26 June 2025

The Trinitarian Resurgence?

Introduction

The story of recent Protestant engagement with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not an entirely happy one. The heart of the contemporary confusion is a widespread failure to grasp the nature of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. The nature of this relationship was at the core of the fourth century Trinitarian controversy and it was this particular doctrine which was given confessional shape and substance at Nicaea (325) and Nicaea-Constantinople (381). The failure of the evangelical church to rightly receive the catholic tradition on this fundamental teaching has caused significant confusion. For example:

[T]hough the Father is supreme, he often provides and works through his Son and Spirit to accomplish his work and fulfill his will. I am amazed when I consider here the humility of the Father. For though the Father is supreme, though he has in the Trinitarian order the place of highest authority, the place of highest honor, yet he chooses to do his work in many cases through the Son and through the Spirit rather than act unilaterally. … It is not as though the Father is unable to work unilaterally.^[1]

The idea that the Father works unilaterally is not one that should pass without a serious measure of alarm. Or again:

The Father is the grand architect, the wise designer of all that has occurred in the created order, and he, not the Son or the Spirit, is specifically said to have supreme authority over all. In his position and authority, the Father is supreme among the Persons of the Godhead as he is supreme over the whole created order.^[2]

It is sometimes suggested that the chief defect in Protestant theology has been the neglect of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity:

…it is remarkable to note that the doctrine of the Trinity has made an important comeback among Christian theologians, beginning in the last decades of the twentieth century. World-wide an ever-increasing number of theologians from a wide range of denominations have discovered the doctrine’s ecumenical significance, seeing that it involves a faith tradition shared by the universal church and thus serves as a distinguishing characteristic of the largest religion in the world.^[3]

At a prima facie level, this does fit the history of the intellectual pursuits of many academic theologians in the first half of the twentieth century. Yet if the doctrine of the Trinity is at the heart of the “faith shared by the universal church” it should not be a surprise that forms of the doctrine were retained and proclaimed at church level. Fred Sanders helps here:

There is an oft-told tale of how the doctrine of the Trinity was marginalized in the modern period, until an heroic rescue was performed by one of the Karls (Barth or Rahner). But for theologians like Pope, Hodge, Bavinck, and Hall, as for most Christians, there was no need for an absolute retrieval of a completely lost doctrine. Retrieval is a normal part of responsible theological method, and theologians were actively engaged in a kind of low-level, ordinary retrieval throughout the modern period, a retrieval so incremental as to be indistinguishable from conservation.^[4]

Modern evangelical Protestantism has not forgotten the doctrine of the Trinity. It has rather, in quite a number of varied and often bizarre ways, decided to develop novel ahistorical versions of the doctrine, or else quite commonly central elements of the doctrine have been jettisoned in catechesis and apologetics.^[5] This failure has resulted in some cases in a flirtation with social trinitarianism and in other cases a rejection of the tradition with a wholesale turn to social conceptions of the divine persons. In his important work on the subject Stephen Holmes concludes that:

In brief, I argue that the explosion of theological work claiming to recapture the doctrine of the Trinity that we have witnessed in recent decades in fact misunderstands and distorts the traditional doctrine so badly that it is unrecognizable. … Many brilliant works have been published in the name of that recovery, but I argue here that, methodologically and materially, they are generally thoroughgoing departures from the older tradition, rather than revivals of it.^[6]

Thankfully this is not the end of the story. In the decade just past controversies over aspects of the doctrine of the Trinity have provoked serious reassessments of Protestant teaching and recent years have seen significant conferences, publications, and academic courses dedicated to the necessary work of theological retrieval.^[7] The kind of low-level retrieval and conservation highlighted by Sanders has developed into the wholesale recovery of the catholic doctrine of the God that the Holy Trinity is. This work is far from complete – but at the level of confessing the faith once delivered to the saints contemporary Protestantism is in a much healthier position now than it was a decade ago. But it should be remembered that this is a return from a fairly low ebb. If Protestants have learned anything from this theological debacle it is that a posture of deeper humility to the work of the Spirit in previous generations is part of our moral and spiritual vocation.

The purpose of this essay is to reflect on what went wrong before turning to some key theological principles that will help Protestantism navigate the lee shore it has been troubled by for quite some time. The argument at the heart of this paper is that Reformed Protestantism’s claim to be genuinely catholic depends on a return to a clear and unambiguous confession of the Nicene doctrine of the Holy Trinity and, in particular, the Nicene account of the equality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In other words, Protestantism is summoned by the gospel to mortify certain theological desires that have led it into idolatry and confusion while learning to confess again the good news of God, who is the Holy Trinity.

Jürgen Moltmann (1926-2024)

The German Reformed theologian Jürgen Moltmann lived an extraordinary life and it is hard to think of a theologian with a higher global profile in the twentieth century – with the exception, perhaps, of Pope John Paul II.^[8] He was extraordinarily fruitful in his writing and he was both intensely engaging and charismatic in his teaching. He attracted loyal students in vast numbers and influenced conservative Protestants (as well as other Christian traditions) in every continent. It has been noted that “no single other theologian of [the late twentieth century] has shaped theology so profoundly as has Moltmann … the power of his vision and the originality of his method helped inspire a host of new directions.”^[9] Many of the maladies that have afflicted modern Protestantism are evident in his work. By his own testimony, Moltmann’s life of faith began in a dramatic context. Caught up in the bombing of Hamburg in July 1943, Moltmann said “[d]uring that night I became a seeker after God.”^[10] It is hard to overstate the horror of the bombing of Hamburg, as many people died during Operation Gomorrah as were killed in Great Britain throughout the course of the war:

Altogether 56 percent of Hamburg’s dwellings, around 256,000 of them, had been destroyed and 900,000 people were made homeless. Some 40,000 people lost their lives and a further 125,000 required medical treatment, many of them for burns.^[11]

Moltmann’s dear friend Gerhard Schopper died at his side. For Moltmann, life became an enduring quest to interrogate the question of human suffering and the relationship of God to the endless woes of his creatures. And so, in one of the most famous openings to any theological work, Moltmann wrote:

Jesus died crying out to God, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” All Christian theology and all Christian life is basically an answer to the question which Jesus asked as he died.’^[12]

A central part of Moltmann’s work was the development of what he called a social account of the trinitarian persons: “[t]o take up the theology of the cross today is to go beyond the limits of the doctrine of salvation and to inquire into the revolution needed in the concept of God.”^[13] In this revolutionary move Moltmann set to one side the classical doctrine of the one divine essence and three personal subsistences, and instead offered social and personal concepts for understanding the Trinity. Moltmann rejected both classical theism (especially Aquinas) and Hegel who spoke of the divine as “absolute personality.” Moltmann’s theological vision is a reorientation of Christian theology proper. It is a vision rooted in a particular set of revolutionary theological ideas. Stephen Williams says,

It is the cross itself that is the critique of alien ideas of God within our (own) Christian tradition. Moltmann’s special target here is the doctrine that God does not and cannot suffer, the doctrine of divine impassibility. To all appearances that was axiomatic in the early church, profoundly affecting its Christologies. Hence the revolutionary nature of Moltmann’s proposal.^[14]

This is not just a specific theodicy for a particular time and place but a reimagining of the Christian doctrine of God. A “trinitarian history of God” (an oft-repeated phrase) rooted in the story of the gospel. The story of Jesus is the story of the Son, which shapes the story of the Triune God; the biography of Jesus is the historical, developing account of the growth and development of the Triune God. He argued:

In distinction to the trinity of substance and to the trinity of subject we shall be attempting to develop a social doctrine of the Trinity.^[15]

This social doctrine finds unity in God because there is unity of love and purpose between the persons. It is a long way from the Nicene doctrine of the church catholic.

The point is not particularly hard to grasp – the unity of the Godhead is a unity of “purpose, revelation and glory.” This is why social Trinitarians have introduced the church to a whole new set of images to help explain the Trinity. In comes, among other things, dancing. And, of course, dancing seems to work well as a picture of divine unity because in dancing (well some dancing at least) there is a unity of purpose. Paul Fiddes’ book Participating in God uses Henri Matisse’s odd and distasteful painting La Danse on the cover. So Fiddes: “…the image of the divine dance is not so much about dancers as about the patterns of the dance itself, an interweaving of ecstatic movements.”^[16] Perhaps someone should point out there are five naked people in Matisse’s painting, which seems numerically challenging for the trinitarian application unless the point is that creatures fully participate in the divine dance, which would seem to open up a whole world of theological trouble.

The further development of Moltmann’s vision may be seen, for example, in the work of Cornelius Plantinga Jr.’s article “Social Trinitarianism and Tritheism”:

The theory must have Father, Son, and Spirit, as distinct centers of knowledge, will, love, and action. Since each of these capacities requires consciousness, it follows that, on this sort of theory, Father, Son, and Spirit would be viewed as distinct centers of consciousness or, in short, persons in some full sense of that term.^[17]

Or again:

Father, Son, and Spirit, must be regarded as tightly enough related to each other so as to render plausible the judgement that they constitute a particular social unit. In such social monotheism, it will be appropriate to use the designator God to refer to the whole Trinity, where the Trinity is understood to be one thing, even if it is complex thing consisting of persons, essences, and relations.^[18]

Moltmann’s influence is legion. It is seen in every modern instance where the Father and Son as divine persons are set against each other or separated from each other in the work of Christ making satisfaction for sin. Consider this example of an evangelical receiving Moltmann’s revolution in the doctrine of God – this is J.R.W. Stott citing Moltmann:

When, then, do we understand of God when we see the crucified Jesus and hear his derelict cry? … in that awful experience which “divides God from God to the utmost degree of enmity and distinction” … we have to recognize that both Father and Son suffer the cost of their surrender, though differently. “The Son suffers dying, the Father suffers the death of the Son. The grief of the Father here is just as important as the death of the Son. The Fatherlessness of the Son is matched by the Sonlessness of the Father.”^[19]

The notion that the Father can become sonless is Moltmann’s revolution in the doctrine of God in a nutshell.

Moltmann believed that the church in Europe faced a “double crisis” – a crisis of relevance and a crisis of identity.^[20] This twofold crisis is the crisis of two interwoven elements. It is the “traditional dogmas” of the church that make the church increasingly irrelevant because they (the dogmas) rupture the “critical solidarity with our contemporaries.” Yet as the church attempts to speak with contemporary relevance “the more they are drawn into the crisis of their own Christian identity.”^[21] The opening chapter of The Crucified God is an extensive rhetorically expansive discussion of this twofold theme.^[22]  The argument Moltmann advances is that Christianity – which once conquered the Roman world – must now “conquer its own forms when they have become worldly.”^[23] Moltmann discusses at great length the ways in which the “cult of the cross” and the mystical common piety that surrounds the religion of the masses is a consequence (in his view) of the abandoned masses finding their hope and comfort in the abandoned God:^[24]

The church of the crucified was at first, and basically remains, the church of the oppressed and insulted, the poor and wretched, the church of the people.^[25]

In other words, the church of the crucified, not the church of the metaphysically speculative Nicene tradition with all the associated traditional dogmas. The “cult of the cross” and the transformation of the gospel story into the story and personal autobiography of God himself are central to the recovery, or maybe even discovery, of real Christian identity. The rhetorical force of Moltmann’s work is seen in the accent he placed on the history of Jesus. His stress on the economy – the works of God in history – and his downplaying of metaphysical, speculative theology made him not only popular with evangelicals but effectively sidelined much of the historical emphasis on theology proper, the divine attributes, and the creedal understanding of the Holy Trinity. Without Moltmann’s reorientation of modern theology to the economy and his complementary development of Trinitarian thought in social terms, many of the most significant changes in Protestantism would not have occurred or would not have happened in the way that they did. Moltmann’s argument that the history of Jesus is in some sense the biography of God himself set the context for his teaching about divine abandonment at the cross. None of this was authentically catholic, nor was it faithful to the confessional Reformed tradition. At best, Moltmann’s work was eccentric; at worst, it represents a total retreat from the pro-Nicene Reformed position.

So much for the pathology of contemporary Protestantism’s malady.

Central Concepts in the Confessional Tradition

What then is the task of theology? Holmes writes:

The task of theology is to find a grammar that will speak of this adequately, a task completed by the Cappadocian fathers in Greek and St Augustine in Latin, at least in the judgement of the majority witness of the Christian tradition. The question both had to answer, of course, was how to speak of the threeness of God without compromising the prior confession of simplicity.^[26]

The church must speak and the church must maintain the prior confession of divine simplicity. When speaking the church must recall the great distinction between archetypal and ectypal knowledge – believers have no knowledge of God as he knows himself. This is the essence of the archetype: only the Lord God knows the Lord God in his infinite wisdom and glory, and only the Lord God knows all things in relation to himself. The maxim still stands finitum non capax infiniti – the finite is incapable of the infinite.^[27] It is probably worth comparing this confessional view with Moltmann – “[i]n the incarnation of the Son the triune God communicates himself wholly and utterly.”^[28]

Secondly, the church must respect the prior confession of divine simplicity. The Belgic Confession begins with the words “[w]e all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual Being, whom we call God.”^[29] The Lord God is not, as social Trinitarians would say, “complex”. Many who hold to social views of the Trinity agree with Plantinga that “simplicity theory ends up complicating trinity doctrine quite needlessly. Its lease ought not to be extended.”^[30] Yet the confessional Protestant tradition is quite uniform here – “[t]he orthodox have constantly taught that the essence of God is perfectly simple and free from all composition.”^[31] This is because the divine nature cannot be dependent on anything, the Lord God is not a composite being formed from pre-existing materials – his essence alone is eternal, self-sufficient, and unchanging. Herman Bavinck argues that:

On the whole, its teaching has been that God is “simple,” that is, sublimely free from all composition, and that therefore one cannot make any real [i.e., ontological] distinction between his being and his attributes. Each attribute is identical with his being: he is what he possesses.’^[32]

Giles Emery writes that:

The recognition of the simplicity and incomprehensibility of God ranks among the fundamental elements of a Christian culture that respects the mystery of the Trinity.^[33]

The recognition of these “fundamental elements” disciplines the thinking and speech of the church and enables the confession of the church to be shaped by the grammar of the gospel developed in the fourth century.

A Contemporary Restatement of Traditional Doctrine

In an excellent statement of confessional Trinitarianism Scott Swain states:

The doctrine of the Trinity is the church’s interpretation of God’s revealed name, “the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). God makes his triune name known to us through an unfolding economy of revelation that disciplines us at once to distinguish the one true God from all who bear the name “god” but lack the characteristic marks of God’s unique and indivisible nature and to identify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with the one true God without eliding the distinctions signified by their personal names. Interpretation of God’s triune name in turn gives rise to trinitarian language and metaphysics^[34], along with the illuminating concept of divine “person,” which serve to elucidate further the significance of God’s triune name and to expose errors that would mask that name’s significance. Because it concerns the supreme mystery of revelation, the doctrine of the Trinity sheds light on our understanding of divine perfection and divine action and deepens our communion with God.^[35]

Swain is surely correct to refocus attention on the significance of the one divine name revealed in Matthew 28:19. God’s revealed names matter, and this climactic revelation, on the cusp of the global mission of the church to baptise the nations, reminds us that the one God of the covenant is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Divine Aseity and the Doctrine of the Trinity

Praise, blessing and sanctifying add nothing to God; they do not and cannot expand or enrich God’s holiness, which is inexhaustibly and unassailably full and perfect. They are simply an acknowledgement and indication. And theology as holy reason finds its completion in such acknowledgement and indication.^[36]

What does it mean to talk about God’s “inexhaustibly and unassailably full and perfect” life?^[37] It does not mean that we try to find a way to define God’s life as a “much bigger” version of creaturely reality. Of course, this is a discussion of something incomprehensible. The necessary concepts will themselves be creaturely (“anthropomorphic”) and therefore analogical. Yet Webster says, “the content of the term cannot be determined simply by analysis of the difference between God and contingent creatures.”^[38]

Traditionally divine life/aseity/independence is referred to in discussions of the divine attributes. In the western theological tradition there is first a discussion of de Deo uno before there is a discussion of de Deo trino. This is seen, for example, in the second chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith. For some people even the very chapter title seems odd – “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity.” In traditional Reformed theology, Divine aseity is “a term derived from the language of self-existence used with reference to God by the scholastics: God is said to exist from himself (esse a se).”^[39] A charge that is often raised against the classical doctrine of aseity is that it is just a thinly veiled Christian version of Greek philosophy. The argument runs that Christian theology was taken captive by Greek philosophy in the early church. This is at the heart of Moltmann’s project.^[40] This is known as the “Hellenization thesis.” But, as Michael Allen notes (quoting Robert Louis Wilkins) it would be better to speak of the “Christianization of Hellenism.”^[41] While this approach has been often criticised complaints are almost always based on a misunderstanding of how these topics relate. Under the discussion of the one God, it is appropriate to speak of God as the first mover (Aquinas) and therefore to think of aseity largely in terms of causation. It is also appropriate to speak of the one God in terms of self-existence and independence. It is also appropriate to offer an account of the attributes of the one God. Of course, if this is all we have to say about aseity the doctrinal formulation will be distorted, but simply saying these things, in the context of a broader Trinitarian discussion, does not distort the teaching. T.F Torrance calls the traditional approach “radically schizoid.” Torrance believes that the traditional approach “makes of him an immutable and impassible Deity, with devastating consequences for life and work.”^[42] Blame for this terrible turn of events has been firmly (and totally unjustly) laid at the feet of St Augustine. In a famous and formative essay, Colin Gunton argued that Augustine gave priority to the unity rather than the threeness of God and thus laid down principles that would endlessly distort Western theology.^[43] The traditional approach critiqued by Torrance, Gunton, and many others, is commonplace and dominant in the tradition since the time of Aquinas (at least). Richard Muller helps us here:

One of the great errors of modern writers has been their claim that … the Protestant scholastics devalued the doctrine of the Trinity because of an emphasis on the essence and attributes of God. The error arises out of two misapprehensions concerning the form and method of scholastic system. On the one hand, it assumes that the comparatively greater space allocated to the doctrine of the essence and attributes is a sign of its greater importance to the system. … In the second place, it is the discussion of the work of the three persons, first in their relationships ad intra and then in their common works ad extra, that provides the point of transition from the doctrine of God to the rest of the system.^[44]

Additionally, Sanders maintains that “the mere external sequencing of the doctrines is hardly a matter of great importance, consensus at the level of the table of contents is no goal worth seeking.”^[45] At this point an observation from Webster provides clear navigation. Webster highlights that the unity of God and the triunity of God are not rival or competing concepts. The theological tradition is ordering material in a certain way and for a certain purpose (Muller’s comment about “point of transition”). Webster writes that “[i]n arranging the material in this way, there is, of course, no suggestion of the material priority of de Deo uno over de Deo trino: that the simple divine essence and the divine triunity are equiprimordial is beyond question.”^[46]

At this point it is important to return to Webster’s previous observation that in discussions about divine life “the content of the term cannot be determined simply by analysis of the difference between God and contingent creatures.”^[47]  Life for God is not simply an increase on created life, rather, and this may be one of Webster’s most significant contributions to this discussion, God’s own life should be considered as the fullness of the life of the divine persons.

Webster believes that a careful exposition – a conceptual expansion – of the fundamental claim of Nicaea, the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, yields a doctrine of the divine life, aseity, and fullness, that will fund significant theological development. The confessional aspect here is not incidental – it is fundamental, pervasive, and determinative.^[48] Webster argues that God possesses “unqualified and wholly realized identity.”^[49] Such designation of God as perfect, indeed as superlatively perfect, must not stop at comparative description. If we rely on comparison we will miss out on the “unfathomable strangeness of God.” Theology must direct its attention to those places where the One who is incomprehensible has declared his perfect being: “to the free, spontaneous presence of the Holy Trinity in majestic condescension.”^[50]  Webster’s theology is marked by his development of a positive doctrine of divine aseity rooted in the fullness of life possessed by the divine persons. Historically aseity has been understood as a negative concept; or at least a concept to be discussed under the topic of the one God, rather than the triune persons.

The Eternal Generation of the Son

Swain highlighted the need “to identify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with the one true God without eliding the distinctions signified by their personal names.”^[51] This is precisely what the gospel proclaims (Matt 28:19); the revelation of the triune name of God, and the distinction of names, reveals the importance of the eternal generation of the Son. It is in this sense that the language of Father and Son is appropriate language of the Godhead – not that the distinctions in the name of God reveal a relationship of authority and submission (the Son has no lesser glory), but rather that the Father is the eternal and unending source of the Son’s life. The central truth encapsulated in the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son is that the Father communicates the fullness of the divine life to the Son. This involves no diminution of the Son because within the eternal life of God there never was a time when the Son was not. It is sometimes said that the Son receives his personhood from the Father but the divine essence by his own right. This is not the teaching of the church catholic. Sonship is the one thing the Father cannot communicate to his Son because it is the one thing the Father does not possess. What he can give to the Son is the fullness of the divine life. One the central texts for this teaching is John 5:26. Thus Webster argues:

Christian teaching about the eternal generation of the Son is a conceptual expansion of the confession of the one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not made.^[52]

This gloss on the Nicene formula stresses the distinctions within God (“God of God”) because there is eternal movement within the life of the one God. This eternal movement the church has called “processions”. These processions – reflecting the intellect and will of God – are the only distinctions within the perfect life of God. One of these processions is the Son, the other the Spirit. These processions are what the church has traditionally called “divine persons”. These processions have been revealed in the temporal or redemptive missions of the Son and Spirit. Fred Sanders argues:

The most holistic interpretive move in the history of biblical theology took place when the early church discerned that these missions reveal divine processions, and that in this way the identity of the triune God of the Gospel is made known.^[53]

This “interpretive move” has come to the fore in recent years, and this is a matter of great significance. It is the retrieval of some of the best insights of Aquinas.

Yet even relatively recently, it was argued that,

Those who deny any eternal submission of the Son to the Father simply have no grounding for answering the question why it was the “Son” and not the “Father” or “Spirit” who was sent to become incarnate. And even more basic is the question why the eternal names for “Father” and “Son” would be exactly these names.

This objection is simply a way of denying the truth or importance of the eternal generation of the Son. If the Father has sent forth his Son eternally – so that the Son is eternally “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of this nature” (Heb 1:3), it should not be difficult to hold that the reason why the Son became incarnate is that in the fullness of time the Son spoken forth eternally should be spoken into time (Heb 1:2).^[54]

Conclusion

The argument advanced in this essay is that the rejection of pro-Nicene trinitarian theology in the twentieth century, particularly by social trinitarians, has impoverished Protestant theology and rendered it incapable of explaining the place of Nicene terminology, grammar, and concepts in the contemporary confession of faith in the one Triune God. This is hardly a trivial matter. The abandonment of Nicaea – it might be said “with the utmost degree of enmity” – has transformed Protestant teaching, even Reformed evangelical Protestant teaching, on the doctrine of God, the Holy Trinity, and the person and work of Christ. The relatively broad treatment of Moltmann in this essay seeks to illuminate George Hunsinger’s claim that Moltmann’s work “is about the closest thing to tritheism that any of us are likely to see.”^[55] Thus on this point certainly Karl Barth was unerring in a letter to Moltmann – “If you will pardon me, your God seem to me to be rather a pauper.”^[56] The only way for Protestantism to recover from this vicious theological poverty is to return to the reading of Scripture with the great Nicene tradition of the church catholic. On this there was no dispute at the Protestant Reformation. No “back to the Bible campaign” will bring enrichment, for the only faithful way back to the apostolic witness is through the great gift of the Spirit to the church, the pro-Nicene faith – “the confession of the one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not made.”^[57]

Footnotes:

^[1]  Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Wheaton, Crossway, 20-12), 55, 57. See the various interactions with Ware in Trinity without Hierarchy: Reclaiming Nicene Orthodoxy in Evangelical Theology, Michael F. Bird & Scott Harrower (eds) (Grand Rapids, Kregal, 2019) where the argument is made that he is articulating a form of semi-Arianism.

^[2]  Bruce A. Ware, ‘Equal in Essence, Distinct in Roles: Eternal Functional Authority And Submission among the Essentially Equal Divine Persons of the Godhead’ in The New Evangelical Subordinationism: Perspectives on the Equality of God the Father and God the Son edited by Dennis W. Jowers & H. Wayne House (Eugene, Pickwick Publications, 2012), 17. It should probably be noted that Ware is attempting to articulate the orthodox doctrine, the problem lies in the move from eternal relations within the one God to the idea of ‘relationships,’ which in Ware’s retelling are decidedly anthropomorphic and rely on social accounts of the Trinity.

^[3]  Cornelius van der Kooi & Gijsbert van den Brink, Christian Dogmatics: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2017), 80.

^[4]  Fred Sanders, ‘The Trinity’, in Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical Introduction edited by Kelly M. Kapic & Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids, Baker, 2012), 21-45, 44. For another modern example of this lamentation see Colin E. Gunton, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Toward a Fully Trinitarian Theology (London, T&T Clark, 2003), 3-18, the chapter title is ‘The Forgotten Trinity.’

^[5]  For an example of the former see Alister E. McGrath, Understanding the Trinity (Eastbourne, Kingsway Publications, 1987) in which there is almost no reference to the Nicene tradition and the place of the Nicene grammar in confessing the doctrine of the Trinity. This is not to suggest that McGrath is unorthodox, just that the presentation of the doctrine is not explicitly Nicene. For an example of the doctrine expressed in strong social Trinitarian terms as part of an apologetic attempt see Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Scepticism (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2008), 214-215: ‘The inner life of the triune God, however, is utterly different. The life of the Trinity is characterised not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we centre on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two. So it is, the Bible tells us. Each of the divine persons centers upon the others … That creates a dynamic, pulsating dance of joy and love. The early leaders of the Greek church had a word for this – perichoresis.’ Keller’s work is clearly indebted to the work of Colin Gunton as indicated in his references.

^[6]  Stephen R Holmes, The Holy Trinity: Understanding God’s Life (Paternoster, 2012), xv–xvi.

^[7]  The story of the controversy and the early stages of the retrieval is very well told in Trinity without Hierarchy: Reclaiming Nicene Orthodoxy in Evangelical Theology, Michael F. Bird & Scott Harrower (eds) (Grand Rapids, Kregal, 2019). Most recently see the retrieval work in Matthew Barrett (ed) On Classical Theism: Retrieving the Nicene doctrine of the Triune God (Downers Grove, IVP Academic, 2024).

^[8]  Although Pope Pius XII thought the honour should go to another Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, whom he described as ‘the most prominent theologian since Thomas Aquinas.’ See Steven D. Cone, Theology from the Great Tradition (London, T&T Clarke, 2018), 145. Barth may have had a major academic impact but Moltmann’s impact has been much wider and deeper. If prominent means ‘better’ maybe Pope Pius XII had a point.

^[9]  Miroslav Volf ‘Introduction’ in Miroslav Volf, Carmen Krieg, & Thomas Kucharz (eds) The Future of Theology: Essays in Honour of Jürgen Moltmann (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1996), ix.

^[10] Jürgen Moltman, A Broad Place: An Autobiography (London, SCM, 2007), 17. See also Thomas R. Thompson, ‘Jürgen Moltmann’ in The Routledge Companion to Modern Christian Thought ed Chad Meister & James Beilby (Routledge, 2013), 227-238.

^[11]  Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis led Germany from Conquest to Disaster (Penguin Books, 2008), 446. For a brief account of Operation Gomorrah and the impact on Hamburg and Nazi Germany see 443-450.

^[12]  Jürgen Moltman, The Crucified God (London, SCM, 1974), 4. For personal reflections on his life see Jürgen Moltman, ‘A Lived Theology’ in Darren C. Marks (ed) Shaping a Theological Mind: Theological Context and Methodology (Farnham, Ashgate, 2002), 87-96. See also his fascinating work autobiographical work A Broad Place. The reference is to Psalm 31:8 and not to the Sermon on the Mount.

^[13]  Moltmann, Crucified God, 1.

^[14]  Stephen N. Williams ‘Jürgen Moltman: A Critical Introduction’ in Getting your Bearings: Engaging with Contemporary Theologians Philip Duce & Daniel Strange (eds) (Leicester, Apollos, 2003), 75-124, 85. This helpful overview article by Williams includes a valuable section on divine suffering (83-89; 107-115). For a theological assessment of Moltmann’s construction of divine passibility the most important work is Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2000).

^[15]  Jürgen Moltman, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, 19.

^[16]  Paul Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Theology of the Trinity (London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000).

^[17]  Cornelius Plantinga Jr., “Social Trinity and Tritheism,” in Ronald J. Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga Jr., eds. Trinity, Incarnation and Atonement (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989) 67-89 , 68. This is the first of three criteria that Plantinga advances for a ‘social theory of the Trinity’. This article remains foundational for social theories and is honest enough to ask ‘[b]ut, now, what about the claim that there is only one God? How, exactly, may social Trinitarians cling to respectability as monotheists?’ (75). It may be argued that this is setting the bar a little low. See also Miroslav Volf, ‘”The Trinity is our social program”: The doctrine of the Trinity and the shape of social engagement’ in Modern Theology 14:3 July 1998, 403-423, and the response by Mark Husbands, ‘The Trinity is not our Social Programme: Volf, Gregory of Nyssa, and Barth’ in Daniel J. Treier (ed.), Trinitarian Theology for the Church: Scripture, Community, Worship (Downers Grove, IVP, 2009), 120–41. The development of Patristic doctrine and, in particular the language of person and substance, is set out in John McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (New York, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 138-145. See also the excellent work by D Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God (Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2022).

^[18]  Plantinga, ‘Social Trinitarianism and Tritheism’, 68.

^[19]  John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Leicester, IVP, 1986), 216-217. It is troubling to see Moltmann’s teaching on the personal enmity between the divine person of the Father and the divine person of the Son in this volume on the work of Christ. The issues are outlined helpfully in Thomas H. McCall, Forsaken: The Trinity and the Cross, and Why it Matters (Downers Grove, IVP, 2012), 13-47. It is simply untrue to say that the Father and the Son were divided ‘God from God to the utmost degree of enmity and distinction.’ Much of the evangelical infatuation with Moltmann was based on the assumption that this teaching somehow would help in upholding the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. It does nothing of the sort.

^[20]  Moltmann, Crucified God, 7.

^[21]  Moltmann, Crucified God, 7.

^[22]  Moltmann, Crucified God, 7-28.

^[23]  Moltmann, Crucified God, 36.

^[24]  Moltmann, Crucified God, 32-75.

^[25]  Moltmann, Crucified God, 52

^[26]  Stephen R. Holmes, The Holy Trinity: Understanding God’s Life (Paternoster, 2012), 108.

^[27]  Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology Richard A. Muller (ed) (Grand Rapids, Baker, 1985), s.v. Finitum non capax infiniti.

^[28]  Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 97.

^[29]  Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms: A Reader’s Introduction Chad Van Dixhoorn (ed) (Wheaton, Crossway, 2022), 79.

^[30]  Plantinga, ‘Social Trinitarianism and Tritheism’, 85. Plantinga’s article is largely a rejection of divine simplicity.

^[31]  Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, (trans) George Musgrave Giger, (ed) James T. Dennison Jr., vol. 1 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 3.7 (191–94). Turretin’s entire discussion is helpful. For a robust modern account of the classical doctrine see Steven J. Duby, Divine Simplicity: A Dogmatic Account (London, T&T Clark, 2016).

^[32]  Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation Volume 2 (trans) John Vriend (ed) John Bolt (Grand Rapids, Baler Academic, 2004), 118.

^[33]  Gilles Emery OP, The Holy Trinity: An Introduction to the Catholic Doctrine of the Triune God (Washington DC, Catholic University Press of America, 2011), 92.

^[34] Duby notes that the word metaphysics may be shorthand ‘for any doctrine of God according to which God is complete in himself without reference to the economy.’ See Steven J. Duby, God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, 2019), 188-189.

^[35]  Scott R. Swain, ‘Divine Trinity’ in Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic edited by Michael Allen & Scott R. Swain (Grand Rapids, Baker, 2016), 78-106, 81. This is a superb summary chapter. Emphasis added.

^[36]  John Webster, Holiness (London, SCM, 2003), 29-30.

^[37]  Webster offers a briefer version of his argument in his essay ‘God’s Perfect Life.’ It is from God’s Life in Trinity Miroslav Volf & Michael Welker (eds) (Fortress Press, 2006), 143-152.

^[38]  John Webster, God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology Volume 1 God and the Works of God (London, Bloomsbury T&T, 2016), 14.

^[39]  Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology Richard A. Muller (ed) (Grand Rapids, Baker, 1985), s.v. Aseitas.

^[40]  Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom (Fortress Press, 1993), 16-20.

^[41]  Michael Allen ‘Divine Attributes’ in Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic edited by Michael Allen & Scott R. Swain (Baker, 2016), 71-73. Weinandy outlines the hellenization thesis in this way: ‘The influence of Greek philosophy, especially Platonism, is the main reason why it has taken almost two thousand years to develop the notion of God’s passibility. All theologians, who advance the idea that God is passible, agree on this judgement. The static, self-sufficient, immutable, and impassible God of platonic thought hijacked, via Philo and the early church Fathers, the living, personal, active, and passible God of the Bible.’ Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 19.

^[42]  T.F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement (T&T Clark, 1994), 4. You can read his general lamentations about the western tradition here.

^[43]  Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (T&T Clark, 1991). The most recent and specific response to Gunton is Bradley E. Green, Colin Gunton and the Failure of Augustine: The Theology of Colin Gunton in the Light of Augustine (Wipf & Stock, 2011).

^[44]  Richard A. Muller, Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 Volume Four: The Triunity of God (Grand Rapids, Baker, 2003), 144-147. Some of the difficulties in discussing the divine attributes are discussed in Stephen Holmes helpful article ‘Divine Attributes’ in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, & Iain Torrance (eds) (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), 54-71.

^[45]  Fred Sanders ‘The Trinity,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology edited by John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance (Oxford University Press, 2007), 35-53, 38. This is an excellent short article.

^[46]  John Webster, God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology Volume 1 God and the Works of God (London, Bloomsbury T&T, 2016), 5. For a really interesting account of divine life see Jonathan King, The Beauty of the Lord: Theology as Aesthetics (Lexham Press, 2018), 30-87. See particularly 58-60 where King builds on the foundations laid by Webster.

^[47]  Webster, God without Measure, 14.

^[48]  ‘A number of things came together to extract me from the inhibitions of my theological formation. One very prominent factor was a half conscious but remarkably emancipating decision to teach confessionally, in two senses. First, I resolved to work on the assumption of the truthfulness and helpfulness of the Christian confession, and not to devote too much time and energy developing arguments in its favour or responses to its critical denials. I discovered, in other words, that description is a great deal more persuasive than apology. Second, I resolved to structure the content of my teaching in accordance with the intellectual and spiritual logic of the Christian confession as it finds expression in the classical creeds, to allow that structure to stand and to explicate itself, and not to press the material into some other format.’ John Webster, ‘Discovering Dogmatics’, in Shaping a Theological Mind: Theological Context and Methodology Darren C. Marks (ed) (Ashgate, 2002), 130-131.

^[49]  John Webster ‘God’s Perfect Life’ in God’s Life in Trinity, Miroslav Volf & Michael Welker (eds) (Fortress Press, 2006), 143-152, 143.

^[50]  Webster, God without Measure, 144.

^[51]  Swain, Divine Trinity, 81.

^[52]  Webster, God without Measure, 29. John Webster offers this helpful reminder of the place of creeds and confessions: ‘We should be under no illusion that renewed emphasis upon the creed will in and of itself renew the life of the church: it will not. The church is created and renewed through Word and Spirit. Everything else—love of the brethren, holiness, proclamation, confession—is dependent upon them. Yet it is scarcely possible to envisage substantial renewal of the life of the church without renewal of its confessional life. There are many conditions for such renewal. One is real governance of the church’s practice and decision-making not by ill-digested cultural analysis but by reference to the credal rendering of the biblical gospel. Another is recovery of the kind of theology which sees itself as an apostolic task, and does not believe itself entitled or competent to reinvent or subvert the Christian tradition. A third, rarely noticed, condition is the need for a recovery of symbolics (the study of creeds and confessions) as part of the theological curriculum—so much more edifying than most of what fills the seminary day. But alongside these are required habits of mind and heart: love of the gospel, docility in face of our forebears, readiness for responsibility and venture, a freedom from concern for reputation, a proper self-distrust. None of these things can be cultivated; they are the Spirit’s gifts, and the Spirit alone must do his work. What we may do—and must do—is cry to God, who alone works great marvels.’ in ‘Confession and Confessions’ in Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics II (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 83.

^[53]  Fred Sanders, The Triune God (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2016), 113.

^[54]  For an outstanding recent account of eternal generation see Graham J. Shearer, ‘The Communication of the Divine Essence in Eternal Generation: A Dogmatic Defence’ (PhD Dissertation, The Presbyterian Theological Faculty, Ireland, 2023).

^[55]  Cited in Paul D. Molnar, Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity: In dialogue with Karl Barth and contemporary theology (London, T&T Clark, 2002), 201-201, quoting a review of Moltman in The Thomist 47 (1983), 129-139, 131.

^[56]  Letter dated 17 November 1964, in Karl Barth, Letters, 1961-1968, (trans and ed) Jürgen Fangemeier and Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans 1981), 176.

^[57]  Webster, God without Measure, 144.