The Third Person: A Critique of Trinitarian Systems and Cosmological Footings through the Binitarian Pneumatology of the Early Church

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 Person1 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.

footnotes

  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. ↩