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I am looking for a book concerning the dynamism of the Trinity and how that dynamism relates to God's relationship with the world.

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Robert Furney: I am looking for a book concerning the dynamism of the Trinity and how that dynamism relates to God's relationship with the world. I know Clark Pinnock writes on it a bit in his The Unmoved Mover, but I am looking for something more detailed. Is there anything out there that can help me?

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Hi Robert.

I'm going to assume, because it is true, that by "dynamism" of the Trinity you are speaking of the action of the Trinity in salvation. What's called "economy." (What can be said more than that is mostly statements of negation. And these are very important, useful, and protective.) We know God as Trinity because that is the way we know him in the works of salvation. And to really unpack that all the way: to not know God as Trinity is to not understand the grace of God. What can and must be known is that the Son and the Spirit are like the right and the left hands of the Father--always doing everything together in consort, according to the will of the Father.

I can recommend a very good book that covers the historical developement of the doctrine of the Trinity, and also covers the topic themes individually. That book is "Byzantine Theology," by Fr. John Meyendorf. And I can also recommend an outstanding (and well known, cited, etc.) book that clears up everything that you would ever want to know. It is "In the Image and Likeness of God" by Vladimir Lossky. (Several chapters of that second book are available online--so I'll give you links at the bottom.) Here the two are:

(P.S. There is already a thread up and running with a lot of material. Meph and I were having an exchange: www.gregboyd.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1468) (I've attached a a quote from meyendorff off that thread at the end of this post.)


Byzantine Theology, by John Meyendorf (Who was Dean of St. Vladamir's Orthodox Seminary in New York) search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=6THJR27HRI&isbn=0823209679



And two portions from Vladimir Lossky:

Vladimir Lossky, "God in Trinity" Chapter 3 of The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (SVS Press, Crestwood, NY: 1976), pp. 44-67. www.jbburnett.com/lossky/lossky-trinity.html (FREE OnLine)

Vladimir Lossky, "The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine": Chapter 4 of In the Image and Likeness of God (SVS Press, Crestwood, NY: 1974), pp. 71-96. www.jbburnett.com/lossky/lossky-filioque.html (FREE OnLine)


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Some short quotes from Meyendorff (a historian of theology) to get you started are:

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Meyendorf's Byzantine Theology,
Chapter 14--The Triune God

"WHEN I SAY God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," writes Gregory of Nazianzus.1 Far from being a form of abstract speculation, the doctrine of the Trinity was always, for the Greek patristic tradition, a matter of religious experience—liturgical, mystical, and, often, poetical:

No sooner do I conceive of the one
than I am illumined by the splendor of the three;
no sooner do I distinguish them
than I am carried back to the one.
When I think of any one of the three,
I think of Him as the whole,
and my eyes are filled,
and the greater part of what I am thinking
escapes me.2

The basis of this Trinitarian theology, which was formulated by the Cappadocian Fathers in the fourth century at the conclusion of the Arian controversies, and which remained standard throughout the Byzantine period, is found in soteriology; the Fathers were actually preoccupied, not with speculation, but with man's salvation. The Nicaean doctrine of con-substantiality meant "the confession of the fullness of divinity in Christ and implied that the Incarnation was essential to the redemptive act of Christ"; and maintained, similarly, that if "the Spirit is not fully God, He is unable to bestow sanctification." In itself, the Cappadocian doctrine of the Trinity remains totally meaningless unless one remember that its goal is to maintain the Christological and pneumatological presuppositions developed in the last two chapters: the incarnate Logos and the Holy Spirit are met and experienced first as divine agents of salvation, and only s then are they also discovered to be essentially one God. It is well known that, during the theological debates of the fourth century, the Cappadocian Fathers were accused of tritheism, so that Gregory of Nyssa was even obliged to issue his famous apologetic treatise proving that "there are not three gods." It remains debatable, however, whether he succeeded in proving his point philosophically. The doctrine of the three hypostases, adopted by the Cappadocian Fathers to designate the three divine Persons, had definite Plotinian and Origenistic associations, which normally implied substantial differentiation. The Fathers, however, remained faithful to the terminology they had adopted, in spite of all difficulties and criticism— both from the "old Nicaeans" faithful to Athanasius and from the theologians of the Latin West—because they saw no other means of preserving the Biblical experience of salvation in the fully identifiable and distinct persons of Christ and the Spirit, an experience which could never enter the categories of philosophical essentialism.

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AND

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Meyendorf's Byzantine Theology,
Chapter 13--The Holy Spirit

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING of creation and of man's ultimate destiny is inseparable from pneumatology; but the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament and in the early Fathers cannot easily be reduced to a system of concepts. The fourth-century discussions on the divinity of the Spirit remained in a soteriological, existential context. Since the action of the Spirit gives life "in Christ," He cannot be a creature; He is indeed consubstantial with the Father and the Son. This argument was used both by Athanasius in his Letters to Seraplon and by Basil in his famous treatise On the Holy Spirit. These two patristic writings remained, throughout the Byzantine period, the standard authorities in pneumatology. Except in the controversy around the Filioque—a debate about the nature of God rather than about the Spirit specifically—there was little conceptual development of pneumatology in the Byzantine Middle Ages. This does not mean, however, that the experience of the Spirit was not emphasized with greater strength than in the West, especially in hymnology, in sacramental theology, and in spiritual literature.

"As he who grasps one end of a chain pulls along with it the other end to himself, so he who draws the Spirit draws both the Son and the Father along with It," Basil writes. This passage, quite representative of Cappa-docian thought, implies first that all major acts of God are Trinitarian acts, and secondly that the particular role of the Spirit is to make the "first contact," which is then followed—existentially, but not chronologically— by a revelation of the Son and, through Him, of the Father. The personal being of the Spirit remains mysteriously hidden, even if He is active at every great step of divine activity: creation, redemption, ultimate fulfillment. His function is not to reveal Himself, but to reveal the Son "through whom all things were made" and who is also personally known in His humanity as Jesus Christ, "It is impossible to give a precise definition of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit and we must simply resist errors concerning Him which come from various sides." The personal existence of the Holy Spirit thus remains a mystery. It is a "kenotic" existence whose fulfillment consists in manifesting the kingship of the Logos in creation and in salvation history.

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Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 09/24/2002 09:33:36 AM

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By dynamish I mean the interpersonal relationship within the Trinity. I believe this is reflected in God's dealings with mankind, which is to say, relationships on a real basis. I am wondering how much scripture shows what the relationship is between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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Robert, it says a lot about where you are coming from when you say: ". . .the interpersonal relationship within the Trinity. I believe this is reflected in God's dealings with mankind."

Perhaps a Thomas Aquinas would make that presumption. But I think that the ENTIRE Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches WOULD NOT MAKE that presumption.

However, some things can be said. While they might be called "negative" by some speakers, they have a positive side too. For what can be truthfully said I'd recommend Lossky.

You are wrong when you presume that what can be said of the "relationships on a real basis" can be projected into the Trinity. That is even idolatrous. But the reverse is true; and perhaps you will find that to be delightful news. That news is that the "negative" comments about what is not true of the Trinity is wonderfully inspiring and does reflect for us on what God's love is.

I'll try to find those portions of Lossky for you.






P.S. - The most wonderful thing I've read is that the procession of the Holys Spirit from the Father preserves that the Trinity is NOT merely a finite number of Three, but an eternal infinity. Not an infinite number, but is unlimited. This is directly reflected in that humanity in the catholicity of the Body/Church preserves both unity and diversity. And all this stems directly from Christology -- That Christ is fully God and fully man, in the mystery of the incarnation. That's the best. If I find it I'll mark it.

There may be more that I can post here for you, though.



Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 09/26/2002 4:15:10 PM

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There is no interior process in the Godhead; no 'dialectic' of the three persons; no becoming; no 'tragedy in the Absolute', which might necessitate the trinitarian development of the divine being in order— that it be surmounted or resolved. These conceptions, proper to the romantic tradition of nineteenth century German philosophy, are wholly foreign to the dogma of the Trinity. If we speak of processions, of acts, or of inner determinations, these expressions— involving, as they do, the ideas of time, becoming and intention— only show to what extent our language, indeed our thought, is poor and deficient before the primordial mystery of revelation. Again we are forced to appeal to apophatic theology in order to rid ourselves of concepts proper to human thought, transforming them into steps by which we may ascend to the contemplation of a reality which the created intelligence cannot contain.

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There is no dependence in relation to created being on the part of the Trinity; no determination of what is called 'the eternal procession of the divine persons' by the act of the creation of the world. Even though the created order did not exist, God would still be Trinity— Father, Son and Holy Ghost— for creation is an act of will

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THIS MAY BE IT..............

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St. Gregory speaks to the philosophers as a philosopher, that he may win the philosopher to the contemplation of the Trinity. 'The monad is set in motion in virtue of its richness; the dyad is surpassed (for the deity is above matter and form); the triad contains itself in perfection, for it is the first which surpasses the composition of the dyad. Thus, the Godhead does not dwell within bounds, nor does it spread itself indefinitely. The one would be without honour, the other would be contrary to order. The

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one would be wholly Judaic, the other Hellenistic and polytheistic.'5 One gains a glimpse of the mystery of the number, three; the deity is neither one nor many; its perfection goes beyond the multiplicity of which duality is the root (we recall the interminable dyads of the gnostics, and the dualism of the Platonists), and expresses itself in the Trinity. The term 'expresses itself' is improper, for the divinity has no need to manifest its perfection, either to itself or to others. It is the Trinity, and this fact can be deduced from no principle nor explained by any sufficient reason, for there are neither principles nor causes anterior to the Trinity.

Trias: 'name which unites things united by nature, and never allows those which are inseparable to be scattered by a number which separates,' says St. Gregory Nazianzen.6 Two is the number which separates, three the number which transcends all separation: the one and the many find themselves gathered and circumscribed in the Trinity. 'When I say God, I mean Father, Son and Holy Ghost; for Godhead is neither diffused beyond these, so as to introduce a multitude of gods, nor yet bounded by a smaller compass than these, so as to condemn us for a poverty-stricken conception of deity, either Judaizing to save the monarchy, or falling into Hellenism by the multitude of our gods.'7

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BUT THIS IS SAID WITH THE FOLLOWING CONDITION AND WARNING:

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St. Gregory Nazianzen is not seeking to vindicate the trinity of persons before the human reason: he simply shows the insufficiency of any number other than three. But we may ask whether the idea of number can be applied to God; whether we do not thus submit the divinity to an exterior determination, to a form proper to our understanding— that of the number, three. To this objection St. Basil replies as follows: 'we do not count by addition, passing from the one to the many by increase; we do not say: one, two, three, or first, second and third. 'For I am God, the first, and I am the last.8Now we have never, even to the present time, heard of a second God; but adoring God of God, confessing the individuality of the hypostases, we dwell in the monarchy without dividing the theology into fragments.'9 In other words, there is no question here of a material number which serves for calculation and is in no wise applicable in the spiritual sphere, where there is no quantitative increase. The threefold number is not, as we commonly understand it, a quantity; when it relates to the indivisibly united divine hypostases, the 'sum' of which is always the unity, 3=1, it expresses the ineffable order within the Godhead.

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IT GETS JUST MORE WONDERFUL, AND MORE WONDERFUL-ER!!!

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The contemplation of this absolute perfection, of this divine plenitude which is the Trinity— God who is personal and who is not a person confined in his own self the very thought, the mere 'pale shade of the Trinity', lifts the human soul beyond the world of being, changing and confused, in bestowing upon it this stability in the midst of passions; this serenity, or apatheia which is the beginning of deification. For the creature, subject to change by nature, can by grace attain to the state of eternal stability; can partake of infinite life in the light of the Trinity. This is why the Church has defended so vehemently the mystery of the Holy Trinity against the natural tendencies of the human mind ' which strive to suppress it by reducing the Trinity to unity, in making it an essence of the philosophers with three modes of manifestation (the modalism of Sabellius), or even by dividing it into three distinct beings, as did Arius.

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WE HAVE STRUCK OIL!!!!!

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...the Trinity— God who is personal and who is not a person confined in his own self...

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I hope that that helps, Robert!!!

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"...in the Trinity, the discussion of subject X is before the creation of the world. That discussion is seen in terms of past and in terms of a real relationship BETWEEN them. A discussion about X is not illusory, even to God, but one that is real and normal IN THE SAME SENSE as we have with others"

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I think you are projecting onto God there. (But I'm not going to accuse you of anything -- or else I would have to apologize again.)

I much prefer Lossky's statement:

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...the Trinity— God who is personal and who is not a person confined in his own self...

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Question: Isn't a Person who "enters" into relationship, rather than exist in communion, a separate God (One of Three Gods)?

You also said, Robert: "A God who cannot enter into real relationships is a God who cannot be with us in a literal sense throughout our lives in a real and meaningful manner."

Obviously God does enter into relationships WITH US. But I'd have to say that I would not use the word "enter" with respect to the Trinity. God's ontological state of being in IN COMMUNION. It would, I think, be THREE Gods who "enter" into relationship.

You decide. I'm just trying to lay out this view for you while you are on the subject. Tri-unity.

Thanks.

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It is worthwhile to recall here what we have said before about the negative approach characteristic of Orthodox thought– an approach which radically changes the value of philosophical terms applied to God. Not only the image of – cause," but also such terms as "production," "procession," and "origin" ought to be seen as inadequate expressions of a reality which is foreign to all becoming, to all process, to all beginning. just as relations of origin mean something different from relations of opposition, so causality is nothing but a somewhat defective image, which tries to express the personal unity which determines the origins of the Son and the Holy Spirit. This unique cause is not prior to his effects, for in the Trinity there is no priority and posteriority. He is not superior to his effects, for the perfect cause cannot produce inferior effects. He is thus the cause of their equality with himself.{20} The causality ascribed to the person of the Father, who eternally begets the Son and eternally causes the Holy Spirit to proceed, expresses the same idea as the monarchy of the Father: that the Father is the personal principle of unity of the Three, the source of their common possession of the same content, of the same essence.

The expressions "Godhead-source" and "source of the Godhead" do not mean that the divine essence is subject to the person of the Father, but only that the person of the Father is the basis of common possession of the same essence, because the person of the Father, not being the sole person of the Godhead, is not to be identified with the essence. In a certain sense it can be said the Father is this possession of [83] the divine essence in common with the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that he would not be a divine Person if he were only a monad: he would then be identified with the divine Essence. Here it may be useful to recall that St. Cyril of Alexandria regarded the name "Father" as superior to the name "God," because the name "God" is given to God in respect of his relations with beings of a different nature.{21}

If the Father is sometimes called simply God– ho Theos, or even autotheos– nevertheless we cannot find in orthodox writers expressions which treat consubstantiality as participation by the Son and the Holy Spirit in the essence of the Father.{22} Each Person is God by nature, not by participation in the nature of another.

The Father is the cause of the other hypostases in that He is not His essence, i.e. in that He does not have His essence for Himself alone. What the image of causality wishes to express is the idea that the Father, being not merely an essence but a person, is by that very fact the cause of the other consubstantial Persons, who have the same essence as He has.

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With reference to the Father, causality expresses the idea that He is God– Person, in that He is the cause of other divine persons– the idea that He could not be fully and absolutely Person unless the Son and the Holy Spirit are equal to Him in possession of the same nature and are that same nature. This might lead to the idea that each person of the Trinity could be regarded as the cause of the other two, in that each person is not the common essence; this would amount to a new relativization of the hypostases, transforming them into conventional and interchangeable signs of three diversities. Roman Catholic theology avoids this personal relativism by [84] professing belief in the procession of the Holy Spirit ab utroque, i.e. by falling into an impersonal relativism, that of relations of opposition, which are regarded as the basis of the three persons in the unity of a simple essence. Orthodox theology, while taking as its starting-point the initial antinomy of essence and hypostasis, avoids personal relativism by attributing causality to the Father alone. The monarchy of the Father thus sets up irreversible relationships, which enable us to distinguish the two other hypostases from the Father, and yet to relate them to the Father, as a concrete principle of unity in the Trinity. There is not only unity of the same one nature in the Three, but also unity of the Three Persons of the same one nature. St. Gregory of Nazianzus expresses this neatly: "Each considered in himself is wholly God, as the Father so the Son, as the Son so the Holy Spirit, but each preserves his own properties; considered together the Three are God; each (considered in himself is) God because of the consubstantiality, the Three (considered together are) God because of the monarchy."{23}

According to St. Maximus, God is "identically a monad and a triad."{24} He is not merely one and three; he is 1=3 and 3=1. That is to say, here we are not concerned with number as signifying quantity: absolute diversities cannot be made the subjects of sums of addition; they have not even opposition in common. If, as we have said, a personal God cannot be a monad– if he must be more than a single person– neither can he be a dyad. The dyad is always an opposition of two terms, and, in that sense, it cannot signify an absolute diversity. When we say that God is Trinity we are emerging from the series of countable or calculable numbers.{25} The procession of the Holy Spirit is an infinite [85] passage beyond the dyad, which consecrates the absolute (as opposed to relative) diversity of the persons. This passage beyond the dyad is not an infinite series of persons but the infinity of the procession of the Third Person: the Triad suffices to denote the Living God of revelation.{26} If God is a monad equal to a triad, there is no place in him for a dyad. Thus the seemingly necessary opposition between the Father and the Son, which gives rise to a dyad, is purely artificial, the result of an illicit abstraction. Where the Trinity is concerned, we are in the presence of the One or of the Three, but never of two.

The procession of the Holy Spirit ab utroque does not signify passage beyond the dyad but rather re-absorption of the dyad in the monad, the return of the monad upon itself. It is a dialectic of the monad opening out into the dyad and closing again into its simplicity.{27} On the other hand, procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone, by emphasizing the monarchy of the Father as the concrete principle of the unity of the Three, passes beyond the dyad without a return to primordial unity, without the necessity of God retiring into the simplicity of the essence. For this reason the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone confronts us with the mystery of the "Tri-Unity." We have here not a simple, self-enclosed essence, upon which relations of opposition have been superimposed in order to masquerade a god of philosophy as the God of Christian revelation. We say "the simple Trinity," and this antinomic expression, characteristic of Orthodox hymnography,{28} points out a simplicity which the absolute diversity of the three persons can in no way relativize.

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(Lossky, "Procession", just before section 8)

Every name except those of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit– even the names of "Word" and "Paraclete"– is inappropriate for designating the special characteristics of the hypostases in the inaccessible existence of the Trinity, and refers rather [90] to the external aspect of God, to His manifestation,{32} or even to His economy. The dogma of the Trinity marks the summit of theology, where our thought stands still before the primordial mystery of the existence of the Personal God. Apart from the names denoting the three hypostases and the common name of the Trinity, the innumerable names which we apply to God– the "divine names" which textbook theology calls his attributes– denote God not in his inaccessible Being but in "that which surrounds the essence" (ta peri tes ousias).{33} This is the eternal radiance of the common content of the Three Persons, who reveal their incommunicable nature in "energies." This technical term of Byzantine theology, denoting a mode of divine existence besides essence, introduces no new philosophical notion alien to revelation. The Bible, in its concrete language, speaks of nothing other than "energies" when it tells us of the "glory of God"– a glory with innumerable names which surrounds the inaccessible Being of God, making Him known outside Himself, while concealing what He is in Himself. This is the eternal glory which belongs to the Three Persons, which the Son "had before the world was." And when we speak of the divine energies in relation to the human beings to whom they are communicated and given and by whom they are appropriated, this divine and uncreated reality within us is called Grace.

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