The Holy Trinity

Robert Letham
Review by Iain D Campbell

Phillipsburg: P&R, 2005

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I completed my reading of Dr Letham’s work on the Trinity on a transatlantic flight to Boston, during which I was sitting beside a very interesting young man. He had a modicum of theological awareness, due to his having been raised an Episcopalian, and was very interested in my book. When he saw the title, he commented: ‘The Holy Trinity? What is that? Is it God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary?’

Well – it opened up an interesting conversation, and left me with a twofold impression: first, that misconceptions of the doctrine abound everywhere, and second, that the doctrine of the Trinity is a great help to mission, witness and outreach.

For both of these reasons I am thankful to the Triune God of Scripture for Dr Letham’s outstanding contribution to theological reflection in this volume. It is a readable, comprehensive and definitive study of the doctrine of the Trinity in the unfolding revelation of Scripture, in the maturing reflection of the church’s history, amid the loci of systematics, and in the life and witness of the evangelical community.

In this tour de force of theology, Dr Letham quotes from Gregory of Nazianzus:

Not to everyone, my friends, does it belong to philosophize about God; not to everyone; the subject is not so cheap and low; and I will add, not before every audience, not at all times, nor on all points, but on certain occasions, and before certain persons, and within certain limits’ (p158).

Gregory’s statement concerns the limits of human knowledge and the supreme importance of the subject under discussion; but he is right – not everyone can do, and not everyone should do it.

Calvin, at least, was glad that Gregory himself did it, and he quotes with approval the statement of Gregory that ‘no sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendour of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one’ (p164, from Institutes 1.13.17). Indeed, this quotation appears to varying degrees four times throughout Letham’s volume (pp267, 378, 463).

All of which is to underscore the fact that the Reformed community ought to be grateful that Dr Letham has produced this treatment on the nature of God which will have the same effect as Nazianzen on Calvin. Not everyone could have done it – the subject is neither cheap nor low. Indeed, the book is evidence of the expenditure required on the subject, and the heights the discussion has scaled.

Letham’s discussion of biblical foundations is thorough, beginning at the beginning, with the magisterial statements of Genesis regarding creation and the nature of man. We are reminded that the vocabulary of Genesis ‘attest[s] a plurality in God, a plurality later expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity’ (p20). The strict monotheism of the Old Testament is discussed in relation to the theophanies, the Angel of the Lord, the Spirit of the Lord, and cognate themes.

Equally thorough are the treatments of the Gospels, with their revelation of the deity of Jesus Christ, so crucial to the unfolding of the revelation of the nature of God as Triune. The discussion of Pauline theology is extremely helpful, not only with its explicit trinitarianism, but also with the ‘triadic patterns’ which appear in the New Testament epistles (pp63ff). The application of this to the letter to the Ephesians (pp73-85) is worth the price of the book.

The discussion of historical development is extremely important: thorough but not laborious, rewarding a careful reading of over 250 pages. In them we travel from the second century apologists to modern contributors like Tom Torrance, with special emphasis – as one would expect – on Arius, Athanasius, Augustine, the Cappadocians, the filioque, Calvin, Barth, Pannenberg and Lossky.

Throughout this discussion, Letham operates on the principle that the route of Western theology was generally from the one God to the three persons, whereas the East travelled from the three persons to the one undivided being (p176). The implications of this for different church traditions I found illuminating and helpful. The differences work themselves into soteriology: the gospel in the West is deliverance from sin; in the East it is deliverance from death (p216). While such assessments may run the risk of being simplistic, the argument is well put.

For discussion of trinitarian theology, these divergences focus on the filioque clause, with its debate over the procession of the Holy Spirit. Does it matter whether the Spirit is said to proceed from the Father only, or from the Father and the Son? Well it does, according to Letham, if only to demonstrate the weaknesses inherent in both approaches to the issue. Writing this as a theologian in the filioque tradition, and for a predominantly Western readership (I guess), I am acutely conscious of the tendency for us to abstract such propositions, and become practical modalists. Letham is aware of this problem, and explicitly says so (p212): ‘the Trinity,’ he avers, ‘is little more than an arithmetical conundrum to Western Christianity.’

Letham’s solution is simple, though pages of parameter-setting are necessary for him to reach this point: it is to say that Cyril of Alexandria got it right when he said that the Spirit proceeds ‘from the Father in the Son’ (p218). This, Letham suggests, expresses mutual indwelling, avoids any tendency to subordination, and focuses fitting attention on the baptism of Christ. A very useful summary of the differences between Western and Eastern trinitarianism appears on pp250-1.

Letham’s discussion of Calvin is extremely helpful. He calls it ‘the Trinity in plain Latin’ (p252), noting both the continuity with the tradition and the originality of much of Calvin’s thought. This appears not least in the discussion of the Son as autotheos, God in himself (a point helpfully emphasised by Torrance).

Modern thinkers are carefully assessed: Barth’s anti-modalism position Letham regards as compromised by his stress on uni-personality; Rahner he charges with collapsing the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity (p298); Moltmann’s trinitarianism he views as theological political correctness; Pannenberg he suggests is perilously close to tritheism. A chapter on Eastern theologians Sergius Bulgakov, Vladimir Lossky and Dumitru Staniloae is illuminating, as is Letham’s observation that ‘the East has had no medieval period, no Renaissance or Reformation, and no Enlightenment, and so has never had to grapple with the vital epistemological breakthrough achieved by Calvin, to which Barth in his own way held, of direct auditory, intuitive knowledge of God’ (p354). This makes Eastern criticism of Western trinitarianism no less valid, of course; we have much to learn from one another (because we were created in the image of a Triune, inter-personal God).

Letham regards Torrance’s treatment of the Trinity as the best to date. One might quibble with Letham’s insistence that Torrance is not a Barthian (p357), and one ought to take seriously Letham’s suggestion that he tends to modalism (p373). Letham is correct to draw attention to the Torrancian emphasis on the homoousion and perichoresis – and this is the strength of Torrance’s theology. Indeed, in the remaining section of the volume, in which Letham applies the doctrine with care to the practical life of the church, the Torrancian emphases are evident.

A chapter on the Trinity and the Incarnation carefully guides the systematician through the issues surrounding the relationship between the tri-personal God and the two natures of the Second Person. Might any of the Three have become incarnate? Mysteriously, Letham corrects us, the incarnation of the Son reveals the whole Trinity. How far does the Incarnate Son reveal the Eternal Son? Gloriously, Letham declares, ‘the Son’s submission to the Father is compatible with his full and unabbreviated deity’ (p402). These are the questions that begin and end in mystery.

Yet they also led to worship, prayer and praise, to which Letham devotes another chapter, charging Western Christianity with worship with is not explicitly trinitarian at all. John Owen’s discussion of communion with the Triune God is (helpfully) taken as a model: worship can only take place on the basis of a trinitarian salvation.

The implications for church life, says Letham, are startling. We need to treat people better. We need more trinitarian hymns and prayers. We need to preach the Trinity and let the Trinity shape our preaching. We need a Calvinian, Trinitarian direction to the Lord’s Supper. All of which is probably true; but as a psalm-singer in a psalm-singing church I still baulk at the suggestion that the Triune God has done everything except provide us with a suitable collection of forms in which to worship him! Indeed, I find it ironic that Letham should suggest some inadequacy to the Psalter, as truncating the worship of the church, when he has insisted from the outset that the sensus plenior demands that we build our trinitarian structures on the totality of biblical revelation (p20), listening ‘to the whole of Scripture in the light of what happened in Jesus Christ’ (p431).

I also find Letham’s insistence on the need to add to Scripture for singing, when he himself quotes so often from the Psalms in defence of a trinitarian theology of creation (pp428-9). When I sing the Psalms I have no doubt that the God of whom I sing is the Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. What else is the homoousion for?

Letham is on strong ground in his discussion of the implication of the Trinity for mission. He sees Islam and postmodernism as twin challenges to the Church. The first of these he defines as ‘unity without diversity’; the second as ‘diversity without unity’. The doctrine of the Trinity – unity in diversity – he sees as a major element in evangelising contemporary culture. The church must do its theological spadework in order to tell the story of the Gospel in a meaningful and relevant way: ‘the message of God’s grace must be grounded in creation, the reality of truth, and in the union and communion of the Trinity’ (p456).

The final chapter on the Trinity and Persons explores the nature of relationship, and suggests that this brings us to the heart of the Gospel. One might quibble here with Letham’s formulations. He says, for example, that Paul refers to Christ as ‘the Second Adam’ (p464). Not quite: Paul refers to him as the second ‘man’ (1 Corinthians 15:47), but always as the last Adam. Letham also states that ‘the goal of our salvation – our ultimate destiny – is union with Christ’ (p464). But if I enjoy union with Christ here – to be in Christ is the very definition of a Christian – it is misleading to describe this as my ultimate destiny. Likeness to Christ, perhaps – but not union with him.

Two articles reviewing works by Gilbert Bilezikian and Kevin Giles on the Trinity conclude the work as appendixes. A useful glossary and bibliography conclude the work.

No criticisms of mine can detract from the fact that this is one of the most important theological works to have appeared in the last decade. While Letham credits Torrance with producing the best work on the Trinity to date, others will credit Letham himself with doing so. This book deserves wide circulation and careful reading. If nothing else, it will make us examine our Christian lives and church practice, and lead us to ask just how much – or perhaps how little – the doctrine which we profess informs and influences the way we live out our Christian lives.

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