Quiz 10
According to McGrath, because it reflects the actions of the one God, the doctrine of the Trinity is in actuality a simple doctrine.
False Those who first crafted the doctrine of the Trinity could have made the doctrine simple, but to do so would have neglected the richness of God's multifaceted actions as presented in Scripture.
According to Ware, God exists as three persons in community in the same way that, for example, Peter, James and John are three persons in community.
False As unity-in-diversity, the Trinity is three persons in one essence. In other words, though the Trinity is three distinct persons, they are always of one will and purpose and energy. Peter, James and John - or any three distinct people - are not of one essence, and therefore not of one will and purpose and energy.
According to McGrath, Jürgen Moltmann's theology of the "social Trinity" has distinct social or political ramifications, but is too obscure to have theological function.
False Because the social understanding of the Trinity is a community of mutuality and eternal self-giving love, it can have a social function as a model for how society ought to exist, in loving community without hierarchy, domination or oppression. However, it also has a theological function in that it affirms the real subjectivity of each of the three persons of the Trinity, aiming to avoid an overly monarchical notion of God grounded in various systems of philosophical metaphysics.
According to McGrath, the doctrine of the Trinity was settled by the end of the third century, when Christ's divinity was affirmed.
False Christ's divinity was officially affirmed at the Council of Nicaea in 325. The more that Christ's full divinity was recognized, the more that Christianity was faced with explaining how God could be both the God of the Old Testament and the God revealed in Jesus Christ. How was Christ related to God? As the fourth century progressed, the Holy Spirit was then also recognized as the full presence of God. And thus, by the end of the fourth century, the doctrine of the Trinity was finally formalized, relating God (the "Father"), Jesus Christ (the "Son"), and the Holy Spirit to one another, each possessing full divinity while each also being somehow distinct from one another.
According to McGrath, Tertullian, in defining the nature of the Trinity, asserted that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three different "substances" in one "person."
False Other way around. The Father, Son and Spirit are of the same substance, but are different "persons." In this way, Tertullian could preserve the unity of the Trinity (one substance) while also claiming the distinctiveness of the Father, Son and Spirit (persons).
According to McGrath, Sabellianism is a form of functional modalism.
False Sabellianism is a form of chronological modalism. Chronological modalism holds that there is one God that, in salvation, has successively appeared to us as the three persons of the Trinity. First God was Creator, then God came to earth as Jesus, and finally, God now is with us as the Holy Spirit. In contrast, functional modalism holds that there is one God that acts in one of three different ways with us at any given moment. God sometimes acts as creator or sovereign (when God does this, we call God "Father" or "Creator"), and God sometimes acts as savior or redeemer ("Son," or "Jesus"), and God sometimes acts as sanctifier or inspirer ("Holy Spirit"). But this is not three different persons of the Trinity, functional modalists would say, but rather one God that acts according to three distinct functions at distinct moments.
According to Ware, though God exists as a circle of love, humans cannot participate in that circle.
False The final goal of the Way of faith is to participate in the perichoresis or coinherence of the Trinity. This is "theosis," or coming into communion with God.
According to Ware, "living the Trinity" means that core to the Christian life is living in silent and reflective contemplation of what it means that God the Trinity.
False We are called to emulate God by being people of self-giving love. "Living the Trinity" means, just like the three Persons of the Trinity, serving the other with absolute abandon. Each social unit, says Ware, should be an "ikon," or a "picture," of the Trinity. Further, without loving one another, people will never come to true faith in and understanding of the Trinity.
According to Ware, God the Spirit proceeds from the Son both eternally and in time.
False In time, or "history," the God the Son sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. But in Eastern Orthodox theology, God the Father - not the Son - sends the Spirit outside of time, from all eternity. This is why Eastern Orthodoxy rejects the Western filioque, because it claims that God the Father and God the Son eternally send the Holy Spirit.
According to McGrath, the doctrine of the Trinity (God as one and three) developed from the basis of Greek philosophy and only later incorporated the witness of Scripture since it had not yet been formed by the church.
False The doctrine of the Trinity developed as the early Christian church considered the biblical witness to the work of God. The bible never mentions the word "Trinity," and only mentions Father, Son and Spirit together twice. However, as the church carefully reflected on the pattern of divine action as recorded in Scripture and experienced in the life of faith, the notion of God as Trinity became evident. The belief in God as creator, in the divinity of Jesus, and in the continuing role of the divine Holy Spirit -- and the close connection between these "persons" in the work of God, as in the revelation of the Father in the Son by means of the Holy Spirit - led the church to understand God as not merely one, but as three.
According to Ware, humanity is given images and symbols to describe God that are not fully explained. Which of the following is not an image or symbol for God used as an example by Ware?
God as "filioque" God has given humanity biblical symbols or analogies to talk about who God is, but that does not mean that these symbols or analogies are wholly understandable. For instance, what is the difference between generation (of the Son) and procession (of the Spirit)? What does it mean that God is Father even though God is not male? We can never be entirely sure. ("Filioque" is not an image or symbol for God, but a Latin word added to the Nicene Creed by Western Christianity to describe the double procession of the Holy Spirit.)
According to Ware, which of the following biblical episodes is not an example of all three persons of the Trinity working together?
The Resurrection If God only worked in one way and not in three ways at any given moment - for instance, if God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit each acted separately, independently, or in succession - we would have little reason to believe that God is three. However, there are many biblical instances of the three divine persons acting simultaneously. Except for the Resurrection, Ware gives all of these as examples of "Triadic" activity, whereby God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all simultaneously active.
According to McGrath, which of the following is not one of the analogies that Gregory of Nyssa uses to help us visualize the Trinity?
The three leaves of a shamrock In his analogies, Gregory was trying to help people see how one unifying substance could have distinct elements were inseparable. The analogy of the shamrock was said to have been used by Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, to show how a single clover also had three distinct elements as well. In modeling the Trinity, these analogies all may have some utility in trying to imagine such a complex concept. However, like all analogies, they are imperfect.
According to McGrath, Robert Jenson claims that "Trinity" ("Father, Son and Holy Spirit") is the proper name of the Christian God.
True As God's "proper" name, "Trinity" is the name by which Christians can identify their God. Jenson makes the point that when we say that God is Trinity, we are in fact describing who God is. Israel referred to God often by using names - such as Yahweh - but more often by uniquely identifying the God they worshiped, often through actions. As opposed to other gods of the region, their God was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or the God who led them out of Egypt. In the same way, Christians should refer to God not by making up a name or concept, but rather by the actions of God that have been revealed to us. The Christian God is the God of the Old Testament. And the Christian God is the one who raised Jesus from the dead, and who is was poured out at Pentecost and is present with humanity in the Holy Spirit. Thus "Trinity" or "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" is a summary of the story of God and God's relation to us. Just as the Old Testament described God as the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," the New Testament further and more fully describes God as "Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
According to McGrath, those who promote the Trinitarian heresy of modalism are typically defending the oneness of God.
True A term coined by Adolf von Harnack, "modalism" refers to a series of heretical beliefs held by different Christian theologians. Thinkers such as Noetus, Praxeas, and Sabellius, in an effort to guard against what they saw as tri-theism in the early doctrines of the Trinity, defended the absolute unity of God, sometimes called "monarchianism." They claimed that the one God was simply revealed to us in different ways at three times. Thus the one God, at different points in history, has been successively revealed in three different "modes" - as Creator, as Jesus, and as Holy Spirit. This is essentially Unitarianism - the belief in a single God that is known at different times as "Father" or "Son" or "Holy Spirit." According to modalism, there is no difference at all between these three persons; they are the same God appearing or acting at different times and places.
According to Ware, God as Trinity implies that God is analogous to a society.
True As three equal persons in relationship with one another, God exists as a circle of love. In fact, God would not be eternally and essentially personal if there was not another with whom to be in a relationship of love. Thus God is personal because he is a perichoresis of three persons in a circle of self-giving love with one another.
According to McGrath, Karl Barth grounds his doctrine of the Trinity in terms of revelation.
True Barth's doctrine of the Trinity is unique in that it is based on his understanding of revelation. He starts with the assertion that people of faith have recognize that "God has spoken"; God has been revealed to us. What has God revealed? God has revealed or "spoken" God in Jesus Christ. So people of faith know that God has two "parts" - the source of revelation (God the Father, or the God who revealed or "spoke") and the revelation itself (Jesus Christ, or that which God has revealed or "spoken"). Barth then says that, because we are sinful people incapable of finding or grasping God on our own, the capacity to receive God's revelation and understand it is also the work of God (the Holy Spirit, or God enabling people of faith to see revelation). So, if revelation takes place, God must be three. There is God, there is God's revelation in Jesus Christ, and there is God giving people of faith the ability to see that revelation. God is three distinct things all at once.
According to Ware, God the Son is the eternal generation of God the Father, and gives all created their principle of order and purpose.
True God the Son is the eternal logos, the second person of the Trinity, is the embodiment of the eternal self-giving of God the Father. The logos in return eternally offers itself back to God the Father in obedience and love. It is through this logos that God gives life its purpose, namely love.
According to Ware, God the Father is the "fount" of divinity, the "source" of both the Son and the Spirit.
True In Eastern Orthodox theology, unlike Western Christian theology, both the Son and the Spirit find their source in the Father alone. In this perspective, the West's filioque clause - which asserts that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son - portrays a "double procession of the Spirit" that confuses the roles of God the Father and God the Son.
According to McGrath, "appropriation" refers to how distinctive roles are attributed to one of the three persons of the Trinity.
True It should be noted, however, that appropriation is done simply for convention's sake, simply for the sake of conversation; in reality, all three persons of the Trinity are involved in any act attributed to any one person. For instance, creation is usually attributed to the first person of the Trinity, the Father or Creator. However, all three persons of the Trinity - Father, Son and Spirit - are active in creation.
According to McGrath, many Christians have virtually ignored the notion of God being Trinitarian.
True Some have neglected understanding God as Trinity because they felt it jeopardized the oneness of God and comes too close to unseemly polytheism. Some have felt that understanding God as Trinity is simply too complicated and obscure to spend time considering. Many would confess God as Trinity without ever thinking about what that meant, or even believing it. However, over the last 80 or 90 years, there has been a dramatic resurgence of theological reflection on the nature of God as Trinity, asserting the primacy and profundity of that doctrine for Christianity.
According to McGrath, the "economy of salvation" witnesses to the fact that the saving work of God in salvation history - from creation to the present - is the work of one God carried out in three distinct ways.
True The claim that God is Trinity asserts that God is involved in the entire process of salvation, from creation (God the Father) to reconciliation (God the Son) to redemption (Holy Spirit). The fact that God is three and one implies that there is a single and unifying economy of action with three distinct aspects. God's work of creation, God's work in Jesus Christ, and God's work in the Holy Spirit are all part of one act of salvation. To the Gnostics who claimed that the God of the Old and New Testaments were different gods, Irenaeus responded that the Old Testament creator God is the same as the New Testament God of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit; it is one God in three forms. This oneness and threeness of God is reflected in the complex Christian experience of salvation as well.
According to McGrath, describing God as Trinity is a reflection of understanding God as creator, as redeemer (in Jesus), and as presently active here and now (in the Holy Spirit).
True The doctrine of the Trinity reflects the Christian understanding of God in Scripture and experience, as complex as that understanding may be. In the end, the idea that God can be both one and three is a paradox; the concept of the Trinity is ultimately a mystery.
According to McGrath, "perichoresis" is related to a more "social" understanding of the Trinity.
True The term "perichoresis" is a Greek theological term first widely used in the sixth century. The term means "mutual interpenetration"; broken into its Greek cognates, the word literally means "around the circle," in reference to imagining an intimate dance of the three persons of the Trinity. According to a perichoretic understanding, the individuality of the three persons of the Trinity is affirmed as is their mutual and self-giving sharing of life. Each of the three person has a distinctive identity, yet each person fully penetrates the other two while also being fully penetrated by them in a unity of love.
According to Ware, many prayers in the Orthodox tradition are prayed to and about all three Persons of the Trinity.
True Ware gives as examples single line "breath" prayers, the Sanctus prayer of "Holy, Holy, Holy," other "everyday" prayers, and the common liturgical prayer of "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit."