Mandy's Musings

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Classical theism and trinitarian thinking

One of the other things I've been pondering (mainly while in Doctrine of God classes or revising for the exam on Friday) is the link between statements of God's attributes and trinitarian thinking. Can we afford to have one without the other?

Hilary of Poitiers in de trinitate links together a discussion of God's attributes with his relational being (why he made it onto my list of 30 things to be thankful for). I was reading him in relation to my Doctrine of God essay on incorporeality, omnipresence and perichoresis.

Here are some of the things he said that I really liked:
‘His merciful and mysterious self-revelations are in no wise inconsistent with His true heavenly nature; and His faithful saints never fail to penetrate the guise He has assumed in order that faith may see Him [...] God was seen and believed and worshipped as Man, Who was indeed to be born as Man in the fullness of time. He takes upon Him, to meet the Patriarch’s eye, a semblance which foreshadows the future truth.’

Hilary explicitly denies that the eternal Son had a human form before the incarnation – although he may have been manifest in the theophanies, in taking on human flesh in the incarnation he assumes a body he did not have before that time:
'He had the fullness of the Godhead; he has it still, for He is God’s Son. But He Who was the Son of God had become the Son of man also, for The Word was made flesh. He had not lost His former being, but He had become what He was not before; he had not abdicated his own position, yet He had taken ours.'

Hilary explores this perichoretic relationship and demonstrates that the nature of the eternal Son is determined by the unbegotten Father. He argues that the Father begat the Son in eternity not from any pre-existent matter, nor from nothing, by childbirth or as a piece of himself. Rather: ‘Incomprehensibly, ineffably, before time or worlds, He begat the Only-begotten from His own unbegotten substance, bestowing through love and power His whole Divinity upon that Birth. Thus He is the Only-begotten, perfect, eternal son of the unbegotten, perfect, eternal Father.’

In taking on human form for our salvation, the external Son is embodied, however, like the Father, he remains essentially invisible, bodiless and incomprehensible: ‘the Son is mysteriously omnipresent in the same way as the Father […] If the mutual indwelling of the Father and the son is understood in a bodily way, this is an impossibility. ’ Faced with an embodied Son, Arians must reject the mutual indwelling of the Father and Son, because they argue the Son is less than the Father. Hilary counters a suggestion that omnipresence and perichoresis are inconsistent by acknowledging that what may seem impossible for human understanding is possible for God to be: ‘It seems impossible that one object should be both within and without another, or that (since it is laid down that the Beings of whom we are treating, though They do not dwell apart, retain their separate existence and condition) these Beings can reciprocally contain One Another, so that One should permanently envelop, and also be permanently enveloped by, the Other, whom yet he envelopes […] what man cannot understand, God can be.’

13 Comments:

  • According to HoP, if the Son is omnipresent, is the incarnate Son still omnipresent? I assume 'yes' from the following:

    In taking on human form for our salvation, the external Son is embodied, however, like the Father, he remains essentially invisible, bodiless and incomprehensible

    However, if that is true, do we really get to know the Son in meeting Jesus? If what he is 'essentially' is something other than the 6'6" blond-haired blue-eyed pin-up boy we know and love, do we really know him? I also assume that HoP would deny that the Son died on the cross, since nothing 'essential' to him was affected.

    By Blogger byron smith, at Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:31:00 pm  

  • Thanks Byron for picking up on the huge hole in my use of Hilary's argument on the first comment!

    It's a huge implication of the taking on of human nature by the eternal son, and how we talk about the joining together of the divine and human nature in the one body.

    My understanding of Hilary and the implications thereof are:
    * it is the eternal son in his human nature that dies upon the cross.
    * this is because it is a human substitute for our sins that is needed, not a divine substitute
    * thus when we speak of the death of Jesus, we speak of the death of the eternal son in his human nature. To avoid being Nestorian, we must affirm that it is not an independent human nature that dies, but the human nature of the eternal son, embodied at the incarnation.

    However, this leads to my big problem: in doing all this to avoid the ontogolical separation at the cross of the Father and Son are we then just separating the divine and human natures of the eternal son? If that is the case, I'm not sure we are any better off than asserting an ontological separation between the Father and the Son at the cross.

    By Blogger Mandy, at Wednesday, May 31, 2006 2:24:00 am  

  • Not sure how much this helps but in my Doctrine of God revision I read someone (possibly Weinandy) who suggested that we define suffering as loss, and death as the ultimate form of suffering and hence loss. In which case, clearly the eternal Son can only die according to his human nature since all that he loses is to do with his human nature. He does not lose anything which is of his divine nature, thus according to his divine nature he does not die.

    Inevitably it's going to be tricky since our understanding of death is drawn only from examples of persons with a single nature, but this helped my thinking.

    And isn't the way we get to know the Son in Jesus not so much through his external appearance as through his acts and words - which really are his and thus adequately reveal him?

    By Blogger Ros, at Wednesday, May 31, 2006 5:54:00 am  

  • And isn't the way we get to know the Son in Jesus not so much through his external appearance as through his acts and words - which really are his and thus adequately reveal him?

    Not sure I'd want to draw such a sharp distinction between appearance and act (= what is and isn't mine (or anyone else's)). Though I agree that we look at Jesus' acts - and his passion - to see God. It is for this reason that I reject actus purus. If passivity was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for God.
    Going back one step - why define suffering as loss?

    Don't we need to say that whatever happened to the person Jesus happened to the eternal Logos who took on flesh?

    Mandy: I feel your pain.

    By Blogger byron smith, at Wednesday, May 31, 2006 10:55:00 am  

  • Ros, thanks I had noted down that I should read Weinandy - now I know why!

    Byron said 'Don't we need to say that whatever happened to the person Jesus happened to the eternal Logos who took on flesh?'

    Yes, but - can we not distinguish between what happened to him as to his human nature and what happened to him as to his divine nature? ie, did not the eternal son in his divine nature continue to uphold the entire universe, including those who nailed him to the cross while, according to his human nature he died?

    Although this still gets me back to my original problem of dividing the divine and human natures of the eternal son!

    By Blogger Mandy, at Thursday, June 01, 2006 3:25:00 am  

  • Mandy, from my quick scan of what you've said, I think you've got it right here.

    The divine and human natures of the Son find their unity in his Person, Jesus Christ who is enternally begotten of the Father, incarnate for us sinners, died, risen and reigning at the Right Hand of God untill he comes again, as well as filling all things and sustaining the universe! He is located according to his humanity and omnipresent according to his divinity. He is great indeed.

    We must hang on to: (1) the true Eternal Son (God) (2) truly exists (3) as a true man. What you see is what you get - Rahner's dictum (updated), that the economic trinity is the immanent trinity.

    Revd Dr Father Tom Weinandy (whoes lectures I attened in Oxford) really is a must read. Does God Change is very good to - on the becomming of the Son (becoming a man) in his incarnation, though to my mind less accessible and urgent. I'd start with does God suffer - especially the chapter on theological method as defining the revealed mystery.

    Hope that helps,

    And how happy to have a happy discussion.

    By Blogger Marc Lloyd, at Thursday, June 01, 2006 7:21:00 am  

  • A happy discussion = one that those dastardly MTC students haven't found yet and corrupted? :-)

    Can natures be subjects of action (or passion)? Or can only people be subjects?

    By Blogger byron smith, at Thursday, June 01, 2006 4:44:00 pm  

  • Obviously only people and I don't think anyone's trying to deny that. But when you've got a one person, two natures situation you do end up having/being able to say things which you'd never need/want to say of your usual one person/one nature set up.

    So, yes the person of the eternal Son died. But I don't think it's entirely inconceivable that for a person with two natures, one of which is divine, eternal, immutable and incorruptible, death might look a bit different and we might want a bit more precision in the way we talk about it with respect to him.

    Hmm. Think I'll avoid the trinitarian questions in tomorrow's Doctrine of God exam.

    By Blogger Ros, at Thursday, June 01, 2006 6:53:00 pm  

  • So persons are the subjects of actions in or according to one, other or both natures.

    By Blogger Marc Lloyd, at Saturday, June 03, 2006 7:26:00 pm  

  • Why must divine nature be immutable?
    If Jesus is the one who reveals God to us, doesn't his death reveal something else about God, that God can suffer?

    By Blogger byron smith, at Monday, June 05, 2006 10:22:00 am  

  • Byron, how is it possible to depend upon a truly mutable God? Does not the depiction of GOd as a 'rock' in whom we trust demand his immutability?

    Highly reluctant to stick my head into the hornet's nest, but anyhow...

    Someone asked me about this the other day, and I had a go at explaining...here it is FYI or otherwise!...

    It is critical that we hold together the transcendence and immanence of God – the two need to be understood in such a way that doesn’t compromise the other (i.e., we musn’t speak of his immanence in a way that compromises his transcendence and vice versa). To say that the transcendent, eternal God is passible or experiences emotions in the way that we as creatures do is to imply that he is in fact a creature (i.e., in time, able to be acted upon, has unrealised potentialities etc.). If God is transcendent and immutable, then he is complete and perfect eternally (i.e., not subject to the finite and creaturely variations/changes that time inevitably brings). This is why theologians often describe him as ‘pure act’.

    Nonetheless, if we simply assert that God is transcendent, it would, in fact, be impossible to know anything about him, because he is so completely different/’other’. While it is true that God is ‘different’ and ‘other’, we only know this because this God can actually reveal himself to creatures within the fabric of our creaturely existence – i.e., he can condescend to our level, use our language, know what it is like to be a creature and even take on our flesh. In other words, he is entirely immanent (hence theologians describe him as the omni-present Lord of creation). In fact, it is entirely correct to say that God has experienced ‘human emotions’, e.g., grief, loss and even death. But here we need to be extremely careful. He doesn’t experience them in his eternal existence, as if before the creation of the world there was some unrealised gap in God’s character and feelings (for want of a better word) that needed to be filled with these new experiences which arose from the history of his interactions with the world. No, he experiences these things insofar as he interacts with our world, i.e., on our terms, within our time, within our history and so on. There must be some kind of mediation or bridge between the transcendent God and our existence. That ‘bridge’ is his immanence - the covenant, his revelation, the scriptures and ultimately the incarnation. Hence, God AS man grieves, God AS man dies and so on. God AS God can never die, but God AS God certainly can experience human death AS man. Because the scriptures teach that the God of revelation is the eternal God (otherwise there would be no real revelation, but only mystery), we can be confident that the instances where God AS man experiences human passions/emotions within time etc. are in fact an expression of his eternally unchangeable, impassible character. So, for instance, what does the perfect, ‘maximal’ justice of God look like when it interacts with his creation? It takes the shape of his dealings with Israel and the nations, and ultimately causes him to take on human flesh and suffer the punishment his people deserved. Thus, he suffers death as man, even in such a way that God AS man is estranged from God AS God, but he remains the eternally unchangeable God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - throughout! Here Cyril is brilliant - neither nestorian nor apollinarian in depicting the suffering of Christ - the impassible suffers! The so called 'extra calvinisticum' is key here too - the incarnation does not 'exhaust' the eternal Son's divinity - lest we collapse God into his world.

    Actually, this is the only way God can be victorious over suffering. Whereas we can be acted upon and thus become the victims of suffering, God experiences suffering and death on our terms while nonetheless defeating it by maintaining and never compromising his eternally compatible attributes of justice and love. Without this, God is reduced in a kind of Marxist/unionist way to a ‘divine battler’. It’s very hard for him to defeat death if death somehow becomes a part of his eternal existence.

    People often want to assert the passibility of God because they feel that God needs to know what it’s like to suffer humanly. Some theologians go as far as to say that God needed to suffer humanly in order to be God (i.e., to express his love and so on). Inevitably this turns God into a creature because it rather suggests that God needed his creation to be God. God never needed to create the world. He created the world, because in his goodness he decided to. He would still have been good without it. However, having created the world, his eternal goodness – indeed, his fidelity and character - takes on an historical and therefore temporal and creaturely shape. This is the God we have revealed to us in the pages of the scriptures – in fact, this is the only way we can know what the eternal God is like.

    Hope this helps some more! And yes, Fr. Weinandy - and especially his great hero, Cyril of Alexandria - has been a great help to me too (except for his stuff on the atonement/the Son's assumption of sinful flesh etc., but that's another story)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Tuesday, June 06, 2006 10:50:00 am  

  • Thanks Andrew for your lengthy response.

    I guess I'm a little less keen to so sharply distinguish between the immanent and economic trinities: God is as he is towards us. The defense of God's immutability seems to rest on Hellenistic notions of mathematical perfection in which any movement or change requires either improvement or devolution, and hence undercuts perfection. But once we go here, then God's involvement in time becomes something of a mask he has to wear to deal with us while avoiding getting his hands dirty.

    I'm happy for God's revelation to not be exhaustive, while remain true (indeed, I think it is vital that we hold this combindation), but don't think that we need to begin with Aristotle's actus purus. The gospel is at the centre of our knowledge of God and reveals his heart: God on the cross is the best that we know of him - he is never more God-ish than here.

    God can be mutable without compromising his faithfulness (which I think is the what is worth preserving from immutability). His 'mutation' is better conceived of as responsive and loving engagement with his world, in which he works towards his promised goals in the face of genuine (not puppet) enemies. He is not yet 'all in all' (1 Cor 15.28), but is on his way to bringing his plans to pass.

    By Blogger byron smith, at Friday, June 09, 2006 9:02:00 pm  

  • I'm with you on this one Andrew. I've never been convinced by notions that 'only the suffering God can help'. I don't see how you can assert that he is both faithful and mutable. Surely to be faithful entails being unchanging or else one could become unfaithful. The christological resolution makes the most sense to me.

    By Blogger Mandy, at Wednesday, June 14, 2006 5:10:00 pm  

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