The Triune God and its implications for Theological Language

In preparation for our annual Church Camp on the Doctrine of the Trinity, I have been reading Broughton Knox’s essay ‘God in Trinity’ from D. Broughton Knox Selected Works: Volume I The Doctrine of God (Kingsford: Matthias Media, 2000). Here’s an excerpt which has an interesting connection to a question raised in my previous post - can our theological language which comes through human words and language actually refer to and describe who God is? Is theological language univocal, equivocal or merely analogical?

Knox says this:

The doctrine of the Trinity helps solve another problem which troubles modern theologians. How is it possible that human language drawn from human experience can be an adequate vehicle for describing the ineffable God? Must all language be merely analogical when it is used to describe the realities of religion? That is a very popular view. Religious language is thought to be analogical and not direct description, but if this were true it would mean we have no sure knowledge of God, for we cannot be sure how an analogy fits unless we already know the object which the analogy describes-that is, unless we already know God, we cannot know whether analogical language fits the God of whom we are speaking. In other words, this line of thought means that we have no sure knowledge of God and this is a conclusion of much modern theology.

However, the doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that human life has been created in the image of God. Human relationships reflect the image of the Trinity. It follows that human language reflecting these human relationships is a suitable vehicle to describe God's relationships within himself and with humanity, for we have been created in his image and our relationships correspond to his relationships, for they are an image of them. It follows that when God chooses human language to describe his relationships, not only within himself but especially his relationships to us, he is not using analogical language but a direct description of reality, for the language being used is language drawn from the image of that reality. It is God who is using the language (for he is inspiring the prophet), and the vehicle that he is using (human language) is adequate, indeed exact, to describe what would otherwise be beyond our powers of knowing. Because we have been created in the image of God, the revelation of God to us becomes a possibility. We may know him truly through our own human language. [...] God reveals himself to us personally in a direct and literal and not merely analogical way, and so we are able to respond in a real and true way and enter into real personal relationships with God. All this follows from the fact that God is Trinity and has created us in his image, that is to say, to be relational, so that the language which describes our relationships is an adequate vehicle when used by God himself to describe the real relationships that he has within himself and with us. In other words, religious language is not analogical but direct and univocal (p.90-91, my emphasis)

Knox has provided us an interesting and important insight. If David Clark (from the previous post) provided us a philosophical reason for the univocal nature of language when it comes to describing God, Broughton Knox here provides us a theological reason. The overall insight is valid and important. But upon deeper thought, one realises that Knox’s argument works through various intermediary steps. God, in giving us the gift of language, has allowed that human language describes human relationships (univocally). Human relationships in turn reflect (though not fully or perfectly but truely i.e. univocally) God’s relationships within Himself and with humanity, since we are created in the image of the Triune God. Hence, human language ‘which describes our relationships is an adequate vehicle when used by God himself to describe the real relationships that He has within himself and with us’ (p.91). In another words, Knox’s argument really works based on a two-stage univocity. Human language describe human relationships univocally, and human relationships represent the inter-Triune and the Triune God-mankind relationships univocally too, hence human language can refer to the Triune God univocally.

I’m wondering if Knox’s argument can be further strengthened by the truth of the incarnation. The inter-Trinitarian relationships summarised by love and other-centredness and servant-mindedness (and Knox provides in his essay biblical references to show this) sees its climax in the incarnation of the second person of the Godhead, God the Son. Jesus comes and speaks to us these daring and totally amazing words, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. [...] Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father [...].” (John 14:6-7, 9). Jesus here is saying when we know Him and relate to Him, we are relating to the Father as well (through Jesus enabled by the Spirit). The force of Jesus’ statement here is univocal. Jesus is not saying here that knowing him is different from knowing the Father (equivocal relationship), nor is he merely saying knowing him is like knowing the Father (analogous relationship), but He is saying knowing him is equivalent to knowing the Father (univocal relationship). In another words, it is through our knowing and relating to Jesus that we are brought into relationship with the Triune God. And how do we know and relate to Jesus? We know him through his words spoken, which by virtue of the fact that he is God the Son incarnated as man, means through his words of human language. There is of course the role of the Holy Spirit in reminding the disciples and illuminating and convicting us today of what Jesus had spoken, but the point remains clear – human words and language help us to know Jesus univocally, and knowing Jesus is knowing the Triune God univocally. The incarnation of our Lord Jesus arising from the doctrine of the Trinity grounds this truth.

Features of an Evangelical Theological Method - review of To Know and Love God by David Clark

What does an evangelical theological method look like? One that is contextually aware and well-suited for the times we are in, as we sail our way through the waters of modernism into postmodernism? One that retains the best insights of theological methods influenced by modernism and yet incorporates the new insights brought about by postmodernism? This is the question that David Clark seeks to answer in his To Know And Love God: Method for Theology (Wheaton: Crossway, 2003). Clark works his way through different features or aspects of an evangelical theological method, and arrives at the following picture –

An Evangelical Theological Method should

1) Take into account what Clark calls the ‘Contextual Pole’ (the emphasis for theology to be connected to the cultural situation or other forms of human thought e.g. philosophy and reason) and the ‘Kerygmatic Pole’ (the emphasis of theology to be objectively grounded in faith and Scripture and ‘systems’). An evangelical Theological Method should hold onto both poles and work within the extremes of these two poles. The evangelical theologian should not be a ‘transformer’ – one who so emphasises the Contextual Pole that the truths of the gospel are compromised for the sake of cultural connection, nor a ‘transporter’ – one who simply transports theology straight from the bible without any regard or awareness of culture or influences from other forms of human thought. Rather, the evangelical theologian should seek to ensure that his theology is ‘contextually relevant in every mode of expression, yet shaped very fundamentally through essential connection with biblical revelation’ (p.57).

2) Recognise the Scriptures as uniquely authoritative in authorising both theological statements and moral commands. More than that, the authority of Scripture is first and foremost grounded in the ontological truth of God and his act of speaking, rather than in the church or the community’s reception of that Word. In technical language, the ‘ontological ground of the text’s authority is not the same as the epistemic acceptance of the text’s authority’ (p.65). In authorising the theological statements and moral commands (or in moving from Scripture to Theology), Clark also denounces principlizing – where Scripture is seen to be filled with universal timeless principles which lie beneath the narrative, cultural husks the words of Scripture find themselves in, and theology is all about extracting these principles and applying them to our new context. Instead, Clark calls for a nuanced version of narrative theology, where the whole Bible itself (with its different genres and narrative account), rather than just the principles, is seen to be the thing that authorises theology for living (p.96-97)

3) Be Contextually Relevant. In this regard, Clark discourages a decode/encode way of contextualisation which he deems in essence as a form of principlizing (p.112-13) and instead encourages a dialogical model for evangelical contextualisation, where from one’s culture with its own values, beliefs, practices and dilemmas, Christians raise questions and issues; they then take these initial questions to Scripture and allow a culturally relevant theology to emerge – at all times doing this with great humility and a keen eagerness to apply their discoveries to life while recognising the supreme authority of the Word of God to question and challenge their cultural viewpoints. This dialogical process is further extended to involve the “other culture” whether it may be a culture in a distant era of time or a far off place. The whole dialogical process continues and at all times, understanding of Scripture is deepened (p.114 and 120-21).

4) Have a foundation on which evangelical theology is built. In terms of this foundation, Clark rejects ‘strong’ foundationalism (or classical foundationalism which asserts something like ‘basic beliefs must either be self-evident, incorrigible, or evident to the senses’) (p.155-56); coherentism (where a system of beliefs is valid as long as the individual beliefs are coherent when they come together) (p.156-58), or pragmatism (where a system of beliefs is valid as long as it works!) (p.159-161). Instead, Clark espouses soft foundationalism, consisting of the following tenets (p.161-62):
• A kind of belief-foundationalism, which distinguishes between basic beliefs and non-basic beliefs. Basic beliefs are warranted directly in a variety of ways, while non-basic beliefs build on basic beliefs.
• Coherence is relevant to the warranting of beliefs, but is never sufficient to ground an entire web of belief.
• Unlike classical foundationalism, basic beliefs can be warranted despite they not achieving the same standards of self-evidence or incorrigibility as demanded by classical foundationalism. This means a person is justified prima facie in accepting many ideas when the justification is less than absolutely certain. Soft foundationalism also allows for its basic beliefs to be defeated if it turns out to be so upon further inspection.

5) Recognise because there is a larger unified narrative behind the various disciplines (Biblical Theology, Systematic Theology, Historical Theology, Philosophical Theology and Practical Theology) – that of God’s self-revelation in the totality of history – a unity of the theological disciplines is achievable (p.192). A good evangelical theological method recognises the uniqueness and diversity of disciplines; understands its own discipline’s horizon, and fuses that horizon with that of the other disciplines.

6) At its best be scientia that serves sapientia. Scientia refers to knowledge that is derived from a scientific way of exploring and discovering, while sapientia is godly wisdom directed to salvation and Christian living. A good theological method recognises both and does not see the two as contradictory but rather complementary – seeing theology as a means to the end of loving God is perfectly consistent with a robust interest in objectively correct (albeit an imperfect and incomplete) biblical descriptions of the object of our love (p.217). In another words, ‘theology is a science of God that enables faithful Christian followers to know God and to find spiritual wisdom’ (p.219). To this end, Clark espouses a five step method involving both scientia and sapientia – Engagement, Discovery and Testing, Integration, and Communication (p.232-44). Clark’s summary of the process is helpful:

Theology, then, includes both truth-discerning and truth-applying functions. Theology as scientia is concerned to tease out the best possible understandings of God, his will, and his ways. This happens as theologians appropriately pursue the discovery and testing phases in order to explore successively more adequate theological ideas, models, theories, and research programmes. This requires objectivity and critical testing. [...] Theology as sapientia functions to transform believers’ lives through integration, and Christians in turn influence people and communities through communication. [...] The second and third moments in theology yield understandings that genuinely reflect the Word and the world; the fourth and fifth moments use theological truth to influence affections, decisions and characters (p.244).

7) Be open to philosophical methods of analysis involving strategies for clarifying concepts, criticising assumptions, evaluating arguments, and constructing positive viewpoints. These analytic skills are helpful, though not sufficient for good evangelical theologizing.

8) Acknowledge that some genuine knowledge of an objectively existing spiritual Reality (in this case God!) is essential to evangelical theology, and that language while not capturing that reality fully, does connect to that objective reality. Clark espouses a minimalist account of correspondence, where language does refer to mind-independent state of affairs. It is a view which Clark admits is more of ‘an affirmation of an intuition than it is the development of a theory’ (p.381), for trying to prove truth beyond the category of intuition to more basic or fundamental terms will only result into hopeless circularity. Applying this concept to religious or theological language, Clark espouses a ‘carefully crafted commitment to univocity’ (p.393), where religious language speaks univocally (a word has exactly the same meaning in two different contexts) as opposed to speaking equivocally (the way a word is used in one context is entirely different from the way it is used in another) or by analogy (where a word or term as used in two different contexts communicate different senses, but yet the different senses are somewhat meaningfully related to each other). A commitment to univocity means that when a term is used to predicate of God the way it is used of man, e.g. ‘God is loving’, the meaning of the term as applied to God and the meaning of the term as applied to man are identical, though the mode or manner of expression of the two predications of a univocal term may different completely. But in the case of analogy, the meaning of the term as applied to God and the meaning of the term as applied to man are not identical, though they are similar. Finally, Clark also encourages us to see religious language as not only having its function in referring or describing, but through Speech-Acts theory, to see that it also has other functions and does other things. Saying things about the world is one thing language does, but not the only thing it does – or even the most important thing it does. Speech-acts also forms a link between theology or theological language as scientia and sapientia. Speech-acts as a way of understanding religious language

[...] shows how the language of Scripture, worship, preaching, spiritual formation, and moral instruction is sapiential. This language is intended to do something. As such, religious utterances of this sort do something other than informing listeners about reality. But they do relate to theology as scientia. Scientia is the language intended to describe spiritual realities truly. The purposes of sapientia – worshipping the triune God, transforming Christian character, building the spiritual community called the church, and fulfilling God’s call to evangelistic and social mission – these all involve the use of linguistic utterances of various sorts. But they require the background truth of theology as scientia (p.416-17).

Overall, the biggest contribution of To Know and Love God is to provide a realistic philosophical underpinning to evangelical theological method – one that draws the best insights of both modernism and postmodernism, yet without succumbing to the blind spots and weaknesses of either. It affirms critical realism (that there is a mind-independent objective reality); a minimal account of correspondence to religious language (that language is able to refer and describe this reality); epistemic humility (we can know truly though not exhaustively or fully), and theology that is rooted in scientia for the purposes of sapientia – that we may be truly wise, having ‘passionate love for God, genuine worship of the Trinity, true community with fellow Christians, and loving service in personal evangelism and social compassion – all to the glory of God’ (p.424).