The Essential Trinity

The Essential Trinity : New Testament foundations and practical relevance.

"The Trinity is foundational to Christian theology. Indeed, for more than fifty years Christian theological discussion has been increasingly dominated by discussion of the doctrine, in large part due to the provocative move by Karl Barth in making it the every principle of his dogmatic enterprise. Unfortunately, however, it is not uncommon to encounter the view that the Trinity is a non-biblical doctrine (or perhaps one possible way of reading biblical texts) that arose only on the basis of later philosophical speculation. Likewise, many consider the Trinity to be a ‘take it or leave it doctrine’ when it comes to living the Christian life. The Bible – according to many – does not contain the doctrine of the Trinity, and even if it did, that would be something only for theologians to debate. However, historically in the Christian church the Trinity has been understood to be a robustly biblical doctrine with immense relevance for practical living. It is with this in mind that we present this volume, one that eschews overly technical discussion and focuses attention on the importance of the doctrine for every Christian. The chapters in part 1 consider the trinitarian contours of every corpus of the New Testament, along with a chapter reflecting on the Old Testament roots of trinitarian doctrine. Here we must be clear: the term ‘Trinity’ and key terminology such as homoousios do not appear in Scripture; the technical terminology for trinitarian doctrine comes later, being crystallized in the fourth century. However, this precision of language does not import something foreign into the biblical texts, but faithfully articulates the content of those texts. In other words, it is the presupposition of this volume that trinitarian doctrine legitimately and necessarily follows from the phenomena of Scripture, rightly understood. Therefore, when using the term ‘Trinity’ or ‘trinitarian’ throughout this volume in relation to biblical books, we speak of the triadic contours of the text that lead inexorably to the doctrine of the Trinity. Stated differently, one of the aims of this volume is to show that faithful exegesis of biblical texts necessitates a trinitarian reading of the biblical texts, especially in the New Testament, where the doctrine is more fully revealed than in the Old Testament. The chapters in part 1 focus primarily on the New Testament witnesses, but also necessarily include reflections on the Old Testament backgrounds for the New Testament theological perspective. Indeed, chapter 8, on Revelation, and chapter 9, the final chapter in part 1, which is devoted to Old Testament revelation, will consider in greater detail how the New Testament’s trinitarian witness is rooted in the Old Testament."