Karl Rahner (Catholic) said “despite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists’.” I see his point, and I suppose he’s right when he says that if the doctrine of the Trinity were to be proved false, they were perceive no real consequence to their life/faith.

But I think WHY that’s the case, strangely enough, is that their concept of the Trinity is too polytheistic, not too monotheistic. It’s because they differentiate the divine persons unto polytheism (without perceiving the consequence) that the Trinity could be proved false for them without consequence. See what I mean? I mean, ask the average Christian (even over the past 100 years) what he thinks the Trinity is and you’ll get something far more like polytheism than ‘mere’ monotheism. I’ve had my students write up how they’d try to explain the Trinity to a Muslims and 99% of them would serve up polytheism.

So I’m having difficulty seeing Rahner’s point. It seems to me that average Christians are practically polytheists.

Tom

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/6/2012 8:08:13 AM (GMT-6)

See what I'm saying, Jeff?

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/6/2012 8:22:26 AM (GMT-6)

That's what see Jesus through the eyes of faith is SUPPOSED to do.

Loder's ALLLLLLL over this, too.

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/6/2012 8:42:22 AM (GMT-6)

To my mind:

Polytheism (understood as a multiplicity of independent greatest possible beings) is out of the question because logically incoherent. Hartshorne has a great section on why such polytheism is self-defeating.

So for me there are only the advantages/disadvantages to Trinity over non-Trinitarian monotheism.

Without the Trinity, it seems to me that:

- God is not essentially personal.

- God is not essentially loving.

- The incarnation never occurred (i.e., the homoousion is a fiction).

- Humankind and creation are lost—if ‘being saved’ is understood as the fulfilling of humanity’s existential craving for unending, personal being.

Given that much, we could list a host of other existential nightmares.

We haven’t taken pantheism off the table, but I’m not including it in my option.

Tom

I’m not sure where I’d err if I had to err, on the side of social trinitarianism (polytheism) or undifferentiated monotheism. We can't embrace a view of ultimate reality which from the start is incapable of grounding and fulfilling our most fundamental existential drives, and undifferentiated monotheism can’t even get off the ground conceptually speaking in this respect. In spite of this, many Jews and Muslims insist upon the essentially personal nature of divine reality. To me this just demonstrates the undeniable force of existential considerations (Kierkegaardian despair, and the existential angst that Zizioulas describes as the biological hypostasis void of the ‘personalizing’ presence of God).

Undifferentiated monotheists who take the existential into consideration when thinking of their faith have to just suppose God to be that which fulfills these desires in spite of failing to conceive of God in a way that explains how God can fulfill us (or they have to dismiss their existential craving for personal relation and fulfillment as extraneous to their true identity and purpose; and that’s a kind of living suicide). On the other hand, polytheists (or social-trinitarians) equally have to just suppose some fundamental unity among the three divine persons in order to avoid Hartshorne’s devastating critique of polytheism.

It seems the social-trinitarians are conceptually more equipped to account for their existential intuitions and salvation than undifferentiated monotheists. It’s easier to see how three gods essentially related can ground the ‘personal’ and ‘relational’ nature of all things than it is to see how an undifferentiated monad can do so.

Gotta hand it to the Fathers of the 4^th century. I think most open theists are of the opinion that they royally f*d up Christianity for 1,600 years until Clark Pinnock came along and that in heave we open theists will all take turns spanking the Fathers. Their ‘discipline’ we suppose! Truth is, Zizioulas is right—those guys were frickin geniuses. They invented a vocabulary from the philosophical conversations of their day that avoided reducing God to Plotinus’ Monad while describing God as essentially personal and self-related in love sans creation so that the Incarnation becomes a conceptually viable means of personal salvation.

If they only did THAT (ala Trinity) whatever else they might have gotten wrong (about divine temporality or whatever) is forgivable. What’s unforgivable is our getting it right (supposedly) regarding ‘time’ but screwing up on the Trinity.

I think open theists will be getting their rear-ends spanked by the Fathers.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/6/2012 12:57:32 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/6/2012 3:42:39 PM (GMT-6)

What evangelical in ETS or NAE or whatever is gonna wanna call MILLARD ERICKSON a heretic of the first order?

"You can't even get the TRINITY and simple Patristics right. And we are supposed to quibble with you about some view of INERRANCY??"

--the EO

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/6/2012 3:52:05 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/7/2012 11:49:01 AM (GMT-6)

----------------------------

Dude did a WHOLE DISSERTATION on this...and missed it.

Even though he himself believes in "logos asarkos", he didn't see how the main kenotic premise is fundamentally Anti-Chalcedonian.

Like C. Stephen Evans said.  You HAVE to have a "social model" of the Trinity to get it off the ground.

Like Greg showed.  You HAVE to say that immediately post-Incarnation God the Son was reduced without remainder to human nature...thus saying that God the Son ceases to have interpersonal love relationality with the Father by the Spirit...thus annihilating the Triunity of God.

And NONE of his advisors or whoever didn't catch it either.

DOCTOR Tom McCall.

Is anyone feelin' what I'm saying here?

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/7/2012 11:47:17 AM (GMT-6)