Saturday, August 03, 2019
Trinitarian Parlance and Divine Personhood (Building on John 1:1)
A problem that Trinitarian theology has not addressed (satisfactorily) involves how it is possible to speak of the Son and holy spirit as Persons. To be sure, theologians attempt to cut the Gordian knot of this troublesome antinomy. Nevertheless, not one thinker has satisfactorily explained how Persons who are not Persons in the Cartesian sense (cogito ergo sum) can subsist with (pros) one another and enjoy meaningful communion and love one another. For instance, Robert Bowman (following earlier thinkers) suggests that "person" is analogical language when the term references God. But this explanation does not explain how one analogical divine Person can be with another analogical Person, then love and send that "analogical" person.
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4 comments:
In other words, if they act like cogito ergo sum people, then Trinitarianism collapses into tritheism.
Exactly, and too far in the other direction is modalism.
So tritheism and Modalism are the Scylla and Charybdis of Trinitarian theology.
Yes indeed! :-)
"If these [i.e., three persons] are taken as three separate centers of consciousness in an individualistic way, as some modern thought seems to do, then one would end up with tritheism, a denial of the Trinity. Equally, one can overemphasize the unity to the detriment of the persons" (John Thompson, Modern Trinitarian Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, page 6).
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