Book Review: Faith, Freedom, and the Spirit: The Economic Trinity in Barth, Torrance and Contemporary Theology by Paul D. Molnar
Faith, Freedom, and the Spirit: The Economic Trinity in Barth, Torrance and Contemporary Theology, by Paul D. Molnar
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015/448pp. /$24.38.
The questions: “who are we?” “whose are we?” and “what are we called to be and to do?” are about identity. They are questions which congregations, judicatories, seminaries, institutions of higher learning, corporations, and ecumenical organizations are asking when revisiting mission and vision statements, or to recalibrate the same in accordance with changing times and circumstances. The same is true at a personal level when we engage in critical self-reflection, utilize ancient mystical practices, or heed the insight of Calvin that true knowledge of God leads to true knowledge of self. That is, to know oneself (and by extension, to know the community of faith), one must have a proper understanding of God. Or to put it simply: the true identity of God leads to true identity of who we are, whose we are, and what we are to be and to do. For the task and craft of preaching—to know why and what we preach—the identity of God is critical, essential, and pivotal.
Paul Molnar is a Roman Catholic theologian who teaches at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, and is internationally renowned as a scholar of Karl Barth. His present volume follows his 2005 book, Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity. You know it is a good primer on Trinitarian theology when the footnotes are just as important as the body text. He applies Barth’s theology of the Trinity and election, and then uses the thoughts of one of Barth’s students, the late Reformed theologian, Thomas F. Torrance, to bring clarity to Barth’s thoughts on the matter, and to provide a corrective to contemporary theologies.
Why a corrective? Molnar rightfully addresses attempts in the last 30 years of confusing the work of the triune God toward us in creation, revelation, and reconciliation (the economic Trinity) with who God is in God’s self (the immanent Trinity). Contra Karl Rahner and Paul Tillich, and to some extent Schleiermacher, who all placed an emphasis on the human experiencing of transcendence and seeing in experiences of all things that are good in human actions and in the world as analogies or examples of the triune God, Molnar sees that Barth’s and Torrance’s traditionalist approach locates revelation of God solely and exclusively in Scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit, who unites us to Christ. Because of this, our acknowledgment, recognition, and confession (collectively called obeying or believing) have their basis in the Holy Spirit revealing God’s self to us, an act of divine grace, and, therefore, not under our control.
Molnar critiqued and corrected contemporary Trinitarian theologies as represented by Robert Jenson and Bruce McCormack. According to Molnar, the former rejected the notion of the eternal Word (before the incarnation); the latter insisted that the Word realized or fulfilled his divinity at the incarnation. Instead, applying Barth’s and Torrance’s thinking on the matter and in congruence with Chalcedonian and Nicene theologies, Molnar presented that Jesus Christ was always the Logos, that the triune God did not need to create to be divine or to assert divinity, that even if Jesus Christ as the eternal Logos did not become the incarnate God-man he would still be the second Person of the Trinity equal in authority, power and glory with the Father and the Spirit. Molnar asserts that in the triune God’s divine freedom, the Lord chose to create us and all of creation, the Lord chose to be incarnate in human flesh, the Lord chose to redeem and reconcile us. The Lord was not dependent on creation. And the God who is for us and with us and whom we know through Scripture by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, is the same triune God who is in God’s self. What we are called to be and to do as covenant partners of the triune God is to live into our God-given freedom, which has been enabled by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And thus, for the Christian life, the act of prayer is essential and constitutive. Prayer is living in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, who enables us to be free in Jesus Christ, i.e. to know God, to know ourselves, and therefore, to love God, and to love neighbor.
Our calling as pastors and as preachers of God’s Word is grounded on the triune God – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The triune God is both the subject and predicate of who, why, and what we preach and teach. Without the triune God, what and why we do what we do every single week in Sunday worship or in seminary classrooms would be for naught. We owe a debt of gratitude to Molnar for anchoring us as preachers and teachers, and, therefore, our ministries to the Word and Spirit, when our default position can so easily be about us and our human experiencing of God.
The task and calling of preachers, of preaching, and of the Church are not to necessarily make the Gospel relevant, but as more about to take particular contexts seriously, and appropriate the Gospel’s promises accordingly. When relevance is our chief criteria, we can easily fall prey to what Molnar critiques: equating the sublime of human experience to transcendence and label it examples of the triune God present with us; tilting the scales to an over-emphasis on the human nature of Jesus Christ or the triune God’s work toward us and what human response is necessary to live out our redeemed humanity, or an under-emphasis of the same resulting in an abstract God who has no dealings in human affairs. With either alternative, we have a weakened Christology, an insipid Trinitarian theology, and a faith that has no basis at all.
Molnar calls us back to our moorings, reminding us of the centrality of the Word, the Holy Spirit, and prayer. When we see that our calling is to be as witness, we can do no other than to proclaim what we have seen and heard, what has been revealed to us by the Word and Spirit, in prayer, relying upon the freedom of God to act upon the hearts and minds of people, including our own, to believe and live.
