Cultural Encounters: A Journal For The Theology Of Culture Volume 12 Number 1 (Winter 2016) | Page 10
Volume 12, Number 1 A JOURNAL FOR THE THEOLOGY OF CULTURE
giving them one or another wide-lensed rationalization for both their fears
and aspirations. As such, history and theology reinforce one another.
“Those who narrate the story of God clearly wield no little authority,” as
Kevin Vanhoozer rightly summarizes the matter. “The same can be said for
those who narrate the story of the doctrine of God.”4
To challenge these histories is no mere academic trifle, but strikes at the
beating historiographical lifeline of current Trinitarian theology—indeed,
“an appeal to reconsider classical Christian resources that have been
rejected on the basis of misapprehensions cannot but also involve
reconsideration of the histories of theology implicit in all of these recent
proposals.”5 While we contend the Trinity still has immense significance
for all aspects of life, how this has been implemented must in many cases
now be reevaluated in light of recent scholarship. In particular, our concern
for this essay is to observe how historiographical descriptions of something
generally termed “classical theism” and the common juxtaposition of
“Eastern” and “Western” Trinitarianism (referred to in the shorthand—
illicitly, as we shall see—as the “de Regnón paradigm”) often converge to
create a sort of standardized working model or “received story” of
theological (and philosophical) history. Variations of this “received story”
then, in turn, justify, and often ground, constructive decisions made in the
task of systematic theology.
Our argument is that we can account for much of the creation of the
“received story” 6 of “classical theism” and “Eastern vs. Western Trinitarian
theology,” and the specific nature of what an increasing number of diverse
scholars argue are their misrepresentations of the earlier sources. To do
this, we will demonstrate how many participated in, modified, or rejected
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 82.
4
Lewis Ayres, “(Mis)Adventures in Trinitarian Ontology,” in The Trinity and an Entangled
World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology, ed. John Polkinghorne (Grand Rapids:
Eerdman’s Publishing, 2010), 131.
5
Michael Hanby, Augustine and Modernity (London: Routledge, 2003), nicknames this
caricature Augustine’s “grim paternity” for Western thought. He remarks: “In its theological
guise, the reassessment of Augustine is part and parcel of Christianity’s ongoing selfassessment, especially in the West,” and, “in its philosophical and political guise, it is part of
culture’s ongoing reassessment of Christianity, in relation to new, secular forms of life and
thought” (6). These connections of modern systematic theology’s historical narratives “have
provided the architecture for a grand story of modern origins now taken as axiomatic by
thinkers with little in common. And Augustine’s place within them is crucial as one of the
West’s great metaphysical pillars” (135). Karen Kilby, “Aquinas, the Trinity, and the Limits of
Understanding,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 4, no. 7 (October, 2005): 415–416,
also rightly acknowledges how this narrative spills into readings of Thomas Aquinas (or vice
versa, backwards to Augustine). She writes: “The need for this [Trinitarian] rehabilitation
stems from the fact that, in the broader revival of Trinitarian theology over the last forty years
or so, Aquinas has often been presented as a classic example of thinking about the Trinity
gone wrong, Trinitarian theology done in such a way as to make the doctrine seem sterile,
confusing, and irrelevant. . . . Thomas is rarely censured in isolation: most often the context is
a criticism of the whole Western tradition of Trinitarian reflection. The pattern was set by
Augustine, and it is his influence . . . that is the root of the problem, a problem which,
according to many, is seen today in the fact that the doctrine of the Trinity so easily appears to
be an intellectual puzzle with no relevance to the faith of most Christians.”
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