It Is Finished.

Well, our foray through Foundations of Dogmatics is finished. It was a wild ride. Did everyone else enjoy it as much as I did? Did you also experience such a feeling of satisfaction this morning when you read those last words? Is it weird for anyone else to not see a Foundations of Dogmatics volume taking up desk real estate?

I kid because I love. Happy Thanksgiving.

God's revelation and mystery.

Thus begins the section on God's essence and attributes. It's asking the question, 'what is God like?' How can we ask that question, nonetheless answer it? In some sense we can't. One of the problems with history, religion, and the world is that people have been trying to ask and answer that question on their own. In this sense then, Nietzsche is very helpful when he says that "All gods are dead." (as in Weber, 398) We have dreamed up God, and he ends up looking an awful lot like us (or our parents!), and we are slowly realizing that this is grim, and cannot be. So how can we even talk about God? Only because God makes himself known.

We do not have any predicates for God at our disposal...We can do nothing other than to accept the fact that God has predicated himself. ... We do not predicate God, but God predicates himself in eternity.

Weber, 399.

All that we can do then, with all humility, fear, and trembling, is "merely interpret how God reveals himself to us." (Weber, 400) God reveals himself through his revelation, but he is not transformed into something else by his revelation. This means that, (1) God turns completely to us, and that (2) God remains completely he himself in his turning to us.

The Triune God in His Revelation

Although his work is not the emanation of a necessity which controls him, it is the work of his true nature itself and thus of the necessity which is established in him and through him.

Weber, 389.

This sentence may seem as if it could be glossed over, but it's implications cannot be overlooked. This is a sentence which leans heavily on the relationship that Karl Barth forged between the doctrines of the Trinity and of election (or predestination). First, God's work is not a necessity that controls God. God chooses, or elects, just who God is and what he does. That is to say that God is totally free in himself, God did not need to create stuff (people, the universe, time, etc.) outside of himself to be God. God elected to do this and to be this God out of his free and loving decision, which is ultimately for us. Thus, it is only out of a sort of self-imposed necessity (established in him and through him) that God is and does this.

I'd like to know what Weber means when he says "the work of his true nature itself". Is this to say that God has a nature "before" he had a triune being and activity? Or is he simply stating that within himself, within the trinity, his true nature worked outward into this necessity? Does this "work of his true nature" result in a sort of 'overflowing' within and from the triune life that resulted in creation, humanity, etc.? I'm taking a class on the doctrine of election, so this stuff is just in my wheelhouse.

He sort of gets at the answer to those questions in the very next section. This is a good long quote to think on:

His work cannot be separated from his nature. He has destined himself in his essence, in his true nature, for this his work. But that means that God as the One is always himself and thus he is always turned towards a counterpart. He is he himself in that he does not exist for himself alone bur rather for himself in his distinction from himself. And that means, as Augustine very rightly saw, that God is love.

Weber, 389.

Of yeah. These are the conceptual seedlings for why God's unity is in his three-ness, and his three-ness in his unity. An important consequence of this is in God's opus as extra (outward directed work). This concept basically claims that

God's unity in triplicity is not solely an 'inward' unity, so to speak, but it is also a unity in God's work regarding the creature.

Weber, 392.

What he's saying here, for instance, is that the work of Creation, while traditionally attributed to the Father, is also the work of the Son and the Spirit. The work of reconciliation and redemption, traditionally thought of as the work of the Son, is also the work of the Father and the Spirit. And on and on. So while it is God the Son who dies on the cross, it is also an act of God the Father and God the Spirit.

This is all related to the traditional and dangerous doctrine of "appropriations". Weber seals up this deal nicely:

...the Doctrine of Appropriations is a reflection of the 'order of persons'...it cannot imply more than this, that God's work, in accordance with his being, realizes the lordship of the Father through the lordship of the Son in the lordship of the Spirit. ... the Doctrine of Appropriations refers back to the mystery which does not cease to be mystery when it has been revealed, the mystery of the unfathomable and inexhaustible unity and triplicity of God.

Weber, 396.

Revelation and Being and the Trinity.

The Doctrine of the Trinity, like all theology, is derived from the self-disclosure of God which is made manifest as real in faith. It can be nothing other than the interpretation of the "salvation-event" proceeding a posteriori.

Weber, 379.

Thus, Weber starts this section on the relation of the Trinity to the "salvation-event", i.e., the sending, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the subsequent outpouring of the Spirit. In this event, in this 'act', God does not reveal something other than who he is and has always been, Father, Son, and Spirit. Thus we can say that the revelation of God's being is in God's acting. Not only the revelation, but the being of God is in God's act. God is what God does. That sort of thing.

In this act, and in God's being, God is out to utterly destroy the "walled insularity of man, his enslavement to the powers and forces..." (Weber, 381). He does this, as God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. (II Cor. 5:19) He also does this through the gift, act, and "reception of the Spirit, [where] revelation becomes 'subjective reality' and thus 'possibility'" (Weber, 386). Although our knowledge of God in his revelation is imperfect because our knowledge of revelation is imperfect, this is still how we can and do know anything about God (Weber, 388).

Important Trinitarian Ideas, Concepts, and whatnot.

These are some of the most important ideas to keep track of when it comes to the theology and problems with the doctrine of the trinity.

Subordinationism refers to the idea that Jesus (or the Spirit) was in some sense 'subordinate' to God. Usually, this takes shape when it is thought that Jesus was 'given' the power/deity of God so that Jesus wasn't in fact God but merely somehow divine...God-like, God-empowered, and God-created. Arius was the big name here, basically claiming that there was such a time when Jesus did not exist. The biggest problem here is that the full deity of Christ and the Spirit is not respected, and it does not respect God's unity.

Modalism refers to the idea that Jesus Christ and the Spirit were merely modes or ways that the one God behind the mode appeared. Modalism can take the form of something like God being a shape-shifter, or take the form of God being something like an actor in a play who puts on different masks and costumes to fit the role. This is associated with Sabellianism. The problem here is that since God only reveals himself to us in different modes, we do not get to see God as God and so we have no real knowledge of God. In modalism, there is always a real God behind the mode of God - denying the true revelation of God. Not good.

[The interesting thing about subordinationism and modalism is that all doctrines of God are in danger and violation of slipping ever so gently into one camp or the other. As we read (not just Weber, but all talk of God), we have to keep this possibility in mind.]

Vestiges of the Trinity refers to a concept, which gained steam with Augustine, that claims that there are vestiges (marks, traces, etc.) of the trinity in nature, the human person, etc. Augustine saw vestiges of the trinity in the human intellectual makeup (memory, intellect, and will) and in the makeup/powers of the soul (spirit, self-knowledge, and self-love). In this scheme, there is a sort of analogy between humans and God whereby we can understand God as trinity. This is often referred to as "analogia entis" (analogy of being). When it hits the fan, this is a nice idea but ultimately a very bad one. It is trying to discover and fit God in something that he ought not. I'll leave it at that.

Another important trinitarian word is "homoousios". It is the idea that God is made up of a divine substance ("ousia") and that the Father, Son, and Spirit are all made of this same ousia (thus, "homoousios" literally means 'of one substance'). This all gets a little hairy when God is thought of to be made of a substance, essence, nature, etc. For instance, it is important to state that while the Father, Son, and Spirit are of one substance, this substance cannot not be given/attributed to anything that is not God. Also, it's important not to think of God's being one substance in the sense that humans are all made out of one substance. If this were the case, then as all humans are individual people, so would God be three individuals, resulting in tritheism. Complicated. It's important to be able to navigate though, as these terms filled a lot of church fathers' time. I think that they struggled through these issues for good reasons.

Another important trinitarian idea is around the words hypostasis, persona, and ratio, as referring to something like 'person'. The idea of person is helpful (Jesus is the 2nd person of the trinity, etc.) but it is also dangerous. Our modern idea of "personhood" is very individualistic and separate (leading to tritheistic ideas), where as in the old days hypostases, ousia, persona, prosopon (face), and substantia all got mixed up and misunderstood over time.

This is all very confusing, complicated, and somewhat frustrating. Weber draws out the gem of the section though when he says that

[O]ur review of the terminology of the Doctrine of the Trinity should have made one thing clear: all of the formulae are only approximate attempts to express a mystery which will never be completely comprehended by our thought processes.

Weber, 379.

On Monotheism.

Weber mentions the inadequacy of the concept of monotheism, in that monotheism generally deals with an abstract, unknown, and absolute God or deity. (Weber, 354) In God's revelation (in God's concrete self-disclosing acts), God contradicts this general monotheism as God encounters us as Father, Son and Spirit. Does this mean three Gods? No, in that God in his freedom determines Himself as the One Triune God. This is not easy. Weber prefers the term "revelational monotheism" because it allows the Biblical revelation of God to determine our way of thinking and conceiving of God. Weber states that

...the biblical witness makes three things clear. The one God is not a solitary God. He is not a lifeless God. He is not a God who is wrapped up in himself.

Weber, 358.

God is three and God is one. He is the personal, living, and outward oriented Triune God. So what does this mean practically? Four things:

1) This means first of all that worship, service, and obedience are due to God alone...

2) God is this One God as the Lord who deals with us...

3) God is, as the One and the Only One, the God whom we may and should trust solely and completely...

4) God is the One and the Unique as the God who discloses himself to us really, validly, and as he who stands over against us.

Weber, 358-60.

Why the Triune God?

Why the Triune God? Why not just talk about God? Shouldn't we get God down first (a 'general' doctrine of God), and then move on to this "trinity" idea? This is a decision upon which everything stands or falls. Weber puts it like this:

In our doctrine of God's being and attributes, everything then will depend upon our really talking about the God who encounters us in the biblical witness. This God, however, is the One who discloses himself to us as the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit. He is the God whose unity, life, and revelation are expressed by the Doctrine of the Trinity in reflection and interpretation.

Weber, 350.

What the point is, is that if there is some God behind the trinity (i.e., behind God as he has revealed himself in scripture), then we actually have no knowledge of God because God had actually not revealed himself. He would have revealed some other version of himself. If this were true, then all would be lost. All theology/talk of God would be utterly meaningless and nothing more than human speculation. But this is not the case. God reveals himself. He does so as he is, Father, Son, and Spirit. This is good news.