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    God's Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God's Suffering Glory
    God's Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God's Suffering Glory
    God's Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God's Suffering Glory
    Ebook538 pages6 hours

    God's Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God's Suffering Glory

    By Stephen M. Garrett

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    Jurgen Moltmann and others contend that Christian theology and the church face a dual crisis--one of relevance and the other of identity. Despite making this pronouncement nearly forty years ago, the church in the West continues to struggle with this crisis. Several proposals have been espoused, from the way of wisdom to the way of ecclesial praxis. Yet, little attention is given in Protestant theological discourse to the role God's beauty plays in bringing theology and ethics together. By neglecting God's beauty for theological discourse, we risk diminishing Christian worship, witness, and wisdom.

    God's Beauty-in-Act addresses these issues, in part, by arguing that the redemptive-creative suffering and glorious resurrection of Christ are the nexus of God's being, beauty, and Christian living. God's beauty, understood as the fittingness of the incarnate Son's actions in the Spirit to the Father's will, radiates God's glory and draws perceivers into the dramatic movements of God's triune life. These movements serve as the patterns that shape the imagination, enabling participants to perform their parts creatively and fittingly in God's drama of redemption. In doing so, human beings flourish as they jettison false identities and realities of their own making that are incommensurate with God's purpose found in Christ by the Spirit.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPickwick Publications
    Release dateJul 24, 2013
    ISBN9781498271141
    God's Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God's Suffering Glory
    Author

    Stephen M. Garrett

    Stephen M. Garrett, PhD, is an Academic Fellow with the International Institute for Christian Studies and Lecturer/Researcher of Public Theology and Philosophy of Religion in the Social Communications Institute at Lithuania University of Educational Sciences.

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      Book preview

      God's Beauty-in-Act - Stephen M. Garrett

      9781610977302.kindle.jpg

      God’s Beauty-in-Act

      Participating in God’s Suffering Glory

      Stephen M. Garrett

      2008.Pickwick_logo.jpg

      God’s Beauty-in-Act

      Participating in God’s Suffering Glory

      Princeton Theological Monograph Series 196

      Copyright © 2013 Stephen M. Garrett. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Pickwick Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      isbn 13: 978-1-61097-730-2

      eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7114-1

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Garrett, Stephen M.

      God’s beauty-in-act : participating in God’s suffering glory / Stephen M. Garrett.

      xviii + 244 pp. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

      Princeton Theological Monograph Series 196

      isbn 13: 978-1-61097-730-2

      1. Aesthetics—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 1905–1988. I. Series. II. Title.

      br115.a8 g39 2013

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      Princeton Theological Monograph Series

      K. C. Hanson, Charles M. Collier, D. Christopher Spinks, and Robin Parry, Series Editors

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      para mi familia

      Preface

      Patience with God. Patience with God! Patience with God? Thank God, he’s patient with us. Tomáš Halík, a Czech theologian and secretly ordained Catholic priest during Communist occupation, identifies with many contemporary atheists in his culture regarding that confounding sense of God’s absence from the world.¹ These atheists, agnostics, and critics of religion espouse that God is dead in an attempt to explain God’s apparent absence in a world darkened by the horrors of the Communist regime and other atrocities of the twentieth and now twenty-first century. Such an explanation seems plausible if one understands God as static and uninvolved with his creation. Yet, Halík, in his work entitled Patience with God, posits an alternative explanation. There are "three (mutually and profoundly interconnected) forms of patience for confronting the absence of God. They are called faith, hope, and love."² Patience with God, he surmises, teaches us how to live with God’s mystery and hiddenness, for it is this patience that distinguishes between faith and atheism. Yet, what is it about the manifestation of patience in the life of faith that makes it so attractive, so appealing, so fitting, as to address such non-belief?

      Jürgen Moltmann, in an effort to address God’s apparent absence, contends that Christian theology and the church face "a double crisis: the crisis of relevance and the crisis of identity. When theology and the church endeavor to be relevant to the surrounding pluralistic culture, they face a crisis of identity because they are confronted with conflicting viewpoints. Yet, the more they assert their identity in traditional dogmas, rights and moral notions, the more irrelevant and unbelievable they become."³ Moltmann and others like Wolfhart Pannenberg and Catherine Mowry LaCugna fault classical theism for this dual crisis because God as the infinitely perfect being, for example, seems untouched or unmoved by the suffering and pain of this world. In response to this dual crisis, some capitulate to the cultural ethos of the day, becoming indistinguishable from the culture, while others isolate themselves and withdraw into Christian ghettos failing to engage the culture.⁴ Such responses seem indicative of a bifurcation between theology and life, between theory and praxis. How, then, might we connect orthodoxy with orthopraxy, right thinking or right worship of God with right action?

      Moltmann attempts to navigate between cultural capitulation and isolation by advocating the way of orthopraxy, not in the sense that we begin with right doctrine (orthodoxy) such that a particular insight can be demonstrated by what everyone can experience and check by repeating the experience. Rather, the kind of orthopraxy Moltmann has in mind comes "through verum facere, what everyone is not yet assumed to be able to experience"⁵ such that knowledge of the truth comes through action. This approach is meaningful, though, only if the notion of relation is the central idea of Christian theology. Even Moltmann, though, begins with what he believes to be orthodoxy, namely the dialectic principle: the deity of God is revealed in the paradox of the cross. Thus, to the extent that the Christian life is a form of practice which consists in following the crucified Christ, . . . a theology of the cross is a practical theory.⁶ Although Moltmann seems to identify the problem facing Christian theology and the church, is he able to avoid the extremes of cultural capitulation and isolation as he so desires?

      Elaine Scarry implicitly offers us another approach in her book, On Beauty and Being Just.⁷ In part one of that work, she seeks to ally beauty with truth such that beauty ignites the desire for truth by giving us . . . the experience of conviction and the experience, as well, of error.⁸ Yet, beauty’s association with error in that it brings us into contact with our own capacity for making errors has led many to disassociate beauty and truth and perhaps is why many have exiled beauty from the field of humanities.⁹ Nevertheless, she attempts to redeem beauty, in part two, by refuting the political complaints that insist beauty distracts us from social injustices and even leads us to prolonged stares and gazes that are degrading and destructive. In the end, Scarry argues that our experience of beauty radically decenters us, turning our attention to correct injustices.¹⁰

      Nicholas Wolterstorff, in an essay presented to the National Lilly Fellows Conference in Seattle entitled Beauty and Justice, critiques Scarry’s notion of beauty and how she relates it to justice.¹¹ He rightly surmises that Scarry’s conception of beauty as unity, equality, and symmetry echoes the Romantic ideals of a bygone era that championed the inherent salvific power of art to reshape society. Such notions, Wolterstorff contends, are patently false because of the numerous instances of those who may very well be enamored with beauty but have little regard for justice, not unlike the Germans who supervised the concentration camps during the day [and] attended concerts during the evening and expanded their art collections with paintings plundered from the occupied countries.¹²

      Scarry may very well be on to something, though, in that she has brought beauty into the conversation, forcefully arguing that it is somehow bound up with truth and justice. Wolterstorff seems to concur, although he does not accept the analogies that Scarry sees between beauty and justice. Instead, beauty and justice are two modes of acknowledging worth, two modes of acknowledging excellence.¹³ Nevertheless, both seem to recognize some version of objective realism in which beauty and justice are connected. That being the case, if we are to link orthodoxy and orthopraxy it seems that beauty has a role to play as Graham Ward suggests when he reasons for the inseparability of a Christian aesthetics from a Christian epistemology, and both from a theological ethics.¹⁴ Yet, what do we mean by theological aesthetics, and how might we incorporate the notion of God’s beauty into our theological discourse, particularly given its supposed exilic status?

      Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Notebooks, 1914–1916, makes an astute observation regarding the relationship between art and ethics: "The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics."¹⁵ In other words, Wittgenstein connects aesthetics and ethics through the lens of eternity, similar to Scarry’s acknowledgement when she says, what is beautiful is in league with what is true because truth abides in the immortal sphere.¹⁶ Herein lie the rudiments for addressing the relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxy—the Way of incarnate Beauty—a way that has received much scrutiny and disdain, particularly in Protestant theology.

      Although the burgeoning discipline of theological aesthetics has emerged over the last three decades where beauty appears to be awakening from its slumber, a reticence to integrate God’s beauty into Protestant theological discourse still persists. This reticence seems to stem, in part, from fears that associate beauty with human eros and with the seduction of humanity into an ornamental and innocuous pleasant or into some ethereal reality in an effort to escape the bane and pain of human existence. Yet, I wonder if we can afford not to speak of beauty and continue to perpetuate this gap in our knowledge of God as Karl Barth suggests.¹⁷ In my estimation, greater danger lies in omitting beauty from our theological discourse, furthering the bifurcation between theology and life and diminishing Christian worship, witness, and wisdom.

      This book, based on my doctoral dissertation, seeks to contribute to this ongoing renaissance in theological aesthetics that strives to answer Karl Barth’s charge, not by merely delineating God’s beauty as some have done but by explicating the interconnectedness of his beauty with human action and flourishing to address, in part, this supposed bifurcation between theology and life. To do so, I offer a trinitarian account of God’s beauty noting particularly how it artfully renews human imagining, which is essential not only for human being but also for creative expression and ethical action. The key idea, God’s beauty-in-act, is understood through the risen Christ’s actions in the Spirit by following a biblical trajectory found in the pattern of the Suffering Servant motif in the Old Testament and Christ’s death and resurrection in the New. Hence, we see God’s beauty-in-act radiating the splendor of God’s multifaceted, self-giving, dynamic love that draws perceivers into these divine patterns of living and being. These fitting movements of the risen Christ in the Spirit serve as the patterns that educate and form the imaginations of properly perceiving subjects, enabling them to envision their role and to perform their parts creatively and fittingly in God’s drama of redemption. In doing so, human beings flourish as they jettison false identities and realities of their own making that are incommensurate with God’s purpose found in Christ by the Spirit.

      1. Halík, Patience with God, ix.

      2. Ibid.

      3. Moltmann, Crucified God,

      7

      .

      4. Ibid.,

      8

      –

      15

      ,

      18

      –

      23

      .

      5. Ibid.,

      11

      ,

      27

      .

      6. Ibid.,

      11

      ,

      25

      ,

      27

      .

      7. Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just.

      8. Ibid.,

      52

      .

      9. Ibid.,

      31

      ,

      52

      –

      57

      .

      10. Ibid.,

      58

      ,

      109

      –

      24

      .

      11. I am grateful to Joice Pang for providing me with a copy of Wolterstorff’s lecture.

      12. Wolterstorff, Beauty and Justice,

      6

      .

      13. Ibid.,

      19

      .

      14. Ward, Beauty of God,

      64

      .

      15. Wittgenstein, Notebooks,

      1914

      –

      1916

      ,

      82

      . Commenting on a previous draft, I am grateful to Kevin Vanhoozer who reminded me of this quotation.

      16. Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just,

      31

      . Scarry maintains, though, that acquiescing to the existence of an immortal realm is not necessary because beauty’s enthralling self-showing incites in us the longing for truth as it brings us into contact with our own capacity for making errors (ibid.).

      17. Barth, CD

      2

      /

      1

      ,

      651

      –

      52

      .

      Acknowledgments

      While working on this project, I was fortunate to have witnessed and experienced several fitting performances, which I must acknowledge, in the midst of a variety of difficult circumstances that almost eclipsed this project’s completion. Like many, I stretched myself to the limits, probing the boundaries of my finitude and falling exhausted in my efforts to maintain a work-life balance while raising a family, writing full-time, and working part-time as an engineer. Throughout the process, Balthasar’s remarks reverberated in my mind: It is not possible to make a clean break between [writing and living].¹⁸ So, writing and living and living and writing never seemed to separate as various themes of this project surfaced in my life and my life surfaced in various aspects of this project. Fortunately, I was a part of several supportive communities that provided council and encouragement along the way, without which I would not have been able to complete this work.

      The value and importance of living in community with the people of God has no greater voice than Willem VanGemeren, whose pastoral and scholarly wisdom brought comfort on more than one occasion, both in private and in public. I owe him a debt of gratitude for his insistence that we live in community and not attempt to walk this academic path alone. His words would often be the impetus for making sure I stayed connected with my peers even when I was no longer living in the Chicagoland area. I owe much to the doctoral community at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for my spiritual and academic formation. Another important member of my community to whom I extend my sincerest appreciation is Graham Cole, whose sharp intellect and apt ability to ask just the right question often stimulated my thinking beyond the classroom. His writings on the Holy Spirit and research on religious experience have left an indelible impression as this book shows. And to Ben Mitchell, who gave more of his time than I am sure he had to give to listen to and counsel with me on numerous ecclesial matters. His familiar face while we were at Oxford, for the briefest of times, brought the assurance of conviction as I wrestled with various doctrinal matters, learning better to extend grace than be right. Many thanks as well to Fr. Francis Caponi who graciously provided insightful and instructive comments on my interpretations of relational theism and Hans Urs von Balthasar while preparing the manuscript for publication.

      To my Doktorvater, Kevin Vanhoozer, I am grateful for and shaped by his modeling of the intellectual virtues as he patiently and wisely guided me through this process. His concern, prayers, words of encouragement, and constructive criticisms were always fitting. His influence on my life extends beyond the classroom and this project, as his family—Sylvie, Mary, and Emma—has shaped mine, giving us a sense of what it looks like to live with a Gospel-formed imagination.

      Particular mention must be made of the care rendered by two churches: Christ Church, Lake Forest and Tabernacle Baptist Church. Christ Church loved my family immeasurably and shared life’s burdens with us while we were at Trinity. We are grateful for the lasting friendships and the continuing community. To Tabernacle Baptist Church who welcomed a stranger into their midst by providing a quiet and spacious place to write and keep my research. I would not have been able to complete this book without these provisions.

      Para mi familia—I use the Spanish language because of the cultural implications associated with the importance of family within the Hispanic community, from which my childhood was formed. There is little doubt that I would have finished if it were not for the Henry and Garrett families. While having their support throughout, both families came along side of my family particularly during the writing phase that gave me the freedom to devote my energies to writing without having to worry about the necessary essentials for living. To my aunt, Anna Melton, whose generosity still never ceases to amaze as she took an abiding interest in my work, praying and encouraging until the end.

      To my wife Rebecca, who has faced and continues to deal with some of life’s chronic afflictions, I know of no other person I would rather share this life with than her. Her constant encouragement, loveable sense of humor, and insistence on having tea while reading poetry kept our hearts knit together, for which I am immensely grateful. And to my son, Owen, whose love for life, endless questions, and colorful artwork that adorns my office always brings joy. Such are the reasons why I dedicate this book to all of them.

      I have endeavored to make sense out of the practical shapes of words by fashioning them in such a way to explore a particular aspect of the frameworks and structures of meaning within which we live and understand our everyday experiences. I hope to have communicated in a way that is clear, relevant, and meaningful for graduate students interested in dissolving the supposed bifurcation between theology and life and for academic specialists interested in the inter-relatedness of the doctrine of God, theological aesthetics, and theological ethics. I, and I alone, am fully responsible for the errors and misjudgments that arise within this work. My desire is that this book honors the triune God, be of some service to followers of Christ, and to those in the public square interested in contemplating the implications of God’s beauty for human flourishing.

      18. Balthasar, My Work,

      17

      .

      Abbreviations

      CD Church Dogmatics

      GL Glory of the Lord

      KB Theology of Karl Barth

      NIDNT New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology

      NIDOTT New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology

      ST Summa teologica

      TD Theo-Drama

      TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament

      TL Theo-Logic

      Introduction

      The Scandalous Cross?

      Does the cross of Christ, construed as an instrument of suffering and torture, present a dilemma for classical theism? Contemporary theologians like Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Catherine Mowry LaCugna, and others believe that it does. They contend that classical theism creates a metaphysical gap between who God reveals himself to be ad extra in Christ as the One who suffers on our behalf and who he really is in se as the infinitely perfect being untouched or unmoved by such suffering. Such commitments, they contend, render the Gospel impotent in a modern world. With all the suffering and turmoil of the twentieth century in mind, these theologians wonder how a loving God cannot suffer ad intra with his creation, freely limiting his sovereignty to be immanently present with them. Inherent within this question are concerns to safeguard God’s love, which is rooted in a relational ontology, and to present God as one who cares for his creation. Why, though, do these relational theists attempt to levy such damning charges against classical theism?

      The Scandalous Cross: Relational Theism’s Assessment of Classical Theism

      Many relational theists have noble apologetic concerns regarding Christianity’s place in the modern world. During the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when modern science was flourishing and the world had suffered two world wars, God was declared dead while others sought the historical Jesus. In a postwar era fueled by historical critical methods of biblical interpretation, theologians questioned the classical understanding of God because of its inability to address the contemporary problems of the modern era. The Western church and her classical theism faced a growing crisis of relevance and credibility, Moltmann remarks.¹ This crisis of relevance, according to Moltmann, is due to the church’s inability to reform itself and respond to modern concerns because the church simply continued its previous form and ideology, [which] was in the process of losing contact with the scientific, social, and political reality of the world around it, and in many respects had already lost it.² The modern Western church’s obstinate adherence to classical theism, relational theists contend, guarantees Christian theology’s irrelevance in the world and the church. They assert that nothing less than the Gospel, with its socio-political and economic implications, is at stake in this growing crisis. Something must be done in its defense.

      Classical Theism Defined According to Its Critics

      A summary description of relational theism’s understanding of classical theism is important to articulate before detailing their apologetics for Christianity. Relational theists depict classical theism as conceiving first of God’s oneness and then of his threeness. Such a starting point allows classical theism to argue not only for divine unity but also for the rational existence of God. In doing so, God is a single unified substance, a single unified subject. Conceiving of God in this manner, Christianity at its earliest stages was able to import Greek philosophical concepts like, infinity, immortality, immutability, and impassibility, ". . . certain characteristics of the cosmos, and these are marked by negation. That is the via negativa."³ Most notably, the Greek mind prized the immutability of God absent any form of human passion, from which God’s impassibility, the doctrine that God being perfect, nothing can affect the divine nature, was derived.⁴ These brief statements encapsulate the perspective of relational theists regarding classical theism and its roots in classical Greek philosophy. These are the ideas, relational theists contend, that are smuggled into the Christian tradition through Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, evidenced most notably in the doctrine of impassibility. Consequently, relational theists cite classical theism as the culprit for Christianity’s contemporary identity crisis and lack of relevance in a pluralistic world.

      Relational Theism’s Critique of Classical Theism

      Relational theologians who identify with the concerns of Christianity’s irrelevance in the modern era embark upon a theological project that first identifies when the church’s theology fell from grace and then proceeds to a theological solution that attempts to avoid these historical pitfalls while addressing the concerns of modern society. This project, according to Wolfhart Pannenberg, begins with Albert Ritschl and has as its goal to purify [Christian theology] from the various metaphysical influences that the so-called Hellenization of Christianity had on the Christian doctrines of God, world, and humanity.⁵

      Historically, the argument begins by suggesting that the starting point of the Church Fathers, una substantia, is problematic as well as the division between De Deo uno and De Deo trino. Consequently, if the real God is known as one, the tacking on of his threeness simply appears as an unnecessary complicating of the simple belief in God, as Colin Gunton surmises.⁶ Moltmann, for example, contends that Augustine’s and Aquinas’s belief in the one supreme subject and single divine substance as the necessary supposition to the three divine persons allows both to import Greek notions of divinity, identifying the divine as one, necessary, immovable, infinite, unconditional, immortal, and impassible.⁷ Moltmann identifies further evidence of this in theological textbooks, both Catholic and Protestant, that divide the doctrine of God, first, into a treatment on De Deo uno and then on De Deo trino, particularly Aquinas. In doing so, natural theology with its cosmological proofs takes precedent over divine revelation, thereby establishing a generic structure into which one pours divine revelation; yet, divine revelation has no influence on that structure. By allowing divine unity to precede divine threeness, salvation history is deemed irrelevant, Moltmann maintains, leading to the disintegration of the doctrine of the Trinity in abstract monotheism.⁸

      LaCugna also argues that the artificial distinction between the ontological and the economic Trinity adhered to by classical theism detracts from the Gospel. The quintessential doctrine that demonstrates this artificiality is the doctrine of impassibility. While criticizing the mysticism of the Cappadocians regarding God’s ineffability, LaCugna remarks, How could the immutable, impassible God become incarnate and suffer in Christ? [This] God could not. How did the Cappadocians come to this conclusion? LaCugna answers, Greek patristic theology took over from Greek philosophy the classical divine attributes . . . and applied them to the God incarnate in Christ, thereby denying any real suffering in the Logos and asserting that Christ suffers in his humanity, not in his divinity. She concludes that this decision to preserve both divine impassibility and the Nicene dogma of homoousios contributes to the demise of the Trinity and allows the attributes of God taken from philosophy to remain intact, rather at odds with the living God of the Bible.⁹ How do relational theists attempt to address the irrelevance of trinitarian theology as well as this supposed metaphysical gap between who God is in se and who he is ad extra?

      Solving Christian Theology’s Crisis of Relevance

      Each relational theist mentioned has a unique contribution to this question, yet all seem to follow the same general approach—De Deo uno is derived from De Deo trino. In other words, as Moltmann says, We are beginning with the trinity of the Persons and shall then go on to ask about the unity.¹⁰ The formal principle for this approach to God’s nature is Rahner’s rule: "The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and vice versa.¹¹ Although each nuances Rahner’s Rule and departs from it in various ways, each affirms, as LaCugna surmises, that the God of Jesus Christ whom we come to know in the Spirit is the eternal, free, absolutely mysterious God who exists as the mystery of love and communion."¹² In doing so, there is no deus absconditus lurking behind the deus revelatus as there is in classical theism.

      Moltmann builds upon Rahner’s Rule by attempting to develop a social doctrine of the Trinity. He reasons that we understand the scriptures as the testimony to the history of the Trinity’s relations of fellowship, which are open to men and women, and open to the world. This trinitarian hermeneutic leads us to think in terms of relationships and communities.¹³ Two assumptions buttress this move toward a relational ontology. First, the flow of redemptive history becomes constitutive of God’s being when relational theists employ Rahner’s vice versa to equate the economic and the immanent Trinity. Moltmann argues that "the economic Trinity not only reveals the immanent Trinity; it also has a retroactive effect on it, which is why the meaning of the cross of the Son on Golgatha reaches right into the heart of the immanent Trinity."¹⁴ Thus, God’s being is in his becoming and is constituted by relations—relations to himself and to the world.

      Second, these relations presume that God’s eternal nature is love, a self-giving love, and is thus God with and for us. As Moltmann observes, If we follow through the idea that the historical passion of Christ reveals the eternal passion of God, then the self-sacrifice of love is God’s eternal nature.¹⁵ God’s love is not self-absorbed or arrogant but is teeming and abundant, seeking communion with all his creation. This kind of love makes God vulnerable to and capable of suffering because God, as perfect love, is at the same time perfectly selfless, he loves himself in the most extreme and complete self-forsakenness. God lays God open for his future.¹⁶

      LaCugna takes this kind of love a step further by insinuating that God is not God unless he is with us in the economy of redemption: Revealed there is the unfathomable mystery that the life and communion of the divine persons is not ‘intradivine;’ rather, God is ". . . overflowing love, outreaching desire for union with all that God has made. The communion of the divine life is God’s communion with us in Christ and as Spirit."¹⁷ The essence of God is fundamentally linked, then, to his relationship with creation. The turn toward relationality that dominates current trinitarian theological discourse can be attributed, in part, to how relational theists use Rahner’s Rule and their methodology, which conceives of God by moving from three persons to divine unity.¹⁸

      Challenges to the Solution Offered by Relational Theism

      There is a growing body of literature, though, that challenges the assumptions, methods, and conclusions of relational theism, proceeding generally along historical and theological lines. Historically, patristic scholars like Lewis Ayres, Fergus Kerr, and Paul Gavrilyuk contest the theory of Theology’s Fall into Hellenistic Philosophy by demonstrating that Hellenistic philosophy did not consist of a unified notion of divinity characterized as one, infinite, impassible, removed, and unemotional, but rather was an eclectic, often conflicting, array of conceptions. To say otherwise creates a false dilemma and produces a convenient caricature as an antagonist for relational theism’s theological reconstruction.¹⁹ Theologically, scholars like Paul Molnar, John Cooper, and Ted Peters contend that relational theism domesticates God by blurring or eliminating the Creator-creature distinction.²⁰ Such notions seem to subscribe to pantheistic or panentheistic conceptions of God, which make God dependent upon his creation, compromising his divine freedom and making God in our own image.²¹

      What seems to be uncontested, however, is relational theism’s assessment of the current irrelevance of the Trinity. The Trinity does seem to have little bearing on Protestant theology, particularly the doctrine of God, and the Christian life; yet, it is essential to the Gospel. If this assessment is correct regarding the Trinity’s irrelevance and these recent critiques are enough to cause concern regarding relational theism’s project, what might be the culprit for this current trinitarian crisis of irrelevance?

      The answer is complex and should be nuanced with the appropriate developments regarding the contemporary trends toward the atomization of knowledge, individualism, the supposed superiority of human reason, the emphasis on pragmatism, and the relativistic nature of truth, yet it is beyond the scope of this project to do so. The answer to this question, in part, can be found, ironically, in the writings of these same relational theists. Moltmann and Pannenberg, for example, cite René Descartes as one who furthers and expands the classical theism they oppose, yet they persist in faulting Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas for this current situation.

      Taking my cue from these relational theists, there seems to be more of Enlightenment deism, and specifically perfect being theology, in their understanding of classical theism, rather than Hellenistic philosophy. What I am suggesting is that Descartes and the tradition of perfect being theology, with its notions of perfection, transcendence, and the infinite, reconstructs the classical understanding of God. It is this understanding that relational theists read back into the Christian tradition, creating a false dilemma between classical theism and the living God of the Bible.²² What Gavrilyuk only suggests in saying that enlightenment deism should not be read into the philosophical climate of late antiquity,²³ I attempt to make clear in the next section.

      Golgotha: Perfect Being Theology as the Foil of Relational Theists

      Golgotha, for Moltmann, is the essential point in redemptive history that reveals the eternal heart of the Trinity and is the inescapable revelation of [God’s] nature in a world of evil and suffering, which is why, he believes, the cross becomes a scandal for classical theism.²⁴ Perhaps, though, Golgotha continues to be a scandal, but for relational rather than classical theism, since relational theists conflate perfect being theology with classical theism and trade one notion of perfection (i.e., a transcendental ontology) for another (i.e., relational ontology).

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