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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 June 2011
If this very weighty and important book did nothing else than establish the fact for modern systematic theology that the trinitarian theology of the fourth century cannot be understood properly by dividing Eastern from Western theology with the usual statement that the former begins with the three persons and moves towards the divine unity while the latter begins with the divine unity and moves towards the three persons, then something truly significant would have been accomplished (Nicaea, pp. 52, 384). Why? Because then one would not be able to trace a supposed modalist tendency directly from Augustine through much Western theology to contemporary theologians such as Barth in order to argue for a view of God's triunity which actually could undermine the full divinity of each of the persons of the Trinity who in reality exist eternally as three persons, one being. Consider, for instance, the remark made by Ted Peters that ‘There is no inherent reason for assuming that the three persons have to be identical or equal in nature.’ If one studies the development of fourth-century trinitarian theology, I think one would find many reasons to insist that the three persons are in fact equal in nature, among which are that any other assertion would undermine the divinity of the Son, lead to some sort of subordinationism or adoptionism (what Barth called Ebionite christology), and would ultimately strip the Gospel of its saving power.
2 Peters, Ted, God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), p. 70Google Scholar.
3 See e.g. Gunton, Colin E., The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991), ch. 3Google Scholar.
4 See Torrance, Thomas F., Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995), p. 193Google Scholar. See also Colyer, Elmer M. (ed.), The Promise of Trinitarian Theology: Theologians in Dialogue with T. F. Torrance (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), p. 317Google Scholar. Torrance notes that G. D. Dragas, in St Athanasius Contra Apollinarem, refuted the idea that Athanasius was an Apollinarian.
5 See Torrance, Thomas F., The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1987), p. 51Google Scholar.
6 Gunton, Colin E., ‘And in One Lord Jesus Christ . . . Begotten, Not Made’, in Seitz, Christopher R. (ed.), Nicene Christianity: The Future for a New Ecumenism (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001), p. 35Google Scholar.
7 Barth claims Augustine was not entirely consistent in this when he later presented his imago trinitatis in the human soul. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols in 13 pts (hereafter CD). Vol. I, pt 1: The Doctrine of the Word of God, trans. G. W. Bromiley, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), pp. 475–6.
8 See CD I/1, pp. 373, 397, 474.
9 See e.g. Athanasius, Contra Ar. 1.34. Torrance notes that while the actual concept of ‘coinherence’ was not used by Athanasius, he ‘developed the conception of coinhering relations in God’ (The Trinitarian Faith, p. 305). Also, Epiphanius (c.310–403) thought of the divine persons ‘indwelling one another’ (The Trinitarian Faith, p. 326).
10 Barth notes that Augustine deals with the subject in Conf. 13. 11, 12; De civ. Dei, 11, 24–5; and esp. in De trin. 9–11. The problems associated with this could explain T. F. Torrance's frequent opposition to what he calls Augustine's dualistic disjunction of the intelligible from the sensible realms which later led to difficulties both with regard to the incarnation, the sacraments, the doctrine of grace and trinitarian doctrine.
11 See Molnar, Paul D., ‘Some Problems with Pannenberg's Solution to Barth's “Faith Subjectivism”’, Scottish Journal of Theology 48/3 (1995), pp. 315–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, trans. Bromiley, Geoffrey W. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), p. 45Google Scholar.
13 For Thomas, real relations suggested that the world's relations with God affect God (Nicaea, p. 410). Barth believes God is indeed affected by his relations with us but not in a mutually conditioning way; rather God can experience our distress without changing in his essential nature as one who loves in freedom as the Father, Son and Spirit. See e.g. CD II/1, pp. 303, 307ff., 312, 496, 510–11, and CD IV/2, p. 357.
14 For Rahner, God can change in another via the incarnation (cf. Nicaea, p. 410, n. 52); this implies that God needs another outside himself to change and illustrates the mutual conditioning that is excluded from Barth's thinking.
15 See e.g. Nicaea, pp. 142, 192–6, 231, 234 and 359. I think Barth would find problematic Gregory of Nyssa's belief that ‘terms used to describe God do not describe God's nature, they describe things “around” (περί) the divine nature, things through which the divine nature may be known’ (pp. 351–2). If our language only reaches ‘what is “around” the Godhead’ (p. 353), how do we know we actually have described God at all?
16 Distinguishing between knowing ‘that God is’ and not knowing ‘what he is’ to preserve God's incomprehensibility is impractical because ‘That God is, lies as little in the field of our spiritual oversight and control as what He is. We lack the capacity both to establish His existence and to define His being’ (CD II/1, p. 187). But God reveals this to us and so knowledge of God for Barth is ‘an event enclosed within the mystery of the divine Trinity’ (CD II/1, p. 181).
17 See CD I/1, pp. 337–8, in reference to De civ. Dei 11. 26. Barth says that what Augustine thought he saw in the human soul was more the imago Dei than a ‘mere vestigium’ (p. 338) but that ‘this theory of the vestigium above all others made an impression and formed a school throughout the centuries’, culminating in various idealist positions which ‘would be quite unthinkable except against the background of Christian dogmatics even if they were not just new variations on Augustine's proof of the Trinity’ (p. 338). Barth knew that Augustine was not claiming knowledge of the Trinity here without first knowing the Trinity itself through faith. Yet Barth maintained that Irenaeus had already warned against this, insisting we must not understand God from created things but created things from God and he was followed in this by Augustine himself, as well as by Lombard and Thomas Aquinas.
18 See also CD I/1, pp. 335 and 346.