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The Wedding Cake Cosmos: Augustine & NeoPlatonism

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to

the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than

according to Christ. The Apostle Paul (Col 2:8)

The Christian doctrine of God is a "hybrid of two organisms": Greek philosophy and biblical

thought. Colin Gunton (2003:2)

In many respects, the Christian doctrine of God is secular, constructed out of philosophy, not

out of the self-revelation of God in Christ. Catherine Mowry LaCugna (1991:3).

The Roman Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner (1970:10, 11), rightly lamented nearly forty years agothat most Christians are "mere monotheists," not in the sense of believing in one God, but in the sense

of believing in a unipersonal cosmic "monad." He argued that the doctrine of the Trinity was

practically irrelevant in the lives of most Christians. He went so far to say, I believe correctly, that

"should if the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature

could well remain virtually unchanged." That is a strong indictment of the relative unimportance of

the doctrine of the Triune God in Western theology and piety. With today's post I want to begin a

series of articles that trace the eclipse of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Western Church.

For sixteen hundred years, from the time of Augustine until the early 20th century, the doctrine of the

Trinity has been little more than a relatively minor appendix to an already developed doctrine of the

"One God." The relegation of the doctrine of the Trinity to minority status in the Western doctrine of

God is directly related the influence of pagan metaphysics on Christian thought. As my friend,

theologian Robert Lucas puts it: the Western doctrine of God is a confluence of two very different

streams of thought: Greek philosophy and Holy Scripture, with the result that the "Christian" doctrine

of God has been thoroughly polluted by an alien stream.

As Bloesch (1995:205) notes, "the history of Christian thought shows the unmistakable imprint of a

biblical-classical synthesis in which the ontological categories of Greco-Roman philosophy have been

united with the personal-dramatic categories of biblical faith." This synthesis of Greek and biblical

thought was conspicuous in Augustine and Aquinas (Bloesch, 1995:206). The God of the classical-

biblical synthesis is described negatively as infinite, immutable, impassible, incomprehensible and

eminently as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. This is the distant, aloof, inscrutable deity

that Baxter Kruger succinctly describes as the "omniGod," or simply G-O-D. Many Christians may be

surprised to know that the omniGod developed, not from the scriptural attestation of God as Father,incarnate Son and Holy Spirit, but from Greek metaphysics. To be sure, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and
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others have been given equalplace alongside Holy Scripture in formulating the Latin-Western

doctrine of God.

As we shall see, Augustine, the Father of Western Christianity, was enamored with NeoPlatonism.

Thomas Aquinas, another of the great "Doctors" of the Western Latin Church, developed his doctrine

of God within the framework of the metaphysics of Aristotle. No malevolent intent is attributed to

either of these Christian saints. They were simply swimming in the philosophical waters that

surrounded them. Yet in developing a doctrine of God that is rooted in Greek metaphysics, they

turned away from God's threefold self-revelation in redemptive history. In short, as Robert Lucas

often says, they have failed to allow Jesus to reveal the Father. In so doing, they have left the Western

Church with an uninvolved God who watches us from a distancealoof, alone, and unmoved by our

plight. The inscrutable omniGod of the Western-Latin tradition is very different from the self-

abnegating, stooping (cf. Hosea 11:4), compassionate God revealed in Holy Scripture, particularly in

its attestation to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God and loving Savior of the world (see Pinnock, et

al, 1994; Pinnock, 2001; Sanders, 2007).

So let's lighten up the tone a bit and travel back in time to the late 4 th century to see how the Good

News of God's adoption of humanity into the joyful circle of Triune life, so passionately proclaimed by

Irenaeus, Athanasius and the Cappadocians, was distorted into the awful proclamation of the

omniGod. To do that, we must start with Augustine.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is known as the Father of Western Christianity. Like it or not, if you

grew up in the Western Church,he's yo daddy! (You knew I couldn't stay serious forever!) Auggie is

probablythe major player in the development of the Western doctrine of God. His great work,De

Trinitate (On the Trinity), written over a twenty year period (399-419), is not only a classic in Western

trinitarian thought but also determined the course that Western trinitarian theology would follow, so

that later differences between Western and Eastern trinitarian theology can be traced to this work

(Gonzales, 1987:328).

Here's the deal about Auggie. For whatever reasons, he initiated anew approach to the doctrine of the

Trinity. While there's nothing wrong with originality, when it comes to the doctrine of God, we do well

to pay attention to what all our predecessors had to say. Auggie, however, didn't do that. Rather, he

failed to appropriate many of the developments in trinitarian thought that had preceded him as far

back as Origen in the early third century (Gunton, 1997:39). In fact, Auggie was largely blind to the

achievements of Athanasius and the Cappadocians (Jenson, 1997:111). I think Auggie rejected

Athanasius and the Cappies because he didn't understand what they were saying. Part of the problem

may be that Auggie spoke and wrote Latin and was not well-versed in Greek. You think!


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Anyway, grab hold and follow this: Augustine did not fully comprehend the Cappadocian

formulation, mia ousia, tres hypostaseis (one substance, three persons) never quite understanding

what the Cappadocians meant byhypostasis(Jenson, 1997:111). Instead of translating the term as

"person," Augustine translated it as substantia (substance) (Gonzales, 1987:330). InDe

Trinitate (Gonzales, 1987:330 n11; cf.Augustine, 1991:196), Augustine writes of the Cappadocians:

They indeed use also the word hypostasis; but they intend to put a difference, I know not

what, between ousia andhypostasis: so that most of ourselves who treat these things in the

Greek language, are accustomed to say, mian ousian, tres hypostases, or, in Latin, one

essence, three substances [unam essentiam, tres substantias].

The essential point to note is that Auggie failed to fully comprehend the Cappadocian distinction

between ousia(substance) and hypostasis (person). Look again at what he said: they (the Cappies)

intend to "put a difference,I know not what, between ousia and hypostasis." So Brother Auggie

wrongly translates hypostases as "substances" (substantias) and gets the notion that the Cappies must

have been a bunch of wild-eyed polytheists who believed in three gods (three "substances"). I'm not

putting Brother Auggie down here; there was a lot of confusion in those days in translating technical

terms back and forth between Latin and Greek. Nevertheless, Auggie fails to fully appreciate the

Cappadocian distinction ofpersonhoodwithin the deity itself, for in his translation

(wherein hypostasis is equivalent to substantia), to do so would amount to tritheism (Gonzales,

1987:330). In short, Auggie seems at a loss to how to articulate the distinctions in the Godhead. In

fact, as he himself said, he merely uses the word "person" in order not to remain silent (Augustine,

1991:196).

Auggie seems stuck on the idea of the indivisible unity of God, and as a NeoPlatonist, he would have to

be (see below). So whereas our boys the Cappies tend to take as their point of departure the diversity

of the persons or hypostases, and from there move to the unity of essence or ousia, Augustine begins

from the essential unity of God and moves to the distinction of persons (Gonzalez, 1987:330). Some,

perhaps many, would argue that Auggie never quite gets there and leaves the Western Church with an

essentially modalistic view of God (God as one person, not three). Let me say all that more simply: the

Cappies start with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Auggie starts with the unitary substance of God

and, arguably, never really makes it to the Triune Persons.

But what really separates Auggie from his predecessors is that he refuses to grant the importance that

the diversity of persons had for the Cappies. Auggie's manner of understanding divine unity and

simplicity leads him to reject every attempt to speak of God in terms of what he must have regarded as

a triple being (Gonzales, 1987:330). Thus, unlike his trinitarian predecessors, Augustine insists on


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starting with the unity of the divine substance rather than the diversity of persons as revealed in the

economy of salvation as Father, incarnate Son, and Spirit. Augustine's failure to appreciate the

Cappadocian distinction within unity is the result of his unfailing commitment to the Greek

philosophical presupposition that the Deity is metaphysically simple; that is, no sort of self-

differentiation can be posited in the Godhead (cf.Jenson, 1997:111). Read all that again, my homeys,

this is BIG! Auggie's method of starting with the unitary substance (essence, nature) rather than the

Triune Persons would become standard practice in the Western doctrine of God.

So what is going on with Brother Auggie. Why is he so committed to emphasizing the unity of God

while only secondarily considering the diversity of personhood within the Triune Godhead that was so

clearly appreciated by Big Basil and the two Gregs, not to mention the gunslinging Athanasius? To

answer that question, we gotta' light our pipes (cigars if you are female), pour a brandy, kick back and

do a little philosophizin'. And that brings us to none other than NeoPlatonism (finally!), the revival of

Platonic philosophy represented especially by Plotinus (ca. 205270), the last of the great Platonic

philosophers.

Plotinus is big-time important to a discussion of Augustine's doctrine of God, for although Auggie was

committed to the Lord Jesus Christ, he was deeply influenced by Neoplatonism, which, even in his

mature years, he used to interpret the Bible (Pinnock,et al, 1994:80; Pinnock, 2001:69). As the Roman

Catholic philosopher tienne Gilson (2002:47) notes, Augustine boldly undertook to solve the

problem of how to express the God of Christianity in terms borrowed from Plotinus. Look at that

again. Already in the late 4th century, the "Christian" doctrine of God is being packaged in

apagan wrapping, and that unseemly gift has been slipped under all our Christmas trees.

Plotinus referred to the Divine (the ultimate transcendent principle) as the "One," an

impersonal, simple, absolute unity without the shadow of plurality (Allen & Springsted, 2007:57) and

to which no multiplicity or division can be ascribed (Copleston, 1962:465). (Wake up, Brothers and

Sisters! The lights ought to be coming on already!) In order to maintain the Greek philosophical

insistence on an ontological gap between the One and the created order, Plotinus posited a series of

emanations, wherein each succeeding "level" of emanation possesses less ontological significance, that

is, less "being," than the prior level (Allen & Springsted, 2007:50). The material world, existing in time

and space at the "lower" end of the emanational chain of being, possesses the least degree of

ontological significance and is regarded as evil (Tarnas, 1991:85). (Don't miss that last point: the

world is evil, per Plotinus!). As part of the material world of multiplicity, human beings have less

ontological significance (less "being" or "reality") than the One. The essential point is that in the

Neoplatonic philosophy that underlies Augustine's thought, the greater the unity, the greater the


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"being" or "reality." Thus, as an indivisible unity, the One has greater being or reality than the

distinctions (the many) that emanate from it.

Let's unpack all that high-browed talk for a moment. We've talked before about the ubiquitous

ontological divide that characterizes Greek thought, the spiritual-material dualism of the ancient

world. You remember: God is "way up there," aloof, alone, arelational and uninvolved; we're "way

down here" and "never the twain shall meet" cause God don't dirty his hands with dirt; or so said the

Greeks! So how do you get from God to the world? You posit a bunch oflayers between the divine and

dirt (the Gnostics did the same thing), "layers of being" that actually emanate from the One. You've

seen the layers on a wedding cake. That's how Plotinus envisioned the cosmos. God is at the top layer

and you "descend downward" through other layers, called "Nous" (mind) and World Soul, before you

finally get to dirt where we are. Note that with each descending "layer" in our cosmic wedding cake,

there is less "ontological significance." In other words, each succeeding lower level has less "reality"

than the preceding level, so by the time you get to us all you have is a relatively unimportant world of

impermanence, change and flux. With the cosmic wedding cake model, Plotinus keeps the

unchangeable divine from being contaminated by our dirty world, insulated from us by the

intervening levels of the wedding cake. So the "One" keeps its hands clean and remains unchanged

(immutable) and unaffected (impassible) by what goes on down here.

Now let's catch a breath and recap: The One is simple, without the shadow of plurality. So what's the

big deal? It means Plotinus and the other Greek philosophers have taken relationship right off the

table in their concept of God. Do you get it? Divine simplicity d'q's (disqualifies) diversity of

personhood from the git-go. In addition, this means not only is there no diversity (multiplicity) in the

Godhead, the divine is also uninvolved with the world (impassible). The divine must remain aloof,

alone, arelational and uninvolved, else it would somehow be conditioned by the cosmos and thus no

longer immutable. In short, if the God of the philosophers were to engage creation, it would be

changed and thus no longer perfect, for change in a perfect being can only be for the worse. You can

see what's comin' can't you? How in the hell are you going to develop any decent doctrine of theTrinity with that kind of framework? Gimme a break!

Back to Auggie: In line with the Neoplatonic presupposition that divine unity is ontologically prior to

all manifestations of multiplicity (whew!), Augustine begins his articulation of the doctrine of God

with the unitary being of God, that is, the essence, or substance (ousia) of God, rather than the

threefold manifestation of God as Father, incarnate Son, and Spirit revealed in Scripture (Pinnock, et

al, 1994:83, 84; cf. Letham, 2004:3, 4). According to Sanders (Pinnock, et al, 1994:84), "Augustine

makes divine substance [essence, nature] rather than the tripersonal God the highest ontologicalprinciple. The substance of God is what is ultimately real, not the relationships between the Father,


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Son and Spiritlet alone the relationships between the triune God and creatures." For Augustine, in

strict accordance with Neoplatonism, God is understood as a simple, unitary substance. Again, this

paragraph is very important. Do you begin to see how the Triune PersonsFather, Son and Spiritare

going to get lost in all this emphasis on the unitary being of God?

In addition, there is a distinct anti-material bias in Augustine's thought. Augustine does not believe

that the world is the kind of place where God's presence can be revealed, even in the humanity of

Jesus (Gunton, 1997:33-38). Augustine's suspicion of the material world is reflected in his

Christology, wherein he tends to emphasize the divinity of Jesus over his humanity (Gunton, 97:34).

This suspicion of the material world is natural for one influenced by the Neoplatonic view of creation

as the realm of evil. In his development of analogies of the Trinity (see below), Augustine finds the

material world to be the least adequate source of assistance. Book XI ofDe Trinitate is an argument

for the inferiority of the outer world as distinct from the inner rational world to serve as an analog of

the Trinity (Gunton, 1997:37). Given the fundamental Greek dualism between the world of spirit and

the world of matter, it would be difficult for Augustine, as a Neoplatonist, to imagine the material

world as the bearer of the Divine. Hence, under the pressure of the anti-material bias of his

philosophical presuppositions, Augustine would be more inclined to articulate his doctrine of God in

terms of the metaphysics of substance rather than in terms of the concrete manifestation inspace and

time of the incarnate ("enfleshed") Son.

Because he achieves an essentially Neoplatonic understanding of God (cf. Bloesch, 1995:205), one

may rightly expect a severe bifurcation oftheologia (God in his eternal transcendent nature)

and oikonomia (God threefold self-revelation in redemptive history) in Auggie's doctrine of God. In

brief, Auggie develops his doctrine of the eternal God apart from God's self-revelation in the incarnate

Son and Holy Spirit. To be sure, Auggie did notlook to the material world to articulate his doctrine of

the Trinity. Don't miss the point: Auggie turns away from God's historicalself-revelation in time and

space (the world of dirt) in order to develop his doctrine of God. Rather than inquiring into the nature

of the transcendent God as revealed in Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit, Auggie turnsaway from God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history to look for analogs of the Trinity in the

human mind or soul (LaCugna, 1991:10; cf. Grenz: 2004:9).

InDe Trinitate, Augustine articulates a "psychological analogy" of the Trinity that pointed the way

Western trinitarian thinking would follow (Gonzales, 1987:334; Grenz, 2004:9). Drawing upon the

scriptural revelation of man as created in the image of God (Gen 1:26), Auggie looked for traces or

"vestiges" of the Trinity (vestigia trinitatis) in the human mind or soul. In order to show how

something can be both one and three, he sought to articulate a doctrine of the Trinity by arguing thatthe human mind, with its threefold structure of memory, understanding, and will in a unitary whole,


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mirrors the Trinity (Gonzales, 1987:333, 334). Augustine's predilection for looking to the inner

relations of the mind or soul is natural for one influenced by Platonism, wherein the human mind is

regarded as a limited reflection of the Divine mind (Allen & Springsted, 2007:74).

InDe Trinitate, Augustine develops a method for the self-reflexive contemplation of the image of the

Trinity in the human soul (LaCugna, 1991:83). That is, to know God, one turns inwardto contemplate

the Trinity within. The obvious result of this inward turn, however, is a turn away from God's self-

revelation in the saving acts of Christ (Grenz, 2004:9). By positing analogs of the Trinity in the human

mind, Augustine develops a conceptual structure of the Trinity that is independentof God's self-

revelation in salvation history. This conceptual structure is then used to interpret the doctrine of God

as revealed in Scripture (Torrance, 1980:148, 149).

Let's be sure and get that last paragraph: Drawing upon the presuppositions of NeoPlatonism, Auggie

turns inward to the human mind or soul to develop analogies for the Trinity. Hence, his conceptual

structure for his doctrine of God is developedindependently of God's self-revelation in history. He

then uses that independent structure to interpret God's self-revelation in history! And no doubt, he

and a lot of others who followed in his wake could cherry-pick any number of scriptures to support a

doctrine of God largely developed from pagan metaphysics. AAAAGGGHHHH!!! Why didn't

somebody tell me this decades ago!

OK. Let's calm down and get back to Auggie. Here's the bottom line: Auggie makes a major

epistemological and methodological blunder. Think about it. If I want to know about God, where do I

start looking? Inside my own head? No!I look at Jesus! But if I am a NeoPlatonist with a grudge

against the material world, I won't be inclined to look toward the flesh and blood Son. Ugh! Instead,

I'm gonna develop my thinking about God by turning away from the world of dirt and guts and look

inside my own head, where I may dispassionately contemplate the divine mystery. Not only that, as a

NeoPlatonist, I am going to emphasize divine simplicity and unitary substance to the point that the

Triune Persons get lost in the ontological soup, like three bits of potato sunk in the vichyssoise. Do you

see how all this works?

Let's give Catherine Mowry LaCugna, a Roman Catholic scholar, the last word. Augustine's method of

turning inward to contemplate the image of the Trinity completely alters the theoretical basis for the

economy of salvation by relocating the economy within the human soul rather than in the threefold

pattern of God's self-revelation in redemptive history (LaCugna, 1991:10). Even though Augustine may

have never intended it, his legacy is an approach to the Trinity (theologia) that is largely divorced

from God's self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia) (LaCugna, 1991:102; cf. Grenz, 2004:9).


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And that, Brothers and Sisters, has been the problem ever since in the Western doctrine of God. By

turning away from God's threefold self-revelation as Father, Son and Spirit, the Western Church,

under the influence of pagan metaphysics, has developed a doctrine of the One God that is

independent of, and completely overshadows, the Trinity, leaving God's Triune self-revelation as a

mere appendix to the doctrine of the omniGod. Instead of allowing Jesus to reveal the Father, the

Western-Latin tradition has left us with the inscrutable, immutable, impassible, omnipotent cosmic

monster of absolute, unrelenting sovereignty that fills many Christians with dread and terror.

References

Allen, D. & Springsted, E.O. 2007.Philosophy for Understanding Theology. Louisville, KY:

Westminister John Knox. 267pp.

Augustine. 1991.De Trinitate (edited by J.E. Rotelle; translated by E. Hill). New York, NY: New City

Press. 472pp.

Bloesch, D.G. 1995. God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love. Downers Grove, IL: IVP.

329pp.

Copleston, F.A History of Philosophy (vol 1). New York, NY: Doubleday). 521pp.

Gilson, E. 2002. God and Philosophy. New Haven, CT: Yale Nota Bene. 147pp.

Gonzalez, J.L. 1987.A History of Christian Thought(vol 1). Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. 400pp.

Grenz, S.J. 2004.Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology.

Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress. 289pp.

Gunton, C.E. 1997. The Promise of Trinitarian Theology. London: T & T Clark. 220pp.

Gunton, C. E. 2003.Act & Being. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Jenson, R.W. 1997.Systematic Theology (vol 1). Oxford: OUP. 244pp.

Letham, R. 2004. The Holy Trinity. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing. 551pp.

Pinnock, C.H. et al. 1994. The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional

Understanding of God. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 202pp.


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Pinnock, C.H. 2001.Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker

Academic. 204pp.

Rahner, K. 1970. The Trinity. New York, NY: Crossroads. 122pp.

Sanders, J. 2007. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. Downers Grove, IL: IVP.

384pp.

Tarnas, R. 1991. The Passion of the Western Mind. New York, NY: Ballantine. 544pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1980. The Ground and Grammar of Theology: Consonance Between Theology and

Science. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

That's a lot of references for a blog post! I need to get a life. I think I'll go possum huntin' tonight!

Tommy A. and the Western Split

In our recent post on Augustine and Neo-Platonism (see "The Wedding Cake Cosmos"), we saw how

the doctrine of the Trinity began to be conceived apart from God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son

and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. You remember don't you? Failing to understand the

Cappadocian emphasis on the diversity of Persons in the Triune Godhead, Auggie turned inward to

look for "vestiges" of the Trinity (vestigias trinitatis) inside his own head and developed an innovative

approach to the doctrine of God that emphasizes the unitary essence or "substance" (ousia) of God

largely considered apart from God's triune self-revelation in salvation history.

Centuries after the time of Augustine, the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 marked a milestone in

trinitarian dogma in the Latin West due to its detailed, precise articulation of the nature of God (Olson

& Hall, 2002:62). The council defined faith in God as belief in "only one true God, eternal, infinite

(immensus) and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty and ineffable, the Father, the Son, and

the Holy Spirit: three persons indeed but one essence, substance, or nature entirely simple" (O'Collins,

1999:148). The council stood in the Augustinian tradition of trinitarian reflection by describing God as

one divine substance, absolutely simple in every way, and unchanging, that is, unaffected by history

(i.e., impassible). The council described the Triune Persons as "nothing more than distinct relations

within the divine substance distinguished only by their differing relations of origin with regard to one

another" (Olson & Hall, 2002:62, 63).

Latin theologians of the High Middle Ages, concerned with the "logical intricacies" of the immanent

Trinity (i.e., God in God's eternal transcendent nature), sought to round out Augustine's trinitarianism
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by addressing intellectual questions that had been left unanswered (Grenz, 2004:10). The philosophy

and logic of Plato and Aristotle were given equalplace alongside Scripture in medieval speculation

about the transcendent of God (cf. Olson & Hall, 2002:51, 52).Stop! You may want to read that line

again!Apparently, God's triune self-revelation as attested in the history of Israel, the incarnation of

the Son, and the gift of the Spirit (oikonomia) was little more informative than non-biblical Greek

metaphysics in the Western doctrine of God.

Since Lateran IV, especially in the Latin West, there has been a tendency to begin with and emphasize

the unity of the divine substance while neglecting the divine persons as a Triune community of

reciprocal love. Some critics have argued that by placing a strong priority on the unity of God to the

detriment of God's triunity, Lateran IV effectively dogmatized the division of the doctrine of God that

would become standard procedure in the Latin West, beginning with one of the major players in the

development of Western thought regarding the doctrine of God: the Dominican friar, Thomas

Aquinas (1225-1274).

In order to understand where Tommy A. was coming from, we must realize that the Greek

philosopher, Aristotle, had been newly rediscovered in the Latin West. Aristotle was all the rage in the

High Middle Ages in Europe. Everyone was wearing T-shirts with his picture on them. At every

cocktail party, theologians and philosophers, well-oiled with good Single Malt Scotch (pardon the

redundancy), huddled near the fire, puffed their pipes and debated the fine points of Aristotelian

metaphysics. In those days, if you didn't know the difference in "efficient" and "material" causality,

you just weren't with it, Dude! This is the philosophical milieu in which Tommy Aquinas went to work.

We're not here to put the brother down; we just want to note the kind of water he was swimming in.

In hisSumma Theologi (1266-1273), a classic work of Western theology, Thomas split the doctrine

of God into two parts: a thorough exposition of the one God (De Deo Uno) followed by a treatise on

the Trinity (De Deo Trino). Methodologically, Thomas followed Augustine by examining first the unity

of the divine "substance" (ousia: essence, nature, being), onlyafterwards to articulate the

"deployment" of the divine substance in the Trinity of persons (LaCugna, 1991:146). Aquinas attempts

to understand God, notby beginning with God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ (revealed theology),

but by beginning with the unity of the divine substance considered in terms of the philosophy of

Aristotle (cf. Allen & Springsted, 2007:103-110). Since Aristotle was everyone's hero at the time, I

guess it just made sense to frame a "Christian" doctrine of God in terms ofpagan metaphysics! Am I

missing something?

Aquinas sought to "prove" the existence of God, as well as describe the general characteristics of the

divine nature (ousia), via the "five ways," a series ofrational(not revealed) cosmological proofs for


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the existence and nature of God initially derived from Aristotle (Aquinas, 1989:12ff; Moltmann,

1993:10ff; Allen & Springsted, 2007, 103ff). Thomas reasoned that 1) objects in motion ultimately

require a Prime Mover to initiate the first move; 2) the existence of cause and effect requires a First

Cause; 3) the existence of contingent beings requires a Necessary Being; 4) degrees of perfection

require that which is ultimately Perfect, and 5) the design in nature can be explained only by a

Designer (McGrath, 2001:245-247). The principle behind this method is that a cause can be known by

its effects (Aquinas, 1989:11, 12). In other words, knowledge of God (cause) can be derived from

observation of the created order or cosmos (effects) (Allen & Springsted, 2007:104). Aquinas' five

ways of cosmological proof start from the general phenomena of the world and inquire about their

ultimate foundation; that is, the cosmological proofs start from the finitude of the world and contrast

this with infinite Being (Moltmann, 1993:12). After each proof, Thomas asserts "et hoc dicimus Deum"

("and this we call God") (cf. Aquinas, 1989:12-14; McGrath, 2001:245-247). Note that for Aquinas, it isthe divine essence or substance (ousia), deduced from the five ways of cosmological "proofs," that is to

be called God, not the Triune Persons.

Based upon the "five ways" derived from Aristotle, here is the description of God that Thomas ends up

with: "The divine nature is the moving, causing, necessary, pure and intelligent Being for being that is

moved, caused, possible, intermingled and ordered" (Moltmann, 1993:12). Wow! Now there's a God

you can relate to. Not! As my homey theologian Baxter Kruger often says, who wants to hang with a

God like that? By the way, did you notice anything missing in that description of God?

We may rightly question if Aquinas is correct to assert "and this we call God." Aquinas bases his

conclusions about the nature of God on rational(not biblical) presuppositions of what it is "proper"

for God to be like (dignum Deo) (Sanders, 2007:295, n29). According to Greek metaphysics, any deity

worthy of the name must beimmutable, impassible, omnipotent, etc. (We'll get more of this in the

next post.) Unfortunately, conclusions about God based on pagan philosophical presuppositionsare

more descriptive of Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover" (the aloof, alone, arelational deity of Greek thought)

than the scriptural portrayal of the dynamic, passionate, self-emptying God who engages and isaffected by creation (cf. Pinnock, 2001:70, 71).

Moreover, the epistemology (How do we know?) and methodology (Where do we start?) of Aquinas'

approach is subject to question. Thomas develops his ideas of what God must be like rationally, quite

independently of God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia). In short, Thomas

derives his description of God from reason rather than revelation (Pinnock, 2001:70). Thomas'

cosmological approach is far different from the approach of our boys Athanasius and the

Cappadocians, who started with God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia).


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O.K. Hang on to your hats! We're coming to the part where Thomas does something entirely new in

the Western doctrine of God: Drawing upon his starting point with the cosmological proofs of the

existence and nature of God, Aquinas divides his doctrine of God into two parts:De Deo Uno (On the

One God) andDe Deo Trino (On the Triune God). He then writesfirsta lengthy treatise on the One

God (De Deo Uno) wherein he articulates the essence of God (De Deo Uno) in terms of natural

theology, that is, investigation into the divine nature solely in terms of human reason and empirical

observation. When he finally gets around to his subsequent treatise on the Trinity (De Deo Trino), the

description of the Triune Godhead is philosophical and abstractwith little relation to God's self-

revelation in salvation history(Rahner, 1997:16, 17; cf. LaCugna, 1991:145).Thomas is the first

theologian to divide the doctrine of God in such a manner (Rahner, 1997:16, 17). Notice what's

happening already: Thomas does not begin his articulation of the doctrine of God with the Triune

Persons as revealed in redemptive history; instead, he begins with a rationalexplication of the unitaryessence (ousia) common to all three persons (Aquinas, 1989:14ff).

In dividing the doctrine of God into two parts, wherein the unity of God is considered first, with the

triunity of God explicated inpreconceivedterms of the divine substance, Thomas dubiously achieved

what is frequently described as "the paradigm instance" of the separation oftheologia (God in God's

eternal transcendent nature) and oikonomia (God as revealed in salvation history in the incarnate Son

and Spirit), thus hardening into dogma what had begun in Augustine (LaCugna, 1991:145, 147, 148).

Get that point! Aquinas has splitapart the doctrine of God; he has separated consideration of God'seternal transcendent nature from God's triune self-revelation in time and space! His method of

beginning with the divine essence or substance is a clear departure from Scripture, early creeds,

liturgy and Greek patristic theology (LaCugna, 1991:147). Aquinas' doctrine of God is neither historical

nor Christological. It has the transcendent "essence" or "substance" of God as its subject, so that God's

self-revelation in salvation history is not an essential dimension or the explicit foundation for

knowledge of the Trinity. Hence, the entire structure of theSumma emphasizes the priority

oftheologia over oikonomia.Given Thomas' starting point in God himself (in se), the economy of

redemption in salvation history is notthe primary basis for his doctrine of God (LaCugna, 1991:147-

150).

Let's sum up: Thomas begins with speculation on the abstract substance (ousia) of God, considered in

terms of Greek metaphysics, notin terms of the biblical revelation of God as Father, Son and Spirit.

He then writes first a major treatise on the One God (De Deo Uno), that is, the essence or substance of

God wherein the divine nature is described rationally, that is, in terms of what humans may think is

"proper" for God to be. (As if we would know!). Only after that does he get around to his treatise on


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the Trinity (De Deo Trino). Even then, his trinitarianism is abstract and philosophical and bears little

connection to God's triune self-revelation in salvation history.

To continue: For both Augustine and Aquinas, the one, common divine substance or essence of God

was considered the foundation of the trinitarian persons and was, hence, logically primary in

comparison (Moltmann, 1993:16). Augustine begins with the divine substance and only secondarily

considers the triunity of God. For Aquinas, the divine substance, which could beabstractedfrom the

triune persons, is what is to be called "God," not the three persons or any one of them (Moltmann,

1993:16). Thus, both Augustine and Thomas divide the doctrine of God by beginning with the unitary

substance and onlysecondarilyconsidering the doctrine of the Trinity in light of the preconceptions of

substance ontology(i.e., "substantialist metaphysics). This methodological bifurcation of the doctrine

of God has prevailed since in Western theology (Rahner, 1997:16).

The Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God has had considerable consequences for

the doctrine of the Trinity in Western theology. In the textbooks of both Roman Catholic and

Protestant theology, the doctrine of God has been divided into a treatise on the one God followed by a

treatise on the Trinity (Moltmann, 1993:17). Only after the doctrine of the one God is fully explicated

is attention given to God's triune self-revelation in salvation history. This methodological bifurcation

makes it appear that everything that really matters in the doctrine of God is said in the first treatise on

the one God while the treatment of the Trinity is locked away in "splendid isolation" and "devoid of

interest" (Rahner, 1997:17). Don't make the mistake of thinking all this only happened in medieval

Roman Catholicism: In Protestant circles, the systematic theologians Charles Hodge and Louis

Berkhof both devote hundreds of pages to the explication of the existence and attributes of God before

even considering the Trinity (Letham, 2004:4). Believe it or not, Charles Hodge, one of the great

representatives of Calvinism, devotes only four pages to the doctrine of the Trinity in a work of

systematic theology that comprises three volumes and nearly 2,300 pages (Grenz, 2004:229 n 55).

Unreal!

As the bifurcation of the Western doctrine of God became rigid in medieval scholasticism, the treatise

on the unitary substance of God (De Deo Uno) evolved into "natural theology," that is, philosophical

speculation on the divine nature and attributes, based on pure reason, and developed rationallyapart

from revelation. As the Western doctrine of God was disconnected from God's self-revelation in

salvation history, Christology and Pneumatology became irrelevantto the doctrine of God when the

medieval philosophical speculation of natural theology was at its height (LaCugna, 1991:10, 11).

Moreover, the treatise on the Trinity was relegated to secondary status and regarded merely as a

formal treatment of intradivine processions, persons, and relations, so that, finally, in the seminariesof post-baroque Catholicism, the doctrine of the Trinity was hardly studied at all and regarded as not


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essential to Christian faith (LaCugna, 1991:167, 168). Moreover, the marginalization of the doctrine of

the Trinity impacted not only theology but doxology as well. The complexities of medieval Latin

theology helped to precipitate the demise of the doctrine of the Trinity in the West because the

doctrine could no longer be related to the concerns of popular piety and religious experience (Grenz,

2004:13). Thus, one of the consequences of the medieval scholastic emphasis on the unity of God

understood from natural theology was the marginalization of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Latin

West (LaCugna, 1991:167).

Do you see what has happened? With the Augustinian-Thomist-Western emphasis on the unitary

"substance" of God ("substantialist metaphysics") considered rationally in terms of human ideas of

what is "proper" for God to be (immutable, impassible and generally unavailable), the doctrine of the

Trinity fell along the wayside. God's Triune self-revelation in redemptive history was marginalized and

no longer considered particularly relevant in the Western doctrine of God. By the time you get to more

recent Protestant theologians like Berkhof and Hodge, the doctrine of the Trinity is still marginalized.

The result of all this for most Christians is a fear and dread of the "hidden God" that lies "behind"

God's self-revelation in salvation history. This is the God we are not sure of, the God we fear may not

be like Jesus. The existential angst in the hearts of many Christians is the inevitable result of the

Western bifurcation of the doctrine of God, wherein G-O-D (Baxter Kruger) has been considered apart

from God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son and the Spirit. In short, the Western tradition has

failed to allow Jesus to reveal the Father (cf. John 1:18).

Thomas Aquinas' bifurcation of the doctrine of God contributed to the relegation of the doctrine of the

Trinity to the status of nothing more than an uninteresting, rather puzzling appendix to the doctrine

that has little to do with theology or Christian piety. The situation remained thus until the early

20th century when Karl Barth roared, "Nein!" Things are getting better, but we have a long way to go in

restoring the doctrine of the Trinity to its proper place as thefoundationaldoctrine from which all

Christian dogmatics must be explicated.

P.S. Look for next major post April 30. I hope you can join me then!

References

Allen, D. & Springsted, E.O. 2007.Philosophy for Understanding Theology. Louisville, KY:

Westminister John Knox. 267 pp.

Aquinas, T. 1989.Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation(edited by T.S. McDermott).Allen, TX:

Christian Classics. 652pp.


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LaCugna, C.M. 1991. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco, CA:

HarperSanFrancisco. 434pp.

McGrath, A.E. 2001. Christian Theology: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 616pp.

Moltmann, J. 1993. The Trinity and the Kingdom (trans by M. Kohl). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress

Press. 256pp.

Pinnock, C.H. 2001.Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker

Academic. 204pp.

Rahner, K. 1997. The Trinity: Introduction, Index, and Glossary by Catherine Mowery LaCugna.

New York, NY: Crossroads. 122pp.

Sanders, J. 2007. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. Downers Grove, IL: IVP.

384pp.

How to Make a Western OmeletGod (in Three Easy Steps)

Hello again, everyone! Before we start cooking' up our Western omeletGod, I want to call yourattention to a new article of mine that was just published in The Plain Truth magazine. I'm really

excited about the article because it's the feature article in the current edition. It's a tongue-in-cheek

critique of the really bad question sometimes heard from more than a few pulpits: "If you were

accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" Check it out. You'll find

it in the right-hand column of this blog under "Articles."

Now then, ya'll. Let's put on our tall chef's hats, sprinkle a little flour on our noses, adding a smidgen

of bacon grease under our arms to make us smell pretty, and stir up a Western omeletGod. Here wego!

Today we are going to discuss what my friend, theologian Baxter Kruger, calls the "omniGod." For this

post, I decided to change the terminology a bit and call it the "omeletGod." The recipe is the same so it

won't hurt to play around a little. If you have grown up under the influence of the Western (Latin)

Church, as have most readers of this blog, you will be familiar with the omeletGod: the omnipotent,

omniscient, omnipresent and generally unpleasant God of Western theology. This God is infinite,

ineffable, immutable, impassible and inscrutable. This God is to be approached with extreme cautionbecause this God is unfriendly. This God does not readily invite us to the kitchen table for cookies and
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milk. In fact, we can never be certain that this God even likes us. (Some extremists would even say this

God hated most of us even before we were born! I'm serious. I was taught this kind ofgar-bage in a

seminary class not that long ago.)

Have you ever wondered where the nasty, distasteful omeletGod comes from? How did the Western

Christian church develop a recipe for God that features something so unsavory as its chief ingredient?

If you've read this blog for a while, you won't be surprised to discover that the omeletGod was first

cooked up in the olive-oiled skillets of ancient Greece. Isn't it strange that every time we start talking

about the God of Western Christianity, we soon find ourselves in the tangled web of Greek

metaphysics? Go figure!

Let's set the stage for further discussion of the omeletGod with a great quote from Colin Gunton, one

of my favorite theologians: My boy Colin (2002:3) writes:

It is one of the tragedies - one could almost say crimes - of Christian theological history that

the Old Testament was effectively displaced by Greek philosophy as the theological basis of

the doctrine of God, certainly so far as the doctrine of the divine attributes is concerned.

I think that quote speaks pretty clearly, don't you? Notice that Gunton mentions the attributes of God.

"Attributes" are those characteristics that philosophers have ascribed or "attributed" to God based

upon human ideas of what is "proper" for God to be like (dignum deo). Infinity, immutability,

impassibility and omnipotence are some of the standard "attributes" of God, according to Western

theology. Gunton, like many others, is arguing that the attributes of the Western "Christian" God are

derived more from Greek (pagan) philosophy than from the Bible. That is a sad but highly accurate

commentary on the version of God with which most of us have been burdened.

As we have discussed before, the Greeks posited a great cosmic dualism: the divine is way up

therealoof, alone, isolated and uninvolved; we are way down here in this world of dirt, separated

from the divine by a great ontological chasm. The divine is good, the material world is evil; thus, there

can be no interaction between the two, for relation with the world would "taint" the divine. As Gunton

(2002:6) argues, herein lays the key to the entire problem of the so-called "attributes" of God. The

Greeks have located the divine in a realm that stands in opposition to, or is a negation of, the world.

The Greeks thought of God as unknowable and ineffable, so far beyond the capabilities of human

thought and language and so far removed from earthly concerns that we could say nothing positive

about God. All that remained was to say what God is not, a method known as the "way of negation"

(via negationis). Proclus, a student of Plotinus, the Neoplatonist who heavily influenced Augustine,


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argued that we cannot predicate anything positively of the "ultimate Principle"; we can only say what

it is not, because "it stands above all discursive thought and positive predication ineffable and

incomprehensible" (Gunton, 2002:14). In short, the idea underlying the "way of negation" (via

negationis) is that in describing the divine, we can only say that God is essentially what the world is

not.

So how do we use "negative" theology to formulate a list of the "attributes" of God? It works like this: I

look around and see a world that stands in opposition to the divine (according to Greek thought). I see

that this world of evil is finite; therefore, God, who is perfect and totally removed from this world of

dirt, must be notfinite, in other words, in-finite. I see that the world is mutable (changeable);

therefore, God must be notmutable, that is, im-mutable (unchangeable). I see that there is suffering

(passibility) in the world; therefore, God must be im-passible. It's really quite simple: I look at the

world around me, with all its flaws and imperfections, and assert that God is "not this."

Pseudo-Dionysius (5th C) introduced the "negative way" (via negationis) into Christian theology.

Other theologians followed suit, including the great Medieval Latin scholar, Thomas Aquinas, known

in this blog as Tommy A. Here's what our boy Tommy did: he added some ingredients to the Western

omeletGod that he picked up from the renowned Greek chef, Aristotle. As we saw in the last post

("Tommy A. and the Western Split") Aquinas sought to "prove" the existence of God, as well as

describe the general characteristics of the divine nature (ousia), via the "five ways," a series of

cosmological proofs for the existence and nature of God. By way of review, here's how it works:

Tommy A. looks at the world around him and the first thing he notices is objects in motion (effects).

So he puts on his thinking cap and commences to cogitate. Tommy reasons that 1) objects in motion

ultimately require a Prime Mover to initiate the first move; 2) the existence of cause and effect

requires a First Cause; 3) the existence of contingent beings (effects) requires a Necessary Being; 4)

degrees of perfection (effects) require that which is ultimately Perfect, and 5) the design in nature

(effects) can be explained only by a Designer (McGrath, 2001:245-247). You'll note that the "five

ways" are all variations on a common theme, sort of like Fernando Sor's "Variations on a Theme ofMozart." (Any classical guitarists out there?) The principle behind this method is that a cause can be

known by its effects. In other words, knowledge of God (cause) can be derived from observation of the

created order or cosmos(effects). In short, these cosmological "proofs" are developed using the "way of

causality" (via causalitatis): a cause can be known by its effects. When it's all said and done, Tommy's

version of God is a re-hash of the "prime Mover" of Aristotelian metaphysics. God is basically the first

cause, the necessary being, the perfect being, the cosmic designer, yada, yada, yada.

In addition to the "negative way" imported into Christian theology by Pseudo-Dionysius and the "wayof causality" just described, Tommy added another set of ingredients to his Western omeletGod: the


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"way of eminence" (via eminentiae). The principle behind the way of eminence is the "denial of

limits." Here's what Tommy did: Once again, he looks at the world around him and sees that people

have power and knowledge, although in limited amount, as well as the limited ability to be in only one

place at a time. So he simply applies all these things to God but removes the limits. In other words,

Tommy cogitates that God does not have limited power as we do; so he removes the limitations of

human power and says that God is all-powerful, that is, God isomnipotent. Ditto with knowledge. God

is not limited in knowledge as we are; God has all-knowledge, that is, God is omniscient. Ditto again

with the removal of the limitation of presence. Tommy contends that God is omnipresent.

OK, troops. Let's sum up, because this isn't rocket science. All we've done in these three methods or

"ways" is look at the world around us and say God is not this, or God lacks these limitations, or God is

the ultimate cause of all these effects. No big deal.

Now then, ya'll. Here's where the fun starts. Let's take all these ingredients from the Western recipe

for a doctrine of God and make a Western omeletGod. Do you still have on your tall chef's hat? Good!

Here we go! First we have to stoke up the wood stove till the fire's really blazing, then get out the

bacon grease and slick down the heavy black cast iron skillet. While the skillet is getting hot, we'll

crack open a half dozen eggs, then chop up some green peppers, onions and mushrooms and search

the cabinets for the salt and pepper. With luck, we may even find some Louisiana hot sauce

somewhere around the kitchen. OK. That's all done and the bacon grease is hot and starting to smell

oh so fine. So let's carefully pour in the eggs and start adding the ingredients to make a good'ole

Western omeletGod in three easy steps.

Step 1: First, we add the ingredients from the "way of negation" (via negationis). We'll throwin some infinity since God is not finite. Then we'll add some ineffability since God is not

known by human comprehension. Then we'll throw in that ever-present pair of ingredients

known as impassibilityand immutability since God (supposedly) does not change or suffer.

Step 2: Now we add the ingredients from the "way of causality" (via causalitatis). We throw ina first cause, a prime mover, a cosmic designer, and a necessary being.

Admittedly, this step is not as fun as the others.

Step Three: Now we add the ingredients from the "way of eminence" (via eminentiae). Likestep one, this one is really easy. We grab a handful of this and that, carefully removing the

imperfections, and throw it all in the skillet, adding to our omelet some hefty handfuls

ofomnipotence,omniscience and omnipresence.

Now, let's carefully fold the egg over all these ingredients and let the stove and skillet do their work. . .

. . . Presto! There it is. In just three easy steps we've cooked up a Western omeletGod. Let's grab a


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spatula and lift this heavy baby onto one of our finest plastic plates. There we go. Now grab a fork and

let's dig in! I'll bet this thing is going to be great. After all, our recipe comes from a long tradition of

great Western chefs. Here we go: Aaggghhhh! This thing doesn't taste right! It's yucky and awful and

I'll bet if we eat it all, it's going to make us all sick!

Yikes! What did we do wrong? We must have left something out. Let's review our ingredients and see

where we went wrong. We started by adding infinity, ineffability, immutability, and impassibility. OK.

That's all standard for a Western omeletGod. No problem there. Then we added some of those

ingredients that Tommy A. borrowed from Aristotle. Let's see: there was a first cause, a prime mover,

a designer . . . OK. That all seems pretty standard. Then we added those hefty handfuls of

omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. Maybe that's where we went wrong. Perhaps we put in

too much of the heavy stuff. Still, something is missing from our Western God omelet.

Wow! Silly me! I just figured it out. No wonder this thing tastes like a fried inner tube from my

grandson's bike tire. We left out the most important ingredients of all. How dumb can we be? We left

out the Father, Son and Holy Spirit! No wonder this omelet tastes so bad.

And there, friends and neighbors, is the problem with the Western doctrine of God. God's triune self-

revelation in salvation history has been utterlymarginalized(see previous post: "Tommy A. and the

Western Split") in favor of a one-sided doctrine of the One God whose characteristics (attributes) are

developed solely from rational reflection on the cosmos. Western Christians have been burdened with

a doctrine of God that has been developed apart from God's self-revelation in time and space as

the God who saves. The Western omeletGod gives us no reason to believe that God isfor us, for it is a

recipe for a doctrine of God developed apart from God's redemptive activity in salvation history.

It is vital that we teachers and preachers play our part in the ongoing call to bring the Western Church

back to the trinitarian vision of God shared by Irenaeus, Athanasius, Hilary, the Cappadocians and

others. Only when we understand that God's trinitarian self-revelation in time and space is a

redemptive, salvific revelation of the eternal nature of God whose essential being is love will the

Western Church finally be freed of its bondage to the omeletGod.

Well, folks, we made an omelet using the ingredients of the Western doctrine of God and found that it

didn't taste so good. I guess that's what happens when you leave the most important ingredients out of

the recipe. I don't know about the rest of you chefs out there, but I'm throwing away my recipe for a

Western omeletGod and I'm going to look for a cook book that's got some Jesus in it! Amen.

(Next major post circa, June 15, 2009. See you then!)


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References

Gunton. C. E. 2002.Act & Being: Toward a Theology of the Divine Attributes. Grand Rapids, MI:

Eerdmans. 162pp.

The Problematic God of Western Theology

Before reading this post, I suggest you read the previous post entitled "The Subordination of the

Doctrine of the Trinity."

The following post brings together much of the material that has been presented in previous posts by

articulating the problems associated with the Augustinian-Thomist-Western doctrine of God. The

post is long but I believe it is vitally important to our understanding of the problems in the Western

doctrine of God.

Split Between Faith and Reason

There are a number of serious problems with the Western doctrine of God. The first problem with the

Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God is a "false disjunction" between faith and

reason. While Jesus and the Spirit are known by faith in the apostolic witness revealed in Scripture,

the One God, that is, the supreme substance, is known by speculative reason rooted in pagan Greek

philosophy (Rahner, 1997:ix).

The Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of God implies that the One God of substantialist metaphysics is

the "real" God and is known differently from the Triune God revealed historically in the incarnate Son

and the Holy Spirit (oikonomia). As a result, the Augustinian-Thomist tradition has created a split

between faith and reason and left the Western Church with two competing sources of knowledge of

God, each tending to discredit the other (Gunton, 1990:35). These two versions of God are

incompatible, for each posits a distinct but dissimilar view of the nature of God and God's relationship

to the world. The One God of the philosophers, that is, the God of reason and natural theology, is the

immutable, impassible God of all determining power who is unaffected by the troubles here below.

The Triune God revealed in Scripture and known by faith is the God who stoops to interact with

creation (cf. Hos 11:4) and whose power is subordinated to his essential nature of love (Pinnock, et al,

1994:18ff).
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This split view of God leaves the Church with profound questions: Is the Christian God like the God of

the philosophersremote, aloof, and disengaged? Or is the Christian God the Triune God of grace and

mercy revealed in salvation history who freely and lovingly engages creation? In opening an

epistemological chasm between the One God and the Triune God, thereby creating a split between

faith and reason, the Augustinian-Thomist tradition has left the Western Church with the same

question posed to T. F. Torrance (1992:59) by a dying young soldier on the battlefield: "Is God really

like Jesus?"

Epistemology and Methodology

As evidenced above, many of the problems in the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of

God are epistemological and methodological, as can be seen by a comparison to Eastern Patristic

theology. The pre-Augustinian Fathers of the Eastern Greek tradition begin their thinking about God

with revelation; they do not attempt to describe God ad intra. Rather than offer a "philosophy of

being," their primary concern is to explain how we may speak of the God who is revealed in Jesus

Christ (Metzger, 2005:52). Whereas the Augustinian-Thomist approach to the doctrine of God begins

with an emphasis on the unitary substance of God, only thereafter to consider the Triune Persons, the

Eastern theologians of the early Greek-speaking Church begin their doctrine of God by considering

first the Triune Persons as revealed in salvation history and only thereafter reflecting on the

intradivine substance (ousia) (cf. Gonzales, 1987:335; Grenz, 2004:8, 9). While the Western approach

emphasizes nature over person, the Eastern approach emphasizes person over nature (LaCugna,

1991:11).

Moreover, in the Eastern approach to the doctrine of God, the divine persons in relationship among

themselves constitute the being (ousia) of God. The being of God is simply what the persons are, one

to another; that is, for God to "be" is simply to be the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in their intradivine

relations to one another (Gunton, 2007:86). On the other hand, Western theologians, who typically

begin their articulation of the doctrine of God based on the substantialist metaphysics of natural

theology, tend to talk of three "subsistencies" in the divine being, as though the divine persons

exist within the being of God rather than constituting that being. To say, however, that the divine

Persons are merely subsistencies in the being of God seems to imply that the being of God

is differentfrom the persons. In other words, the Western tradition implies that the being of God is

something that underlies the divine persons rather than being constituted by them. Thus, in Western

theology, following Augustine, the being (ousia) of God appears to be a substratum, a fourth

"something," that underlies the Father, Son and Spirit (Gunton, 2007:87). This presents the Church

with an epistemological problem: If the essence of God is different from the Triune Persons, that is, if


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God is different from God's historical self-revelation in Christ and the Spirit, then Christians are faced

with the question, "Who (or what) is God and how do we know?"

Another major problem with the Augustinian-Thomist approach is methodological. Because the

identity of God is notrooted primarily in the biblical witness to the incarnate Son and the gift of the

Holy Spirit, but is found in rational speculation on the substance (ousia) of God based on Greek

philosophy, the Western practice of describing the unitary substance as "God" is liable to making

God's redemptive self-disclosure as Father, Son and Spirit subordinate to the essence (ousia) of God.

Because this approach begins with substantialist metaphysics, derived from human ideas of what is

appropriate for a perfect being to be (dignum deo) (Sanders, 2007:295, n29), the Western tradition

suggests that Jesus and the Spirit are to be interpreted in terms of the pre-understanding of the

attributes of the divine essence (e.g., immutability and impassibility) rather than in terms of God's

self-emptying love for the world revealed at the cross.

The Significant Influence of Pagan Philosophy

Another problem with the Augustinian-Thomist-Western doctrine of God is the ever-present influence

of pagan philosophy. According to Bloesch (1995:205, 206), the history of Western Christian thought

is marked by a "biblical-classical synthesis," particularly conspicuous in Augustine and Aquinas,

wherein the "ontological categories of Greco-Roman philosophy" have been united with the "personal-

dramatic categories of biblical faith." LaCugna (1991:3, 4) accurately asserts that, in many respects,

the "Christian" doctrine of God is secular, because it is derived more from philosophy than from God's

self-revelation in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. She describes the root of this non-soteriological

doctrine of God as the "metaphysics of substance": the pursuit of God in his internal, intradivine

relations largely considered apart from God's self-revelation in the incarnate Son and the gift of the

Spirit. Colin Gunton (2007:39), a rather outspoken critic of Augustine, argues that "Augustine either

did not understand the Trinitarian theology of his predecessors, both East and West, or looked at their

work with spectacles so strongly tinted with Neoplatonic assumptions that they have distorted his

work." Similarly, Moltmann (1993:10-12; 16, 17) is rightly critical of the Thomist emphasis on divine

substance derived from Greek philosophy and articulated in the classic "five ways" to knowledge of

God (cf. Aquinas, 1989:12ff), wherein the unity of God is given primary consideration with the result

that the Trinity is finally explicated only within the framework of the one, divine substance. Moltmann

argues that such a rational philosophical approach to the nature of God based on natural theology

becomes a "prison" for biblical statements about the nature of God; that is, the scriptural witness to

God as revealed in the incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit is constrained by an alien view of God

developed from natural philosophy. Moltmann (1993:149) succinctly but accurately summarizes theall-important distinction between the methodological approaches to the doctrine of God: "If the


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biblical testimony is chosen as point of departure, then we shall have to start from the three persons of

the history of Christ. If philosophical logic is made the starting point, then the enquirer proceeds from

the One God."

The Compromise ofSola Scriptura

In the Augustinian-Thomist tradition, an alien framework of Greek metaphysics has been given equal

place with Scripture in the development of the Western doctrine of God. This syncretic mixture of

pagan and biblical thought compromises one of the hallmark principles of the Reformation: sola

scriptura. When the doctrine of the One God is separated from the self-revelation of God as Father,

Son, and Spirit, then reflection on the nature and character of God becomes merely a matter of

philosophical speculation. When theologia is divorced from oikonomia, thebiblicalwitness to God's

involvement in the world in the history of Israel and the incarnation of Christ is rendered irrelevant

for understanding the transcendent eternal nature of God. This means that rationalist speculative

theology on the intradivine nature of God can operate on its own, unsupported by a thorough

investigation of Scripture (exegesis). Therefore, while the Reformation principle sola scriptura might

still be applied to the divine economy (oikonomia), there is apparently one area where the principal

does not apply: "the immanent Trinitarian constitution of the divine being" (Schwbel, 1995:7).

In the Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of God, natural theology, based on the rational speculation of

Greek metaphysics, is the starting point for the doctrine of the One God, while revealed theology, as

embraced by the community of faith, is the basis for the doctrine of the Triune God (Torrance,

1980:147, 148). Latin theology has promulgated a union in Western Christian thought between pagan

Greek philosophy and biblical revelation that has been taken for granted for centuries, while only

recently coming into question. In the Augustinian-Thomist tradition, the biblical revelation of the

Father, Son and Spirit is subordinated to a view of God derived from natural philosophy.

Consequently, as my friend theologian Robert Lucas notes, the Western Church, while intending to

faithfully adhere to the Reformation principle, sola scriptura, at least in its Protestant manifestations,

is unconsciously reading Scripture through an alien grid that emphasizes the oneness and unity of

God with comparatively little consideration given to the distinctiveness of the Father, Son and Holy

Spirit or to the communion of fellowship shared among the Triune Persons of the Godhead. The

Trinity is removed from the practical concerns of Christian life and worship and is relegated to the

status of a puzzling conundrum whose incomprehensibility is taken as axiomatic. Finally, and most

importantly, As my friend theologian Baxter Kruger notes, abstract philosophical reflection on the

inner nature of God considered apart from the scriptural witness to salvation history means that Jesus

Christthe One by, in, for, and through whom all things exist (Col 1:16, 17)is left outoftheformulation of the doctrine of God.


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In summary, the Western doctrine of God arises from a confluence of two very different streams of

thought: 1) natural theology largely derived from the substantialist metaphysics of pagan Greek

philosophy and 2) revealed theology based on Holy Scripture. According to theologian Robert Lucas,

because the scriptural witness of God as Father, incarnate Son and Spirit has been thoroughly polluted

by an alien stream of thought, the Western Church for centuries has unconsciously allowed the

presuppositions of pagan philosophy to drive its "biblical" understanding of God.

Loss of Relationality in the Doctrine of God

Because the Latin emphasis on the unitary substance seems to portray God as an "isolated, passionless

monad," thus obscuring both the inner relationality of the Trinity and God's loving relationship with

creation, contemporary Trinitarian theologians largely eschew the Western emphasis on the

metaphysics of substance wherein the divine essence is said to "stand under" (L.substantia) the divine

Persons (Cunningham, 1998:25).

The emphasis on the unitary substance of God and the concomitant loss of relationality in the Western

doctrine of God can be traced to Augustine. Because of his intense sensitivity to the suffering involved

in human relationships, Augustine developed a permanent dislike for interpersonal models of the

Godhead. Given the Neoplatonic presupposition that God is utterly simple with no shadow of

plurality, Augustine has great trouble positing real relationships, that is, diversity, in the Godhead.

For Augustine, the Father is God in respect to substance, yet he cannotsay that God is Father in

respect to substance because that would make relations an aspect of the being of God, an assertion

that is in conflict with divine simplicity (Sanders, 2007:83, 84).

Moreover, Augustine fails to properly define "person," understanding the term to mean simply

"relation." Constrained by the Aristotelian "substance-accident" dualism, Augustine gives relations in

the Godhead secondary place to the divine unity (ousia) so that relations are understood logically but

not ontologically, that is, as something that constitutes the being of God (cf. Thompson, 1994:129).

Because Augustine is unable to make claims about the being of theparticular persons of the Godhead,

the Father, Son and Spirit tend to disappear into the all-encompassing oneness of God (Gunton,

1990:44, 45). In short, while Augustine understands the unity of the persons, he fails to sufficiently

grasp the diversity, thus bequeathing to the Western Church a doctrine of God that barely masks an

underlying modalism (cf. Gunton, 2007:86, 87).

Following in the tradition of Augustine, the Fourth Lateran Council and Thomas Aquinas formalized

the Western habit of privileging unitary substance over the diversity of the Triune Persons. In

relegating the concepts ofperson and relationship to secondary status in the doctrine of God, the


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Western tradition has further contributed to the separation oftheologia and oikonomiaby

subordinating God's tripersonalself-revelation to a substantialist doctrine of God derived from

rational presuppositions.

Practical Unitarianism

Closely related to the loss of a relational concept of God is the issue of practical Unitarianism.

LaCugna (1991:6) rightly argues that an ontological distinction between God in se and Godpro nobis,

that is, God in his eternal intradivine nature (theologia) and Godfor us as revealed in salvation

history (oikonomia), is inconsistent not only with the biblical witness to God's redemptive acts in

history but also with early Christian Creeds and doxology. This separation of God in his eternal

intradivine nature (theologia) from God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history (oikonomia),

most particularly obvious in Aquinas' separation of the two treatises,De Deo Uno andDe Deo Trino,

can only result, she argues, "in a unitarian Christianity, not a Trinitarian monotheism."

In a similar vein, Moltmann (1993:17) sees in the Thomist approach not only an undue emphasis on

the unity of God but also a reduction of the triunity of God to the One God. As he rightly asserts, "The

representation of the Trinitarian Persons in a homogenous divine substance, presupposed and

recognizable from the cosmos, leads unintentionally but inescapably to the disintegration of the

doctrine of the Trinity in abstract monotheism." Moltmann seems to suggest that, given the Western

emphasis on the ontological priority of unitary substance, the distinct persons of the Triune Godhead

disappear into an undifferentiated ontological "soup," leaving the ordinary believer with a Unitarian

view of God.

Following LaCugna and Moltmann, we may assert that the Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the

doctrine of God, wherein God in his inner being (theologia) is considered apart from God as revealed

in Christ and the Spirit (oikonomia), is not commensurate with God's self-revelation in Scripture nor

with the Apostles' or Nicene Creeds, both of which are set in an unmistakable Trinitarian framework,

nor with Christian prayer and worship, wherein Father, Son and Spirit have been historically

worshipped as God. In addition, the Augustinian-Thomist emphasis on the unitary substance of God

makes the Trinity appear to be a mere addition to the doctrine of God, thus reducing Christian belief

and piety to practical Unitarianism, as evidenced by Rahner's (1997:10, 11) lament that the doctrine of

the Trinity is irrelevant in the lives of most Christians, who are, in fact, "almost mere 'monotheists.'"

Pastoral Concerns


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The Augustinian-Thomist doctrine of the One God has only minimal connection to the incarnation of

Jesus Christ. In the Western Latin tradition, Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity have been

virtually divorced, so that the life and work of Jesus is disconnected from the Trinity. Accordingly,

there is only an "accidental relation" between the economy of salvation (oikonomia) as revealed in

Scripture and the eternal triune being of God (theologia) (Thompson, 1994:22). There are clear

pastoral concerns attached to the separation oftheologia and oikonomiawhen the "bond of being"

between the incarnate Son and the Father is torn asunder in our doctrine of God. Any disjunction

between the being of Jesus and the being of God disrupts the message of grace contained in the

Gospel, introducing anxiety into the hearts of many Christians who fear there may be a dark,

inscrutable, arbitrary deity hidden behind the back of Jesus "before whom in our guilty conscience as

sinners we cannot but quake and shiver in our souls" (Torrance, et al, 1999:16).

A truly Christian doctrine of God (theologia) must be rooted in the economy (oikonomia) of salvation,

particularly the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The vital importance of a Christological

approach to the doctrine of God is ably demonstrated by a series of questions posed by T. F. Torrance

(1995:134):

What kind of God would we have, then, if Jesus Christ were not the self-revelation or self-

communication of God, if God were not inherently and eternally in his own being what the

Gospel tells us he is in Jesus Christ? Would "God" then not be someone who does not care to

reveal himself to us? Would it not mean that God has not condescended to impart himself to

us in Jesus Christ, and that his love has stopped short of becoming one with us? It would

surely mean that there is no ontological, and therefore no epistemological connection between

the love of Jesus and the love of God in fact there would be no revelation of the love of God

but, on the contrary, something that rather mocks us, for while God is said to manifest his

love to us in Jesus, he is not actually that love in himself.

Torrance's questions illustrate the important truth that thinking about God that does not begin with

Jesus Christ leaves us uncertain about God's care, concern and love for the world. The Augustinian-

Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God implies that God in his eternal, inner being may be

different from God as revealed in his acts in salvation history. Hence, Christians cannot be certain that

God as revealed in the incarnate Son and Holy Spirit is the same as God "really" is in his inner-most

being. This immediately raises a soteriological concern for the Church: "Is Jesus' death on the cross

really the act ofGodon our behalf?"

Summary


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Contemporary Trinitarian theologians, led by Barth and Rahner, have been highly critical of the

Augustinian-Thomist bifurcation of the doctrine of God, wherein the doctrine of the Trinity is separate

from and subsequent to the doctrine of the One God. The Western bifurcation of the doctrine of God

into a major treatise on the unitary substance (ousia) of God, followed by a relatively minor appendix

on the Trinity, makes it appear that everything important to say about God is said in the first treatise,

while God's threefold self-revelation in salvation history is subordinated to a position of little

importance in the development of the Western doctrine of God. This schizoid split in the doctrine of

God has created a false disjunction between faith and reason in the mind of the Western Church,

burdening the Church with two competing, incompatible and often confusing versions of God: the

immutable, impassible God of substantialist metaphysics and the world-engaging, compassionate God

revealed in Jesus. Moreover, the Western emphasis on the unitary substance of God, presupposed by

natural theology, has led to the disintegration of the doctrine of the Trinity and created a practicalunitarianism or mere monotheism in the worship and practice of many Christians. Finally, the

Western emphasis on the unitary substance of God raises the issue of knowability by appearing to

make the divine essence the "real" God, while subordinating the Triune Persons to the unitary

substance of God. Because the Father, Son and Spirit are interpreted in terms of the pre-

understanding of substantialist metaphysics, many Christians are burdened with concerns for their

salvation, uncertain that God is really like Jesus.

(Next post circa August 15, 2009.)

References

Aquinas, T. 1989.Summa Theologi: A Concise Translation (edited by T.S.

McDermott).Allen, TX: Christian Classics. 652pp.

Bloesch, D.G. 1995. God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love. Downers Grove, IL:

IVP. 329pp.

Cunningham, D.S. 1998. These Three are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology. Malden,

MA: Blackwell Publishers. 368pp.

Gonzalez, J.L. 1987.A History of Christian Thought(vol 1). Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.

400pp.

Grenz, S.J. 2004.Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology.

Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress. 289pp.


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Gunton, C. 1990.Augustine, the Trinity and the Theological Crisis of the West. Scottish

Journal of Theology, vol 43, pp. 33-58.

Gunton, C.E. 2007. The Barth Lectures (transcribed and edited by P.H. Brazier). London: T &

T Clark. 285pp.

LaCugna, C.M. 1991. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco, CA:

HarperSanFrancisco. 434pp.

Metzger, P.L. (ed). 2005. Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic Theology. London: T & T

Clark. 225pp.

Moltmann, J. 1993. The Trinity and the Kingdom(translated by M. Kohl). Minneapolis, MN:Fortress Press. 256pp.

Pinnock, C.H. et al. 1994. The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional

Understanding of God.Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 202pp.

Rahner, K. 1997. The Trinity: Introduction, Index, and Glossary by Catherine Mowry

LaCugna. New York, NY: Crossroads. 122pp.

Sanders, J. 2007. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. Downers Grove, IL:

IVP. 384pp.

Schwbel, C. (ed). 1995. Trinitarian Theology Today. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 176pp.

Thompson, J.R. 1994.Modern Trinitarian Perspectives. Oxford: OUP. 165pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1980. The Ground and Grammar of Theology: Consonance Between Theology

and Science. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. 256pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1992. The Mediation of Christ. Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard.

126pp.

Torrance, T.F. 1995. The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic

Church.London: T & T Clark. 345pp.

Torrance, T.F. et al. 1999.A Passion for Christ: The Vision That Ignites Ministry (edited by

G. Dawson & J. Stein). Edinburgh: Handel Press. 150pp.


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The Subordination of the Doctrine of the Trinity

In the last few posts we have examined how the doctrine of the Trinity was relegated to the status of a

relatively minor appendix to the doctrine of the One God in Western Christianity. In order to refresh

our memories, let's do a quick review to get our bearings and then move on to new material.

As a result of the theological controversies of the 4th century, particularly the Arian controversy (see

my posts, "Arians are not Skinheads" and "Athanasius contra Mundi," both from 11/08), theologians

began to focus on the eternal, intradivine nature of God (theologia) considered apart from God's self-

revelation in the history of Israel, the incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit (oikonomia). To answer their

Arian critics, the Fathers were forced to consider the eternal nature of God in order to defend the fully

divine nature of the eternal Son. Nevertheless, their focus on God ad intra (God in God's eternal

divine nature) resulted in a reduced emphasis on God ad extra (God in relation to the world). In

technical terms, a conceptual gap was opened betweentheologia (the eternal intradivine Being)

and oikonomia (God's self-revelation in time and space). After the 4th century, theologians in both the

Greek Eastern Church and the Latin Western Church focused more and more attention

on theologia so that God's self-revelation in history (oikonomia), particularly in the incarnate Son,

became less and less important in the formulation of the Christian doctrine of God. To put it in a raw

and simple form, after the 4th century, Jesus, the incarnate Son, was largely left out of the picture in

the portrayal of the Christian God, particularly in the Latin West.

Again, to review, here's what happened. Augustine, the Father of Western Christianity, developed an

innovative approach to the doctrine of the Trinity. His innovations were related to his inability to

grasp the significance of divine relationality as developed in the Cappadocians' doctrine of the Trinity

(see my posts "A Cup O' Cappadocian," parts 1 & 2, posted 1/09) as well as his commitment to

Neoplatonism (see my post, "The Wedding Cake Cosmos: Augustine & Neoplatonism," posted 2/09).

As a Neoplatonist committed to divine simplicity, Augustine had great difficulty in conceiving

relationship as an aspect of the Godhead. Hence, Augustine emphasized the unitary essence of God

rather than the diversity of persons of the Godhead that had been the focus of Cappadocian

trinitarianism. As Colin Gunton has noted, Augustine made divine "substance" the "real" God so that

the divine persons were reduced to mere

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68525905 Problem in Western Theology