Scripture and Trinity

Scripture and Trinity November 12, 2015

“God speaks in Jesus in and through the texts of the Old and New Testament,” writes Francis Watson in an appreciative critique of Robert Jenson’s Systematic Theology. “These texts do not merely report divine speaking, they enact it; and that they do so is the distinctive work of the Holy Spirit.” Scripture thus is the word of the Triune God (217-8).

As such, Scripture is the means for our participation in the Triune conversation: “According to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Holy Spirit who is the Lord and the Life-giver is also the one who spoke through the prophets . . . . In post-biblical Christian usage the term `prophets’, comprising the ‘former’ and the ‘latter’ prophets in the Jewish canon, is extended still further to cover the Old Testament in its entirety. The content of what the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets is simply the Jesus of the Creed’s second article, and the Spirit’s utterance thereby converges with the Father’s. In Jesus, the Father speaks the Word. In the prophets, the Holy Spirit speaks that same word – but with a view to our inclusion in the conversation. It is the distinctive role of the Spirit to open up the intratrinitarian communication to full human participation, and to do so in and through the prophetic writings. Thus, in communicating the divine life to humans, the Holy Spirit is the Life-giver. . . . The Father speaks the Word which is communicated to us in the Spirit, and in thereby communicating that Word scripture is the word of the triune God” (218).

We don’t have to decide between the “Catholic” view that the Bible is the church’s book and the “Protestant” view that it is the word of God. Choosing either option perpetuates “a false and damaging dilemma.” Rather: “precisely as the church’s book, in its canonical form, that scripture is the word of the triune God. The identification of scripture as word of God should not be regarded as so tainted by association with interconfessional or anti-modernist polemics as to be unusable. On the contrary, the most elementary phenomena of the church’s canon express an understanding of scripture as the word of the triune God” (218). As the church’s book, the Scriptures are also foundational for the church: “The very existence of Old and New Testaments bears witness to the conviction that the inspired speech of prophets and apostles alike intends its own distillation and preservation in the form of writing. The church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets in that it is built upon the foundation of the apostolic and prophetic writings; for in these writings the Holy Spirit causes us to overhear the Word of the Father, Jesus, so as to draw us into the intratrinitarian conversation” (218-9).

(Watson, “‘America’s Theologian’: An Appreciation of Robert Jenson’s Systematic Theology, with some remarks about the Bible,” Scottish Journal of Theology 55:2 [2002] 201-223.)


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