Doctrine of God and the Trinity
The doctrine of God ('theology proper') examines the existence, nature, and attributes of God and the distinctively Christian claim that the one God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Definition
The systematic study of the being, attributes, and triune nature of God within Christian theology.
Scope
This area covers the classical theist conception of God as one, simple, eternal, and perfect; the divine attributes (omnipotence, omniscience, immutability, impassibility, aseity); the development and grammar of trinitarian doctrine, including the relations of the divine persons and the East-West debate over the procession of the Spirit; how God acts in and sustains the world (providence and concurrence); and the problem of reconciling God's goodness and power with evil. The treatment is descriptive, surveying positions and their arguments across Christian traditions with comparative notes on Jewish and Islamic monotheism where apt.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- What does it mean to say that God is one, simple, and perfect?
- How can the one God be three persons without contradiction?
- How does God act in and relate to the created world?
- Can belief in a good and omnipotent God be reconciled with evil?
Key theories
- Classical theism and divine simplicity
- The view, developed by Augustine and Aquinas, that God is wholly simple (without parts), and accordingly immutable, eternal, and identical with the divine attributes, so that God's essence and existence coincide.
- Rahner's Rule and the immanent-economic Trinity
- Karl Rahner's axiom that the economic Trinity (God as revealed in salvation history) is the immanent Trinity (God's inner life) and vice versa, intended to reunite trinitarian doctrine with the concrete experience of salvation.
History
Trinitarian doctrine was articulated in the fourth century through the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), defining the consubstantiality of the Son and the divinity of the Spirit, with the Cappadocian Fathers distinguishing one ousia in three hypostases. Medieval scholasticism, especially Aquinas, integrated the doctrine of God with classical metaphysics. The filioque clause divided Eastern and Western Christianity, and modern theology (Barth, Rahner, and later social trinitarians) renewed attention to the Trinity as central rather than peripheral.
Debates
- Divine impassibility versus a suffering God
- Whether God is impassible (incapable of suffering or being affected), as in classical theism, or whether God genuinely suffers with creation, a view advanced by some twentieth-century theologians in response to suffering and the cross.
- Social versus psychological models of the Trinity
- A dispute over whether the three persons are best understood as a communion of distinct centers of consciousness (social trinitarianism) or by analogy with the faculties of a single mind (the Augustinian psychological model).
Key figures
- Augustine of Hippo
- The Cappadocian Fathers
- Thomas Aquinas
- Karl Barth
- Karl Rahner
Related topics
Seminal works
- aquinasST
- barth1957
- rahner1970
- mcgrath2016
Frequently asked questions
- What is divine simplicity?
- Divine simplicity is the classical claim that God is not composed of parts or properties; God's attributes are not components added to a substance but ways of describing the one undivided divine essence.
- What is the filioque controversy?
- It concerns whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (the Eastern position) or from the Father 'and the Son' (Latin filioque), a difference in the Nicene Creed that contributed to the division between Eastern and Western Christianity.