## The Third Person

One traditional mode of inquiry into Trinitarian theology is through an analysis of the roles of distinct Persons. Inquiry of this sort unpacks unique identifying Trinitarian roles *ad intra, ad extra,* or vis-à-vis conceptual contours drawn in between these two traditional realms of Trinitarian systematics. The premise that the Third Person[^1] of the Trinity performs a "cosmological role" serves as our point of departure for this speculative theological analysis. As the point of departure, it will also become a facet of our final destination which demands deeper reflection. First, however, it deserves a preliminary investigation that will serve to delimit the vivifying heuristic of this article and provide a trajectory on which we will eventually circle back, and give deeper consideration to modes of inquiry concerning "cosmological role."

We can, theoretically, explore the concept of "cosmological role" within the auspices of each traditionally distinct person of the Trinity. The animating question for this consideration could be stated as follow: *what function does a distinct person (and/or, theoretically, the essential unity of God) serve in the existence of the cosmos?* This could be, for example, a function of generation, maintenance, animation, purposive attraction or the like. We could, and may find the question of "cosmological function" to be more amenable to our end goal as opposed to "cosmological role." This is, partially, a consequence of the anthropomorphic and epiphenomenological connotation of "role," and the more commensurable insinuations of "function" within the auspices of methodological naturalism; this is meant, however, in the sense that methodological naturalism, in this analysis and theology proper, plays a supporting role to the theological enterprise.[^2] This analysis will, albeit provisionally and not uncritically, adopt the language of "function" for the sake of clarity and precision. To further direct our study here, it is important to briefly explore this driving question of "cosmological function" within the historical realms of *theologia* and *oikonomia* as they are part and parcel to Trinitarian theology.

Following pro-Nicene patristics, such as Origen, Augustine, and Athanasius, Western theology has historically acted on the impetus to distance God from world in order to preserve God's essential immutability, immateriality and transcendence against the conceptual threat of creation's mutability, materiality and temporality.[^3] Within these given premises, the cosmological function of either the Unity (particularly in the case of the Augustinian-Thomistic tradition) or a given Person can be relegated to the *oikonomia* of a particular entity. The most applicable example for our purposes, is, in Augustinian-Thomistic terms, the premise that all "cosmological functions" vis-à-vis creation are considered *ad extra* (*oikonomia*) work of the Unity of God.[^4] And despite Thomas' typically overlooked (yet arguably nuanced) views on the appropriation of creative acts between the persons, he further reinforces this premise by concretizing creation as the *ad extra* work of an undivided, undifferentiated Trinity. In so doing, the relationship between God and world in Augustinian-Thomistic terms, is fundamentally *unifold* rather than *threefold*.[^5]

There are a two underlying premises here, as well as the conceptual overlap between them, which are of particular interest to this appraisal of the historical mode of Trinitarian theology and its implications for cosmology and pneumatology. First, is the concern with adulterating God's fundamental immutability, immateriality and transcendence as they function as categorical metaphysical properties. This analysis will give ancillary attention to some ways in which contemporary Trinitarian theology should reframe this theological problem; but more importantly, it will seek to address the question: *in what ways does this perennial concern potentially undercut the most basic defining characteristics of the Third Person of the Trinity?* The second premise, gestured to above, concerns the ongoing bifurcation of "oneness" and "threeness" as theoretical starting points for Trinitarian theological consideration. This analysis will seek to build on some of Karl Rahner's critiques of this mode of Trinitarian inquiry with a specific eye toward questioning the underlying assumptions of this methodology and theological premises.

On a macro level, it will hopefully become evident, as this analysis unfolds, how and why the traditional methodology of Trinitarian thought is handicapped by the common systematic starting points of "oneness" and "threeness." But for the purposes of this analysis, we will focus specifically on the Third Person by unpacking the internal conflicts and contradictions which arise from the inner-workings of this particular modality of Trinitarian systematics referenced above. We will begin by further unpacking the introductory question of "cosmological function" in light of the early Church and Ante-Nicene pneumatologies. The goal of this analysis is to demonstrate the need for a twofold recasting of the vision of Trinitarian theology. First, we will explore how the classical method for engaging in Trinitarian thought needs be either abandoned or seriously refashioned due to its inability to faithfully represent the God-world relationship. We will address this by unpacking an irreconcilability inherent to its internal logic vis-à-vis the role of the Third Person. The second issue, will manifest itself as a lacuna that unfurls from the first issue, re-emphasizing the need for a more rigorous approach to the interface between theology and cosmology.

## Early Christian Phenomenological Pneumatology

We embark then, by returning to the question of the cosmological function of the Third Person within Early Christian thought. One might critique the legitimacy of this question by pointing out that the particularities and modern sensitivities of this question may have been alien to early Christian intuition. As we continue, it should become apparent how the validity of this criticism will, in fact, support the basic conclusions of this analysis by advocating a reconsideration of our "modern sensitivities" in light of the outlook of the early Church.

Early Christian pneumatology is discussed in a numbers of works, but for the purposes of this analysis, it is succinctly and comprehensively synopsized by Michel René Barnes in his article *The Beginning and End of Early Christian Pneumatology*, "There are four traditions of Jewish Christian pneumatologies [...] the theology of the *Spirit as creator; angelic pneumatology; wisdom pneumatology;* and *consort pneumatology*."[^6] For the purposes of this analysis, we are not particularly interested in the *intra*-theological aspects of these different modes of early pneumatology, but rather, the underlying *meta*-theological, and therefore cosmological, premises. We can, from this, further refine our question: what do Early Christian pneumatologies intimate about the perceived cosmological function of the Third Person?

With this being said the intra-theological implications of early pneumatologies, and the given relationships to protology, soteriology and eschatology, provide a path into the cosmological function of the Third Person. Beginning from the earliest Judaic experiences, it appears that one centralizing theme around which appearances of the Spirit of God orbit is the empowerment of a human (through word *or deed*) to communicate God's will.[^7] We will see how early Christians follow this basic premise, although not uncritically, and further develop the role of the Third Person in its context to Jesus and his Church.

An appropriate place to begin is with the Apostle Paul. In his article discussing the Holy Spirit in early Christian theology, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte builds on the work of New Testament scholars F. F. Bruce and Gordon D. Fee. He expounds the pneumatology of Paul as part of the theological narrative carried over from Judaism, through Luke-Acts and into the second century "Apostolic Fathers" (i.e. Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Tatian and Athenagoras). The two fundamental theological roles which the Holy Spirit fulfills, Peerbolte argues are: first, the eschatological fulfillment of the old promise that God would speak directly to his people in the final days of history; and second, the establishment of God's personal presence.[^8] We will not develop these exhaustively on the basis that they are not developed schematically by Paul but more importantly, because one can argue that more specific categorizations can be unified under the auspices of these premises (if not solely by the latter).[^9] For example Fee, elsewhere writes:

[...] [T]here is little question that Paul sees the Spirit as distinct from God; yet at the same time the Spirit is both the interior *expression* of the unseen God's personality and *the visible manifestation of God's activity in the world*. *The Spirit is truly God in action*; yet he is neither simply and outworking of God's personality nor all there is to say about God.[^10]

We will note, as well, that that these are largely consonant with the rest of the early Judaic and Christian consideration of the Third Person. We can expound these roles through further consideration of the question of other apostolic patristics, and then seek to draw some conclusions about the cosmological function of the Third Person to the early Church.

In the earliest experiences of the Church following the death and resurrection of Jesus, the importance of legitimizing apostolic preaching and prophecy is designated as the work of the Holy Spirit.[^11] The significance of this can hardly be understated, and it is evidenced not only by the role of the Spirit in the individual life of an apostle, but also, in legitimizing and unifying the apostolic church as a community *and* institution.[^12] Cognar, in his exhaustive three volume work on the Holy Spirit, unpacks the subtleties of the question of charism and institutionalization in the early Church (vis-à-vis later disputes concerning Montanism). He lists some patristic examples:

Ignatius of Antioch, for example, claimed that he called out his essential message under the action of the Spirit, Polycarp of Smyrna was called a "teacher who was both an apostle and a prophet" and Melito of Sardis was said to "live entirely by the Holy Spirit."[^13]

Another second century father, Athenagoras, will serve as an helpful example on which to pivot this analysis from a historical theological outloock, to our driving cosmological question. In part as an apologetic appeal for the apostolic legitimacy of his church's teaching, he writes in his *Apology*, "The Holy Spirit Himself also, which operates in the prophets we assert to be an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun."[^14] It is not the content of his (potentially Middle Platonist) cosmology worth noting—but rather that if the Spirit flows *from* God and *returns back to Him*, this would suggest that the place the Spirit flows is through the world. This analogical picture of the movement and role of the Third Person hearkens back to Paul and propels us forward into the question of cosmological function.

## Cosmological Function of the Third Person

In light of the varying shades and degrees with which early Christians considered the Holy Spirit, we can attend to these as means to answer our animating question: what is the cosmological function of the Third Person. In the most elemental sense, it appears iteratively in early Christian thought, that the Third Person serves as the *betwee* n in-between God and world.[^15] Further clarification of this principle relies heavily on suggestive language all of which inevitably leads to further problems: i.e. joint, link, connection, contact, relation, etc. Pneumatology (ancient and modern) has relied heavily on the use of theological terminology such as flow, return, animation, empowerment, inspiration, revelation, presence, indwelling, etc. to describe the Third Person. It is no stretch to say that the use of this language which builds on the spiritual groundwork of ancient Judaism, takes root in early Christian thought and then germinates well into the modern era is based largely on a mysterious faith commitment. This commitment is rooted in a phenomenological religious experience, that leans on a somewhat opaque understanding of the God-world relationship. It is for precisely this reason, that a better understanding of the Third Person is part and parcel to developing a better understanding of the God-world relationship (and vice versa). Suffice to say, that all of these conceptualizations, and experienced realities, are unified by (but not necessarily exhausted by) the ubiquity of the Third Person in relation to the activity of God in the world.

Surely, "the *between* in-between God and the world" is no less obscure than any other terminology.[^16] The question "What is the *between*?" serves as the trajectory for thought beyond this methodological and axiological study.[^17] Suffice to say, the rest of this analysis will focus primarily on the historical modality of systematic trinitarianism as a methodology, assuming this conclusion about the cosmological function of the Third person in early Christian thought. Notably, the analysis does not seek to undermine the fundamental premises and conclusions of Trinitarian theology, but rather to reinterpret the proper orientation of the trinitarian theological enterprise by building on the phenomenological binitarian orientation of the early Church.

The diversity of pneumatological thought in the works of Early Christians, and the relative absence within rigorous, explicit theological development serves to highlight the mysterious, and yet tacit communal convictions concerning the Third Person. This may be in part due to the fact that Early Christian thought was occupied (rightfully so) by the pressing need for rigorous Christological thought that provided the theological substructure necessary for justifying and preserving the work of Jesus in and through the Church. Before attempting to substantiate anything trinitarian, it is evident why the Church felt the pressing need to focus first on substantiating their binitarian position (read: the fullness of the deity of Jesus). The strange irony inherent to this orientation, is that by possibly disregarding the meticulous development of pneumatology, the church still stood tacitly on an axiomatic, phenomenological foothold from which they were able to precisely develop a genuine and thorough Christian theology via the "presence" of the Third Person.[^18]

## Early Church Binitarian Orientation

We now turn then to the question of the binitarian mindset of the early Church. There have been numerous analyses suggesting potential contours between early binitarianism and trinitarianism. Many contemporary investigations conclude, in one way or another, that the binitarianism evident in the early church was based on a nascent or proto-trintarianism.[^19] Many contemporary thought, in one way or another, holds early church binitarianism and orthodox trinitarianism in tension. H. E. W. Turner has put it succinctly: If, however, there is a persistent tendency in the early centuries to interpret the Christian doctrine

of the Godhead in a bi-personal rather than in a tri-personal manner [...] [t]here is no reason to believe that those who worked normally with a Binitarian phrasing in their theology were other than Trinitarian in their religion. There is no traces, for example, of an alternative Twofold Baptismal Formula.[^20]

The question of particular interest to us then, is whether this early iteration of the religion serves as grounds for a critique of post-Nicene trinitarian doctrine.[^21] We have explored how the pneumatology of the early church was premised fundamentally in-between the God-world relationship. The way this played out related almost ubiquitously to the manifestation of the activity of God in the world through (for example) prophecy, apostolic succession, consecration of the individual, and the unity of the church. All of these activities of God are grounded fundamentally, in the early Church's conviction concerning their involvement in the unfolding work and life of God (i.e. Jesus) in and through the world. But all of these activities which delineate the work of the Third person (particularly in light of the radically paradigm shifting ministry of Jesus), are quintessentially bound up in the self-determining, self-defining crisis which vivifies the church's mission.

Here, a clarifying question may be helpful: would one, in the early church, have spoken of (or been able to speak of) the Third Person as existing in a state entirely disassociated from the world; or—to put in another way—in a state of being wholly and completely interior to the inner life of God? It would appear, from diverse—but *unified* —testimony of the early church concerning the Third Person, that it would have been nearly impossible within this binitarian mindset to divorce the essential nature of the Third Person, from the space it occupied in-between the relationship of God and the church, and consequently between God and the world. In light of this, we should thus return to the notion that the early Church was in some way nascent or proto-Trinitarian. Understood with this phraseology (i.e. nascent or proto-), one might conclude that it was not possible to hold to an explicit orthodox Trinitarian view until after the Council of Nicaea. To which, if we grant then that these early Christians (like the Apostle Paul!) were orthodox, it would be wrong to assume that that they *merely* prefigured Trinitarian Orthodoxy. We would neither, however, suggest that the Trinitarian theology blossoming out of the third and fourth century is less orthodox because it lacks continuity with early Christian binitarianism. It should be one of the most basic commitments of the Christian (particularly the Trinitarian) that these two seemingly opposed orthodoxies—binitarianism and trinitarianism—are commensurable. So rather, by assuming that the early Christians were in fact orthodox, we should be empowered to turn to their binitarianism as a fecund source for our own trinitarian outlook. The suggestion that the early Church were nascent or proto-Trinitarians carries with it an insipid supercessionism that disqualifies the early Church from being "trinitarian." But the question is not whether the early church would have held to explicit Trinitarian systematics, but rather, was the early church trinitarian by the very nature of its tacit understanding of God, and in their phenomenological religious experience of the binitarian mindset? The suggestion then, is that binitarianism *is* trinitarianism; to quality the premise: the phenomenological mindset of orthodox early church binitarianism *is* a legitimate actualization of the Trinitarian systematic theology.

This is tied to one of the ubiquitously undergirding principles of the phenomenology of the Holy Spirit in the early church: if *to know* the Holy Spirit is *to know* God acting in material reality then the knowledge of the Holy Spirit *cannot* be divorced from the experience of God acting in the material world. This plays out in the variety of economic functions outlined above. But its consequence is twofold: first, to reiterate, the Third Person's nearly exhaustive association to experience implicates the essential character of its cosmological function unto its very nature; and, second, that the early church cannot divorce their *knowledge* of God, from their *experience* of God vis-à-vis the Third Person. How then, does this implicate *us*, having introduced a theological system in which the Third Person *can be* divorced from the experience of God's activity in the world, and—as I will suggest—necessarily *will be* because of the inherent implications to the internal logic of the given framework?

So, to ask this question in another way: if the fundamental nature of the Third Person does not implicate the God-world relationship, than to what, *essentially*, do we refer when we talk about the Holy Spirit? This question, it seems, followed the church into pneumatological discussion which ensued in the third and fourth century. And likewise, it is the question on which we turn our analysis to its final subject, the historical mode of Trinitarian systematics.

## Trinitarian Systematic Contradictions

It has been the traditional method of inquiry, since the Council of Nicaea and the explicit Trinitarian theological formulations which developed out of the fourth century Western church fathers, to engage in speculation about the "oneness" and "threeness" of God.[^22] This occurs in a variety of modalities: some following Augustinian-Thomistic lines by explicitly placing priority on the doctrine of unity; some prioritizing threeness following the Greek Fathers; and others (typically of more modern sensitivities) attempting to challenge these traditional categories of trinitarian discourse. Suffice to say, one outcome, to which we have already alluded, is the molding of discourse into dual categories of the *theologia* and the *oikonomia* of God across the majority of trinitarian discouse.[^23] Clearly, there has been a series of work concerning the interface of these traditional schematics following the astute criticism of Karl Rahner and his Trinitarian paradigm shifting *grundaxiom*.[^24] However, instead of following the trajectory set forth by Rahner in his *grundaxiom*, I would prefer to reframe the question here in a slightly different way.

If it can be said, that essential to the role of the Third Person, is the cosmological function between God and world, than it would seem we lack the necessary groundwork to engage—that is, disassociatively of creation—in speculation about an immanent intra-Trinitarian life. This is one internally irreconcilable contradiction that is, I would suggest, inherent to the classical modality of Trinitarian speculation. By the very nature of engaging in systematic Trinitarian thought, we are indebted to proceed by the mapping of categorical metaphysical properties onto the Trinity as a means of preserving philosophical unity among three distinct (and now in someway "transcendent") persons. If the role of the Third Person of the Trinity is bound up exclusively within the God-world relationship, the way forward via Trinitarian speculation becomes constricted by the internal methodological contradiction that some part of God is bound up with the God-world relationship while, on the other hand, some part of God must remain independent of world—and yet still both parts exist in essential unity.[^25] In this way, if it is not too presumptuous to suggest, it appears that the binitarian orientation (that is specifically pertaining to one's phenomenological experience) within the early Church possessed fundamental advantages. Without subsuming the Spirit into the theological super-structure of the Trinity, the early church can more easily accomplish two things (that are of particular interest to this analysis), that it appears we, perennially, cannot.

First and foremost, *the church has a medium in which to consider, legitimate and justify the activity of God within the world*; and one could do this, without having to face the enigmatic consequences of God's ongoing cosmological relationship to the world vis-à-vis God's activity in material reality. But by beginning with the presumption of an anterior intra-Trinitarian life, we, on the other hand, are compelled to wrestle with either the conflation of the unity of God into any one particular or universal action with regard to the material universe; or, the relegation of God's movement within the material universe to purely economic disassociative action. Both require conceptual acrobatics (the former, theological, and the latter, cosmological) to which the prevailing history of literature on the subject attests.

Second, *the Church is capable of locating itself within the ongoing and unfolding life and work of God* without the need to commence by constructing (or regularly re-constructing) a bridge between the internally consistent, eternally Divine life, and the dynamic, radically contingent, mutability of the material world. As a consequence of the salvific work of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit, there was no question that the church could see themselves, without hesitation, as the ongoing activity of God (read: Christ) in the world. But, by subsuming the Third Person into the theological super-structure of the Trinity, and consequently reapplying classical categories to a unity that now includes the very Being which we have suggested is defined (at least in part) by the space between God and world, we have utterly expelled ourselves and the world from the life of God.[^26] As a result, we are compelled to relate our unfolding temporal world to the immanent intra-Trinitarian life analogically, fortitously, gratuitously, or the like. This is to say, that without being able to locate the dynamic nature of our reality within the life of God we must lean heavily on what is essentially speculative epiphenomenology to provide any substantial basis for the connection which exists between who God is in God-self and the ongoing eschatological unfolding of God in the temporal world.

We see that these fundamental advantages, are significantly (but not exhaustively) cosmological in nature. In that, many of the complications discussed above (by the subsumption of the Spirit into the Trinitarian theological super-structure) muddle at best, and debilitate at worst the entity which served the original cosmological function of occupying the space between God and world. It is with this, it should be clear, that we have circled back to our initial point of departure.

## Concluding Remarks

We began by asking this question: *what function does a distinct person (and/or, theoretically, the essential unity of God) serve in the existence of the cosmos?* Originally, it was intended to underscore a basic conceptual premise—that God, or a distinct Person of God can carry out a cosmological role or function. But having traced one particular thread through the cosmological function of the Third Person vis-à-vis the mindset of early Christian binitarian thought, we approach the horizon of a much broader subject concerning the interface between cosmology and Trinitarian theology.

Cosmology and Trinitarian theology are, by their very nature as disciplines, co-implicative. Without rehashing millennia of literature, it is hopefully evidenced by the problems presented above and the iterative nature many consequent works that there exists a perennial holding pattern circling this central tension. We have explored this through a critique of Trinitarian systems and an analysis of an underlying irreconcilability which comes to a head in the definition and consideration of the Third Person of the Trinity. This is, in part, because the cosmological function of the Third Person undergirds its original emergence and subsequent definition through the thought and experience of the Church. It seems safe to assume that the sustainable growth of Trinitarian pneumatology will attempt to decipher this essential tension. In so doing, one would expect that work along these lines, would provide potential in roads to a more developed Trinitarian understanding of the God-world relationship.

But a note of caution should be made: the suggestion that humanity can unequivocally, and univocally identify a precise "causal joint" within the physical sciences is an *ambitious* undertaking.[^27] The purpose of a project such as this one, *is not* to imply that the discovery of "link" within the physical sciences is *necessary* to develop more comprehensive theological cosmologies. But rather, that more nuanced cosmology and theology *is necessary* to promote thinking which fruitfully recasts the Christian vision in the world. The immensity of this task is not to be taken lightly. Not only are we forced to wrestle with millennia of Trinitarian speculation which appears to have silted layer upon layers of complexity, but we are faced now with a new paradigm shifting cosmological outlook developing within modern physics. As Wolfgang Vondey has lamented:

Despite the echoes of these scientific revolutions in modern theology, however, the most recent paradigm shift caused by the replacement of Newtonian physics with Einstein's theory of Relativity in the 20th century is hardly visible in theological reflection.[^28]

We can hope, however, that an increasingly renewed interest in Einsteinian cosmology may serve to empower a groundswell that will overcome this cosmological stalemate. Particularly, because the reframing of matter and energy within an Einsteinian cosmology has, in part, led to a more poignant emphasis on non-dualistic thought.[^29] It is outside the scope of this analysis to propose a thoroughly developed pneumatology that would address the conflicts exhibited here.[^30] It is worth, however, making some orienting remarks regarding the contours between the Einsteinian cosmological revolution, and the pneumatological critique of Trinitarian systematics in this analysis.

In order to be faithful to both the religion of the apostolic church, early and modern, 21st century theology should not side-step the relationship between God and world. One momentous undertaking related to this task is identifying the role of the Third Person in thoroughly cosmological terminology.[^31] Hopefully, one of things we have clearly depicted here is how—without further consideration of cosmological function of the Third Person—trinitarian theology threatens to remain within a constant field of gravity orienting us in a trajectory that does not bear consideration on the lived experience of the church in the world.[^32] The church will only continue forward in the sometimes distressing oscillations of being pulled back down by the grace and work of mystics and theologians who can appeal creatively to our ability to hold this cosmological paradox in utter tension. The question is, how much longer can the church remain in this paradigm? We will be hard pressed to accomplish this as theologians without explicit engagement in, and dialogue with, the prevailing cosmologists of our time—that is the natural sciences. But we are not the only implicated party in this case. We have now a path before us that can be walked only alongside scientific partners.[^33] We have to determine in what way will both parties proceed forward as we approach together the same question—what is the *between* in-between God and world?

[^1]: Because of the modulating and varying uses of "Spirit" throughout this analysis and the history of thought concerning materiality and immaterialy explored here, I have opted to use the terminology of "Third Person" as a fixed, Trinitarian idiom to promote clarity throughout. Notably, this practice eventually breaks down, as one might imagine, if this were a discussion about the theological nature of "personhood."

[^2]: This *methodological* relationship, it may be added, does not have to be, and is not necessarily unique to theology's appopriation of the natural sciences (with the major caveat being that natural scientists have not readily utilized the theological enterprise as a source of insight or guidance in and of itself with as much enthusiasm as modern theologians have done the reverse.) This may be the lingering result of the almost ubiquitous synthesis of the methodological naturalism with philosophical naturalism (following classical foundationalism and empiricism). I am sympathetic to Yong's disatisfaction with the binary implications of using terms like "naturalism" and "supernaturalism," (2011: 13). The disatisfaction is particularly applicable viewed from a theoretical standpoint. However it is, in a certain sense, a *false* dichotomy when viewed from a methodological perspective because they simply would not function the same in the way that these different schools of thought occupy different spaces in our modern time. A modern physicist *could* consider employing "methodological supernaturalism" within the auspices of his or her own work in the physical sciences. The physicist, may then, be indebted to a supernaturalist or theologian provided he or she has laid the groundwork within their own thought for investigation through methodological naturalism. (One thorough example of a proposed framework can be found in Thomas F. Torrance, *Theological Science*, (Oxford UP: 1969).) I suspect that the theologican employing "methodological naturalism" while still indebted to the scientist, is not indebted in the quite the same way. Cf. Alvin Plantinga, "Methodological Naturalism?," *Origins & Design* 18, no. 1 (1997): Here he argues against the orthodox consideration of methodological naturalism as expressed by Ernan McMullin. Plantinga says, "the natural thing to think is that (in principle, at any rate) the Christian scholarly community should do science, or parts of science, in its own way and from its own perspective." Plantinga's concerns are not unfounded, but nearly twenty years later it is evident how these concerns have unfolded within the social and political climate of the United States specifically with the growing ubiquity of creationism science, climate change skepticism, dismissal of queer theory and the like within modern American Evangelicalism (although trends could be traced through a variety of sects). Largely, I think, our goals may be in concert, *however*, it is clear that the mode of integration for Plantinga (that is, essentially, *disintegration*) has not served these ends. The insinuation here of a dialectic cosmological enterprise existing in partnership between theology, the natural sciences and so on, embodied by each specialist in his or her own right, requires a *unified* commitment to truth, passion, obligation and pursuit (cf. Michael Polanyi, *Science, Faith and Society*, (Chicago UP: 1946), p. 70f) that reaches out beyond boundaries which naturally (and inevitably) emanate from the premising centers of any academic venture.

[^3]: Anne Hunt, *Trinity*, (New York: Orbis, 2005), 98; Catherine Mowry LaCugna, *God For Us*, (New York: Harper Collins, 1973), 81f: Hunt and LaCugna both support the basic premises of this general claim. Cf. Chad Tyler Gerber, *The Spirit of Augustine's Early Theology: Contextualizing Augustine's Pneumatology*, (Surrey: Ashgate, 2012); Although the title implies different, Gerber provides an exhaustive account of Augustine's pneumatology with a comprehensive survey; p. 200: "The Spirit keeps corporeal things from reaching the formlessness and non-being from which they have been drawn by God. The Spirit also maintains the soul reformed through Wisdom. The Spirit imparts soundness and stability to bodies, and also leads the sould to enjoyment and beatitude. The Spirit orders bodies through weight or composite unity, and also orders souls through charity. Augustine is able to synthesize these two operations, to see the later [sic?] as an extension of the former, on account of his understanding of the fundamental structure of the Trinity itself *and the expression of this divine infrastructure in all of God's operations* ad extra *,* " (*emphasis added*); cf. Kevin Douglas Hill, *Athanasius and the Holy Spirit: The Development of his Early Pneumatology*, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2016).

[^4]: Cf. Denis Edwards, *Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology* (New York: Maryknoll, 1995), 118. Edwards supports this reading of Augustine, its relation to the Thomistic line of thought and the Western tradition in general: "The Augustinian teaching that 'the Trinity's acts *ad extra* are one,' has led to the common theological position that since creation is an action of the essence of God, there is no proper role for each Person. It has been the traditional view that when we attribute a particular role in creation to one of the Persons, we do so only by 'appropriation.' This means that we attribute to one Person what really applies to all three;"

[^5]: Hunt, 98ff.

[^6]: Michel René Barnes, "The Beginning and End of Early Christian Pneumatology," *Augustinian Studies*, 39, no. 2 (2008), 170; *emphasis original*.

[^7]: Cf. Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, "'Do not quench the Spirit!' The discourse of the Holy Spirit in the earliest Christianity," *HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies*, 71, no. 1 (2015), 2f: Peerbolte, here, also explores the liklihood that in the early Judaic mindset, there were a variety of spirits which would interface with human will and behavior: "The idea that human beings live in a world of spirits that intend to influence their behavious (spirits of truth versus spirits of deceit) is attested by a number of writings from the Qumran."

[^8]: Peerbolte, 4.

[^9]: John McIntyre *, The Shape of Pneumatology: Studies in the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit*, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 60: McIntyre categorizes these more comprehensively drawing from Paul and the Luke-Acts narrative: "[...] the Holy Spirit is the guarantee, foundation, unity, medium, structure, morality, content, diversity and devotion of the Christian life of the person and the community redeemed by Jesus Christ."

[^10]: Gordon D. Fee "Paul and the Trinity: The Experience of Christ and the Spirit for Paul's Understanding of God," in *The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity,* (Oxford UP, 1999) eds. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, SJ, and Gerald O'Collins, SJ, 64f, (*emphasis added)*. Fee's premises support strongly the direction of this analysis. It should be noted, however, if there appear slight discrepancies, that Fee's subtle footwork to ensure the basis of the Spirit in the internal life of God is balanced unequivocally on the "connection" between God and world. This appears in use of terminology like "expression" and "manifestation," both of which *cannot not* implicate a predicative entity (i.e. the world).

[^11]: Cf. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, *A Guide to Christian Theology: The Holy Spirit*, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012, 12;

[^12]: Cf. Peerbolte, 7-9; Yves Cognar, *I Believe in the Holy Spirit Vol. 1: The Holy Spirit in the 'Economy'*, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company), trans. David Smith, 65ff; McIntyre *,* 53-55;

[^13]: Cognar (Vol. 1), 65; it is worthwhile to place this quote in its original context: "Prophecy decline to some exten in the early Church, at least in the form of more or less ecstatic mental exaltation, but this was not, as Harnack believed, because the canon of scriptures had been established, but rather because of an increasing emphasis on the authority of the bishops. This does not imply a contrast between the 'charismatics' and the hierarchical ministers, still less an opposition, since the ministers were themselve charismatic. Ignatius of Antioch, for example, claimed that he called out his essential message under the action of the Spirit, Polycarp of Smyrna was called a 'teacher who was both an apostle and a prophet' and Melito of Sardis was said to 'live entirely by the Holy Spirit.' That is why the increasing affirmation of the part played by the bishops did not in any way minimize the charismatic life of the Church. They were spiritual men in the sense in which Paul described them (1 Cor 2:10-15)." Significantly, the essential insight which bears upon our purposes here, but represent a trajetory beyond this particular paper, is that the institutionalization of the church, does not undermine the role the Third Person in an early Christian's individual life. Rather it is part and parcel to the unifying function of the Spirit of Christ in the life of the Church. To put it in Teilhardian terms there is both a *withinness* and a *withoutness* that *exist in dynamic unity* when considering the role of the Third Person in the unfolding of the early Christian Church.

[^14]: Qtd. in Peerbolte, 8. Athenagoras continues: "Who, then, would not be astonished to hear men who speak of God the Father and of God thh Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and who declare both their power in union and their distinction in order, called atheists?" He goes on to profess the belief in

[^15]: Amos Yong, *The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination* (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 76: "Pentecostal Christians, for all their reliance on the apostolic witness to undergird their expectancy of miracles, have not usually noticed that the earlist Christians did not hold similar assumptions regarding a law-governed world. Whereas pentecostal supernaturalism and interventionism contest the naturalistic paradigm, early Christian miracles opposed not naturalism—an Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment phenomenon—but pagan magical practices. In other worlds, God's power was not needed to overthrow strictly defined laws of nature (these had not yet been "discovered"), but to expose the futility of pagan magic. More importantly, divinely wrought miracles were evidential not to reveal God as more powerful than the laws of nature, but to highlight God's power vis-à-vis other divine beings believe to populate the ancient world and to validate the ministry of Jesus and produce faith in his announcement of The coming Kingdom." While Yong's critique of pentecostal readings of the early Church is prescient, what is of greater import here is his reframing of phenomenological mode in which the early Church engaged with the question of spiritual activity in the world. That is, as we are here attempting to show how the early Church considered the Spirit a vehicle of divine action in the world it is *fundamental* to recognize that they *were not* "supernaturalists" in the ecsatic, mystical way we envision in a post-Enlightenment world; but *rather,* that the reality of supernatural action in the world would have been considered a less remarkable plausibility.

[^16]: It is however, arguably more precise, and less encumbered by anthropomorphic connotations

[^17]: McIntyre, 239f: To suggest just one helpful point of departure along these lines, Mcintyre places the focus on the work of the Spirit as *emperichoresis*, a logical extension of *perichoresis*, and rejects the "from above, from below" pneumatological dichotomy: "[...] the fact that the Spirit bears the emperichoretic relation to the Father and the Son in the created world presupposes, for its validity and its very being, the anterior existence of the relation among the three Persons from eternity to eternity. So we have to conclude that the dichotomy between pneumatology from above and pneumatology from below is a false one; they are co-implicatives in so far as each presupposes the other and conditions the other."

[^18]: Cf. Peerbolte, 9: "[...] it is worth emphasising [sic] again that for Paul the Spirit was far more than a concept—it was the term by which he described the experiential dimension of his theology, a lived reality instead of an abstract concept." Here, Peerbolte interfaces adeptly with the contemporary New Testament studies work of F. F. Bruce and Gordon Fee; in n. 14 Peerbolte gestures to a critique of this vein of late 20th century New Testament historicism that contrours with the basic direction of this analysis: "Even though I consider Fee's book a more than excellent study, I part ways with him when he speaks of the 'Trinitarian presuppositions' to theology and his 'Trinitarian understanding of God' (e.g. 1994:898). *The concept of the Trinity is a later, patristic concept, and although Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of utmost importance to Paul, the usage of this terminology obfuscates rather than clarifies what is happening in Paul*," (*emphasis added*). Significant here, is not the criticism of the Trinitarian systematics, but rather, the complication inherent when appropriating explicit Trintarian systematics in the interpretation of early Christian theology (i.e. scripture). Cf. Elizabeth A. Dreyer, "An Advent of the Spirit: Medieval Mystics and Saints," in *Advents of the Spirit: An Introduction to the Current Study of Pneumotology*, ed. Bradford E. Hinze and D. Lyle Dabney (Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 2001), 123: "Long before the Spirit was a theme of doctrine, He was a fact in the experience of the community."

[^19]: Alan Segal, "'Two Powers in Heaven' and Early Christian Trinitarian Thinking," in *The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity*, Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Dendall, S.J., and Gerald O'Collins, S.J., eds. (Oxford UP, 2000), 79: "Though Christianity's theology is Trinitarian, it may not have appeared so in its original context. For one thing, Christian mention of the 'Holy Spirit' would neither have been considered unique nor heretical by the rabbis," (qtd. also in Barnes (2008), 1); H.E.W. Turner, *The Pattern of Christian Truth: A Study in the Relations between Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Early Church*, (London: Mowbray & Co., 1954), 474: "Christians lived Trinitarianly before the doctrine of the Trinity began to be thought out conceptually," (qtd. also in Bucur (2009), 191); James P. Mackay, *The Christian Experience of God as Trinity*, (London: SCM Press, 1983), 135: "'The binitarian schema, it is evident, was deeply impressed upon the thought of primitive Christianity,' wrote J. N. D Kelly in his *Early Christian Creeds*, and he adds immediately, 'so, it would appear, was the Trinitarian.' And of the ante-Nicene writers Maurice Wiles also has said: 'Their thought about God was at least as much binitarian as trinitarian." Mackay goes on later to insinuate the interesting coincidence at play that binitarianism prevailed primarily alongside Middle-Platonism, and trintarianism primarily alongside Neo-Platonism (137).

[^20]: Qtd. in Bogdan Babriel Bucur, *Angelomorphic Pneumatology: Clement of Alexandria and Other Early Christian Witnesses*, (Boston: Brill, 2009), 191f, n. 1

[^21]: Again, in methodology *primarily*, and content *only reflexively*.

[^22]: Karl Rahner, *The Trinity,* (New York: Seabury Press, 1973), 15-21, esp. 20: "Things do not necessarily have to be this way every time the two treatises *On the One God* and *On the Triune God* are separated and studied in the usual sequence. [...] The important question is: *what* is said in both treatises and how well are they related to each other, when thus separated in the usual way? What we wish to emphasis here is that, in the customary separation and sequence, the unity and the connection of the two treatises are too easily overlooked, as evidenced by the very fact that this separation and sequence are considered quite naturally as necessary and obvious.

[^23]: Cf. LaCugna, 37-44

[^24]: Rahner, 21f.

[^25]: Rahner, 18. This and the argument following, in my estimation, is emblematic of *precisely* what Rahner is talking about here: "[...] [I]f one starts from the basic Augustinian-Western conception, an a-trinitarian treatise "on the one God" comes as a matter of course before the treatise on the Trinity. In this event, however, the theology of the Trinity must produce the impression that it can make only purely formal statements about the three divine persons, with the help of concepts about the two processions and about the relations. *Even these statements, however, refer only to a Trinity which is absolutely locked within itself—one which is not, in its reality, open to anything distinct from it; one, further, from which we are excluded, of which we happen to know something only through a strange paradox" (emphasis added).*

[^26]: See n. 24 (Rahner, 18)

[^27]: Yong, 77-83; Yong provides here a helpful synopsis of the current discussion surrounding the causal joint with a particular eye toward pneumatology.

[^28]: Wolfgang Vondey, "The Holy Spirit and the Physical Universe: The Impact of Scientific Paradigm Shifts on Contemporary Pneumatology," *Theological Studies* 70, no. 1 (2009), 3f.

[^29]: Yong, (2011), 11f: "I thus suggest that recent scholarship about pentecostalism's holistic spirituality, affective and embodied epistemology, and nonreductionistic worldview represents the best of pentecostal thinking in search of a way beyond the impasses of (in no particular order) materialism versus spiritualism, rationalism versus empiricism, intellectualism versus emotionalism, individualism versus communalism, this-worldliness versus otherworldliness, naturalism versus supernaturalism, modernism versus postmodernism, absolutism versus relativism, positivism versus fideism, etc." We see here the non-dual implications that provide fuel for a renewed pneumatological consideration of the world.

[^30]: There would be innumerable sources to point to along these lines, suffice to say, Amos Yong in his text *The Spirit of Creation* (2011) offers a comprehensive and contemporary survey of the various perspectives of the Divine Action Project and various perspectives on the causal joint, NIOSDA, NIODA, etc. in Chapter 3, "The Spirit at Work in the World."

[^31]: Yong, (2011), 22f: Yong makes the critique particularly against authors on Trinitarianism within the vein of science like Polkinghorne and McGrath that their thought suffers from a pneumatological deficiency.

[^32]: Rahner,10: His catalyzing concern here, bears repeating: "[...] [D]espite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, mere 'monotheists.'" Hopefully, this critique of traditional trinitarian schematics provides an in-road to a revitalization of fertile trinitarian orthodoxy and orthopraxis.

[^33]: Yong, (2011), 28f, 65f: Yong suggests a "dual-methodology" that uses the many tongues of Pentecost as a "theological rationale." While exceedingly helpful as a heuristic image for interor bidisciplinary approaches, I side with Yong's "negative reply" interlocuter and am cautious to describe the interface of difference disciplines using the image of "language." There is a sense, in which, Yong's analogy for interdisciplinary methodology is overly encumbered by his own methodological naturalism. That is, in looking at the even of Pentecost from a different vantage point, for instance, we may just as well view glossolalia as the spiritual *breakdown* of human imposed cultural structures which allows for the honest *tacit* interface of spiritual beings, rather than the *empowering* of people to act *explicitly* within others human imposed cultural structures. The question of vantage point is miniscule at most, but does serve to highlight the slight difference in orientations between religion and science vis-à-vis a methodology that begins on pneumatological grounds. I would prefer to pursue, both literally and figuratively, interdisciplinary approaches that value the physical, embodied, inter-subjective dialogue between specialists (or the like).