Preface

T HIS monograph is devoted to clarifying understanding of the most profound

article of the Christian Faith, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The exposition
takes place within the frame of the biblical and Nicene tradition of the One Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church. It is heavily influenced by Greek patristic and
Reformed theology. with particular acknowledgement of debt to Athanasius the
Great. Hugh Ross Mackintosh and Karl Barth. My argument and presentation
have taken an open-structured form in the conviction that the truth of the Holy
Trinity is more to be adored than expressed. The Holy Scriptures do not give us
dogmatic propositions about the Trinity. but they do present us with definite witness
to the oneness and differentiation between the Father. the Son and the Holy Spirit.
under the conmaint of which the early Church allowed the pattern and order of
God's Triune Life [0 impose themselves upon its mind. There took shape within
the ecumenical thinking of the Church a specifically apostolic frame of
understanding the truth of the Gospel which soon came to be revered as the
distinctive mind or ct>p6VT)lla of the Catholic Church. It was to this mind that the
great fathers and theologians of the Church intuitively appealed in forming
theological judgments and making conciliar decisions.
It was thus that something of immense significance for the whole life. worship
and mission of the Church took place, the formation of a theological paradigm of
understanding which became more and more articulate as the Church sought to
expound, clarify and integrate the lruths of the Gospel. and defend them from
damaging misinterpretation. I believe it is important to recognise that in these
early centuries. as the lruth-content of apostolic Scriptures unfolded within the
understanding of the Church, something of definitive and irreversible significance
[Ook place. This is very evident in the Nicene confession of belief in 'one Lord
Jesus Christ ... of one substance with the Father (OIlOOOOlOS' T4J naTpt)'. In that
conciliar formulation of the homoousion the fathers of the Nicene Council were
articulating what they felt they had 10 think and say under the constraint of the
truth and in fidelity to the biblical witness to Christ and the basic interpretation of
it already given in the apostolic foundation of the Church. The explicit formulation
of the homoousion at the Council of Nicaea was an absolutely fundamental event
that took place in the mind of the early Church. It was a decisive step in deeper
understanding of the Gospel, giving precise expression to the all-important relation
between the incarnate Son and God the Father, which they made in obedience to
God's saving revelation in Jesus Christ and in continuity with the apostolic tradition
upon which the Church could not go back. With it a giant step was taken in

IX
 Introduction

T HE Christian doctrine of God is to be understood from within the unique,

definitive and final self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ his only begotten
Son, that is, from within the self-revelation of God as God become man for us
and our salvation, in accordance with its proclamation in the Gospel and its
actualisation through the Holy Spirit in the apostolic foundation of the Church.
It is in the Lord Jesus, the very Word and Mind of God incarnate in our humanity,
that the eternal God 'defines' and identifies himself for us as he really is. Only in
Christ is God's self-revelation identical with himself, and only in Christ, God for
us, does he communicate his self-revelation to us in such a way that authentic
knowledge of God is embodied in our humanity, and thus in such a way that it
may be communicated to us and understood by us. Jesus Christ is at once the
complete revelation of God to man, and the perfect correspondence on man's
part to that revelation required by it for the fulfilment of its own revealing
movement. As the faithful answer to God's self-revelation Jesus Christ yields
from out of our human existence and life the fulfilled reception and faithful
embodiment which belongs to the content of God's revelation of himself to man.
Moreover, it is only in Christ in whom God's self-revelation is identical with
himself that we may rightly apprehend it and really know God as he is in himself,
in the oneness and differentiation of God within his own eternal Being as Father,
Son and Holy Spirit, for what God is toward us in his historical self-manifestation
to us in the Gospel as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, he is revealed to be inherently
and eternally in himself. It is thus in and through Jesus Christ and the Holy
Spirit that the distinctively Christian doctrine of God in his transcendent triunity
is mediated to us.
It is certainly the incarnation of the eternal Word of God made flesh in Jesus
Christ which prescribes for us in Christian theology both its proper matter and
form, so that whether in its activity as a whole or in the formulation of a doctrine
in any part, it is the Christological patter!! that will appear throughout the whole
body of Christian dogmatics. This docs not mean, however, that all theology can
be reduced to Christology, but that because there is only one Mediator between
God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, in the pr.:sentation of the doctrines of the
Christian faith, every doctrine will be expressed in its inner coherence with
Christo logy at the centre, and in its correspondence with the objective reality of
God's self-revelation in Christ. On the other hand, because in Jesus Christ God
reveals himself through himself and as he is in himself, the ultimate ground upon
which our knowledge of Jesus Christ himselfand of God's self-revelation through
Christ rests becomes disclosed as trinitarian. It is thus that the doctrine of Christ
 2

The Christian Perspective

being God. all our knowledge of him comes by divine revelation. for it is
G OD
impossible for us to know God without his willing to be known. God may b~
known only through God. and is known only as he makes himself known to us
through the revealing and saving agency of his Word and Spirit. This biblically
grounded principle. without God. God (annot bt known. was clearly formulated by
Irenaeus in the second century in a remarkable clarification of the foundations of
Christian theology in the early Church. I God actively reveals himself through
himself. through the incarnation of his Son among us as our Saviour and by the
power of his Spirit. 'In all things. and through all things, there is one God the
Father. and one Word and one Son. and one Spirit. and one salvation to all who
believe in him: z This does not imply a preconceived notion of God or any
independent idea of God reached apart from the history of his saving revelation to
the people of Israel or behind the back of his self-revelation through his Son Jesus
Christ and in his one Spirit actualiscd in the midst of Israel. There is no God other
than the self-revealed God. and no self-revelation of God apart from the fulfilment
of his eternal purpose in his saving and reconciling acts in the life. death and
resurrection of Jesus proclaimed to us in the Gospel. As Irenaeus taught, it is only
with the incarnation of the only begonen Son. who declares the Father and interprets
his Word. that the very God who made himself known in a seminal way through
the Old Testament prophets foretelling the advent of his Son. is now made known
to us in the saving economy of the New Testament revelation in this trinitarian
way.' In Jesus Christ the Word of God made flesh. God the Father has taken the
initiative. actively revealing himself to us through himself as the one and only lord

I Set np«ially Irenaeus' discussion of Ihis principle wilh reference 10 Mall. 11.27 &. Luke 10.22 in

Ihe opening chaplers of book four of At/wnw hurrs,," Thus 4.11: 'The Lord has laughl us Ihal no one
can know God unless God himsdfis Ihe Tcacher. Ihal is 10 say. wilhoul God. God is nOllO be: known.'
('E61Sae(V ~QS b KiJpLos. 6n 9£bv d6lvcII oi.&ls 6WaTQI. 11" OUXl 9£0\1 &MeQVTOS.
TOlITlaTlv. C!V(U Ekou 11"" ')'\~(OeCll Tbv Eklw.) Thw. as Hilary formulalcd il. God is known
only Ihrough his wilness 10 himself. for he is his own besl Inlcrprclcr. D, Trinifllft. 1.18; cr. 4.36.
1 Ircnacw. At/wnw hllt,"n. 4.11.
I Irenaew. Adwnw hurrsn. 4.18-20; &. 4.34.10.

13
 3

The Biblical Frame

I N the preceding chapter anent ion was directed to the fact that God makes himself
known through himself alone. that he reveals himself in Jesus Christ and actualises
his revelation through his Spirit. which implies that divine revelation is intrinsically
trinitarian in its content. movement and structure. Hence. as Karl Barth expressed
it. the ratio of the Trinity is the ratio of divine revelation.' This does not mean that
the doctrine of the Trinity is a postulate of revelation. as if it could be argued that
because God reveals himself in this way he must be a Trinity in himself. for that
would mean that the Trinity is not itself part of divine revelation but only an
inference from it. On the contrary. God's active self-revealing and the content of
his self-revealing are one and the same. for. as we have previously noted. his Act
and his Scing inhere in one another. God is who he is in the activity of his saving
love toward us. and what he is in his saving activity toward us he is in himself in his
eternal Being. Within the course of this revelation God reveals himself to us in a
three-fold form and a three-fold way. as he who reveals himself. as he who is the
content of his revelation. and as he who enables us through his presence to
understand his revelation of himself which we are incapable of doing by ourselves.
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity gives expression to the fact that through Jesus
Christ and in his Spirit God has opened himself to us in such a way that in being
reconciled to him we lowly sinful creatures may know him. at least in some measure.
in the inner relations of his divine Being and have communion with him in his
intra-trinitarian Life as Father. Son and Holy Spirit. He reveals himself to us. not
only from without or from above. in the advent of his Son as the incarnate Saviour
among us. but also from below. in a movement of his Spirit in which through his
presence within us he meets himself from our end. thereby bringing us within the
circle of his knowing of himself and his revealing of himself through himself. This
movement and structure of divine revelation are to be interpreted not in abstract
analytic or synthetic terms but only in the concrete soteriological terms of God's
actual self-mediation and self-giving to us as the Father. the Son. and the Holy

• Karl Barth. Chri,llid" l>4puztik (Munich. 1927). p. 150; Stt Chllrrh Dllf"'lIlin 1.1 (Edinburgh.
2nd Nn. 1975). pp. 30411'.
31
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The Trinitarian Mind

W HENEVER we seek to define the meaning of something in precise terms we

have to make use of other terms which for this purpose must themselves
remain undefined. This is very obvious in loolcing up the meaning of any word in
a dictionary. but it applies to all acts of knowledge whether in everyday life or in
rigorous scientific inquiry. for any formal account of what we know rests upon a
base of informal undefined knowledge. from which it cannot be cut off without
becoming empty of significance and useless. This means that a complete
formalisation of knowledge in explicit terms is impossible. A cognate reason for
this is to be discerned in the faCt that in objective knowledge the realities we seek to
know in any field inevitably break through the frame of concepts and statements
which we use to describe them. even though they are developed under the constraint
of those realities. Concepts and statements of this lcind do not have their truth in
themselves but in the realities to which they refer. Thw in all authentic knowledge
we have to take into account an informal and undefined knowledge grounded in
the inherent intelligibility of what we know. and must constantly look for appropriate
ways of letting it exercise a regulative force in all our explicit formulations. This is
what happens in normal scientific inquiry in which we seck to reduce to rational
order knowledge in any particular field. through relying on an ultimate belief in
order. or an inarticulate intuition of an ultimate ground of order. which we are
unable to prove or bring to explicit knowledge and expression. It is only through
relying implicitly on such an inarticulate ingredient in knowledge. the content of
which cannot be made fully explicit. that the moS[ rigorous scientific operations
are possible.
This applies not least but above all to theological inquiry in which we operate
with an implicit understanding of God through his self-revelation but which we
are unable fully to reduce to explicit undemanding and conceptual expression. for
the transcendent intelligibility of God infinitely exceeds all that we can ever grasp
or bring to articulate form. God remains utterly inscrutable to us in the essence of
his divine Being. I This is why the New Testament speaks of divine revelation as

I Karl 8anh. Chllrch Dill""";" 1.1. p. 321 : 'h is of Ihe very nalure of God to be inlCrutable to

man. In saying this we nalurally mean thai in his ,,"ealed nature he is inlCrutable. h is the Dnu

73
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One Being, Three Persons

U NDER this title we are following the way in which the agreement berween
Athanasian and Cappadocian approaches were brought together at the Council
of Alexandria in AD 362 under the presidency of Athanasius: OM Bri"g, thrrt Pmons
(s.Lla ooola TpflS tmOOTaaEls).1 Hence we will not be lapsing into what Karl
Rahner called 'the Augustinian-Western conception of the Trinity ... which begins
with the one God. the one divine essence as a whole. and only aftnwardsdocs it sec
God in three persons.· J The 'whole' with which we are concerned is that of the divine
Triunity in which 'the One and the Three' and 'the Three and the One' are the
obverse of one another. We will take ow cue mainly from Gregory Nazianzcn who
stood rather closer to Athanasius than the other Cappadocians. Basil, his brother
Gregory Nysscn. and Amphilochius, Gregory Nazianzcn's cousin,) and recall several
well-known passages from his Orations to which we have already drawn attemion.
No sooner do I consider the One than I am enlightened by the radiance of
the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the
One. When ( bring any One of the Three before my mind I think of him as
a Whole, and my vision is filled. and the most of the Whole escapes me. I
cannot grasp the greatness of that One in such a way as to anribute more
greatness to the rest. When I contempl:ue the Three together. I see but one
Torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided Light. 4
To us there is one God. for the Godhead is One. and all that proceeds from him
is referred ro One. though we believe in l1uec Persons. For One is not more and
another less God; nor is One before and Another after; nor are they paned in will
or divided in power. nor can you find here any of the features that obtain in
divisible thinp; but the Godhead is. to speak concisely. undivided in being divided;
and there is one mingling of Light, as it were of three suns joined to each other. s
IAlhanasius. Ad AntilKMrws. 6; 5« also Ad Snapioflml. I. 2. 10.
IKarl Rahncr. 171, TrinilJ(London. 1970). p. 17.
) Rcrcr h~n: 10 Nazianzcn's OrvtiDn on ,''' G"ill AlhilNlSilU, OratiDnn. 21.
• Gregory N:uianun. Ora,"",,,. 40.41; cited by John Calvin several timrs. IflJritJIlio. 1.13.17;
C_m~l4? on John. 1.1; Epulln.6IJ7.
I Gregory Nazianun. Or. 31.14.

III
 6

Three Persons, One Being

.ONE Being. Three Persons', and 'Three Persons, One Being' are the obverse of
one another, or the mirror image of one another. In the previous chapter we
found that the one Being of God is to be understood in his interior relations as the
Communion of the three divine Persons with one another: to the communion
which God establishes with w in the incarnate economy of his redeeming and
revealing actS in history there corresponds a transcendent Communion in himself.
These may not be held apart, for while God may be known by us only out of
himself, we may not have knowledge of him except at a point of access which is
both in our creaturely existence and in God himself. This is precisely what we have
in the incarnation, where God's self-revelation ~ Father takes place through his
self-giving to us in Jesw Christ his Son and in the Holy Spirit who. as the Spirit of
the Father and of the Son. constitutes with them the Communion of the Holy
Trinity. In this chapter we focus attention more particularly on the Communion
of the three divine Persons who in their perichorctic interrelations are the one
Being of God. It is only in knowledge of the economic Trinity that by divine grace we
have access within the space and time of our earthly existence to knowledge of the
ontological Trinity. for what God has revealed of himself in his activity toward us and
on our behalf as Father, Son and Holy Spirit he assures w that he really and eternally
is in himself. He is in himself the content of his sclf-communication to w. Our
knowledge of the economic Trinity, in the ortID (ognos(mtii, and our knowledge of
the ontological Trinity. in the ordo t1Jmdi. may not be separated from one another.
for they arise together. interpenetrate each other and regulate each other.
In looking at the biblical basis of our knowledge of the Trinity at an earlier
point we considered various formulations in which there was evident an implicit
trinitarian pattern. but it is worth recalling that mention of the Father. the Son
and the Holy Spirit in the New Testament was not always made in the same
order. The fact that each of the divine Persons could be mentioned first indicates
that the order used did not detract from belief in their full equality. In the actual
mission of the Church. however, in which the Gospel of God's saving activity
was being proclaimed. the spotlight naturally fell on Jesus Christ himself, for it
was through him as the one Mediator berween God and man that human
conceptions of God were critically transformed and Christian belief in God the
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Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity

I N our discussion of the formulation of the docrrine of the Holy Trinity in the
third chapter we followed a movemenr of thought from the ground level of the
incarnate self-revelarion of God in a parrern of implicit trinitarian relations in the
economic Trinity through rwo conceptuaJ levels to a fully explicit parrern in the
ontological Trinity. In the course of this movement there took place a refinement
in our understanding of the basic concepts and relations of God's revealing and
saving activity toward us and for us of which we learn in the Scriptures of the New
Testament. This involved rwo Stages: the interpretation of the soteriological content
of God's three-fold self-revelation mediated to us in the biblical statements about
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the light of their ontological sub-
structure expressed in the Nicene homoousion: and the unfolding of the profound
implications of the homoousion applied to the Spirit as well as to the Son for an
understanding of the eternaJ relations of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
At this third level use was made of the patristic concept of p~richor~sis to express
something of the mystery of the Holy Trinity in respect of the coinherenr way in
which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit exist in one another and dwell in one
another as one God, three Persons. We must now give funher consideration to the
notion of ptrichor~sis and the help it gives us in deepening and clarifying
understanding of the onro-relations of the three divine Persons to one another in
respect of the coordination that obtains berween them and their unity in the divine
Monllrchill.
It was undoubtedly Athanasius who in his elucidation of the dwelling of the
Father and the Son in one another provided the thcologicaJ basis for the docrrine
of coinherence. 1 He did this by way of elucidating statemenrs ofJesus to the disciples
recorded by St John, panicularly, 'I am in the Father and the Father in me'.2 He
deepened and refined the concept of the homoousion which gave expression to the
underlying oneness in being and activity berween the incarnate Son and God the

I For adumbrations of his thought here sec Athenagoras. U,6tiD P'" Chro';'"iJ. 1O. and Irenaeus.
AJIlnJIU hMmn. 3.6.2.
I John 14.11. Cf. also John 10.30. and 14.10.

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The Sovereign Creator

T HROUGHOIJI' the last two chapters our thought has centred on the Triunity of
God as three Persons. one Being. and towards the end of the last chapter
attention was directed particularly to the concept of ptr;chorts;s for our
understanding of the coactivity of the Holy Trinity. It was pointed OUt that it is
very easy when using technical terms to think concepts rather than the realities denoted
by them. Technical terms are a kind of theological shonhand which helps us to give
careful expression to basic truths and their conceptual interconnections. as we noted
earlier. in the passage of theological clarification from one level of understanding to
another and back again. However. in the last resort they are no more than empty
abstract propositions apart from their real content in the specific self-communication
of God to us in his revealing and saving acts in history in which he has made himself
known to us as Father. Son and Holy Spirit. It was such an essentially dynamic
approach to the coactivity of the three divine Persons that we found to be entailed in
the theological shorthand of ptrirhomis. In this chapter we will be concerned to
pursue that funher in regard to the doctrine of God as the Sovereign Creator.
In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed which gives expression to the basic
doctrinal content of divine revelation. belief in God as the Sovereign Creator is
presented within a trinitarian structure: one God the Father Almighty, Maker of
heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible. one Lord Jesus Christ
through whom all things were made. and the Holy Spirit the Lord and Giver of
life. Integrated with these three statements there are clauses about the saving
incarnation of the Son of God. his crucifixion. resurrection. and final advent. while
clauses on the forgiveness of sins. the rcsurrectionof the dead and the life of the
world to come are included in the third article on the Holy Spirit. This signifies to
us that the doctrine of the Creator belongs to the heart and substance of the Gospel.
so that beliefin him is appropriately formulated within the evangelical interrelations
of the economic Trinity. While the concept of God as the Creator of the universe
derived originally from the Old Testament revelation and had been developed by
Judaism. it was radicaliscd through the New Testament teaching about the Lord
Jesus Christ as the Word of God by whom all things that came into being have
been created. from whom they derive their intelligible and lawful order. and through
whom and in whom the whole universe of visible and invisible realities consists or
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The Unchangeableness of God

TYahwth:
as
HE unchangeableness of God is one of the major themes of the Old Testament
Scriptures. In them we hear from God that he has revealed himself to mankind
'I am who I am - I shall be who I shall be," the self-existing, self-living,
self-affirming God whose being is his ever-continuing life and whose life is his
ever-continuing being. God does not speak of himself simply as the One who is,
but introduces himself as Yahwth in the first person as 'I am - I shall be', and even
then not in a static but in a dynamic mode, as 'I am who I am - I shall be who I
shall be'. And he goes on to characterise himself as he who is the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, he who will deliver his people from bondage, who will always be
their God and claim them as his own people. 'This is my name for ever, my memorial
unto all generarions.'! And so through the prophets sent to Israel, God kept
proclaiming himself to Israel throughout their history: 'I am Yahr,wh your God
from the land ofEgypt.'J 'I am Yahwth, the first and the last, I am he. '4 It is as such
that God reveals and names himself as the living. speaking and acting God who
is who he is in the undeviaring self-determination of his own Life and Activity,
and is who he is in covenanted relation with his people and who ever will be their
Lord and Saviour. Yahwth is he who is and invariably will be in the living reality
and self-consistency of his own eternal being. He is Lord God who made heaven
and earth and all that is, and makes himself known to mankind in and through his
Word and Act as he who never will be other than he is in his Word and Act. There
is no other God than this God who makes himself known to mankind and who
reveals himself to them in this way, and who thereby denies reality to any other god
and discounts any other possible way for human beings to know him. As we have
already noted, that is the irr.pon of the those Old Testament passages which speak
of God as 'the jealous God',~ which is not what it appears in English to be, for it
means that the very nature of the Lord God excludes the possibility of there being

I EJiod. 3.13.1-4.
I EJiod. 3.IS.
I Hos. 12.9; 13.-4.

"sa. -41.4; 0.10.13. 2S; -4-4.6; -48.12.

I EJiod. 20.S. 3-4.14; Dan. -4.24. S.9. 6.1 S. 29.20. 32.16. CIC.

135