The Trinitarian Story in 100 Words or Less

From the Triune God comes a narrative centering on Christ, God’s incarnate Son, and supernaturally recorded in Scripture. This story begins with creation, reports humanity’s fall, Israel’s history, and God’s redemption in Jesus, the Messiah. People, who by the Spirit’s power repent and believe this good news, experience salvation: deliverance from sin, Satan, and death. United with the crucified and resurrected Lord, believers participate in Christ’s Body, the eschatological community that worships God, serves a needy world, and provisionally embodies God’s coming Kingdom. This blessing is for the whole creation, which will soon be judged and renewed for God’s glory.

“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.