Schaeffer and Trinity

 In He is There and He Is Not Silent, Schaeffer makes the remark:

Every once in a while in my discussions someone asks how I can believe in the Trinity. My answer is always the same. I would still be an agnostic if there was no Trinity, because there would be no answers. Without the high order of personal unity and diversity as given in the Trinity,  there are no answers. (p. 288 Crossway compilation)

I have puzzled over this. Why would there be no answers?

I asked a friend who knew Schaeffer well, who answered:

You are not the first to scratch your head about this claim, and I myself find it quite strange and do not claim to be able to interpret it for you, or to believe it myself.

     I have asked him to explain it and heard others do the same. I think the main thing in his mind was that he saw in the trinity that neither unity nor diversity, neither the One or the Many, was ultimate and so would obliterate the other. They were both anchored in the transcendent God. He saw secular philosophy as unable to resist getting pulled into one or the other of these dead ends -- of only unity (Parmenides) or only particularity (Heraclitus). I certainly see his point here because neither of these dead ends allows any serious understanding of the complexity and wonder of the human condition. But I can't help wondering if there was no trinity, whether I might be more likely to be a Jewish theist than an agnostic, but that question would be in practicality, so highly subjective as a counter-factual puzzle.

     It all seems a tricky question to say what part of Xn truth, if removed, would make me abandon my faith, maybe not always helpful  -- although Paul said it about the resurrection of Jesus. I heard Schaeffer also say that he could not be a Christian if God had not himself shut the door finally on the ark at the start of the flood. He felt that to ask Noah to do it would have been too cruel and inappropriate, given what would happen to everyone else who was not in the ark. On the other hand I asked him once if he were to ever have macro-evolution demonstrated to have been true beyond any doubt, would he leave his faith as a result? He said, "No, but I would have to rethink a great deal."

     To get back to the trinity, but leave Schaeffer's discussion, I found Tim Keller's insight intriguing when he said that only if God is trinity can love be part of his character, i.e. who he is intrinsically. If God was only One, there would have been no one for him to love unless it was someone whom God had created. If God was only One, his main attribute of character would have been power -- who might have chosen to do loving things, but they would be arbitrary and not grounded in his being and he might have easily done the opposite.

There are few useful thoughts here, and I think he's spotted the nub of it: Who God Is is immovably basic to what is independently (and self-existentially) that is, necessarily, real.

 

What then is the Triune God?

• He is demonstrably personal
• He communicates: the three persons of the trinity are in constant communication for the other: communication and relationship are basic. It is also real, significant and true.
  
• There is inherent diversity and unity, inescapably, as per my friend's observation.
• God's acts flow directly from who he is, with no other reference.

 Solo gods, Monist gods and Monist non-gods have none of this, and leave man's 'mannishness' ungrounded, arbitrary and finally insignificant.

What about Yahweh in the OT? Is he not a 'solo-god'? After all, he says he is one and there is no other.

 

I think not for a couple of reasons.

 

He interacts with the creation, in relationship: Genesis 3:8, for example; Genesis 1 itself hints at Trinity: God who speaks, the Word which (who?) creates, the Spirit who 'hovers'. Even if I am wrong, this doesn't seem like a 'solo-god'.

The theophanies throughout the OT suggest God in some form, often human, in his creation. Again, not triune per se, but not 'solo' in our terms here either.

What the Trinity does bring is grounding of communication, of community, of fellowship, of love, in what is basically so. Everything, including our existential questions and dilemmas is resolved, finally, in this.

So our echo of these acts of love and fellowship as beings in his image are real, and join us to him in sharing this reality. Our love is significant and not derivative: of 'nature', of material, of an arbitrary and not essential act of God. Our decisions, communications, community are real and a basic part of us. The only real questions as to our 'meaning' our significance and the moment of our communication have answers. What is life about? It is about love in fellowship with our Creator. But it is also about doing real things in the real creation which itself has substance as the field of our fellowship with God.

And our creator does not 'need' us, because he had these characteristics  prior to creation and did not need a creation to exhibit, generate or reify them.

Monists (whether impersonal spiritists, materialists or solo-god-ists) have none of this, because, everything finally is the same. There is no real connection or movement of mind. There is no final significance possible and any personal solo-god depends on the creation for realization of anything inter-personal (that is, if person-hood in this landscape is really real). Against this, our creator God is utterly independent of creation; it was made not for him, existentially, but for our Lord in which we are to enjoy him forever.

The real three-in-one God is not thus bound.

By the way, my link to Schaeffer's book, is not a blanket endorsement of the Gospel Coalition. I reject a number of points of their theology.

Another article on Schaeffer's philosophy.