The Trinity Mystery

Starting with the doctrine of the Trinity, Vern Poythress addresses six significant challenges concerning God's attributes, helping us to appreciate more deeply the mystery that lies in each of them.

The mystery of the Trinity is the central Christian belief that defines God's essence, God's ongoing love for humanity, and saving grace. Yet, over the past few centuries, especially in the West, Christians have either ceased believing in the Trinity or simply no longer recognize its relevance in their ecclesial or individual lives. Written in an ecumenical spirit that engages contemporary questions and theological viewpoints, The Trinity: Rediscovering the Central Christian Mystery articulates the mystery of the Trinity for people formed by modern historical consciousness, science, awareness of the equal dignity of men and women, and respect for world religions. By first identifying contemporary problems with the Christian proclamation of the Trinity in our culture and major differences among modern theologians, John Farrelly, OSB, explores Scripture, the life and message of Jesus Christ, the various stages of the development of Trinitarian doctrine in Christian History, the relation of the Trinity to creation and salvation, the generation of the Son from the Father within the Trinity and the procession of the Holy Spirit from Father and Son, and the meaning of three persons in one God. He concludes by reflecting on the implications this renewed theology of the Trinity has for ecclesiology and Christian spirituality in our twenty-first century world, especially in relation to other world religions.

Is there One God or Three? How does one reconcile the "One God" of the Sh'ma with the "Three Persons" of the Trinity? The doctrine of the trinity has been at the heart of much theological controversy. The routine objection is that the doctrine sacrifices monotheism to "tritheism." But this objection thrives on a misconception of divine personality in the image of disparate, individual, human selves. This type of rationalistic apologetics, promotive of trinitarianism on speculative rather than revelational grounds, regrettably encourages this misunderstanding. One of the reasons we suffer such misunderstanding is due to our relying on "models." Chuck explores the ostensible tensions between the Old and New Testament revelations of the ultimate mystery of the Godhead. This is a foundational study for every Christian.

The Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith. What can we say about the divine nature, and what does it mean to say that God is Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three persons who are one in being? In this book, best selling author Thomas Joseph White, OP, examines the development of early Christian reflection on the Trinity, arguing that essential contributions of Patristic theology are preserved and expanded in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. By focusing on Aquinas’ theology of the divine nature as well as his treatment of divine personhood, White explores in depth the mystery of Trinitarian monotheism. The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God also engages with influential proposals of modern theologians on major topics such as Trinitarian creation, Incarnation and crucifixion, and presents creative engagements with these topics. Ultimately any theology of the cross is also a theology of the Trinity, and this book seeks to illustrate how the human life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveal the inner life of God as Trinity.

Paul C. H. Lim offers an insightful examination of the polemical debates about the doctrine of the Trinity in seventeenth-century England, showing that this philosophical and theological re-configuration significantly impacted the politics of religion in the early modern period. Through analysis of these heated polemics, Lim shows how Trinitarian God-Talk became untenable in many ecclesiastical and philosophical circles, which led to the emergence of Unitarianism. He also demonstrates that those who continued to embrace Trinitarian doctrine articulated their piety and theological perspectives in an increasingly secularized culture of discourse. Drawing on both unexplored manuscripts and well-known treatises of Continental and English provenance, he unearths the complex layers of the polemic: from biblical exegesis to reception history of patristic authorities, from popular religious radicalism during the Civil War to Puritan spirituality, from Continental Socinians to English anti-trinitarians who avowed their relative independent theological identity, from the notion of the Platonic captivity of primitive Christianity to that of Plato as "Moses Atticus." Among this book's surprising conclusions are the findings that Anti-Trinitarian sentiment arose from a Puritan ambience, in which Biblical literalism overcame rationalistic presuppositions, and that theology and philosophy were not as unconnected during this period as previously thought. Mystery Unveiled will fill a significant lacuna in early modern English intellectual history.

The following dissertation concerning the Trinity, as the reader ought to be informed, has been written in order to guard against the sophistries of those who disdain to begin with faith, and are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason. Now one class of such men endeavor to transfer to things incorporeal and spiritual the ideas they have formed, whether through experience of the bodily senses, or by natural human wit and diligent quickness, or by the aid of art, from things corporeal; so as to seek to measure and conceive of the former by the latter. Aeterna Press

In the last thirty years, books on the Trinity have abounded. There seems to be a fascination with this mysterious topic, especially among systematic theologians. This present book has no intention of adding to the plethora of treatises on the Trinity. The main question with which it is concerned is what is really scripturally tenable with regard to the Trinity and what is unwarranted theological construction or even speculation. What takes shape here is a story: how the doctrine of the Trinity developed over the subsequent centuries from the traces in Scripture to a centralized dogma at the heart of Christian teaching. We witness in this an evolution from proclamation to controversy to speculation. What are we to make of this doctrine? How do we articulate the biblical faith today?