Credo - Doctrine of God

To speak of God in the Christian witness is to speak of a being that is the all-inclusive whole of reality. There is nothing greater than the being of God. It is from this, that than which nothing greater can be conceived, that St. Anselm begins his ontological argument for the existence of God in reality rather than just in the mind. Karen Baker-Fletcher borrows from Anselm, noting its metaphysical implications when she writes, “God, however, is the universe’s ultimate point of reference.” Baker-Fletcher, Karen. Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective. St. Louis: Chalice Press. 2006. 69. From such an understanding of God follows a discussion of a whole, its constituent parts, and the relationships therein. Three of these relationships are of import: the relationship between the whole and its parts; the parts and other parts; the parts and the whole. God, as the all-inclusive whole of reality, is simultaneously apart from and amidst its parts. Far from saying the parts of reality are in themselves the whole (and therefore God), to understand God as the whole is to understand that the whole’s parts inform the identity of the whole without themselves being the whole. Furthermore, Christian witness has attested to the reality of the Triune God. William G. Rusch notes in The Trinitarian Controversy that though “no doctrine of the Trinity in the Nicene sense is present in the New Testament [or writings of the Apostolic Fathers immediately following the New Testament period], the threefold pattern is evident throughout.” Rusch, William G. Trinitarian Controversy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 1980. 2-3. This Trinitarian understanding of God is undergirded in the relationships between the three persons of God within Godself – the immanent Trinity – and the relationships between the three persons of God as one whole and the parts of that whole – the expressed Trinity. Rusch notes that this development of the second century Apologist writings stemmed from a distinction between the immanent and expressed character of the Logos made by Greek Stoics. He credits the work of Justin Martyr as the main exposition of such an understanding of the Trinity, writing that it was Justin’s arguments for the expression of the immanent Trinity through the begetting of the second person by the first person that “offered an explanation of how God, unoriginate, eternal, and nameless, could be involved in a changeable world.” Ibid. 3-4 The relationships of interest in the discussion of whole and its parts are the same relationships of interest in the immanent and expressed Trinity. In such a relational theology, the Triune God can thus be understood as God the Relator, God the Related, and God the Relationship. Here I find Augustine’s discussion of the Trinity as Lover, Loved, and Love extremely beneficial with regard to both the immanent and the expressed Trinity. Explicitly concerned with maintaining the coequality of the persons of the Trinity while searching for distinctive attributes of each, Augustine argues for the Holy Spirit as “that most excellent love (caritas)” which is a characteristic of the loving act of the lover yet distinct from the lover. Such an argument proclaims love a subject not merely an object about which conversation speaks. From this, Augustine continues to delineate between the Lover and Beloved – the first and second persons of the Trinity – while maintaining the relatedness and equality of the two persons. This deeply informs my work. Given that “God is love” (1 John 4:16); and given that God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”; I would like to argue that love can be understood to be the ultimate relationship. Such ultimity is of import when speaking of the relationships between whole and parts. Given my relational language and focus, I have chosen to speak of the Trinity as Relator, Related, and Relationship in the same way Augustine does of love. Augustine of Hippo. “Augustine of Hippo’s On the Trinity, Book 9.” Ibid. 127-139. The three persons of the Trinity act coequally in the formulation of what God is while acting in concert with the constituent parts of reality to inform who God is. Such absolute relativity understands God to be eternal in essence and ever-changing in personage; greater than the sum and consistently informing the realities of its parts while also inexorably dependent upon the parts of reality to inform its personality. Avoiding internal subordination, such an understanding of the Trinity-in-Relation images the three persons in cooperation, informing and being informed by the other two persons. Here, the First is understood as the one who has apprehended form from chaos, from whom the creative capacity within reality springs, and in whom the Good is known. The Second, the one who has experienced forms and chaos as both fully God and fully human, the one who has more fully related the human and material experience into the reality of God, and the one through whom the Good became manifest in temporal experience. The Third, the one through whom chaos is ordered into form – potential into actual – the one by whom the creative capacity for novelty is realized in the first person, and the one in who lures the Second to manifest the Good in temporal experience. Both creation stories in Genesis attest to the work of the Relationship as the creative power of actualization (Gen 1:2; 2:7). The Gospel of Luke further explores the theme of the Relationship who lures towards the Good in the many pericopae that speak of someone being “full [or some derivation thereof] of the Holy Spirit,” empowering the response to the call of God toward life and the Good (Lk 1:15, 35, 41; 2:25, 27; 3:22; 4:1, 14; 8:55; 10:21; 12:12). Catherine Mowry LaCugna briefly mentions this inspiring power toward right relationship and the Good when she envisions what the Christian community would be should it realize its created destiny, “namely, [that] the communion of all persons who have realized their common vocation to praise and glorify God and to be united in service to others…” This communion is led by Holy Spirit who works to bring the church into the authentic communion extant in the immanent Trinity. LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. “God in Communion With Us: The Trinity.” Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective. editor, Catherine Mowry LaCugna. New York: HarperOne. 1993. 107. The immanent Trinity testifies to the omnibenevolence of God as it recognizes the epitomization, manifestation, and actualization of the Good in its three persons. Such omnibenevolence is especially important in later discussions of divine power and issues surrounding the reality of sin in the whole of reality. Turning to questions of the expressed Trinity is to focus on the relationship between the whole and its parts, the parts and parts, and the parts and the greater whole. I find it useful to begin with omniscience in such a discussion. Given that knowledge is the product of the relational act of knowing, and given that God is in ultimate relationship with all of the parts of reality, then it can be said that God’s knowledge is the product of knowing all the various parts of reality in so much as they can be known. As such, God’s knowledge is absolute and can be rightly termed “omniscience.” However, given the dynamism that results from the parts’ freedom, the parts are not static, uninforming and uninformed. God’s knowledge of all insomuch as all can be known must not remain static. Remaining static leaves the whole’s knowledge lacking the new experiences of its parts. The relativity of God to its constituent parts here necessitates a growing knowledge. As God’s experience of reality through its relationship with individual parts grows, so, too, does its knowledge. Through its dynamic relationships with itself and its constituent parts, God knows all that can be known. In its relationship with itself in God the Related, God more fully incorporates the human and material experience into divine knowledge while its relationship with its constituent parts constantly shapes and reshapes the divine prehension of actualities as such and potentialities as such. Here, I would like to make an important comment regarding the interplay between potentialities, actualities, omniscience, and creaturely freedom. If omniscience is knowing all insomuch as all can be known, then God, Baker-Fletcher notes, can know all possibilities and probabilities, including their outcomes. Such omniscience does not, however, violate creaturely freedom. The possibility known is just that. God does not know the possibility as an event until it has concresced into actuality and can be prehended as such. This subtle distinction between potentiality and actuality maintains creaturely freedom for creative novelty in existence. Baker-Fletcher, Karen. Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective. St. Louis: Chalice Press. 2006. 28. Through the second person of the Trinity, God has experienced humanity and materialism as much as an impoverished, first century CE, Palestinian Jewish male under Roman Imperialism may experience. From the everyday bodily functions to the social realities of religious and political marginalization, God’s understanding of humanity through the experiences of the incarnated Second more fully shapes God’s omniscience. It is through the ultimate relationships with the plethora of other parts that God experiences specific times, places, and events – specificities that had already been actualized or that were but distant potentials in the fabric of first century CE Roman Palestine. What, then, for divine foreknowledge? Baker-Fletcher’s brief discussion of the classical theistic understanding of an omniscient God as directly tied to notions of omnipotence which argue for God’s wholly-otherness, transcendent of the created order in mind and power provided this insight. Ibid. Does not God’s transcendence remove it from the constraints of what we understand to be time and space? Certainly, God’s transcendence does! It would, however, be folly to expect a being that can only be known through relationship with itself and its parts to act solely upon its transcendence. To act as such would be for God to remove Godself from its involvement in reality. This removal is refuted throughout Christian tradition, including biblical testament to creation, the physical manifestation of God within creation history, and the inspiration and luring of parts of reality into the next moment of existence, into right relationships with each other and the whole, and toward the realization of the eschatological Good. God’s omniscience only partially informs an expressed understanding of Trinity. Second in a discussion of divine attributes is a brief, critical reflection on the omnipotence of God. Due largely in part to the work of Thomas Aquinas, the omnipotence of God has been understood in Aristotelian terms of empirical absolutes. Laurel C. Schneider mentions Aquinas’ reappropriation of Aristotle’s natural philosophy in her introductory comments for “God.” John Cobb, Jr. puts this Aquinian reappropriation more forcefully when he argues that “One of the craziest [inherited ideas about God] was that, for any reality to be considered God it must have all the power.” Schneider, Laurel C. “God.” Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes, with CD-ROM. editors, Serene Jones and Paul Lakeland. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2005. 37; Cobb, John B. Jr. “What Do We Mean by ‘God’?” Essentials of Christian Theology. editor, William C. Placher. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 2003. 63. emphasis, original. Just as knowledge is the product of the relational act of knowing, so is power the product of the state of relationship in which one exists. Given that God exists as the whole of reality, absolutely related to its parts, God’s power is understood to be simultaneously independent of and dependent upon those parts. Similar to the redefinition of “all knowledge” in divine omniscience, God’s absolute relativity demands a redefinition of what it means to be “all powerful.” Can an absolutely relative whole of all power be affected by the relationships it has with its constituent parts? If it can, is such a whole responsive and changing or proactive and determinative? To address the former question, it is important to consider God’s affections. Simultaneous independence and dependence argues for a whole that is supremely affected by the very existence of its parts. Such affection spurs further inquiry into the immutability and impassibility of God. If God is simultaneously independent and dependent, then God must be understood as simultaneously unchanged and constantly changing. It can be said that that God is in relationship does not change while God’s relationships are always changing. Such changes appeal to God’s affections and effect in God responses to and with its parts. Likewise, supreme affection places great importance on the freedom of parts to inform the realities of each other and the whole. God the Relator has, in the act of creation, shared the creative capacity for novelty with its parts; God the Relationship as the actualizing force through which capacity and potentialities are realized. Risking the freedom of its parts to mar the right relationships in which they are meant to exist and risking the parts’ freedom to not follow the lure of God the Relationship to the realized and eschatological Good, God the Relator has acted in almighty power and omnibenevolence to bring about the restoration of the capacity of the part to choose the Good in its interactions in relationship to the rest of reality. Here, the incarnation of God the Related into creation history as fully God and fully human works to elucidate divine priorities of right relationships by example and teaching in its personal ministry. Joerg Rieger discusses these divine priorities of right relationship and the importance of what he terms the theological “Turn to Others” in God and the Excluded. This turn to others establishes a new paradigm for theology that takes seriously “actual conflictual relationships” as it “broaden[s] the contemporary theological horizon” beyond discussions of God’s self-revelation and knowledge of God by the Self. Such a divine priority for right relationships is epitomized in this turn to others as a theological priority. God’s loving preference for the socially marginalized is not a choice for God. As God fully knows and acts in according adequacy towards creatures, those creatures who have been objectified and marginalized require a relationship fundamentally deeper and greater than those in power who have made the subjective choice to spurn such relationship. Rieger, Joerg. God and the Excluded: Visions and Blind Spots in Contemporary Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2001. 99-127. Such elucidation is but one of the ways in which God the Relator works through God the Related to restore the relationships marred by the prideful attempts of parts to thwart their partness. Right relationships, or the capacity therein which to enter, is restored by the destruction of the bonds of sin and death by the powerful acts of God the Relator through the personhood of God the Related, inspired by God the Relationship. It could be argued, however, “What power does the whole have if the parts are free to forsake right relationship and turn away from the lure of God the Relationship? That is not power! That is weak reaction!” Nonsense! Which god is more powerful? That god which creates, affixes, and passively leaves set or that god which faithfully acts to defeat the bonds of sin and death so that its creation’s right relationships might be realized in full? The former deity has bound itself to the death-dealing power of sin as made fully manifest in the pride of parts to attempt to thwart their partness! What whole is truly a whole in which even one of its parts is doomed to a predetermined existence as a cog in a cosmic wheel and can’t actively realize its creative capacity to participate in the identity formation of the whole? The latter deity shows its true power in its understanding of the necessity of right relationships. Not only does it understand insomuch as it can, it acts upon that understanding. Such action uplifts the transcendence of the whole just as it prioritizes relational interdependence between whole and parts. 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