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To write on the Trinity is to enter a minefield of presuppositions-presuppositions of theology, exegesis, grammar, logic, philosophy, etc. However, at the heart of Godʹs self-revelation in the Bible is God’s tri-unity, that God is three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Confessional Christians would identify this claim, that God is Triune, as a necessary condition of true Christian faith. To be Christian is to follow Christ who is the 2nd person of the Trinity. Yet, does following this Christ mean following the 2nd hypostasis who is eternally begotten of the Father, sharing with him his ousia? That is a more difficult question, isn’t it? Indeed, many faithful men and women in my life could not make heads or tails of the latter claim while worshipping and following the Christ of the former. So, what does it mean to be Trinitarian? This book is about that question, what does it mean to be a Christian who worships a triune God, to be ʺTrinitarianʺ? Is the Trinity a doctrine, arrived at through second-order reflection on the Biblical data several hundred years after the canon closed, or is it something else? Is it, perhaps, a presupposition about the reality of God that has shaped the Christain imagination, that has shaped the framework Christians bring to the world, throughout created history?
Contents
Contents – vii
Analytical Outline – ix
Preface – xiii
Introduction – 1
-Part 1- Methodology – 15
Chapter 1 – Against Precluding the Trinity – 17
Chapter 2 – Arguing for the Assumed – 23
Chapter 3 – Methodological Conclusions – 27
-Part 2- God in the Old Testament – 31
Chapter 4 – Yahweh and the gods – 33
Chapter 5 – The Great Shema – 49
Chapter 6 – Plurality and Monotheism in the Old Testament – 63
Chapter 7 – The Angel of the Lord Is Yahweh – 73
Chapter 8 – Isaiah’s Eschatological Agent Is Yahweh – 83
Chapter 9 – God the Spirit Is Yahweh – 111
-Part 3- God in the New Testament – 121
Chapter 10 – Canonical Christology and New Testament Trinitarianism – 123
Chapter 11 – Jesus, Isaiah’s Divine Eschatological Agent – 135
Chapter 12 – Jesus, the Old Testament’s “LORD” – 141
Chapter 13 – Jesus Beside Yahweh – 153
Chapter 14 – The Lord Is the Spirit – 163
Chapter 15 – One Lord and One God – 169
-Part 4- Theological Conclusions – 183
Chapter 16 – 4th Century Trinitarianism – Part 1 – 185
Chapter 17 – 4th Century trinitarianism – Part 2 – 199
Chapter 18 – Biblical Trinitarianism? – 207
Chapter 19 – Practical Knowledge of the Trinity – 231
Chapter 20 – Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Doctrine and Tradition – 245
Conclusion – 271
Index – 275
Bibliography – 287
About Teleioteti – 311