Jesus the Son of God?: Luke's Baptism Narrative and Christology," Calvin Theological Journal 17 (1982): 23-24.
63 Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament, tr. Shirlay C. Guthrie and Charles A. M. Hall(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, l963), p. 282. "He did not avoid the title 'Son of God' but he used it so seldom that we can hardly consider it a typical self-designation like 'Son of Man'. And yet the conviction that in a unique way he was 'God's Son' must belong to the very heart of what we call the 'self-consciousness' of Jesus."; Seyoon Kim, The Son of Man as the Son of God (T봔 J. C. B. Mohr, l983), p. 5. "Thus all four Gospels identify the Son of Man with the Son of God. Perhaps it is natural, because for the Evangelists the divine Sonship of Jesus is a firm datum." He refered to 2 Sam 7.l2-l5 as the ground to affirm Jesus' messianic self-understanding which correlates those two self-designations in the Biblical Heilsgeschichte, in pp. 79-8l.
64 Martin Hengel, The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion (Philadeiphia: Fortress Press, l976), P. 9l.
65 Arthur W. Wainwright, The Trinity in the New Testament (London: SPCK, 1962), p. 191. "...the title 'Father' occurs 121 times in the Fourth Gospel and 16 times in the Johannine Epistles as against 123 times in the rest of the New Testament....The title 'Son' occurs 28 times in the Fourth Gospel and 24 times in the Johannine Epistles as against 67 times in the rest of the New Testament," p. 192.
66 Dale Moody, "God's Only Son: The Translation of John 3.16 in the Revised Standard Version," Journal of Biblical Literature 72 (1953): 213-219; Francis Marion Warden, "God's Only Son," Review and Expositor50(1953): 216-223; R. L. Roberts, "The Rendering 'Only Begotten' in John 3:16," Restoration Quarterly 16 (1973): 2-22 support the new rendering of "Only Son," while the following argue for the legitimacy of the old rendering, i.e., "Only Begotten Son.": John V. Dahms, "The Johannine Use of MONOGENES Reconsidered," New Testament Studies 29 (1983): 222-232; James M. Bulman, "The Only Begotten Son," Calvin Theological Journal 16 (1981): 56-79.
67 Moody, "God's Only Son," pp. 213-214. Particulary, Moody's argument was prompted by Francis Marion Warden's dissertation.
68 Brooke Foss Westcott, The Epistle of St. John: The Greek Text with Notes and Essays (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1955), p. 170. However, he did not negate some usages of monogenes which means "only begotten."
69 Roberts, "The Rendering 'Only Begotten' in John 3:16," pp. 2-3. "For from being the new rendering, 'only' is one of the oldest." He listed all the English versions which have "only" upto William Tyndale(1525).
70 Bulman, "The Only Begotten Son," p. 56.
71 Roberts, "The Rendering 'Only Begotten' in John 3:16," p. 15.
72 Dahms, "The Johannine Use of MONOGENES Reconsidered," p. 230.
73 Moody, "God's Only Son," p. 219.
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