Recently I finished reading "Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine" by Keith Ward. It is a stunning and masterful restatement of the idea of the Trinity in light of the findings of modern science and the philosophy of personal idealism. In it, he lays out a powerful case for why the Trinity should be conceived as three Intersubjective Relations within One Divine Self, rather than as three Independent Persons in a Community of Three Divine Selves. I have written before about the difference between this "One Self" or "One Consciousness" view of the Trinity versus a "Three Self" or "Three Consciousness" view of the Trinity.
I am fundamentally convinced that a "One Self" view is more adequate view because it more clearly affirms the oneness, singularity, and uniqueness of God. The "Three Self" view can easily fall into a form of Polytheism called "Tritheism" because the Three Selves of the Trinity are not bound by anything other than mutual agreement. However, as Ward notes in Chapter 37, there is a convergence between One Self and Three Self views of the Trinity, because the Infinity of God is too great to capture in human language, and because each model brings strength and weaknesses. In particular, the One Self view of the Trinity tends to erase real distinctness and otherness in Godself, and thus tends to erase true community in Godself, thus making it hard to fully affirm that "God is Love" (1John 4.8). For God to be Love, rather than God merely choosing to act in Love toward creatures, it seems there needs to be genuine relationally and otherness and community in Godself.
With this concern in mind, I wrote Dr. Ward two letters while reading the book. He generously answered both, but because I neither want to portray myself as being in conflict with him (if that even happened), nor as him endorsing any of my ideas (if that even happened), I will not publish his replies. I will only say that Dr. Ward is as insightful as he is kind, and I have enjoyed my correspondence with him.
LETTER 1
I am almost done with Christ and Cosmos, and I wanted to email you this before I got to the finale in Part V of the book. Because the emotional and spiritual effect on me thus far has been interesting.
I quite enjoyed Parts I-III, and they laid out cogently many arguments and themes I was fairly well acquainted with. But I have found Part IV to be a difficult read for two reasons: First your unremitting criticism of the Social Trinitarian tradition reads very much like a debunking of the entire Trinitarian tradition. It is hard, in the depths of Part IV, to remember that you actually have another Trinitarian model you will be presenting and defending. Second, you really deconstruct the idea of “God is Love” to such an extent that it feels as if you are denying that “Love” is even a good descriptor of God’s nature or character. If I did not know your writings well, I might well think that you were on the way to arguing that God was both merely Unitarian and fairly unconcerned.
I know that what you are actually opposing is a kind of naive Social Trinitarianism of three Independent Persons, which borders on tritheism, and is a hinderance to inter-faith dialogue. I also know that where you are eventually going is toward a model of Triune Intersubjective Relations (instead of Independent Persons as separate centers of consciousness). Instead, what I expect is that you will land somewhere around the Divine Consciousness being expressed intersubjectively as feeling and knowing and acting, and experienced in primordial, expressive, and unitive forms, as Father, Son, and Spirit respectively.
But this conclusion is really not evident after the full broadside on Social Trinitarianism that is Part IV.
May I also suggest that your supposition that God contains Philokalia is a robust and adequate basis for saying that God is Love. On your account, God contains the possibility for every conceivable Good in Godself, and God enjoys and values that Good so much that God decides to actualize it in at least one, and perhaps an infinite number, of created universes. Thus the Philokalia in God is essentially diffusive, and directly leads to sharing that Infinite Good with a (nearly infinite) number or finite created beings. That seems to be very different from an Aristotelian self-oriented first Principle, in that the contemplation of and enjoyment of the Divine Good leads to the actualization of the Good in a created world. And this seems to be a “thicker” kind of Love in Godself than you suggest.
I also think it could lead to a modification of the Augustinian analogy of God as a perichoresis of Lover-Beloved-Loving which overflows to create a universe out of Love. God is the evaluative Source which longs to express all the possibilities within Godself (as “Father”). God is the complete array of all possibilities and every Good state which could ever obtain in any possible world (as “Son” who fully expresses God). And God is the energy or power to actualize some set (or perhaps all sets) of Good possibilities in at least one created universe (as “Spirit”). The Source (Father) loves the complete array of possible Goods (the Son) and through the Son actualizes these Goods through a process of self-diffusion and kenotic emptying, in the Spirit. These need not be Individual Persons, but they are Distinct Relations which express Godself. And this leads to a robust declaration that God is Love, in that God values and enjoys the Good in Godself (as Philokalia, or Enjoyment Love), and God empties Godself to share the Good with others (as Agape, or Sacrificial Love). This model would also tie in well to the Indian understanding of the Divine as Sat Chit Ananda: The power to actualize any possibility as Spirit, the complete array of all possible knowledge as Son, and the blissful and joyful experiencer of all as Father.
Anyway, I expect that I will be brought to a suitable resolution by the end of the book (like I have on at least a dozen others I have read by you). But I just wanted to share the experience, concerns, and questions it has raised before I get to the end.
Thank you for making me think.
LETTER 2
Thank you for your time and words. As I predicted, you suitably resolved things in Part V (and in your email). It's just that the criticisms raised in Part IV were very cogent and powerful, and apart from context, could easily be taken as a rejection of Trinitarianism altogether, and not merely the Social Model of Trinitarianism. Of course, I am sensitive because my default mode of Trinitarianism trends toward the Social Model. Actually it was your writings that, several years ago, shifted me away from the naive Social Trinitarian view I had held until about 2010.
After reading it all, and being persuaded that a One-Consciousness Model of the Trinity is a more probable explanation of the available evidence, here is my conclusion:
I still think that, even in a One-Consciousness model, it is possible to state "God is Love" in a "thick" way, even apart from interactions with a created world. I think a meaningful analogy would be what happens in the human creative process: Think about a Composer composing a Symphony, or a Writer writing a Character, or an Inventor inventing and Invention. In each case, a Person can conceive of an idea so rich and complex that they actually come to love the Idea and want to share it.
The Idea, thus formed, can take on a life of its own, not fully controllable in the mind of the originator, because of its richness and complexity. In fact, once formed, the Idea begins to work from its own internal logic and suggests back to its Creator new options that arise from the algorithmic working of its own Pattern. The Symphony that writes itself. The Character that seems to make their own choices as the writer pens the story. The Invention that not only does what it was designed to do, but opens up radically new possibilities not grasped until after the Invention was conceived.
And in the creative process, the activity of creating takes on just as much unpredictability and uniqueness as that which is being created. Most geniuses are not able to fully articulate the creative process by which they are inspired and do their best work. It just kind of emerges from them as a creative overflow. And so we have a kind of One-Consciousness model of the Trinity: The Creator; The Idea which focuses their creative potential; And the creative Process by which the Idea emerges. And in a very real sense, the Idea-- the Character, the Symphony, the Invention-- is beloved and admired and enjoyed before it is ever actualized. In fact, the Creator's Love for their Idea is what leads them to actualize it in the world.
Thus, in One Consciousness we have Creator, Idea, and Process as Father, Son/Word, and Spirit. Each distinct relation within the Divine Self has its own "integrity" and "inner logic", but they all fully share in each other as part of the same Conscious movement (perichoresis). And it is this Enjoyment Love (Philokalia) within Godself that leads to the Sacrificial Love (Agape) in the economy of Creation, Redemption, and Consummation.
Anyway, that's my resolution after reading all you had to say. Thank you again for helping me clarify even further my understanding of the Triune Lord of Love.
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