10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #5 “Persons” – Part 2

It is impossible to ignore that prominently in the New Testament, two members of the trinity/Trinity interact in I-Thou, Me-You ways, as person to person, self to self. Thus, Jesus prays to his Father, and sometimes, the Father speaks about or to Jesus. This seems to presuppose that both Father and Son are selves. And in a few passages, “the Holy Spirit” is said to speak, or to grieve – things which arguably only selves can do. (e.g. John 14:26; Ephesians 4:30; Acts 5:3, 13:2)

Recent “social” trinitarians of the last fifty years or so have come up with a new theme previously unheard of: the Trinty (or the trinity?) as a loving community, a happy collective of friends, eternally enjoying one another. These trinitarians are thinking of the three Persons as so many selves, that is to say, as three personal beings or persons.

This seems to accommodate the New Testament portrayals of friendship and cooperation between the “Persons,” but only at the cost of tritheism, a high price indeed. Isn’t monotheism a non-negotiable, as far as the Bible is concerned? And what has become of the idea of a tripersonal god? Is the Trinity, the triune god, a mere group of deities, or a whole composed of deities which is not it self a deity, not a god? How can the Trinity not be a god?

Against these three-self trinitarians, probably the larger group of trinitarians in recent times have asserted that the “Persons” of the Trinity are “not persons in the modern sense.” This, of course, tells us what they are not, and doesn’t tell us what they are. It can mean as little as that the three selves are not “separate from” one another, as they have perfect access to one another’s thoughts, desires, feelings, and experiences. Or it can mean that the “Persons” of the Trinity are not much like the “minds” or souls, discussed in Western philosophy since the work of Rene Descartes (1596-1650), in other words, non-physical selves.

But what else might these eternal, divine “Persons” be, if they are not selves? In general, non-social trinitarians consider them to be something less than selves, the sorts of things which might exist in, or dependent upon selves. The two most prominent 20th century trinitarian theologians, Karl Barth (1886-198) and Karl Rahner (1904-84) suggested, respectively, that “modes of being” or “manners of subsisting” might be a better term for what God is three of. Why did they say this? In short, they were concerned to keep their theology monotheistic, that is, presenting one and only one god. If the “Persons” are ways the one god is, they don’t then seem to be three gods, three divine selves. On this view, the “Persons” are not selves, but ways the one divine self is. This is one self trinitarianism, thought it is usually not called that.

What is a god? A divine being. What is a divine being? One popular answer is that a divine being is one who essentially has the divine attributes. What are those? According to the Bible and later Christian tradition, things like moral perfection, perfect freedom of action, unlimited knowledge, and the greatest sort of power to intentionally do things. Notice that each attribute just named seems to be the sort of feature only a self could have.

Also, take note of the way Christians relate to God. Made for fellowship with him, we have offended him, and need to be reconciled to him. We need his forgiveness, and we can talk to him. And sometimes, in dreams, visions, or through written sources, God speaks back. When he does he says, “I,” “me,” and “my” – he’s a someone, a self. And not just any old self, but a divine one, the only divine self, the only god. For Christians, “God” is not a force, a mere idea, or a something-or-other. Our “God” is a someone, to be compared to an ideal human parent, the heavenly “Father” taught by Jesus and his apostles.

We can’t, in the view of these theologians, posit three divine selves, for such would be three gods, which is two too many. Yet, catholic tradition insists that the three “Person” of the Trinity are equally divine. They must be, the thought goes, three ways that the one divine self is, three of his modes.

Lest someone howl that this is “Sabellianism,” a view attributed to the obscure third century theologian Sabellius, and repeatedly denounced since then, these modern theologians need only to add that the modes are eternally concurrent, not one-after-the-other, and that each is essential to God. Essentially, they think, God lives in these three ways that we call “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit.” Just what this amounts to is variously explained. Sometimes these are compared to personalities or personas which may be multiple within a human person. But in any case, in their view we have one divine self who lives his life as three “Persons,” and so we have precisely one god, God.

But what, we wonder, happened to that prominent New Testament theme mentioned above, the interpersonal relationship between Father and Son? Can this be understood as a friendship (or “friendship”) between two modes of one divine self? Was the man Jesus a “mode” of the one God, and not a being in his own right, a human self, which is to say, a living human being?

Who is right? It looks to be a tough dilemma. Either you give up real interpersonal friendship between the “Persons,” or you compromise monotheism, with three “fully divine” selves, each seemingly a god.

Might there by another way? Should we decline to say either that God is more than one self, or that God is one self? Is this a position we can actually believe and practice? Some, loving paradoxes, may affirm both exactly one and three, but that looks like trying to paint a happy face on what we’d consider a theoretical failure in any other area. It is no achievement to assert that God is and is not a (single) self.

These sorts of problems are widely avoided in recent academic theology. Unable to pick, many theologians self-comfort with the falsehood that these differences are merely differences of emphasis. There are, of course, differences of emphasis between various trinitarian theologians, but there are also substantial disagreements, as we’ve seen, on this core issue of interpretation. And it is a pressing issue. And a main device to put these disagreements out of one’s mind is to talk loudly and often about “the” doctrine of the Trinity, as something agreed on by all Christians, or nearly so. But the reality is more complex, and it is simple logic that if the Trinity is either a self or not. And it as simple logic that these can’t both be true: there’s exactly one divine self, and there are exactly three divine selves.

Until we decide what is meant by “Person” in the statement that “God is three Persons” we’ll be unable to even try to hunt for reasons for or against the claim, or to decide whether the claim fits or misfits the Bible. One can’t even agree or disagree with an uninterpreted sentence. You may find such a sentence in your church’s or denomination’s creed, something like

The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being. (The [Southern] Baptist Faith and Message, section II)

“Himself.” So, the triune god is a self. But so, it would seem, are the three who each enjoy “personal attributes.” Are there four divine selves here? Or do the three turn out to be ways the one divine self is? Or, despite the capitalized pronoun, is the triune god really not a self, but rather a group, community, or collective of selves? Are we to flee here to contradictions or obfuscation? The statement is wholly indeterminate. It preserves traditional catholic language which is vague enough to generate an unruly mob of clashing interpretations.

To their credit, analytic theologians (theologians trained in or at least adept in the methods of recent analytic philosophy) do recognize that there is a real, substantial disagreement here. But no consensus has yet been reached. Some think a wrong turn was taken, and that the catholic language just needs to be set aside. After all, Christianity seemed to do rather well before the fourth century. It has in various ways flourished since then, but one must ask whether this is because of widely agreed catholic formulas, or despite them.