Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology of God

Trinity in Process:

A Relational Theology of God

Edited by Joseph A. Bracken and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki

New York, Continuum, 1997. 236 pp. $34.95.

Theology Today, Apr 1998 by Williams, Stephen N

One hundred years ago, one might have predicted that at the end of this millennium, theologians would be churning out material on eschatology but that work on the Trinity would have receded. In point of fact, while eschatology may have ushered the new century in, the Trinity seems to be seeing the old millennium out. This collection of essays swells the literature by looking at the doctrine of the Trinity in process perspective. Three essayists (John Cobb, David Griffin, and Lewis Ford) deal with "The Trinity and Classical Whiteheadian Metaphysics," while six consider "The Trinity and Modified Whiteheadian Metaphysics," two emphasizing God as Tripersonal (Gregory Boyd and Joseph Bracken), four focusing on God as One (Philip Clayton, Roland Faber, Majorie Suchocki, and Bernard Lee).

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The essayists handle the relation of process to trinitarian thought quite differently. Suchocki, for example, attempts to press Cobb's thought in a trinitarian direction, noting that, both in this volume and elsewhere, Cobb himself does not put the Trinity high on his agenda. Cobb himself argues that no doctrine of the Trinity is actually required within a process perspective. Ford lays out a "contingent trinitarianism," as opposed to what is metaphysically necessary. This includes an engagement with Boyd's view of sociality as expressed in his Trinity and Process, while Boyd himself defends the self-sufficient sociality of God by a criticism of Hartshorne. Griffin's delineation of "A Naturalistic Trinity" reiterates process complaints against supernaturalism, while Bracken opts for panentheism and Clayton for idealism in the process-Trinity engagement. Faber argues that a modified theory of analogy effectively mediates between process and trinitarian theologies and Lee offers a reworking of trinitarian conceptuality in terms of the Jewish Dabhar as opposed to the Graeco-Christian Logos idea. All in all, we have the diverse more than the doctrinaire.

This collection will appeal to at least two kinds of readers. The first constitutes those attracted by process thought or a theology such as Pannenberg's, which provides significant points of contact. The second constitutes those attracted by the play of metaphysical ideas. But why this (morally) churlish and (aesthetically) deficient refusal to identify a third kind, namely those generally interested in the doctrine of the Trinity? First, because the authors, for all their flexibility, assume some good will towards process metaphysics. Second, because, for all their differences, they assume the propriety of their metaphysical style. Within these parameters, the collection is quite solid, some essays inevitably stronger than others, displaying the creative vigour and metaphysical liveliness that accords with the process tradition.

But, however one reacts to that tradition, the volume as a whole works with a questionable (some will say, unacceptable) notion of what constitutes a rigorously trinitatian theology. Some observations on classical trinitarianism require correction. Ford wrongly renders the Latin as una substantia in tres personae. Clayton states: "According to the classical view, the eternal Son is identical with an individual human being, Jesus, at least in one nature (because Jesus' human nature is not taken into the Trinity itself)." This forgets both the Cyrilline insistence that the person of the Word is the ground of the union of the two natures and the development of an enhypostatic understanding of the humanity of Christ. Most importantly, however we describe the emergence of fourth-century trinitarianism, it exhibits, in its varieties, a determination to derive doctrine inter alia from putatively dominical, apostolic, or prophetic teaching, couched in propositions. This is not the whole story, and we can argue about how much of the story it is, but it is an inalienable element. Trinitarian doctrine, then, does not simply emerge as a conceptualization of experience, open to a subsequent imaginative reconceptualization using traditional symbols and identifying their experiential root, all within a process metaphysic. It specifies relations between particular persons, irreducible to patterned abstraction. Briefly, the collection needs, but does not supply, a rigorous specification of what indeed constitutes "trinitarian" thought. Clayton (whose essay is one of the better ones) writes: "I have maintained . . . that God is multiple. Furthermore, I have tried to show that a dualistic theory of God is insufficient, that some third moment is required in order to mediate between infinite and finite, ground and consequent. The position is, thus, clearly trinitarian in at least this minimal sense." My question is: on what criterion is it trinitarian?

There is no denying the durability of process thought and trinitarian doctrine. As to compatibility and truth, the debate will doubtless go on.