[Vision2020] Response to Gier on Trinity

[Doug Jones]

Visionaries, at least those interested,

A while back Nick Gier replied to my essay "Spoiled by the Trinity: A
Primer for Secularists" (Credenda 14.2). I've been busy, but here
finally is the response. 

Doug Jones

___________________


Response to Nick Gier on My “Spoiled by the Trinity: A Primer for
Secularists”

My thanks to Nick Gier for interacting with my essay on Trinitarian life
(Credenda 14:2). I’m afraid, though, he has yet to engage with the main
argument of that essay. He begins by characterizing my “principal
thesis” as the claim that monism has bad consequences. That’s an
interesting thesis, but it’s not mine. In fact, my essay never uses the
word “monism,” my primary examples are nonmonistic, and my key argument
shows monism is rather unimportant to my point. He also misreads my
argument as some sort of linear empirical claim, so he musters a host of
irrelevant evidence. To point to examples of playfulness in
non-Christian cultures reveals a fundamental misreading. Other
non-Christians have grasped the argument readily enough; it’s certainly
not uniquely mine.

Dr. Gier also wants to question my Trinitarian orthodoxy. He accuses me
of holding a “mere togetherness of three persons,” a view the essay
excludes several times. He distorts Karl Barth (the Barth who said God
“is a real, true and genuine person”) and fundamentally fails to grasp
the historic position by asserting, “in the orthodox Trinity,
substantial unity (a fully monistic ousia) has ontological priority over
any hypostasis.” This is about as far from basic, historic
Trinitarianism as one can get (and how can a former president of the
American Academy of Religion make such a mistake?). Good backgrounds for
current Trinitarian discussions can be found in John Thompson’s Modern
Trinitarian Foundations (Oxford, 1994) and, more popularly, in Roderick
Leupp’s Knowing the Name of God (IVP, 1996).  

Dr. Gier’s misunderstanding of the Trinity curiously leads him to find
“Wondrous Trinities Everywhere” that are in fact just polytheisms or
modalisms. Simply having multiple gods or personalities does not a
Trinity make. For example, he calls the Hindu gods Brahma, Vishnu, and
Shiva a “fully personalized Trinitarian” godhead with the impersonal
Brahman representing this godhead. Yet elsewhere, Dr. Gier acknowledges
that “In the Upanishads, even the gods don’t know of the existence of
Brahman (Brihadaranyaka 1.4.10).” Yikes. My essay doesn’t focus on the
failings of such polytheisms, but this sort of combination of
subordinate personalities and a superior impersonal force is typical of
polytheism, a scenario quite alien to Trinitarianism. Such a polytheism
makes the impersonal rather than the personal ultimate. No impersonalism
resides in the Trinity, and each person of the Trinity is in full, rich
communion with the other.