Space in the Trinity and in pastoral care

A central feature of the life of the Trinity is contrast without conflict: God is three and God is one. This dynamic has a spatial reference. The Three draw close to each other in the intimacy of love, but they also give each other space to be. This dynamic is a necessary condition for mature relationships on the human level. It is argued that effective pastoral counseling involves both moving in close through empathy and acceptance, and creating appropriate distance through a process that Martin Buber refers to as confirmation. Confirmation involves wrestling with the other person to help her or him actualize her or his God-given moral and spiritual potential.     

Trinity Talk, Again

Abstract :  The doctrine of the Trinity has, in the past couple of decades, reclaimed its central place in Christian God talk. Theologians are now using it to render every doctrine more explicitly Christian, and to sharpen interreligious dialogue. There is a strong drive toward vindicating the doctrine as relevant, but also a recognition that if it is truly a teaching about God it must remain somewhat theoretical. Finally, the field of historical theology is undertaking a fresh examination of the basic primary texts of trinitarian theology.     

Trinity, Temporality, and Open Theism

A number of thinkers today, including open theists, find reasons to attribute temporality to God. According to Robert W. Jenson, the Trinity is indispensable to a Christian concept of God, and divine temporality is essential to the meaning of the Trinity. Following the lead of early Christian thought, Jenson argues that the “persons” of the Trinity are relations, and these relations are temporal. Jenson’s insights are obscured, however, by problematic references to time as a sphere to which God is related. Schubert M. Ogden gives the notion of divine temporality coherent content by arguing that God’s actuality is best understood as an unending succession of experiences. This paper was delivered in the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.     

Trinity,Love, and Pastoral Mirroring

This paper focuses on the positive mirroring (admiration, acceptance, and approval) that Heinz Kohut posits as the primary healing agency in work with clients with narcissistic personality disorder. Donald Capps has demonstrated the pastoral significance of Kohut's theory. Capps' work is extended through an analysis of the role love plays in mirroring. It is suggested that mirror love has agapic, erotic, and philial elements. The loving action of the counselor is viewed as an image of the love of the triune God.     

Trinity,Filioque and Semantic Ascent

It is difficult to reconcile claims about the Father's role as the progenitor of Trinitarian Persons with commitment to the equality of the persons, a problem that is especially acute for Social Trinitarians. I propose a metatheological account of the doctrine of the Trinity that facilitates the reconciliation of these two claims. On the proposed account, ‘Father’ is systematically ambiguous. Within economic contexts, those which characterize God's relation to the world, ‘Father’ refers to the First Person of the Trinity; within theological contexts, which purport to describe intra-Trinitarian relations, it refers to the Trinity in toto-thus in holding that the Son and Holy Spirit proceed from the Father we affirm that the Trinity is the source and unifying principle of Trinitarian Persons. While this account is solves a nagging problem for Social Trinitarians it is theologically minimalist to the extent that it is compatible with both Social Trinitarianism and Latin Trinitarianism, and with heterodox Modalist and Tri-theist doctrines as well. Its only theological cost is incompatibility with the Filioque Clause, the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son—and arguably that may be a benefit.

Trinity and Creation

A theology of creation requires clarity about trinitarian doctrine, especially the relation of the one divine essence to the three persons, the distinction between immanent and transitive acts, and the indivisibility of God's outer works. The triune God is one undivided essence in an irreducible threefold personal modification. The persons of the godhead are distinguished from each other by mutual relations and by each person's proper characteristics; these relations constitute God's immanent perfection anterior to creation. The work of creation is a non-necessary, novel and voluntary work of the Trinity. As an outer work it demonstrates God's unity: the work of creation is not divisible into three distinct actions. But distinct and eminent appropriation of specific acts to specific persons is permissible if each person is understood as a mode of the one divine essence. Creation is thus a common work of the undivided three-in-one; there are not three creators, but three who create.     

内在三一和经世三一——论卡尔·巴特和T.F.托伦斯的三位一体神学

本文讨论了现代基督教三位一体神学的巴特和托伦斯的基本框架.从三个方面阐释了其上帝观的基本内容(1)自我启示的上帝与内在三一/经世三一的关系;(2)内在三一/经世三一和homoousia(本质同一)的关系;(3)现代基督教上帝观与古典基督教上帝观的视界融合.     

The meanings of silence: Wittgensteinian contextualism and polyphony

Radical feminists have argued that there are normative exclusions that have silenced certain voices and have rendered certain meanings unintelligible. Some Wittgensteinians (including some Wittgensteinian feminists) have argued that these radical feminists fall into a philosophical illusion by appealing to the notions of 'intelligible nonsense' and 'inexpressible meanings', an illusion that calls for philosophical therapy. In this paper I diagnose and criticize the therapeutic dilemmathat results from this interpretation of Wittgenstein's contextualism. According to this dilemma, if something is meaningful, it must be expressible from the perspective of the participantin language-games; and if it is not so expressible, it is not meaningful at all. I argue that this is a false dilemma that rests on the untenable internalist notion of a unified 'participant's perspective'. I propose an alternative contextualist view that underscores the polyphonyof language-games, that is, the irreducible multiplicity of perspectives always present in discursive practices (if only implicitly and in embryo). Through a discussion of the different meanings of silence, my polyphonic contextualism tries to show that our linguistic practices always exhibit an irreducible diversity and heterogeneity of points of view that cannot be subsumed under a unified perspective.     

Ethical reflection and pastoral care,part II

A previous article argued for the relevance of theological ethics to pastoral counseling. This article suggests an ethical method with five levels of rationality. These levels enable a practitioner to move from concrete interaction with persons to the most abstract generalizations about the nature of God and human life. Such a method describes a helpful way of bringing theological/ethical concern to counseling in a nonmoralistic style.     

Ethical reflection and pastoral care,part I

Many authors are calling pastoral counseling to give greater attention to issues of morality and ethics in the healing ministries. This article summarizes the main positions in theological ethics and argues that the ethic of character is the most appropriate form for the practice of pastoral counseling.Professor Poling is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Bethany Theological Seminary, Oak Brook, IL 60521. Part II of his article will appear in the Spring, 1984 issue.     

Aquinas, the Trinity and the Limits of Understanding

Abstract:   Thomas's trinitarian doctrine is commonly criticized as being abstract and unbiblical; several writers have offered defences against this charge, but these perhaps ignore too much the genuinely reticent and apophatic aspects of Thomas's thought. In three particular places, it is argued, Thomas can be read as deliberately saying things that are unexplained and unexplainable. The areas considered are: the notion of processions in God; the presentation of the persons as subsistent relations; and the relationship between the subsistent relations and the divine essence.