A Trinitarian Metaphysic

At the heart of Christian theology is the doctrine of the Trinity, which means all theology arises from this understanding of God and all portions of the Christian belief-mosaic point back to the reality of the Triune God.

The doctrine of the Trinity had been an important theological subject for the early church, reached a high point in Thomas Aquinas, but declined during the time of the enlightenment. Hegel and Barth restored the Trinity to its proper place and Karl Rahner became famous for his statement concerning the matter. Walter Kasper writes, "What K. Rahner sets down as a basic principle reflects a broad consensus among the theologians of the various churches."

During the period of the Enlightenment the doctrine of the Trinity was largely ignored by most theologians no matter what what side of the modern-fundamentalist controversy they landed. While the doctrine was cast aside as an embarrassing relic by more liberal theologians, conservative theologians did little more than affirm the classical doctrine of the Trinity handed down through the western tradition. The Trinity was something to affirm as a part of Christian tradition, but not a subject worth developing or reflecting upon, because of its mysteriousness.

It was Hegel and then later Barth, who began to break from the enlightenment treatment of the Trinity. They saw the Trinity as a necessary element of Christian proclomation and placed it at the heart of Christian theology. They paved the way for Karl Rahner and his now famous "rule:" "The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity."

By immanent Trinity he was referring to the speculative Trinitarian theology present in the neo-scholastics that relied little on the biblical narrative, which sought to understand God "in himself" in contrast to the God "experienced in the economy of salvation." Grenz writes, "the experience of God that arises in the economy of salvation remains a genuine experience of the eternal God, for through the process of salvation the eternal God reveals his own true self to humans.

Rahner writes that God is, "actually internally just the way we experience the divine in relation to us, namely, as Father, Son, and Spirit." Catherine LaCugna writes, "The identity of 'immanent' and 'economic' Trinity means that God truly and completely gives God's self to the creature without remainder, and what is given in the economy of salvation is God as such."

The important point that emerges from this discussion is that God has revealed himself as the most perfect and eternal community. He is a social God. God, according to LaCugna is not a "by-itself" or an "in-itself" but a person or a "toward-another."

The most important thing we can say about God is that he is relational and has revealed this to us in history. To quote Scripture, "God is love" (1 John 4:8) and he has revealed this love through his son supremely in the cross. God is the Triune God of self giving love.

This has many implications for theology, for it means that God must be understood in relational terms and ways. It has implications for how mankind is to understand his relationship to God, creation, and to himself. It has implications for the community called the church, and shapes our understanding of the goal God has for his creation.

Theology and Furniture

My wife Lyndsay and I were talking last night while we were washing and drying dishes. That's right, we don't have a dishwasher, so everything that gets washed around our house has to be done by hand. While we were doing this daily chore, we were discussing how we had rearranged our toy room/hobby room with the advent of another computer being added to the room for Lyndsay's use. I pointed out how often we find ourselves re-ordering our home as a result of either adding a new piece of furniture or item to our house for the purpose of organization, efficiency, or style.

Sometimes these changes require an entire overhaul of living spaces that come for example with moving the futon into the living room from the hobby room, or buying a new entertainment center and end tables. Other occasions only require simple changes like the adding a stuffed animal organizer in Xander's room, only requiring his torchere lamp be moved over one foot.

Just when we get things the way we like them some new situation presents itself and we find ourselves innovating new ways to make room for our Christmas tree. Once Christmas is over and we get things "back to normal," I'm sure we'll find something that we want to change or rearrange like moving the poang chair out of the hobby room. We always do. . . . and I like it.

Now, I am a preacher's kid; I grew up eating, sleeping, and breathing church. I have been serving the local church in some capacity for almost 12 years now. I have master's degree in theology and have been pastoring in the church for about eight years, and I grow increasingly astonished at how much and how often my study of Scripture and experience of God has forced me to shuffle around the furniture of the faith. I am completely humbled by the frequency and the magnitude of the "aha moments" that I experience with respect to what I really believe about God, the world, and the way of Jesus.

I have created this blog in the hopes that it will afford me an opportunity to articulate the basic shape of theology and spirituality of a person living in the way of Jesus. I feel the need to do this, because for the first time in my Christian life I feel as though my theology is less a hodge-podge collection of a billion different ideas I've learned and is also not a regurgitation of what "I've always heard" and has truly become what I think and believe. It is as if I have found a place for all the pieces of furniture in the house, instead of them all being piled up in the middle of the living room floor. One could actually sit down in this house. So, this blog is a chance to lay the furniture out and invite any readers to have a seat with me, to eat a meal together, watch an episode of Lost, or take a nap on the furniture. And through this eating, watching, napping, and sitting we may say to ourselves and to each other, "Wow I really like where this couch is located, but this lamp has gotta go. Where in the world did you even find this?"

I will be making several assumptions about specific theological subjects as well as assumptions about the nature of theology. The following is not a comprehensive list of these assumptions, it is a good snapshot of the ideas that will explicitly and implicitly frame most of the posts on this site.

My most important assumption is rooted in a Trinitarian metaphysic that that God is fundamentally relational. Therefore all theology must be grounded in this reality and point back to it.

I will be assuming that the biblical text is authoritative but not the only source of theology. Reason, science, experience, and tradition play an important role in the forming of our theology and must always be in conversation with our interpretation of the biblical text.

I will be assuming that theology, in the words of the late Stanley Grenz, "is always on its way."

Finally, my understanding of theology is such that all Christian practice is theological and all Christian theology is practical if it is truly Christian. Theology's most important task is to serve the church in order that she might better live out the way of Jesus.

So, I am inviting you into my home. Sit down, relax, have a cup of coffee, and let's talk.