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Empirical-Theological Models of the Trinity

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Empirical-Theological Models of the Trinity chapter 5 Empirical-Theological Models of the Trinity Empirical-theological research concerning the doctrine of God has tended to focus on using general theological categories. This has produced some useful studies but has one major flaw: Christianity claims to be Trinitarian not merely theist or monotheist. It cannot be reduced to these categories without serious loss of identity. However functionally deist, pantheist or theist Christian forms of religion may appear, theologically, Christianity claims to be Trinitarian in experience and doctrine. This poses a problem for empirical research. How might one measure beliefs in or attitudes towards a complex doctrine such as the Trinity? Indeed, is such a task possible? And who would be the recipients of such empirical-theological testing and for what purpose? It appears to re- main one of the outstanding challenges for contemporary scholarship. In the light of this concern, my aim is to explore attitudes towards certain models of the doctrine of the Trinity. The theological models that I wish to explore are the following: (1) unity/plurality, (2) subordinationism (3) modalism and (4) a social doctrine. In addition, the instrument used will contain other relevant theological items relating to Christology, pneumatology and gender/language. Of course, there is a certain relation between them, which I shall explain be- low. Data from a study of theology students will be used in order to explore these models and to reflect upon the significance of their theological attitudes. Theological Models As stated, these models are not independent of each other because there is a degree of conceptual overlap between them. The unity/plurality model derives from the basic philosophical categories of the one and the many (although one has to be aware of the problem associated with dichotomous structures; cf. Cunningham, 1998: 35–36). From the unity category emerges the modal- ist model and from the plurality category emerges the social model. The sub- ordinationist model also tends towards the plurality model since difference is emphasised. Undifferentiated monotheism would be a way of eliminating the paradox altogether, as would be tritheism (a model not in focus here). Theoretically, they solve the paradox by eliminating it, that is, either by dissolv- ing the unity into the plurality or vice versa. However, if such distinctions are maintained, these forms could be suggested as functioning at three differ ent © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/97890043457�0_007 <UN> 76 chapter 5 levels of conceptualization. Diagram 5.1 aims to illustrate the possible hierar- chy of conceptualization. Level 3 Modalism Social/Subordinationism Level 2 Unity Plurality Level 1 Monotheism Polytheism Diagram 5.1 Levels of theological conceptualization At level 1 monotheism and polytheism tend towards simplicity and exclusiv- ity: either the one or the many predominate. In theological terms it could be argued that the basic category is either monotheism or polytheism. Certainly, the Old Testament conception of God is that yhwh is One (Deuteronomy 6:4), over and against the polytheism of the surrounding religions (Joshua 24:14–18). At level 2 a certain complexity and paradox is introduced by endorsing both dimensions simultaneously. In the New Testament, the identification of Jesus Christ as “the Lord” (// yhwh, e.g. Acts 2:36, Romans 10:9; Torrance, 2001: 51) raises the plurality question to the foreground together with the revelation of God in terms of the person of the Father (Matthew 6:9; Galatians 4:6) and divine personhood ascribed to the Holy Spirit (John 14–16; Fee, 1994: 829–45). Cer- tainly, while there is not a fully developed explicit Trinitarian ontology within the New Testament, there is divine triadic language that arguably reflects the experiential theology of the early church and especially its Trinitarian soteriol- ogy (Fee, 2001: 52–57). At level 3 we observe certain emphases that attempt to resolve the paradox of unity and plurality, either in one direction or the other. In later centuries, modalism, subordinationism and social understandings emerged as ways in which such experiential and triadic, as well as soteriologi- cal, language was processed. Orthodoxy was eventually enshrined in creedal statements as ways of addressing important issues and drawing boundaries for doctrine (Bray, 1984; Young, 1991). However, aspects of these emphases still exist to this day, even if the intellectual justification for them is largely absent. In the empirical-theological literature on the subject of God, there has been very limited engagement with any Trinitarian construction (Cartledge, 2004). Indeed, it would appear that researchers, apart from Wit Pasierbek (2001), have ignored Trinitarian categories entirely in favour of general theological constructs such as theism, deism and immanentism (van der Ven, 1993; 1998b; Orchard, 1997). These constructs are based on a transcendence-immanence axis, that is, God “out there” (perhaps personal or not) and God “in here” ( indeed everywhere in here). Although this has some utility as a religious <UN>.
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