Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology
As appearing in The Pneuma Review Winter 2007
Stanley J. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 289 pages.
This book should be in every theological library. Stanley Grenz (1950-2005) offers a splendid account of the story of trinitarian thought in the twentieth century. The lucidly written volume is destined to become a standard textbook in colleges and universities. At the same time, it also holds great promise to revive the popular understanding of the Christian God as one god in three persons. Rediscovering the Triune God addresses both historians and theologians and contributes a highly valuable review of both contexts to what the back cover calls “the contemporary revolution in Trinitarian thought.”
The book surveys the development of a renewed interest in the doctrine of the Trinity during the twentieth century. More precisely, Grenz focuses on the time period marked by the publication of Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans, in 1919, which is frequently seen as the initial impulse for the renewal of trinitarian thought, and by the publication of T. F. Torrance’s The Christian Doctrine of God, in 1996, which Grenz considers the last comprehensive theology of the triune God of the twentieth century. As a result, Grenz presents the reader with a list of eleven theologians who he considers the most significant contributors to the revival of trinitarian thought. Each of these voices comes from theological giants whose work has influenced much of the layout of the theological landscape since World War I. This list of trendsetters marks the framework for the entire book.
The overview is ordered topically, and the eleven theologians are grouped together in four chapters that follow the historical development of trinitarian thought in the twentieth century. In addition, the first chapter provides a historical basis for the overall theological discussion and sketches out “The Eclipse of Trinitarian Theology,” especially in the West, before the renaissance of the doctrine. The subsequent four chapters tell the story of the rediscovery of trinitarian thought by means of an unexpectedly brief list of central themes: the restoration of the trinitarian center (Chapter 2), the focus on the Trinity in history (Chapter 3), the idea of trinitarian relationality (Chapter 4), and the rediscovery of the immanent Trinity (Chapter 5). A brief epilogue concludes the book.
Each section of the final four chapters presents the work of one of the theologians and of the recognition or critique their work has received. As such, the book builds a fine introduction to the writings of those who have shaped theology in recent decades. The first chapter outlines the role of Friedrich Schleiermacher and G. W. F. Hegel in the rediscovery of trinitarian thought. Chapter 2 sketches the work of Karl Barth and Karl Rahner, who envisioned the trinitarian elements of Christian thought primarily from the perspective of God’s self-manifestation in the Word and thereby set the parameters of theology in Protestant and Catholic thought throughout much of the twentieth century. Chapter 3 introduces the thought of Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Robert Jenson, all of whom explored the self-disclosure of the triune God in history through the three members of the trinity in largely social and relational terms. Chapter 4 carries this thought further in the introduction of Leonardo Boff, John Zizioulas, and Catherine Mowry LaCugna, who made the aspects of relationality in the triune God more explicit. The final chapter concludes with the thought of Elizabeth Johnson, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and T. F. Torrance, who revived the theological focus on the interplay of the three divine persons in the immanent Trinity.
Grenz’s perceptive survey witnesses to the immense interest invested in the story, history, and theology of the triune God. In a more fundamental way, the reader will benefit from this work as an introduction to a significant number of theologians, whose thought one may further pursue in response to the book. On a more nuanced level, Rediscovering the Triune God would serve as a valuable companion to such works as J. N. D. Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrine, Edmund J. Fortman’s The Triune God, and Paul Tillich’s A History of Christian Thought.
Despite the ecumenical variety and historical depth of the book, it does not offer a global perspective on trinitarian theology in the late modern world. The authors included in this survey come almost exclusively from the West. In this context, one might wonder why Grenz did not include the work of Heribert Mühlen, one of the most significant Roman Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, who gave trinitarian theology the first personal categories for an understanding of the Trinity (I-Thou-We). Voices from the Eastern traditions are marginal, and the reader searches in vain for theologians from Asian or African contexts. Grenz justifies this selection with the suggestion that other theologies of the Trinity depend largely on the eleven theologians that form the heart of his book. In Mühlen’s case, this is not justifiable. In the case of trinitarian thought in non-Western perspective, the work of Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, for example, has shown that reflections on African, Asian, and Latin American theologies are an influential part of forming the rediscovery of the doctrine of God in the contemporary world.
The strength of the book lies in a different arena. Grenz provides a fluid overview of the scene filled with quotes that let the original authors speak while integrating these voices into a readable and insightful essay. The highlight of the book is formed by the voices of the eleven trendsetters of trinitarian thought. Grenz himself remains narrator and guide whose own judgments serve only to direct the audience in their own discovery of the triune God. As a result, the reader is brought in direct contact with the actual work of Moltmann, Pannenberg, Zizioulas, or any of the other theological giants through the lens of one of the leading evangelical theologians of the twentieth century. Books like that are a rare find.
Reviewed by Wolfgang Vondey
