Trinity After Pentecost

Atkinson

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781621897095
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book views the triune God from a Pentecostal viewpoint. In so doing, it offers a fresh articulation of the theology of the Trinity that starts with Pentecost and with the Spirit. It concludes that the Trinity cannot be adequately appreciated using any single model--whether social, modal, or psychological. Instead, it presents three models--relational, instrumental, and substantial--that need to be held in paradoxical tension with one another. Of these, the relational is the foremost. Pentecost offers rich potential for seeing these relations between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as a dynamic reciprocal dance in which each person empties self in order to exalt the other.

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Introductory Matters

Aims

This book aims to offer an account of the Trinity from a Pentecostal viewpoint. My theological perspective as a classical Pentecostal, in line with other expressions of charismatic and wider renewal Christianity, pays particular attention to the Holy Spirit. That is, it is pneumatologically orientated. Thus I seek to offer an account of the Trinity that is pneumatologically driven, and more specifically, that takes full account, in church history and in believers’ personal histories, of “Pentecost,” which term I will consider later in this chapter. I agree with Amos Yong that “theology is only fully trinitarian when due attention is given to pneumatology.”1 Such attention I will seek to provide.

In doing this, I do not claim to be proposing an understanding of the Trinity that differs markedly from those that have preceded it. There are certain fresh emphases and insights but overall the picture of the Trinity that emerges is fairly traditional. What is new is its method.2 It is not new to start trinitarian explorations “from below,” in other words from the history of Jesus of Nazareth and the thinking of his first followers, as opposed to “from above,” in the sense of beginning with mysterious abstractions about being, person, and process that bear no observable relation to human experience of God. What is less explored, however, is detailed thinking about the Trinity that starts with Pentecost. This I attempt here.

As with my previous book, I also have a more general aim. I will simply repeat here what I stated then:

I trust that this book will help to bridge the divide that exists between academic theological study and current Pentecostal church practice and mission. In my own context, this divide is still wide and deep: it needs all the long, strong bridges that can be mustered! I hope to show that academic theological study does have its uses, and that those uses are relevant to Pentecostals who for whatever reason do not intend to or do not have the opportunity to engage in such study themselves. With this in mind, I try to write in a way that is reasonably accessible for people who may not be used to scholarly language.3

Aims do not arise in a vacuum. My own aim arises from three particular challenges that I perceive facing Pentecostal trinitarianism and from the potential I see for Pentecostal insights to contribute significantly to trinitarian thinking in general. In other words, I think Pentecostal trinitarianism needs to be robust so that it can provide an answer to those who regard trinitarianism as misguided or unnecessary, and beyond that I think that general trinitarian thinking can perhaps be enhanced through the application of Pentecostal thinking.

Challenges

Trinitarian Pentecostalism faces three challenges that make it especially important for a rigorous Pentecostal trinitarianism to be advanced. The first and second of these arise from within Pentecostalism itself; the third lies further afield.

From within Pentecostalism, I see two problems. First, Pentecostals who are trinitarian ignore the Trinity in practice if not in theory. Secondly, the “unitarian” voices of Oneness Pentecostalism raise a challenge. If one can be Pentecostal without being trinitarian, what if any is the significance of our trinitarianism? From the wider theological realm comes another more diffuse and less definable challenge: a form of trinitarianism that in reality is not far removed from “binitarianism.” I will introduce these challenges a little more fully before proceeding to consider how this book will go about mounting its advance of a Pentecostal trinitarianism.

The “Trinitarian” Challenge

The first challenge we face is that the Trinity has largely been ignored by Pentecostals. Academic Pentecostal theology has come on in leaps and bounds in the generation since Clark Pinnock wrote, “Watch out you evangelicals—the young Pentecostal scholars are coming!”4 While a wealth of subjects has been tackled by the new generation of Pentecostal scholars, it is unsurprising that much of this focus has been on pneumatology. Thus the chapter in Keith Warrington’s Pentecostal Theology titled “God,” which is 113 pages in length, devotes no fewer than eighty-seven of these pages to a section titled “The Holy Spirit.”5 What is perhaps more surprising is that this interest in the Holy Spirit has not been translated into more interest in the Trinity. Indeed, Warrington’s chapter on “God,” just mentioned, has a section titled “Trinity” that is a mere four pages long. Warrington is no exception here. While whole books—and many of them, at that—have been written by Pentecostals on the Spirit and the Spirit’s activities, little serious scholarly work has been offered from a Pentecostal perspective on the nature of the Trinity.6

This gap is to be found not only in academic writing but also in Pentecostal church practice. Mark Cartledge’s observations of a typical British Pentecostal church in its worship identify that there is focus on the person of Jesus but that this focus is only placed in “a general theistic context” rather than being placed in “an explicitly Trinitarian framework.”7 Anybody with a reasonable acquaintance of what Cartledge calls “ordinary Pentecostal theology”8 will, I imagine, readily recognize that his findings could be multiply replicated. Pentecostals “in the pew” are not encouraged to think about the Trinity, either by the church year with its Trinity Sunday, or by the wording of prayers led extempore in public worship, or by the wording of many contemporary worship songs.9 I do not mean to suggest that this weakness is unique to Pentecostalism. I was recently in a Methodist church in which the preaching on the Trinity was by no means profound. But at least the fact that it was Trinity Sunday that day led to a choice of hymns and a sermon topic that acknowledged and celebrated trinitarian doctrine.

One is justified in wondering whether ignoring the Trinity matters. After all, even Pentecostalism’s pneumatological distinctives are pragmatic rather than ontological—we concern ourselves more with what the Spirit does than with who or what exactly the Spirit is. And when it comes to the Father and the Son, trinitarian Pentecostalism does not generally offer distinctive viewpoints. Thus, one might argue, it is sufficient for Pentecostals to rely on the theologizing of previous generations on the one hand and contemporaries from other ecclesial and theological streams on the other.

I am not convinced, however, that such a policy is the best way forward. Jürgen Moltmann has criticized the church for being, in recent times, too pragmatic.10 This criticism is especially true of us Pentecostals. To those of my tribe who argue that theological study of the Trinity can play no useful part in the God-given mission of the church, I point out, with Moltmann,11 that part of that mission is worship. Pentecostals can find themselves in the position of loving God dearly but taking too little notice of what God is like. However, it is appropriate to get to know the one we love. Furthermore, and turning from worship to works, it is surely the case that “the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits” (Dan 11:32, KJV). If one tries to determine what was the key to Jesus’ success in ministry, as depicted in the Gospels, one might highlight, among other factors, his clear and close knowledge of his divine Father’s heart and mind. I believe that meditation on the nature of the Trinity can in fact enhance one’s mission to the church and the world, through being encouraged, challenged, and informed.

That this claim may be true is attested by the ways in which the revival of interest in trinitarianism that has occurred in the last couple of generations is not only theoretical. It has been matched by a concern to apply trinitarian thinking to Christian practice—and no doubt to consider ways in which Christian experience and practice might illumine trinitarian doctrine, for gone are the days when the flow of thought between theory and practice has been regarded as all moving in one direction.12 In all this, I trust that the book will be informative and useful for Pentecostals, but I do not see why it might not also be just as useful to anyone who has not thought through trinitarianism to any serious extent or considered ways in which relating to God and people impacts and is impacted by how we understand God as Trinity.

The “Unitarian” Challenge

I place the word “unitarian” in inverted commas because Oneness Pentecostalism is far removed from versions of unitarianism that deny the deity of Christ.13 In fact, in terms of its view of Jesus it could not be fu...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Introductory Matters
• Chapter 2: Pentecost and the Spirit
• Chapter 3: Pentecost and the Son
• Chapter 4: Pentecost and the Father
• Chapter 5: Pentecost and the Trinity
• Bibliography