Abstract
Keith Ward contends for the unity of God against concepts of the ‘social Trinity’ in this refreshing, elegantly written and significant volume on long-standing doctrinal deliberations.
Christians have wrestled creatively for centuries to locate words and models that best explain how God is both one and three persons, and to do so without collapsing into contradictions, heterodoxies or plain nonsense. Ward reminds us that even celebrated orthodox contributors have often emphasized either God’s unity or plurality of persons. God as a social Trinity is among the latter tendency, accentuating three conscious subjects in God. Ward admits that the concept has enriched Christian theology during the last century. Yet he soundly rejects it, working with a gentle incisiveness to argue the development as unhelpful to the Trinitarian cause, and to offer correction.
Ward pushes traditional boundaries carefully and ingeniously, achieving his aims while maintaining a faithful Trinitarian monotheism. He does so partly by extending the perspectives of theologians like Karl Barth and Karl Rahner, who have helped to revive Trinitarian thought while emphasizing one mind in God. Some critics will imagine modalism, denying God’s essential Trinitarian nature, in Ward’s extensions. His view is not modalism, however, and he states why.
Additional voices engaged throughout 40 clear and concise chapters include Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, David Brown, John Zizioulas, Colin Gunton, Robert Jenson, Richard Swinburne and William Hasker among others, and all in good detail. Hegel is a welcome inclusion, having influenced theology more than some realize or admit.
Central to this volume is the question of God in se – what immanent relations between Father, Son and Holy Spirit might be like as opposed to what God is like economically, as we encounter God. Can anyone really know what God is like within God’s hidden mysteries, Ward wonders? Such knowledge is argued to be beyond profitable enquiry despite some insisting otherwise, and he is right to query it.
The book is replete with Ward’s ongoing concerns for biblical fidelity, interfaith dialogue, sound philosophical analysis and an insistence that theology must comport with the sciences. Crucially, the author works to extend Trinitarian discourse with wider knowledge of the world (hence ‘Cosmos’ in the title) and the methods of enquiry used in other disciplines. We are pressed to consider the future of Trinitarian faith if we do not look beyond some Aristotelian categories that no longer adequately, or truthfully, describe reality. Contemporary scientific knowledge can help to rescue Trinitarian thinking from unhealthy insularity and anthropomorphic obsession, since there is an entire universe, if not a multiverse, to consider.
Stylistic subtleties add to the book’s value. A hint of humour shows one thinker’s position likening God to having a sort of multiple personality disorder as just ‘not a good position for God to be in’ (p. 241). And, appropriate to the Trinitarian doctrine, worshipfulness shows through the adept analyses.
This work represents explorations of the kind in which we must engage, whatever our conclusions. Ward takes on concerns that many, perhaps especially among an upcoming cadre of theologians, have noticed. He does so as only one with his erudition and experience can. The balance, beauty and importance of Ward’s considerations, while labouring to uphold the Trinitarian faith that he shares, has resulted in a must-read book for all viewpoints and levels.