Here are some brief comments on a book review of Nicholas Lash‘s A Reading of the Apostles’ Creed. (Full ref: Robert P. Imbelli, “Believing Three Ways in One God: A Reading of the Apostles’ Creed”, Commonweal, Jan 28, 1994, 121:2, p. 24. – accessed online through Infotrac.) (my emphases added)
Lash rightly insists upon God’s incomprehensible nature and advocates a welcome modesty of speech in face of the mystery of God. Indeed, theologically and, perhaps, temperamentally he inclines toward the tradition of “apophatic” or “negative” theology; stressing, as it does, the ineffability of God’s mystery which, to us, appears more darkness than light. Thus he counsels an “austere nescience” as the least inappropriate theological stance.In this vein he favors dropping the language of “person” when referring to the three in God and replacing it, at least in technical discourse, with the language of “mode” or”manner” of being. The book’s very title bespeaks this preference. In making this proposal, Lash stands in the splendid ecumenical company of Karl Barth and Karl Rahner–a formidable array, to say the least.
The objection to “person” language is well rehearsed. In the modern context speaking of three “persons” inevitably suggests three individual agents, hence three gods or “tritheism“; whereas originally it merely served to designate with a common word the threefold distinction Christians learn to recognize in the one God. A further danger we risk in too facilely transferring to God a word that has, over the centuries, acquired such a freight of experiential connotations is that we may thereby imagine we have achieved a purchase upon God’s mystery, thus compromising “the absolute difference between God and the world.”
Despite the soundness of Lash’s cautions and the impressive witnesses he marshals to support them, I find his proposal unrealistic and liable to misunderstanding. He insists that his replacement terms–mode, manner, way–do not constitute “modalism”: the ancient heresy that God is one without distinction, who only appears in threefold guise in the course of the successive episodes of salvation history. But the refrain he sounds on this theme still strikes me as not sufficiently differentiated, especially to ears sensitized by the tradition of the Eastern church, which so underscores what distinguishes the three in God. In this regard, though Lash speaks movingly and insightfully of the “Spirit,” the newness of the Spirit’s mission does not always stand out clearly; nor how the “Spirit” differs from the “Word” in God’s trinitarian life. With the German theologian Walter Kasper, then, I think it pastorally and theologically preferable to retain the venerable language of “person”in God: correcting and refining our understanding by delineating carefully the context of its usage. Our understanding and appreciation of that context has most certainly been deepened by Lash’s lovely text.
The reviewer’s criticism, I think, is none too clear, though I think he’s on the right track.
Note Lash’s all-too-common move – it’s OK, because it ain’t Sabellianism (aka sequential modalism).
His motivation is also interesting; the idea is that we either go for (non-Sabellian) modalism, or we’re stuck with tritheism.
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