Our Triune God: A Biblical Portrayal of the Trinity

Our Triune God: A Biblical Portrayal of the Trinity. By Peter Toon. Wheaton: BridgePoint, 1996, 271 pp., n.p. paper. There are at least two ways Toon's new book on the Trinity is especially significant: in its treatments of "precise language" and "inclusive language" regarding formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Throughout history those who have portrayed the Trinity in its Biblical sense engage in the "delicate balancing act" of avoiding the two extremes of modalism and tritheism. Tritheism or Arianism, according to Toon, is not as much of a threat today as modalism or Sabellianism. In other words, the modern Church is more influenced by the ancient heresy of Sabellius than of Arius, although the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, for example, continue to perpetuate Arius' denial of the Trinity.

Whereas the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity makes a distinction (of persons), Arianism makes a separation (of nature) and modalism a conflation (of persons). That is, the Trinitarian formula is "plurality in unity": three persons (hypostaseis), one nature (ousia); the Arian three persons, three natures; and the Sabellian one person, one nature. While imprecise language can lead to the distortion of polytheism (Arianism/ tritheism) rather than to Biblical Trinitarian (mono)theism, the greatest danger today, Toon points out, is pantheism or panentheism stemming from Sabellianism/modalism. While, in the past, modalism emphasizing transcendence alone resulted in deism or unitarianism, Toon argues that imprecise and/or inclusive language regarding the Trinity now leads to a modalistic overemphasis on immanence resulting in pantheism or panentheism.

Toon sees a subtle correlation between the modern emphasis on individualism and current indications of modalism and pantheism in the Church, or at least in some of the people in the Church. Individualism, which makes everything equal, ironically blurs the line of distinction between any two given individuals in the one creation. Modalism results from not distinguishing the three persons in the one Creator. Pantheism follows with no distinction between creation and Creator. This is the attack from within the Church as a result of imprecise language.

For example, whereas traditionally the NT name of God includes the repeated definite article to emphasize the three distinct persons ("God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit"), today the articles often are left out, which, Toon claims, opens the door to the possibility that only one person (in three modes or with three names) is being referred to ("God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit"). This corresponds to the famous Granville Sharp rule (1798) in Greek in which the presence of more than one article in a series of nouns signifies that the nouns refer to different individuals. The ETS constitution, incidentally, lacks the articles in its (doctrinal basis) statement on the Trinity but makes up for it by inserting the word "Trinity": "God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

The attack from without, or outside the Church, Toon contends, comes from feminist theology and is "a crucial part of a larger attempt to dismantle the received linguistic structure of Christianity" (p. 21). Toon refers to the "inclusivist" linguistic crisis, in which grammatical gender in language is erroneously equated with human (physical) sexuality in life, as if the latter is no more important than the former (p. 22). Just as there is "holy order" within the Trinity and yet equality of divine persons "in terms of essential being," so are there order and equality in the creatures that the Creator made male and female (p. 240). Moreover "the content of what Fatherhood [or Sonship] means is wholly revealed"-even though the words used in naming the divine persons are taken from human language (p. 147).

Toon is to be commended for his courage to do the politically incorrect, right thing and to make the case for the "need for precise language" and the "rejection of inclusive language" (pp. 236-241) in the effort toward deeper understanding and worship of the "Blessed, Holy, and Undivided Trinity."

Dave Couric

Dallas Baptist University, Dallas, TX

Copyright Evangelical Theological Society Dec 1998
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