Social Trinitarianism in the ESV Study Bible

I love study Bibles and own many. Of them all, the biggest, and most beautifully laid out, is the massive ESV Study Bible. It has wonderful maps and charts, and voluminous notes.

They do, though, have a very noticeable theological bias – really, it should be called the [American] Evangelical Study Bible. I heard a recorded lecture by General Editor Wayne Grudem, and he made it clear that, for example, a concern to save the doctrine of biblical inerrancy influenced some of the translations. In general, the translation itself is basically an update of the RSV. If you want to know how American evangelical theologians read any part of the Bible, the notes, articles, and translations here are your handy guides – for better and worse.

Here’s some of the worse: to my surprise, the confused realm of Social Trinitarian speculation has invaded an appendix called “Biblical Doctrine an Overview” in the “Trinity” section. In the four point summary of “the” doctrine of the Trinity, it is conveniently vague as to whether the one divine nature is a universal or a particular. (The former would fit better with “social” (a.k.a. “three self”) trinitarianism, although their following entry on Christ makes it sound like his divine nature is a particular.)

But the part which really surprised me is this:

3. Because God is triune, he has eternally been personal and relational in his own being, in full independence from his creation. God has never had any unmet needs, “nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself give to all mankind life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25). Personhood becomes real only within realized relationships, and the reality of relationship can only exist where one has something or someone that is not oneself to relate to; if, then, God had not been plural in himself he could not have been a personal, relational God till he had begun creating, and thus would have been dependent on creation for his own personhood, which is a notion as nonsensical as it is unscriptural. Between the persons of the Trinity, there has always existed total relational harmony and expression; God is, from this standpoint, a perfect society in himself. Apart from the plurality of the Trinity, either God’s eternal independence of the created order or his eternally relational personal existence would have to be denied.

4. The Trinity provides the ultimate model for relationships within the body of Christ and marriage. …Biblical Christianity stands or falls with the doctrine of the Trinity.

ESV Study Bible, page 2515b

You’ve got to love that last rhetorical spasm (Everything, I say, depends on this! Either agree with me on this, or you got nothin‘.) You also have to love the careful weaseling about whether God is literally a group – “from this standpoint.” We won’t ask whether God, being a “him,” is a fourth divine person, in addition to the three others which (somehow) compose him. The point urged here, is that God couldn’t possibly be (identical to) a person; rather, he (“he”?) must contain at least one person and someone (“something”?) else for that person to relate to.

I’ve unmasked the impotence of this speculative argument in many places, such as in this chapter, this post, this podcast and this podcast, and this recent paper.

In brief, the ESV appendix authors do nothing whatever to show that either of these scenarios are impossible: a single divine person existed alone in a timeless state “before” creation, or such a person existed for a million years alone but in time (literally) before creation. Yet, this is what the argument is, lamely, trying to do. No reason has been given to accept the implausible premise that “Personhood becomes real only within realized relationships.” This is not obviously true, and further, it positively seems possible that there just be a single self in the cosmos, just thinking, e.g. “I’m all that’s here. It’s just me.”

The authors merely repeat a common, yet bad, piece of reasoning – it seem to not occur to them that this implausible premise even needs to be argued for. Most disturbingly, this is being foisted on the layman as part and parcel of “Biblical Christianity,” in what is a sort of reference source, where speculation is out of place.

Things like this somewhat temper my love of study Bibles. All translations show the biases of their translators, but a study Bible can magnify a groundless theological speculation into an obvious point of a text, merely projecting later ideas back onto it.