ABSTRACT
Christian naming of divinity, even in the community’s oldest baptismal formula, begins by affirming the threefold character of divine disclosure without abjuring divine unity. The one God who created the world saves that very world by way of God’s Word and Breath which two cannot be collapsed into an undifferentiated simplicity of the one Father. The logic of Christian reflection, which led eventually to Nicene trinitarianism, was also driven by a commitment to safeguarding divine unity and transcendence while affirming God’s real and gracious self-giving. To assert that God gives something other or less than Godself in giving Word and Spirit imperils salvation which can come about only as human beings are taken into the divine life and thereby deified. What is striking about Christian reflection on divine accessibility is that, from the first, trinitarian considerations were never far removed from reflection on religious diversity. No less a theologian than Gregory of Nyssa characterized the trinitarian conception of divinity as a means between as well as a double refutation of the excesses of Jewish commitment to the One and a pagan commitment to the many. As the epigraph to this chapter shows, Gregory did not separate the work of formulating and defending Christian trinitarianism from reflection about Christianity’s others. The work of self-constitution shows itself to be through and through dialogical, at least in principle. Intriguingly, in our time, a time also marked by robust religious variety, the association between trinitarian reflection and religious diversity has been revivified.2 Fortunately, contemporary conversations about trinity and religious diversity are not confined to apologetics but now hold promise for an affirmative
embrace of religious difference. A variety of Christian theologians now assert that trinitarianism is the distinctively Christian way of offering a positive resolution to the problem of religious diversity: by acknowledging distinction within the divine life, Christians can account for substantial differences among the world’s religions as varying but nonetheless legitimate expressions of an encounter with God who will be experienced diversely just because God is not an undifferentiated singularity. The abiding differences between the world religions are neither illusory nor indicative of error. Religious diversity is a natural expression of human encounter with divine multiplicity. Of course, a trinitarian approach to religious diversity cannot be a neat solution to questions of religious diversity. How, after all, are Christian theologians to honor the Jewish commitment to divine unity and Muslim affirmations that God is without associates? Moreover, a problematic apologetic temptation remains at the heart of some trinitarian approaches to religious diversity, the temptation to assert that whereas other traditions offer a monolithic account of divine life, Christian trinitarianism, by contrast, is encompassing and polyphonic. Christians see the whole whereas others see only in part. We are once more in the territory of hierarchical inclusivism in which Christian traditions have little to learn from dialogue with other religious traditions.3 Self-sufficiency trumps the possibility of mutual transformation. Might it be possible for Christian theologians to envision a trinitarian engagement with religious diversity that is marked by a sense of anticipation that other traditions may have something to teach us about how to think even about trinity? Can we imagine the trinity as a site for interreligious exchange rather than as a prefabricated solution to the problem of religious diversity? My sense is that the trinity can indeed be an open site for interreligious dialogue and exchange but not so long as Christians bring to dialogue a finished conception of the trinity that can in no way be enriched by way of dialogue and comparative theology. Theology has been in the midst of a trinitarian efflorescence since the work of Karl Barth and Karl Rahner. This return of trinitarianism, however, is not marked by happy harmony but is instead characterized by considerable dissensus. One conviction that drives the resurgence of trinitarianism is the notion that trinity affords a promising resource for social ontology. If to be is to be in relation, then there is no clearer paradigm for that contention than the trinity itself. But about the character of relationality within the divine life, there is no consensus. On the one side stand the social trinitarians and, on the other, are those who are adamantly persuaded that social trinitarianism is a fundamental distortion of the intentions of the ancients.4 Given the vigorous internal debate between Christian theologians, it is natural to ask how engagements with religious diversity might bear on such controversies. The ongoing intra-Christian trinitarian debate reminds us that trinity is better understood as a question and a problem rather than as a transparent dogmatic dictum. Rather than treat some readymade account of the trinity as a final Christian answer to questions about theology and ontology or the problem of religious difference, an alternative and more open-ended strategy would treat the trinity as itself a locus for interreligious conversation and exchange. Put otherwise, before any particular trinitarian formulation derived from intra-Christian resources alone
is made to serve as the normative basis for a Christian theology of religious pluralism, we would be better advised to begin by treating trinity as a question for comparative theology. In what follows, I advance a trinitarian formulation that draws from a comparative reading of Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist traditions. From Advaita Veda¯nta, I draw an account of ultimate reality as ground. From Christian resources, I offer an account of ultimate reality as contingency, and from Buddhist traditions (specifically Madhyamaka), I draw an account of ultimate reality as relation. The result is a trinitarianism of God as ground, contingency, and relation derived by way of comparative theology. Although each of these concepts can be correlated with accounts of God as Father, Son, and Spirit, the task at hand is not to defend the orthodoxy of this formulation but to launch an experiment in formulating Christian doctrine in conversation with other traditions. A glance at Gregory suffices to show that something like this process of construction with an eye to religious diversity has long been a part of Christian theology. Only now such construction can take on the character of collaborative conversation rather than apologetic contestation. What about the number three? Does this venture hinge on positing a threefold structure to reality and the divine life? And what is the relationship between the three and the poly of polydoxy? Is three too few for those who love the many? In what follows, trinitarianism is meant to serve as a kind of Nyssan middle between the one and the many, albeit with a difference. I appeal to trinity as a refutation of any privileging of the One that would dismiss the exuberant diversity of creation as merely epiphenomenal or otherwise unreal and likewise hold to trinity against any vision of the many as sheer, arbitrary difference without relation. The number three itself is neither arbitrary nor absolute. This speculative trinitarianism is committed to a vision of God as ground, contingency, and relation. However, theologians would do well to remember the warning of the Fathers that number cannot mean in the divine life what it means in quotidian experience. Only finite realities can be enumerated; the infinite cannot. Neither one nor three can mean for the divine life what numbers mean in conventional experience. Nonetheless, I say three.
