<sarcasm>Wheeeeee! Everything is “Trinitarian” now.Not only is our theology Trinitarian, but salvation, Christian experience, the story of Christ, the whole Bible, ethics, human history, marriage, society, government, and religions other than Christianity are all Trinitarian.
Because God’s the creator of the cosmos, everything whatever is somehow related to one or more members of the Trinity – and, you guessed it, that makes these things Trinitarian. I’m Trinitarian, my left shoe is Trinitarian, each blade of grass in my lawn is Trinitarian, the nation of Luxembourg is Trinitarian, Dr. Pepper is Trinitarian, and the Tao Te Ching is Trinitarian.
Furthermore, everything can be referred to in at least three ways (me, myself, I), and nearly everything has three aspects. So, it’s all Trinitarian now. Theology has never been more relevant!
Maybe you, foolish reader, thought that Trinitarian theology was an arcane, abstract topic, irrelevant to Important Things. But no, friend, it’s relevant to Everything Whatever, and so, to all Important Things.
This by the way, shows how doggone important I the Trinitarian TheologianTM am. I hold the keys to understanding Everything, ’cause everything is Trinitarian.
Some might say that this is just meaningless free associating and puffery. To that, I have a Trinitarian reply: no, no, no. </sarcasm>
OK, my theologian friends – we know that the subject of God is important. And we love you. Now knock off this sort of cheerleading talk. Please. Thank you.
I’ve heard that one too. I suppose a theologian could think of all the ways to motivate others to care about the Trinity by saying, if you know the Trinity, then you’ve solved X. This is very different from a theologian who says, if you confess and believe the Trinity, then your salvation is assured. This latter approach is to my mind more preferable — it was Athanasius’s MO.
On a more serious note, I have heard talk to the effect that the Trinity theory is the only one which solves a very important, foundational, and central problem of metaphysics – the problem of the many and the one. For me, I understand neither the problem nor the solution.
One other thing — the vestiges stuff was meant to say something about God, not about creatures. Some ‘trinitarian theologians’ appear to use God to gain power over others: e.g., if you don’t know about the Trinity, you can’t know what water is.
All I know, is that if you’re going to posit “images” of the Trinity in creation, it’d be good to exclude the cast of Three’s Company! Also, the Three Stooges, the Three Muskateers, and Three Blind Mice. But maybe not the members of Rush… 😉
So, no more ‘vestiges of the Trinity’, eh? But this Patristic and Medieval approach is not the same as what you are saying, or am I missing something? I think a difference is that the former may not take the vestiges so straightforwardly ….
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