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What does it mean to say that God is triune? Is this to say that the one God is a loving community of three divine selves? Or is there but one self common to the Trinity? And does the doctrine of the Trinity, properly understood, say something about how God intrinsically is in himself (or if you like, in “Godself”)? Or is the Trinity about how the ultimate source of all else appears to us human beings? Is God, most properly speaking, an “it”or a “he,” or a “she”?
In this episode we tackle these questions, as addressed in Dr. Keith Ward’s Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine (kindle). In Dr. Ward’s view, trinitarian teaching needs to be played, as it were, in a new key, to be understandable and relevant today. He explains in some detail how, in his view, God is triune.
Do you agree?
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Links for this episode:
- Dr. Ward’s website
- interviews of Dr. Ward by Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine (kindle)
- God: A Guide for the Perplexed
- Religion and Revelation: A Theology of Revelation
- Concepts of God: Images of the Divine in the Five Religious Traditions
- In Defence of the Soul
- Is Religion Dangerous?
- Morality, Autonomy, and God (kindle)
- theologian Jürgen Moltmann
- podcast 57 – Richard Swinburne on the Trinity
- podcast 25 – Pastor Sean Finnegan on “the Holy Spirit” – Part 1
- (numerical) identity
- Immanuel Kant on things in themselves (“noumena”) vs. things as they appear to us (phenomena)
- This week’s thinking music is “Roennes, Trio for Three Bassoons” by Grossman, Ewell, Grainger.
Dale,
Another interesting interview. Ward started out great with his candor about “holy spirit” but then your questioning seemed to expose his difficulty elucidating his understanding of the relationship between the persons of the Trinity.
The impression I got is that Ward has given some “fresh” thought to the issues associated with explaining and understanding the Trinity doctrine but also needs to work on making more sense of his own perspective. I think you asked some great questions and you were very gracious in trying to “help him through his thoughts a little bit.
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