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Metaphysical Transcendence & Meaning

By on in Theology

As many have observed throughout centuries past, the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t explicitly identified as a term or concept to present to us how we are to identify or interpret God. In his book, God in Three Persons – A Contemporary Interpretation of the Trinity, Millard Erickson presents to readers the biblical basis for the existence of the Trinity.1 In defense of the doctrine of the Trinity, Erickson lists several vulnerabilities concerning some views of Richardson’s work on the subject.2 The work involves process theology which is a philosophical theology concerning the world having two natures. To describe process theology as the “primordial” transcendence of God and the “consequent,’ or imminent nature by which God is part of the cosmic process.3 While Erickson lists many valuable points of refutation or objections against a process theology interpretation of the Trinity, and he also makes sound biblical arguments about the existence of the Trinity implicit from the patriarchs, prophets, Christ, and the apostles. Within this monograph, and from his work Making Sense of the Trinity, 3 Crucial Questions, exact details and references are made about the case for the Trinity as a formative doctrine by which humanity is to recognize God.4 The doctrine of the Trinity assembled from Scripture as the revealed Word of God presents to people across all time the nature of Trinitarian existence.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are the same essence who have separate identities and are knowable as God. God, by name YHWH, is a single Being comprised of three together in perfect relationship and essence as one. Readers of Scripture see the interaction between members of the Trinity as God is revealed to people within Creation. He interacts with generations of individuals and nations through various covenants, interventions, and creative efforts to redeem humanity from corruption by the errant free will of persons. Erickson meticulously addressed the biblical problems caused by Richardson’s interpretation of the Trinity. There were eight separate enumerated issues around Richardson’s arguments covered by Erickson. From a range of erroneous thoughts around the authority of Scripture to human-centered logical arguments that arrive at modalism, there were numerous counterpoints of biblical evidence and interpretation. Erickson gives explicit reason for how Richardson works from false premise to conclude flawed outcomes of reason.

The doctrine of the Trinity matters pragmatically as it is a model of the relationship between God and His created beings. Invited into fellowship between Creator and created beings, the redemptive process itself is a part of the creative work to derive creatures with a free will made eligible and acceptable to God. The love of others, marriage covenants, and vows to involve the perfect form of relationship has implications about how people are to live out loyalty and obligations centered upon love and commitment. The doctrine of the Trinity provides a theological grounding for human interaction as imagers of God who will at some point be in fellowship with Him as He intended and promised from His revealed Word.

Contested thoughts around the pragmatic interests of people without concern for the Creator is an exercise in futility. The self-serving philosophical rationale that ingratiates itself with interest to improve the human condition doesn’t go far enough because everyone dies. Worse, everyone dies from a position of corruption and suffering by obvious and continued rebellion against natural order in defiance of its Creator (sin), if not just from creation itself. People unredeemed without purpose from God who live and die with philosophical and metaphysical convictions are still empty, albeit temporarily satisfied by answers to practical problems. That is to say, soothe yourself with pseudo-intellectual reasons to ignore God and His revelatory essence to abide in self with contradictory interests.

Objections to Trinitarian Christianity and its uniqueness have concentrated around feminism and liberation theology, where they together form an alternative to “extremities of patriarchal trinitarianism” (Erickson, 147). A range of feminist cases that argue for feminist theology stems from objections around the male gender identity of the trinitarian doctrines explicitly communicated in Scripture. Concepts of domination, power, and authority as masculine traits to express God as a trinitarian form of Being contradict the interests and preferences of females who conceive God as almighty Creator. Their efforts are then to appeal to a tradition of female social prominence and recast it into feminine consciousness. As gender-Trinity is set aside to reshape worship and objects of worship, idolatrous forms of veneration emerge.

Historical female interests in poetry, myth, legend, ritual, and nature worship were elements of common interest in magic to practice goddess worship (Erickson, 144). By what is sometimes known as witchcraft extending back 35,000 years, objections to patriarchal trinitarianism of the last 5,000 years arrived later on the scene to oppose female power according to developing feminine thought. Universal Trinitarian Christianity, with its heritage and bedrock patriarchal foundation, formed its doctrinal system to arrive at well-formed beliefs altogether Scripturally and objectively anchored. In contrast, feminine interest in goddess religion throughout the centuries (pagan, Greco-Roman, and contemporary) was more subjective without concrete tethering to Truth. In the mind of the historical feminist, male patriarchy was and is ascendant to function as a repressive force to which liberation becomes necessary in common cause with liberation theologians who believe a different gospel contrary to the revealed Word of God in Scripture. To deny Scripture as patriarchal (or toxically masculine) and dismiss its authority is to abandon or forsake complementarian order. It is an intentional effort to exchange female will to power for feminist claims toward the worship of feminine deity in the name of liberation. The erasure of a masculine trinitarian concept contrary to the historical work of God interpreted through Scripture is a less than obvious aspiration of historical female theologians.

The formation and acceptance of generic religion as an objection to the uniqueness of Christianity is yet another effort to bring the Creator and creation into subjection to social interests. It is the removal and dilution of the Trinity as unique to Christianity as it must give way to a homogenous interreligious discussion because exclusive claims are viewed as unacceptable. As it is with feminists who view the masculine trinitarian view of Christianity as objectionable, there are those within Islam, Hinduism, and other religions unable to accept the Trinitarian doctrine and theological traditions. Consequently, to those who object and instead press toward a generic religion or a homogenous spirituality, it is Christianity that must conform to social expectations more palatable to belief in an effort to satisfy its interests. The assimilation of new values to transform human understanding of the Christian faith is a necessary sociological pursuit in the mind of those who object to the doctrine of the Trinity as it is participative of creation having exclusive obligations to YHWH, the only God.

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Citations

1 Millard J. Erickson, God in Three Persons: A Contemporary Interpretation of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 100.
2 Cyril C. Richardson, The Doctrine of the Trinity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1958).
3 Stanley Grenz, David Guretzki, and Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 95–96.
4 Millard J. Erickson, Making Sense of the Trinity, 3 Crucial Questions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2000), 15–16.

The Fruits of Disorder

By on in Theology

For decades, since the 1960s, there has been a pressing desire for females to assert their status for equality, differences, or preeminence, depending upon what liberal philosopher, liberal theologian, or historical figure was most outspoken about oppression. The consistent theme among all feminists thought and theology variances beginning in the 1960s was opposition to Western male dominance and patriarchy throughout history, including modern and postmodern societies. After World War II, independent-minded women within liberal ideologies were outspoken about their stature in society as held down, isolated, excluded, or marginalized by men.

With longstanding scriptural definitions about gender distinctions between male and female, Christian tradition, doctrines, and institutional norms, God’s created order was set toward biological, physiological, and social structures of humanity. Functionally ordered to fulfill a purpose defined by the Creator of people within the human race, there are specific roles necessary to satisfy in an effort to fill the Earth, build societies, love, honor each other, and glorify God. Fulfilling God’s design for humanity and its unique cultures must be accomplished through a framework of order, justice, morality, and truth.

The four female persons of interest within Livingston’s coverage of Feminist Theology were of significant and growing interest as their notoriety became more widely known. Their perspectives concerning the feminist cause were especially diverse about realizing or attaining desired objectives while within social conditions that were assailed as oppressive from a range of self-ascribed causes and viewpoints. Mary Daly, Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Sallie McFague, and Luce Irigaray were all intellectually, emotionally, and socially persuaded by Liberalism. They did not place any weight upon the whole meaning of Scripture. Elizabeth Fiorenza sought to reinterpret Scripture to cast a different perspective on the anthropomorphic identity of God (i.e., as female, or something other than male). Moreover, between Daly and Fiorenza, they applied significant thought about the nature of the holy trinity to shape speculation about gender identity and the form of relationship within the perichoresis.

A common thread between all four liberal feminists appears to be about grievance, equal rights, and privilege to compensate for male-dominant conditions placed upon them. By feminists, the female, or women as a whole, were thought of as a class of inferiority, where great and irreversible changes were necessary. Feminist theology as a form of liberal opposition to conventional and proper hermeneutical interpretation of divine revelation through scripture abandons male authority and socially interrelated constructs such as language, identity, premise, functions, and traditions. With sympathy and support from other structurally oppressed or marginalized classes, the feminism of Daly, Fiorenza, McFague, and Irigaray aligns unorthodox, perverse, and evil perspectives against the male patriarchal figure.  

Feminism, or feminist theology, doesn’t merely take the form of these four individuals who pioneered their personal campaigns within academia and society in general to their discovery and sufferings. There are numerous iterations of feminist ideals as a social justice endeavor without a common cause other than just opposition to patriarchy. More specifically, while educated in a prestigious Dominican seminary in Switzerland (Fribourg), Mary Daly experienced male traditions and assumptions that set her on a path of feminist separatism in the abandonment of Christian orthodoxy and Scripturally originated theology. She was a post-Christian feminist. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza sought to re-interpret Scripture by using hermeneutical methods favorable to reframing the meaning of relationships. More generally, superior and subordinate references to males within familial obligations (i.e., father, mother). Fiorenza objected to “kyriarchal” oppression and even formal organizations that involve lordship, mastery, or male figures who have authority to apply power.

There are numerous ways to compare the four feminists in Livingston’s coverage of Feminist Theology. The historical background, philosophical differences, education, and life experiences of women who approach female liberation generally do so from a desire to correct injustices that arise from the male-dominated world that has existed for thousands of years. A modernist and postmodernist approach to theology as distinctly aimed toward disparate female interest represents a limited peace about created male and female order. Not from just oppression of sinful and unacceptable male behaviors, expectations, or attitudes, but simply by outright unwanted differences that bring distress or a need for feminism to assert its place. Numerous continuing manifestations of opposition or counter-perspectives appear to a person who has objections to male authority, power, and its prevailing mandate to “subdue the earth” (Gen 1:28) together with the female.

From the examples seen in the text and examples in society today, females who advocate feminist theology generally originate various formed alternatives to patriarchy or male leadership in the absence of insistent egalitarianism. For example, Sallie McFague advocates for changes in metaphorical language to account for sexist terminology (e.g., refer to YHWH as having female gender) or Luce Irigaray’s call for a feminine deity to center women around to gain power and access to status, resources, and self-realized sexuality as a form of divinity to project maternal, or matriarchal, recognition, and power. As there are intended differences between the female and male genders, there is a uniquely observable “hardwired” physiological separation characterized and made evident by masculinity and femininity norms.

There were and are many iterations and types of feminist objections to patriarchy and male dominance. Analyzing the theories, speculations, and interpretations of influential feminists who had grievances about the structured reality of gender is an often personal and exploratory exercise to determine what sources of systemic social injustices there were toward women. To craft a theology unique and exclusive to women as a feminist or separatist endeavor to achieve a favorable liberal outcome is to dilute and become amiss about the purpose of the gospel and work of Christ. It was Jesus Himself who prayed on behalf of His followers, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me (Jn 17:20-21).”

NOTE: This chapter of the Livingston text makes reference to an article by Valerie Saiving Goldstein entitled, “The Human Situation: A Feminist View” (reference The Journal of Religion 40.2 (April 1960), pp. 100-112). Observations and impressions about the article are as written here:

I must confess that after reading through about 1/3rd of Goldstein’s paper, I stopped listening and put on my boots so to speak. I read it to acknowledge the points made, and the author’s views are very well thought out, but there are subtext inferences between the lines that are meant to cast a contentious “(human) situation” about men. Goldstein calls attention to the use of “man” in the generic sense to highlight the use of language under dubious pretenses about being “on guard” concerning sources of theological work. When, really, the point was to mark the use of the term “man” in the article to diminish the value of masculinity and the unique role of the male gender in the remainder of the paper. She doesn’t refer to “man” in a generic sense when she turns her attention to females (women) later toward the end.

Sin is spoken of as a condition that all men can’t help themselves about, but only seek to overcome it by a pursuit of power, righteousness, or knowledge. 

Goldstein goes on to catalog the sins by the male gender. She doesn’t state as much, but the article reads as offenses against the female and not as heavily weighted sins against God and humanity. She doesn’t list the same detail for the female, other than the planned mention of “will-to-power” and “pride.” The author, a student of theology, doesn’t make use of scripture, early church authorities, or tradition to reinforce her views or support her convictions. I understand this is a pioneering work from 1960 just before the sexual revolution, and it might be a misread from me, but the paper reads like a work of analytical resentment couched as a “situation.” I have more to learn about feminist theology, but the feel of the paper is confrontational and just isn’t productive. 

The catalog of the sins of the male gender: 

a. The article assumes the arrogance of all men
b. Men are generally driven to objectify
c. Men are manipulative by nature
d. Sin pervades everything man does

True, or not, the rationale appears that this catalog of sins gives cause to further explore the need for scrutiny of the human condition (i.e., male oppression).

The author also speaks from an assumed premise that women come from a position of inferiority. While equating sexuality with a person’s identity, Goldstein doesn’t write about gender. So this confuses me since she was a theologian and would know that the identity of female believers rests within Christ.

Positive and favorable perspectives of Goldstein appear within the paper as well. She highly values motherhood and childbearing, the God-given inclination to find joy and peace in her work, and a prevailing quality of empathy as a trait of femininity.