Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons, The

Trinity Journal, Fall 1997 by Copan, Paul

Thomas F. Torrance. The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996. xii + 260 pp. $39.95 cloth.

Catholic theologians K. Rahner and C. M. LaCugna have rightly pointed out that most Christians in their worship are "practicing monotheists" (i.e., Unitarians). On numerous occasions, I myself have heard church leaders pray modalistically by thanking the Father for dying on the Cross or, in general, completely jumbling any distinction between Father, Son, and Spirit. Consequently, a book like theologian Thomas Torrance's The Christian Doctrine of God-one of a number of fine recently-published books on the Trinity-is a welcome sight and a hopeful corrective to the church's "great omission."

Torrance hopes to bring clarity to the reader's understanding of "the most profound article of the Christian faith, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity" (p. ix). His book is not "analytical, deductive, or discursive," but holistic (p. xi). Torrance's book in many ways offers an excellent elucidation and defense of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Torrance follows Gregory Nazianzen's expression of the doctrine-one Being, three Persons, three Persons, one Being-and expounds upon variations of this theme throughout his book.

Torrance writes not only with intellectual rigor and scholarly breadth, but with the winsome spiritual warmth of a praying theologian. For example, he writes:

It is the sheer gratuitous grace of God, the transcendent freedom of his self-determination in love for us, which is so wonderful, for he does not need relation to us to be what he is as the living God. In his superabounding and overflowing love he does not want to be alone without us or want us to be alone without him. (p. 4)

In the same vein, he staunchly maintains that the Trinity is not a mere metaphysical abstraction but is the personal and living source of our salvation (p. 14; cp. pp. 116, 202). Later in the book Torrance makes this same point in a different fashion-namely, that the church fathers took abstract Greek concepts such as being, word, and act and de-Hellenized them by attributing personality and intentionality to them (pp. 127-8).

Besides Athanasius and H. R. Mackintosh, K. Barth is frequently cited by Torrance, who embraces and expounds on various Barthian themes: the vast gulf between fallen humanity and God, who is wholly Other; the necessity for God to sovereignly reveal himself to us if we are to know him; the fact that God's triune Being is to be understood in his Being-in-Act, and his Act as his Act-in-Being; the non-vicious circle in which the one God may be known only in Three and the Three known only as the one God; the analogia fidei is to be preferred over the analogia entis.

Torrance correctly maintains that the divine ontology (what God is in himself) and economy (what God is toward us) are inseparable. God's Act cannot be separated from his Being (p. 30). Torrance s utilization of M. Polanyi's three levels of acquiring scientific understanding, in which we begin with experience and work toward the conceptual meta-scientific level or framework, provides a very helpful schematism for discussing our doctrinal understanding of the Trinity. We begin with our Christian experience in salvation and worship. However, real knowledge of God must be interiorized lest it remain superficial. So we must attempt to refine our comprehension of the Trinity as we look at the nature of salvation and the eternal relations between the Father, Son, and Spirit (pp. 84ff.). Torrance describes these levels in this manner:

1. The evangelical or doxological level begins with our experience of God in salvation (reconciliation with God) and in worship.

2 The second level, which focuses on salvation, makes use of the Nicene homoousion, which is applied to the Son as well as the Spirit in their relation to the Father.

3. The third level, which grapples with the co-inherent relations of the Trinity, applies the idea of perichoresis to the dynamic inter-relationship of love between the divine Persons. This involves being in one another and acting together.

The first level is where we begin-in our experience of the triune God. Then we move beyond this to the more conceptual and organizational levels of homoousios and then perichoresis. As we move to higher levels, we begin to make sense of the lower ones.

Torrance rightly makes the connection between the mutual interpenetration (perichoresis) of the persons of the Trinity and our experiencing the reality of God. The three hypostases of the Trinity, though distinct, are inseparably united. Thus as God incarnate, Christ reveals to us "the innermost secret of [God's] own divine personal life" (p. 143). And because of the Spirit's indwelling us, we are thus united to the incarnate Christ, the Son of the Father (pp. 148-9).

Following the tradition of Athanasius (which I think is questionable; see below), Epiphanius, and Cyril, Torrance rejects the notion that the Father is the sole Arche or Monarch in the Trinity-a notion which allegedly could lead to a subordinationism (pp. 174,182-5). Rather, the whole Trinity is the Monarchia. This is not to deny, however, that a certain order or taxis exists among relations within the Trinity (p. 175). While the perichoretic idea implies the full equality of each person in the Godhead, it also affirms real distinctions in their hypostatic relations (p. 176). Perichoresis affirms that the Father is first in the trinitarian order in virtue of his Fatherhood. And the statement of Jesus, "The Father is greater than I," should be understood soteriologically or economically rather than ontologically.