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A Critique by Viola Larson For Calvin . . . Jesus Christ holds a central position. There is not an “essence” of God’s love that one could know as such, and then a “manifestation” of such a love whose eminent representation is Jesus Christ. No distinction is made between the principle and the person, between the message and the messenger. Jesus Christ is what he brings forth. He is the mercy of God, he is the love of God, he is the open heart of God.“The Trinity: God’s Love Overflowing,” (click here to read) is the paper called for by the 212th General Assembly (2000). The paper produced by the Office of Theology and Worship was compiled and written by at least ten authors. The Office of Theology and Worship requested responses to the paper from members of the church before the final draft is voted on during the 217 General Assembly in 2006. After reading this paper many times and affirming many of the truths highlighted in the paper I still have many reservations about the overall content. I find that the paper begins with some subtle movements that prevent its authors from actually keeping the biblical and confessional view of the Trinity totally intact. In fact I believe the authors of the paper move away from their subject and instead examine inclusive language for God. I will explore the two areas that I believe tend to undermine the classical view of the Trinity. The first area involves the name and theme of the paper, that is, God’s love overflowing. The second problem, and undoubtedly the most important, is a failure to view the Trinity from a Christological perspective. As stated these are subtle movements; they are missteps enmeshed within the authors statements of strong biblical truths, but problematic enough to cause the reader to be wary. Additionally, the problems are leaning on each other, or one might say they are propping each other up, so that when untwisting one the other must also be addressed. However, I will attempt to look at each problem consecutively. The authors begin by suggesting that the term “love overflowing” is meant as a metaphor, “that speaks of the infinite ways the triune God loves all creation.” They further state that the metaphor is their “attempt to express the amazing riches that flow boundlessly from the triune God who in loving freedom seeks and saves us, reconciles and renews us, and draws us into loving relationships that reflect the eternal oneness of God (1).” By the second page the use of the metaphor changes to become a metaphor for the ontological nature of God, that is, God as he is in himself. On the second page they state, “In our reflection, we were ever mindful of the struggle to find faithful ways to speak of the God who is love overflowing.” (Italics mine) They continue to refer to God as love overflowing both in terms of his being and in terms of his gifts, actions and attributes. For instance on page six the authors when writing of the openness of the mystery of the Trinity write, “It is the mystery of the truth that God is holy, abundant, overflowing love both in relationship to us and in all eternity (6).” (Italics mine) While this speaks of the being of God, the statement, “Abundant, overflowing love is the glory, majesty, and beauty of the triune God” speaks of God’s attributes. (Italics mine.) Three distinct difficulties arise with this naming of God. First, the authors have failed to alert the reader to the fact that they have offered a new metaphor for naming God, creating confusion in the text. Second the authors suggest that the paper addresses no controversy in the Church today but rather they are helping the “church renew its faith in the triune God (1).” Yet a great controversy has arisen in the church over the use of inclusive language for God to the point that some prefer not to speak of the triune God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Some breathlessly await the right to refer to God as Father/Mother or even on the extreme side God/dess. Some have already addressed God as Grandmother.1 And in fact, a great deal of this paper does address issues of inclusive language. This extra metaphor is not helpful within the context of the inclusive controversy. Third the image of God as overflowing love in his inner being is problematic since, within this paper, it often lays a fourth entity alongside the distinctions, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; an entity, which at various places tends to replace the work of Jesus Christ.. God is love (1 John 4:8). That means that ontologically, what God is, in himself, is love. Overflowing love is something different; the overflow is something extra, not the actual thing itself. On the other hand, it is from God’s very being, his triune being that God loves the world, there is no need for overflow; God’s love is made known in the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. That love is complete from all eternity in the inner life of God. The believer experiences God’s love, not by overflow, but in union with Jesus Christ. The Christian then offers, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God’s love to a broken world. While the authors of “The Trinity: God’s Love Overflowing,” undoubtedly did not intend the metaphor to do so, when one thinks of God as overflowing love one tends to think of Jesus as merely an instrument through which the overflow of God’s love comes. Still, this is in spite of the fact that the authors clearly and rightly point out, in another section of the paper, that neither Jesus Christ nor the Holy Spirit are “secondary deities or mere creatures of a supposedly solitary supreme God (5).” Yet, the authors push the metaphor of love overflowing toward an extra thing alongside Jesus Christ when they equate the biblical analogies of God’s provision for life to their term overflowing love. They cite Jeremiah 2:13 and John 4:14. The images found in those texts picture God as a gushing fountain. Jeremiah 2:13, images God as a fountain of living water. This is a picture of God as the life giver. He tells his people Israel that they have forsaken him, “The fountain of living waters,” and dug their own cisterns which are cracked and will not hold water. R. K. Harrison explains that “God is here described as a fountain of living waters, i.e., a spring or rivulet which would flow into a cistern for storage.”2 For those who have never lived on a farm nor watched their father look for springs in order to dig a well, they might not understand that this is not speaking of an overflow like a glass that has too much liquid in it and so it overflows and spills out. Rather when a container is provided the fountain or spring bubbles up within the well or cistern. (Notice that biblically God provides the cistern and in the New Testament that is his inexpressible grace understood in the person of Jesus Christ.) In fact this is the way Jesus refers to the life he gives when speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well. “But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life (Jn 4:14).” This is a personal picture; God’s gift is mediated through a personal God. Jesus Christ reveals himself as the gift of God. Those in Christ possess the well of water that bubbles up to eternal life; those without Christ are without such life. When worked out in practical terms the use of the metaphor, overflowing love, leads to speculative theology. For instance, on page thirty-three the authors write of the early Christian’s understanding of the life and actions of Christ and how that worked out in their own experience, “they came to see that the unparalleled depths of communion that they experienced every day in their shared life with one another were actually the overflow of God’s own love. This overflowing love existed eternally in God as the mutual participation, self-giving, vulnerability, interdependence, and responsibility shared among the divine persons.” After listing what attributes this overflowing love in God’s inner being consists of, dubious assertions at best, and how that works out in the communal life of the church, the authors provide the reader with their view of a progressive revelation of the outreach of God’s overflow of love. They write: The overflow of God’s trinitarian love does not stop with the Christian community. The pattern of koinonia in the early church was one of ever-expanding circles of sharing, ever-broadening boundaries of participation, giving, vulnerability, interdependence, and responsibility for one another, all humankind, and ultimately the whole creation. As the triune God’s extravagant love continues to overflow in the church today, we receive power to share the abundant love of God in the world, in word and deed. Thus the Lord adds to our numbers daily, as we grow in grace and embody God’s love in tangible deeds of self-giving before a world desperately in need of the Good News. (34)In this picture of overflowing love, love seems to have the quality of something that keeps flowing outward apparently going beyond the Christian community “broadening” the boundaries and “expanding” the circles. (And here overflowing love has certainly taken the place of “Christ in you the hope of glory (Col 1:27b).” Within this text, the metaphor, overflowing love, loses its ability to hold on to any boundary. Looking through the lens of a Christological perspective this particular paragraph would be biblical, Jesus Christ being the boundary. Then the above statement could be understood as a picture of the church as the community which held to the Lordship of Christ and who, because of his Lordship, began to include gentiles within the circle. The early circle of Christians, because of Jesus Christ, began to touch the lives of unbelievers in helpful ways such as doing away with class structures, caring for the poor and saving abandoned babies. But, interpreting the above paragraph without the boundary of Jesus Christ could mean that all, even those outside of Christ, were included in the church. The problem is that the metaphor “overflowing love” begins, in this paper, to eat up the work of Jesus Christ. The distinctiveness of Christianity could be lost. It is not God’s overflowing love within the community of believers alongside of Jesus Christ that affects the world. It is Jesus Christ, crucified and risen again. It is also the believer hid in Jesus Christ, experiencing the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who reaches out to those in the world. While we may not know every attribute within the inner life of the Trinity we know Jesus Christ through the scriptures. When Thomas asked Jesus to show him and the other disciples the Father, Jesus replied, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know me, Phillip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (John 14:9)” Jesus Christ is the revelation of who God is. The vulnerability of God is seen in scripture in the actions of Jesus touching lepers, eating with those society considered exceptional sinners and dying on the cross. God’s holiness and transforming power are seen as Jesus walks in holiness, forgiving sins and tells those he encounters to, “Go and sin no more.” Of course all of this includes love, the love of the Father who is in agreement with the Son and the Holy Spirit regarding the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross. But we are unable to know anything about the Trinity without Jesus Christ as promised and imaged in the Hebrew Bible and made known in the New Testament. Therefore, a paper on the Trinity cannot rightly address its subject without first addressing Christology. It cannot rightly uphold the scripture and the church’s confessions without coming at it through the Son of the Father. To be sure, in some sense the authors of the paper concur. Explaining that, we can only reliably know the love of God “through God’s own self-gift in the person and work of Jesus Christ and in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. (4)” They also state, “We are invited to participate in this mystery that has been opened to us by God’s own self-disclosure in Jesus Christ and in the coming of the Holy Spirit who binds us to Christ. (5)” But having stated those truths they continue using overflowing love as the mediating focus for our knowledge of God. The authors of “The Trinity: God’s Love Overflowing.” have so over emphasized overflowing love, that rather than focus on the persons of the Trinity, they have focused on the reciprocal action within the triune God. Having focused on the mutual actions of relationships within the Godhead as the basis for knowing God they miss the center, Jesus Christ. The biblical text makes it clear that Jesus is center. It is the Holy Spirit who places us in Christ but who also reveals to us the words of Jesus Christ. On the mount of transfiguration it is the Father who says, “This is my Son, my chosen One; listen to him! (Luke 9:35b)” Jesus states of the Holy Spirit, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.(John 14:26)” (Emphasis mine.) Biblical teaching about God centers in Jesus Christ who is the one through whom God has spoken the final word, (Heb 1:2) who is the “image of the invisible God (Col 1:15),” and who is the only one able to explain God. “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him (John 1:18).” Knowledge of the triune God must be placed squarely on the biblical understanding of the person of Jesus Christ. In a second instance, failure to start from Christology and, instead, attempt to promote a new metaphor, leads to further theological speculation. A good deal of speculative theology is used when the authors address the issues of language about the Trinity. The authors clearly state that scripture, the confessions and creeds, as well as the Presbyterian Church (USA) “regularly speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” But the paper begins to shift from biblical foundations to speculative theology when the authors refer to Father, Son and Holy Spirit as “an indispensable anchor for our efforts to speak faithfully of God (8)” Metaphors and analogies can be weak and if carried to far wreak disorder with doctrine. The authors use the analogy of an anchor to understand the names Father, Son and Holy Spirit as something that keeps the Church from drifting away from her safe position, “stability,” and something that gives the Church liberation to work with new language. They write that because of this anchor, “we are liberated to interpret, amplify, expand upon the ways of naming the triune God familiar to most church members (8).” But the names Father, Son and Holy Spirit were never meant to be a safety net, (or anchor); they rather explain the being of God. Using Father, Son and Holy Spirit as anchors for freedom of expression the authors offer an apologetic for using differing metaphors to picture the triune God. The first apologetic is that the names Father, Son and Holy Spirit have been misunderstood and so create all kinds of problems such as sanctioning hierarchies and causing people to think of God as male(8). Another apologetic is that to insist on the exclusive use of Father Son and Holy Spirit would “quench the Spirit and even foster idolatry (9).” Included among this reasoning is the thought that it “would diminish the joy of knowing God ever more fully (9).” They suggest that female imagery for God “has yet to be adequately explored,” and then give various biblical reverences for female imagery for God. Next they move to Calvin referring to his commentary on Isaiah. They quote his statement “that no figures of speech can describe God’s extraordinary affection towards us; for it is infinite and various.” Referring to Calvin they also write: He [Calvin] further explains that God “has manifested himself to be both. . . Father and Mother” so that we might be more aware of God’s constant presence and willingness to assist us (Commentary on Isaiah 46:3). God “did not satisfy himself with proposing the example of a father,” writes Calvin, “but in order to express his very strong affection, he chose to liken himself to a mother, and call [the people of Israel] not merely ‘children,’ but the fruit of the womb, towards which there is usually a warmer affection” (Commentary on Isaiah 49:15). (Their Italics.)The authors use of these quotations from Calvin are a good example of why and how this paper moves away from its subject, the Trinity. The authors having focused on overflowing love as a name for God have written a paper about the substitution of other names for the Trinitarian name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Explaining Father, Son and Holy Spirit as an anchor meant to liberate the believer’s imagination and language for God, they begin to equate metaphors, similes, God’s attributes and analogies with the names, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They turn to Calvin for agreement. But Calvin was speaking of how God makes his love known to those who belong to him; that is, how are Israel and the Church to understand God’s love in relation to them. He was not speaking of names for God, but rather was speaking of the love of God. Calvin was also using and commenting on scriptural analogy, not on names for the triune God. In fact, adding more from Calvin’s text one sees the use of analogy and the emphasis on God’s love. He writes: But as God did not only begin to act as the father and nurse of his people from the time when they were born, but also “begat them” (James 1:8) spiritually, I do not object to extending the words so far as to mean, that they were brought, as it were, out of the bowels of God into a new life and the hope of an eternal inheritance. If it be objected, that God is everywhere called “a Father,” (Jeremiah 31:9; Malachi 1:6,) and that this title is more appropriate to him, I reply, that no figures of speech can describe God’s extraordinary affection towards us; for it is infinite and various; so that, if all that can be said or imagined about love were brought together into one, yet it would be surpassed by the greatness of the love of God. By no metaphor, therefore, can his incomparable goodness be described. (Commentary on Isaiah 46:3)Likewise, in chapter 49 of Calvin’s commentary on Isaiah, not only does Calvin point out that God uses the image of a mother to show his “strong anxiety” for Israel, but he goes on to point out that although mothers become “such monsters” as to forget their children, still, “The affection which he bears toward us is far stronger and warmer than the love of all mothers.” Calvin was by no means writing of the distinctions in the Godhead but rather writing of God’s care for his people .Within the context of a paper about the Trinity, the comments of Calvin used by the authors are not helpful. Rather they might have noted Calvin’s comments from his Catechism about the Father. “Why do you call him Father—Primarily with regard to Christ, who is his eternal wisdom, begotten of him before all time, and who, being sent into the world, was declared his Son. From this, however, we infer that since God is the Father of Jesus Christ, he is also our Father.3The whole Christian Church, the Church Fathers and Mothers, the scriptures and confessions provide ample language for speaking of God in many ways. Such words as light, rock and mother are wonderful metaphors and/or similes. Such pictures as the woman searching for the lost coin and the father running to meet a wayward son are beautiful analogies. But to address the Trinitarian God the Christian must come through the Son of the Father who is revealed by the Holy Spirit. To even suggest, as the authors of the paper do, that exclusive use of the “traditional Trinitarian names” would “quench the Spirit” and “foster idolatry,” as well as “diminish the joy of knowing God ever more fully,” is at best nonsense. Only in Jesus Christ can we know God fully only in him can we experience the fullest joy. (John 15:9-11) The Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ, gives us language to speak about, the triune God. _____________________ 1See the Women’s Celebration of Fifty years of Women in Ministry Service
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