Anabaptistica
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 56, No. 2 – Spring 2014
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By Stephen R. Holmes. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2012. 231 pages. Kindle edition. $9.99.
Holmes’ thesis is that “the twentieth century renewal of Trinitarian theology” depends “in large part on concepts and ideas that cannot be found in patristic, medieval, or Reformation accounts of the doctrine of the Trinity. In some cases, indeed, they are points explicitly and energetically repudiated … by the earlier tradition” (Kindle Locations 124-126). Holmes not only defends the thesis that the Trinitar- ian renewal has departed from the tradition, but he also contends for a revisionist historiography that reinterprets what he recognizes to be the “standard [historical] narrative of the Trinitarian revival” (2360-361).
Holmes prosecutes his case by introducing the reader to the proponents and claims of the Trinitarian revival in chapter one. According to the revival, “[b]y the end of the nineteenth century, the doctrine of the Trinity was perceived either as wrong or, at best, as useless orthodoxy” (129-30) so that in “the second half of the twentieth century,” there was “a surprising revival of interest in the doctrine of the Trinity” (114-15). Holmes attributes the revival to Barth, Rahner, and Zizioulas (70). Earlier writers, including Zizioulas himself, listed Barth, Rahner, and Zizioulas’ predecessor Lossky as the three founders of the revival (Bray, “Trinity” in New Dictionary of Theology, 694; Houston, “The Nature and Purpose of Spiritual Theology,” Evangelical Review of Theology 16, no. 1 (1992): 132; Schwӧbel, “Introduction” in Trinitarian Theology Today, 1995, 2; Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today” in The Forgotten Trinity, 1991, 20). Perhaps Zizioulas has become more in- fluential or the passage of time has provided a more historical perspective on the founders’ identities. In order to demonstrate that the claims of the revival authors differ from the tradition, Holmes presents the major figures of the tradition and their Trinitarian doctrine from the patristic period up to the time just before the twentieth-century revival (chapters 2-9).
It seems that through his historic narrative, Holmes has cogently made his case that the twentieth-century Trinitarian revival has departed from the tradition. His primary evidence includes the contrast of four revival themes with a summary of patristic doctrine: (1) scholars of the Trinitarian revival hold to a focus on the Gospels to the exclusion of the OT in deriving the Trinity from Scripture compared to the patristic derivation of the Trinity from both the OT and NT; (2) the revival maintains a “social Trinitarianism” involving three modern psychological persons with three centers of consciousness and will compared to the patristic belief in one will in God due to the doctrine of divine simplicity; (3) the revival affirms univocal language compared to the patristic affirmation of trophic or analogical language due to divine ineffability, and (4) the revival entangles God’s life with the history of the world compared to the patristic doctrine of ontological dualism of creator and crea- ture that preserved both divine transcendence and immanence (2374-388).
Holmes’ work seems to be the first or at least one of the first monographs to present a complete revisionist historiography of the Trinitarian revival’s “standard narrative.” Many of the revisionist historical judgments that Holmes seems to take as established have been published for at least the last two decades, with some going as far back as at least 1964, and these revisions appear to be represented as settled scholarly opinion in a growing number of reference works (Emery, The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity [2011]; Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics [2003]; Phan, The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity [2011]). However, Holmes’ revised narrative may come as a surprise to some readers, because although Grenz (Rediscovering the Triune God, 2004) and Kärkkäinen (The Trinity: Global Perspectives, 2007) recognized these revisions, they seem to have retained the standard narrative.
Holmes’ revisionist narrative, or that the history of the Trinity consists of one unbroken tradition that was never lost or eclipsed and in which the so called revival is really part of a continuing conversation with Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Dorner (2156-161), is based on at least five important revisions. First, Holmes rejects de Régnon’s “thesis that Latin and Greek Trinitarianisms are fundamentally different traditions” (1959-960), primarily on the bases of his interpretation of “Augustine as the greatest interpreter of the Cappadocian theology” (1472-473) and Gregory Pal- amas’ appropriation of Augustine’s psychological analogy (1957). Second, Holmes rejects Rahner’s interpretation of Aquinas (that in his Summa, Aquinas isolated the Trinity from personal piety by separating the Trinity from and subordinating it to the doctrine of God and by detaching the Trinity from salvation history) on the basis that the later editorial titles given by English translations to the two treaties, “On the One God” and “On the Trinity,” have obscured the fact that both treatises are about the Trinity (191, 199, 1864ff.). Third, Holmes rejects the idea that the doctrine of the Trinity was lost or eclipsed “[b]y the end of the nineteenth century” (129-30), primarily on the basis of a reference to Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics (2148ff.). Fourth, Holmes rehabilitates Schleiermacher’s Trinitarianism from Barth and Brunner’s critiques (i.e. the Trinity is marginalized by its placement at the end of The Christian Faith, etc.), in part by rehashing the Schluβstein, “coping-stone,” argument that the Trinity “crowns” Schleiermacher’s theology by its placement at the end (2237ff.). Finally, Holmes attributes the revival’s deviation from the tradition, at least in part, to the legacy of Harnack’s thesis of a “Hellenistic infestation” of the tradition (2352, 2373-374).
While the second through fourth revisions now appear to be somewhat standard, the first and fifth revisions require further supporting evidence beyond that provided. Additional documentation for which specific revisionist scholars were reinterpreting which specific original revival authors may strengthen Holmes’ presentation.
