The doctrine of the Trinity at the end!

Glen Scrivener recently posted a great post on why when doing theology we should start with the Trinity, not with any general teaching about God. I must admit I've been largely sold on this over the last few years, and found that while people may not practice it, nobody ever seems to disagree with the basic idea that the Trinity is where we should begin.... that was up until very recently, when I came across a confident broadside against it in the most surprising place.

Oswald Bayer notes that starting with the doctrine of the Trinity "is the pattern that is followed by an ever-increasing number of dogmatic theologians throughout the world" (p. 335, Martin Luther's Theology; A Contemporary Interpretation). But this is not something which he approves of. He describes as "one of the grandiose blunders of the more recent history of both philosophy and theology" (p. 339)!

He believes that the doctrine of the Trinity is "properly located neither as a bland addition nor in the middle as just one dogmatic theme among many, but correctly in the middle and correctly at the end" (p.334). The reason for this is that "the triune nature of God can only be comprehended only as an unfolding of the pure gospel" (p.335 - reminds me of the title to Tim Chester's Theology Network, "The good news of the Trinity"). He sees a number of problems if we start the doctrine of the Trinity. E.g:

• "if one proceeds in such a way, one will come dangerously close to... a brand of speculation that ignores time and the situation" (p.335)
• it "ignores or minimizes the problem of unfaith" (p.335)
• it has no place for the sufferer's experience of God as his seeming enemy, or take seriously the "reality of evil".

The basic problem though is that those who want to see the Trinity placed at the beginning see what is first in theology as the most fundamental. They are always concerned that we fit what follows to what comes before, and that much theology has fit the Trinity into the procrustean bed of a Unitarian view of God. However, a Lutheran who believes in law and then Gospel believes that what follows is the more fundamental. The Lutheran believes the good news is a surprise.

Bayer believes that we should begin with "'general' teaching about God", but not because he thinks that the Trinity is subsidiary. He has no love for the God who is not Trinity. "The God who comes to us apart from being the triune God, who is purely and completely love, 'looks on,' and has for us the grimace of the devil" (p.338). General teaching about God, even a monotheistic God, is something that belongs to the non-Christian and will be left behind in eternity.

The distinction between what is involved in the teaching about the Trinity and "general" teaching about God [...] is encountered in faith and in the hope that this distinction will be removed, along with the distinction between law and gospel, in the eschaton. The the triune God - he alone - will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). Then we also will no longer be assailed by the oppressive, incomprehensible hiddenness that weighs us down even to the point of our death. It will be consumed by open love which itself cannot be comprehended, which will free us from its power and which comes to us conclusively already now in the gospel.

The end that we believe in and hope for, because of the love that has come to us and has been promised to us - the consummation of the work of creation by the triune God - is misinterpreted with regard to its true character when it is claimed that it exists as a timeless principle of knowledge and existence. Its universality cannot be demonstrated in the abstract, not even with theoretical means linked to the Trinity; one cannot apply its truths to every circumstance one can postulate and treat it as an a priori. (pp.339-340)

Glen and others (hi Glen!) are driven by their conviction that we should start all our thinking about God with the Trinity to argue that the Trinity was fully understood by the OT saints. Hence the regular 'Angel of the Lord' etc debates. But while a Lutheran would admit that the Trinity was seen in the OT, just as the Gospel was preached in the OT, they would also want to retain a distinction because:

just as the chief teaching of the New Testament is really the proclamation of grace and peace through the forgiveness of sins in Christ, so the chief teaching of the Old Testament is really the teaching of the laws, the showing up of sin, and the demanding of good. (Martin Luther, Preface to the Old Testament)

For Oswald Bayer there is always a shape and a story to the Bible and to our lives. He sees those who start with the doctrine of the Trinity as flattening the contours of this story, and so missing out on the depths and the heights of the Bible's message about God.

... I must confess its shook up all my thinking. Who knows how it will all settle again.

[A few asides: (a) it is interesting to note that Karl Barth was led the way in both making the doctrine of the Trinity at the beginning of theology, and in arguing that we should deal with Gospel then law. (b) It is also interesting how those who start with the Trinity always seem (IMHO) to be struggling to not say that creation and redemption were necessary for God. (c) In The Cruciality of the Cross PT Forsyth argues that the Atonement (i.e. the Gospel) drives us to the Incarnation, not the other way round. But it could be equally said of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Gospel drives us to the Trinity from our point of view, even if the Trinity is what leads to the Gospel from God's point of view.]