Re-trieving Trinitarian Teaching: A Review Discussion

RE-TRIEVING TRINITARIAN TEACHING: A Review Discussion * 'TIHE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY embraces the ntral teachings of what we might call classic Chrisanity . Its point is, quite simply, truthfully to teach who God is-and to teach this with and for both church and world in such a way as to correspond to what God intends be taught about who God is. "God is one ousia/natura, three hypostases/persoru:i" came to be the climactic trinitarian formula and " revealed " the honorific title attached to teachings of such import. But the set of diverse and conflicting intellectual , religious, and social shifts some call modernity has had a strange love-hate relationship with this doctrine. For the last 200 years in particular, the doctrine of the Trinity has been variously abandoned, re-affirmed, recovered, reformulated , relocated, or ignored in the face of the diverse stands on God in novel christianities and other religious and non-religious ways of life. A teaching which functioned as a sacred canopy for God, world, and church seemingly collapsed under the strain of a culture which forces us to believe we had to choose among such things. The challenges themselves are not surprising-Judaism, classical culture, and Islam all heretofore raised hard-nosed questions about the Trinity. And it is not even surprising that Christians disagree on such things-the classic doctrine of the Trinity was honed against debates within the Christian community which only gradually yielded distinctions between *William J. Hill, The Three-Personea God: The Trinity as a Mystery of Salvation, Washington, D.C. The Catholic University of America Press, 1982. Pp. xv + 354. $37.95. 274 RE-TRIEVING TRINITARIAN TEACHING 275 ortho-, hetero-, and non-orthodox. What is surprising is that even Christians do not seem agreed on what it is they disagree about on this score. Shall we speak of a doctrine, idea, symbol, myth, contemplative or liturgical prayer, experience, praxis, or in some other way? Shall we give the topic its own time and space-not only in our reading and thinking but also in our individual and communal prayer? Or shall we make the Trinity a function of some other teaching-christology, anthropology , ecclesiology, etc.-or some other liturgical feast? Or perhaps it should simply be turned into an appendix to theology or abandoned? And how might we intelligently decide about such issues? William J. Hill's The Three-Personed God: The Trinity as a Mystery of Salvation is a massive contribution to this theological conversation on the Trinity.1 Hill "re-trieves" trinitarian options past and present in order to propose that the being as well as the salvific activity of God is three-personed. .. Those seeking an original overview of trinitarian thinking throughout the ages (including potent challenges to current alternatives ) can do no better than to study this text.· Even more importantly, Hill's constructive proposal (sympathetic to an existential and moderately realistic reading of Thomas Aquinas, but identifiable with no single-ism) is probably the most challenging recommendation to focus trinitarian theology on the classic categories of" nature/persons" to come along in many decades. After a summary of the text, I will analyze and evaluate the major ways I think Hill advances the discussion of the Trinity. The summary is brief, just long enough to give the reader a taste of the breadth of the book and suggest the context of Hill's remarks so that my analysis and evaluation will l The text has a select bibliography as well as indices of names and topics. All numbers in the following essay refer to pages or chapters ("c. ") of this text. .A related book is William J. Hill, Knowing the Unkno'W1b God (New York Philosophical Library, 1971), including a section on "God as Tripersonal" (201-17). 276 JAMES J. BUCKLEY not seem unfair. My primary goal is not to repeat the details of Hill's position but to set it in a context which highlights its key distinctive contribution to the conversation-without, I hope, distorting its internal shape. I. A Re-Trieve of the Trinity The Three-Personed God is fittingly divided into three distinct but mutually dependent parts. The first two parts...