The Idea of Ideas

I am not a trained theologian, just a freelance pneumatologist, suburban shaman, and guerrilla ontologist, so I'm not aware of all the ins & outs, what-have-yous, and loose strands of the discipline. 

Rather, I just like what I like and throw away the rest, but in so doing, I never really know if I am taking a controversial position, or if I'm a fan of two theologians who can't stand each other. Come to think of it, I'm just a...

Country boy?

Yes, Muddy Waters said it best, albeit with an ironic wink:

You know I'm a country boy
And I don't know what's going on

Or in my case, an exurban boy. Which, by the way, is what I was when I somehow fooled my way into grad school --

Not that story again.

I'll spare you, the point being that I come at this -- this being more or less everything -- with a combination of native intelligence and breathtaking presumption. While I know what I know, I often don't know what I don't know, because if I did, I'd probably be paralyzed. 

It is the fearless ignorance or systematic unknowing of the Raccoon that allows us to boldly -- or breezily -- go where no marsupial has gone before. 

For example, in the case of the Trinity there are minefields everywhere, in that there are even Christians who think the whole idea should be jettisoned because it's an atavism that unnecessarily complicates Christian apologetics. Just be like the other religions and say God is one. 

Certainly Muhammad had no use for no steenking Trinity:

Those who say, “Allah is one in a Trinity,” have certainly fallen into disbelief. There is only One God. If they do not stop saying this, those who disbelieve among them will be afflicted with a painful punishment....

Stop! -- for your own good. Allah is only One God. Glory be to Him! He is far above having a son! 

Is this the same Gabriel who announced to Mary that she was pregnant with God? Or is Gabriel a common name among angels?   

According to Gunton, some theologians regard the Trinity as "a dogma to be believed rather than as the living focus of life and thought," or argue that it is "an inherited dogma that is of no interest or relevance to the modern world." 

I remember a priest saying Trinity Sunday was the least favorite among his fellows, because they didn't know how to explain it. Likewise, Gunton speaks of "the hopeless quest for analogies that will somehow make sense of the otherwise illogical." Better to call it Total Mystery and be done with it. Moreover,

if the real God is known as one, the tacking on of his threeness simply appears as an unnecessary complicating of the simple belief in God (ibid).

Besides, if every divine action involves all three persons, then

there appears to be no point in distinguishing between them. All we really need is the action of the one God, so... the Trinity appears as an irrelevance to our actual understanding of the ways of God toward us.... 

[I]t has often been believed that while trinitarian theology might well be of edificatory value to those who already believe, for the outsider it is an unfortunate barrier to belief, which must therefore be facilitated by some non-trinitarian apologetic... 

This ultimately results in God being treated "unpersonally, with his personhood located in his oneness, not his threeness." 

But in reality, "everything looks -- and indeed, is -- different in the light of the Trinity" (ibid.).

Different how?

I mean, c'mon, Petey. We've discussed this subject in so many ways and from so many angles that I'm not surprised readers are bored by my ramblin'. 

I guess I'm at the other extreme, because I say the Trinity must be the mother of all metaphysical ideas -- the Idea of ideas, as it were -- not just about God but about everything. It is a key that unlocks many doors -- a new ontological principle which enables us "to think about God and the world -- about reality -- in a way otherwise impossible."

For example, it seems to me that a trinitarian metaphysic perfectly balances our individuality with our embeddedness in a deeper metacosmic relationality: "God's being is defined as being in relation" or "being in communion," which only changes everything. For in both God and reality "there is no true being, apart from communion." 

"God is indeed one in being," but "this very oneness is not a mathematical oneness," as in Greek theology. Rather -- as we've been saying -- it is a qualitative oneness "consisting in the inseparable relation" of the Persons, AKA substance-in-relation. 

Again, the Idea of ideas:

Communion is the meaning of the world: there is no "being" of God other than this dynamic of persons in relation.

This being the case, we now have a conceptual basis to understand various entailments such as person (that means you and I), relation, otherness, freedom, and truth (which is itself always a relation between knower and known, or intelligence and intelligibility). 

Note that in this new context, person does not mean individual in the modern Lockean sense, which is "defined in terms of separation from other individuals, the person in terms of relations with other persons" (ibid.).

In short, "we cannot understand relation satisfactorily unless we also realise that to be a person is to be related as an other." Otherness is baked into the cake or woven into the cosmic area rug: "To think of persons is to think in terms of relations." And God is 

a communion of three persons -- not individuals -- in mutually constitutive relations with one another. Each is only what he is by virtue of what the three give to and receive from each other... (emphasis mine). 

You keep saying the same thing in different ways.

Good catch, because God himself must be THE SAME THING IN DIFFERENT WAYS. We might go so far as to say that sameness is a function of difference and vice versa. Come to think of it, Meister Eckhart said a number of paradoxically annoying things alontg these lines, which we will -- lucky for you -- put off for another post. 

What's the word count, Petey?

Over 1,000, chief. Better wrap it up.

You're right. We've only laid a foundation for the Idea of ideas, but building on it will require a great deal more yada yada, so we'll put the kibosh on this one for now.