The Ontological Trinity in the Context of Historical Religions
It used to be thought, in western Christendom, at least, that belief in a triune God was a unique feature of Christian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity was thought to distinguish Christianity from the strict ‘monotheism’ of Judaism and Islam (which deny a plurality of ‘persons’ in the Godhead),...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1976
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| In: |
Scottish journal of theology
Year: 1976, Volume: 29, Issue: 4, Pages: 301-310 |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | It used to be thought, in western Christendom, at least, that belief in a triune God was a unique feature of Christian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity was thought to distinguish Christianity from the strict ‘monotheism’ of Judaism and Islam (which deny a plurality of ‘persons’ in the Godhead), on the one hand, and from the ‘polytheism’ or ‘pantheism’ of Greek and Indian religions, on the other. Needless to say, this traditional view reflected an unfair bias toward Christianity and a distorted view of the other religions, especially the ‘pagan’ ones of Greece and India. Since the eighteenth century, however, considerable historical and cultural research has been done on non-Christian religions, and, in our own time, the impact of its results is finally beginning to be felt in the church as a whole. Far from being unique, the doctrine of the Trinity now seems to have been influenced by Stoic and neo-Platonic speculation about God and the world and even to have parallels in the ‘theologies’ of Hinduism and Buddhism. All of a sudden, ‘trinities’ are appearing everywhere in the history of religions as if they were the fulfilment of a universal ‘archetype’ or realisations of a ‘perfect number’, reflecting the subconscious of man more than the objective reality of God. It seems that we must either launch out into a sea of pan-trinitarianism, or else retreat to the safer shores of strict ‘monotheism’ (but, then, the idea of strict ‘oneness’ is probably an archetype of some sort, as well!). |
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| ISSN: | 1475-3065 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Scottish journal of theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0036930600042745 |