Jenson summarizes several thread of Tertullian’s Trinitarian theology: “Tertullian’s interpretation of God was far more biblical than that of the Apologists. He explicitly distinguished the living personal God of Scripture from both the numina of the old Roman religion and the . . . . Continue Reading »
The basic structure of redemptive history is an exitus and reditus structure, going out from God and return to Him. For Thomas, Emery says, “The Trinitarian processions provide the doctrinal foundation of the exitus-reditus structure of the world and of history.” He quotes Thomas as . . . . Continue Reading »
Emery says that for Aquinas the diversity of creation is founded in the personal plurality of the divine relations: “One cannot emphasize more forcefully the positive value of the multiplicity of creature; Saint Thomas does not conceive of plurality as a decline from unity, but to the . . . . Continue Reading »
According to Gilles Emery, Aquinas provides a Trinitarian account of creation. The processions within the being of God are the uncreated exemplars of the acts of creation. Emery (in a contribution to The Theology of Thomas Aquinas ): “In God, procession signified the essential communication . . . . Continue Reading »
Given that the Trinity is incomprehensible, there are limits to our understanding, and I regularly have students ask how far they should go. That has always struck me as an odd question. Incomprehensibility is not a reason to stop exploring and meditating, but the opposite. Because God is . . . . Continue Reading »
Barth writes, “according to Subordinationist teaching even the Father, who is supposedly thought of as the Creator, is in fact dragged into the creaturely sphere. According to this view His relation to the Son and Spirit is that of idea to manifestation. Standing in this comprehensible . . . . Continue Reading »
Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth offered a novel defense of the doctrine of the Trinity, under assault during the seventeenth century. He thought those who attacked the doctrine and those who defended were both wrong to treat it as a “revealed mystery.” Cudworth thought it was a piece . . . . Continue Reading »
Feuerbach wrote that the Trinity “is the secret of the necessity of the ‘thou’ for an ‘I’; it is the truth that no being - be it man, God, mind or ego - is for itself alone a true, perfect, and absolute being, that truth and perfection are only the connection and unity . . . . Continue Reading »
Richard Swinburne describes God’s omnipresence in these terms: “God is supposed to be able to move any part of the universe directly; he does not need to use one part of the universe to make another part move. He can make any part move as a basic action . . . . The claim that God . . . . Continue Reading »
Athanasius: “the Son is in the Father . . . because the whole being of the Son is proper to the Father’s ousia , as radiance from light and a stream from a fountain; so that whosoever sees the Son, sees what is proper to the Father and knows that the Son’s being, as from the . . . . Continue Reading »
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