Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective

This introduction to Christology is an excellent model of careful, creative, and yet confessing theology.  The intentional integration of Christology with a rich Trinitarian theology is refreshing.  Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective is edited by Fred Sanders and Klaus Issler.

Creation

Theology at the movies takes a significant step forward with this important work by Ben Stein: Expelled. Take a few moments to watch the trailer. May the conversation flourish.

Toward a “Robust” Theology

The Christian Vision Project focused in 2006 on culture and in 2007 on mission; this year the theme revolves around the simple question: “Is our gospel too small?” This month Scot McKnight has contributed a refreshing article entitled, “The 8 Marks of a Robust Gospel: Reviving forgotten chapters in the history of redemption.” Each of Scot’s points merit attention and conversation. For one who always enjoys the challenge of trying to express the Christian world view in 100 words or less, I noted Scot’s version in just over  50 words:

“The gospel is the story of the work of the triune God (Father, Son, and Spirit) to completely restore broken image-bearers (Gen. 1:26–27) in the context of the community of faith (Israel, Kingdom, and Church) through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Pentecostal Spirit, to union with God and communion with others for the good of the world.”

The eight marks are as follows:

1. The robust gospel is a story. (biblical narrative)

2. The robust gospel places transactions in the context of persons. (relational)

3. The robust gospel deals with a robust problem. (sin)

4. A robust gospel has a grand vision. (new society & new creation)

5. A robust gospel includes the life of Jesus as well as his resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit alongside Good Friday. (Christ-centered)

6. A robust gospel demands not only faith but everything. (discipleship)

7. A robust gospel includes the robust Spirit of God. (experiential)

8. A robust gospel emerges from and leads others to the church. (missional)

Rediscovering the Trinity: Wheaton Theology Conference

Wheaton’s graduate school will host this important conference, April 10-12, 2008. Speakers will include Volf, Vanhoozer, and Franke, among others. Past conferences (e.g., 2004) have lead to important publications, such as The Community of the Word.

The Mission of God

Chris Wright has written a magisterial work on biblical theology – and from a missional perspective.  His full title is:  The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Any danger that a Christ Centered Trinitarian theology might fade into a reductionistic christomonism is warded off by a faithfully Trinitarian focus, and the organic way in which God’s mission in Christ becomes the focus of YHWH’s redemptive self-revelation.  Such a balance is enriched by this thoroughly canonical and missional treatment of biblical theology. 

Christian theology is at its core both mission and ethics.  Along the way Wright wisely treats the ethical nature of God’s mission (see his earlier work on OT ethics).  Surely this book will become a mainstay in missional theology. 

The Drama

Kevin Vanhoozer’s 2005 work The Drama of Doctrine is worth a long slow thoughtful read, preferably with a doctrinally competent study group.  The following summary of Part 1 reveals some of the its richness:

“The gospel is ‘theo-dramatic’ — a series of divine entrances and exits, especially as these pertain to what God has done in Jesus Christ.  The gospel — both the Christ event and the canon that communicates it — thus appears as the climatic moment in the Trinitarian economy of divine self-communicative action (chap. 1).  Theology responds and corresponds to God’s prior word and deed; accordingly, theology itself is part of the theo-dramatic action.  The mission of theology involves human speech and action, but what ultimately gives these significance is their role in the Trinitarian missions (chap. 2).  This insight leads to a first statement of the directive theory of doctrine that lies at the heart of the present work.  If theology is about the speech and action of the triune God and the church’s response in word and deed, then doctrine is best viewed as direction for the church’s fitting participation in the drama of redemption (chap. 3)” (31). 

Missio Dei

The value of consciously functioning within a Christ centered trinitarian matrix is, in part, its utility for disrupting fossilized theological systems.  It stimulates a kind of healthy "strategic chaos,"  which encourages lateral thinking about what really matters in the Christian confession.  At the same time it can be fruitfully (and faithfully) creative within concrete historical and social contexts.  Exploring the features of this matrix is the task before us.

We have been saying much about the Trinity.  But it must be emphasized that we are advocating a Christ-centered trinitarian model.  This is critical.  A theology whose christology cuts loose from its trinitarian moorings quickly sails away from Orthodoxy.   But a trinitarian approach that is not sensitive to the primary historical, redemptive and revelatory function of the Son,  runs the risk of being an abstraction.  The faithful Christian confession must be both christocentric AND trinitarian. 

The christological focus keeps us close to the missio Dei, and thus to the heart of things.  Those theologians who are moving towards a "missional" theology, and the churchmen [/women] who follow in their trail, are to be celebrated.  Perhaps it is time to critically and prayerfully reread David J. Bosch's monumental work, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission.

In his closing section ("Whither Mission?"), Bosch writes, "The missio Dei purifies the church.  It sets it under the cross — the only place where it is ever safe.  The cross is the place of humiliation and judgment, but it is also the place of refreshment and new birth" (p. 519).  May the Lord purify the church today!

“First Theology”

Anyone working on the boundary between a postconservative evangelical theology and the best of the more traditional theologians, needs the wise counsel of Kevin Vanhoozer.  A good place to start in his 2002 work, First Theology: God, Scripture, & Hermeneutics.  Vanhoozer's concern is for fidelity to the "sensus scripturalis."  He writes, "I am…advocating a distinctly Christian and theological, which is to say trinitarian approach to biblical interpretation that begins by recognizing God as a triune communicative agent and Scripture as the written locus of God's communicative action" (p. 38).  In a footnote, he instinctively adds, "Jesus Christ is, of course, the Word of God made flesh.  The life of the incarnate Jesus therefore is God's communicative act as well.  The point is, however, that one can begin with Christ only by attending to the apostolic (divinely authorized) testimony about him." 

Whether or not one agrees completely with Vanhoozer's use of speech-act theory [and I understand he may have some qualifying thoughts himself], his work is always astute, careful, and a joy to read.

The Subject of Theology

Whether one agrees with it in toto or not, one of the few serious and constructive works on evangelical  prolegomena, is John R. Franke's The Character of Theology: A Postconservative Evangelical Approach. 

John's theological journey and contribution is to be watched carefully.  One might find weaknesses here or there [John would probably be the first to admit it], but one cannot seriously engage contemporary evangelical theology and ignore his work. 

Chapter two is entitled, "The Subject of Theology."  John writes, "For Christians, the subject of theology is the God revealed in Jesus Christ.  Accordingly, the Christian answer to the question of God's identity ultimately leads to the doctrine of the Trinity…the confession of the Triune God has been the sin qua non of the Christian faith" (p. 45).  He continues, "the trinitarian conception of God is so closely tied to the biblical narrative that it serves as a shorthand way of speaking not only about the God of the narrative but also about the narrative itself as the act of the God of the Bible" (p. 46). 

On this the church must speak with one voice.    

Nexus Mysteriorum

The observation that there has been a lack of trinitarian imagination in Western theology, a kind of trinitarian forgetfulness, is painfully close to the mark.  Many, while confessing the Trinity at the formal level, live their everyday lives as though God were a bare monad.  How do we faithfully bare witness to the gospel, if our speech and thoughts are nearly Unitarian?  How, at this critical hour, does the church  give a certain sound before Dar Al Islam, if the Christian community is confused and forgetful about it's own confession?  Therefore we ought to listen to those who help us remember, and who stimulate us to biblically faithful trinitarian imaginations. 

Such voices are coming from many directions.  Anne Hunt, an Austrailian Roman Catholic writer, recently published a book simply entitled The Trinity. While the careful non-Catholic reader will filter her labor through his or her own tradition, Anne has much to offer. 

The full title of this useful volume is Trinity: Nexus of the Mysteries of the Christian Faith.  The thesis is that the Trinity is the nexus mysteriorum, i.e., that which provides the interconnection of all the doctrines.  [The Catholic use of the term "mystery" here is not to be confused with the NT usage of "mysterion," which has a special redemptive historical sense.]  

Anne's aim in her own words is "to awaken the trinitarian intuition and to foster an explicitly trinitarian imagination that extends and enriches the entire theological enterprise" (p. 4). 

This is a worthy goal.