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Knowing the Name of God: A Trinitarian Tapestry of Grace, Faith and Community
By Roderick T. Leupp
InterVarsity Press, 1996
204 pp.; $14.99, paper

The Triune God: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Study
By Thomas Marsh
Twenty-Third Publications, 1994
201 pp.; $14.95, paper

Modern Trinitarian Perspectives
By John Thompson
Oxford University Press, 1994
165 pp.; $35

Our Triune God: A Biblical Portrayal of the Trinity
By Peter Toon
Victor Books/Bridgepoint, 1996
271 pp.; $17.99, paper

The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church
By Thomas F. Torrance
T&T Clark, 1993
358 pp.; $31.95, paper

Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement
By Thomas F. Torrance
T&T Clark, 1994
149 pp.; $37.95

The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons
By Thomas F. Torrance
T&T Clark, 1996
260 pp.; $39.95

Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Art
Edited by Christoph Schwobel
T&T Clark, 1995
176 pp.; $35.95

Times have changed. In the theologically charged atmosphere of the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa grumbled that it was impossible to accomplish even simple tasks without being challenged to doctrinal debate by the local banker or baker. "If you ask for change someone philosophizes to you on the begotten and the unbegotten. If you ask the price of bread, you're told the Father is greater and the Son inferior. If you ask is the bath ready, someone answers the Son was created from nothing."

By way of contrast to Gregory's complaint, note the frustration and skepticism of Enlightenment figures such as Immanuel Kant and Thomas Jefferson over the logic and practical value of the doctrine of the Trinity. Kant, for example, argued the doctrine had no practical significance. "The doctrine of the Trinity provides nothing, absolutely nothing, of practical value, even if one claims to understand it; still less when one is convinced that it far surpasses our understanding. It costs the student nothing to accept that we adore three or ten persons in the divinity. … Furthermore, this distinction offers absolutely no guidance for his conduct."

Jefferson seems particularly irritated by the complexities of "Trinitarian arithmetic," as he called it, a theological mathematics that only served to blur our vision of who Jesus truly was:

When we shall have done away with the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the very simple structure of Jesus; when, in short, we shall have unlearned everything which has been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples.

So which is it? Gregory of Nyssa or Kant and Jefferson? Most conservative Christians would say Gregory, but in the back of our minds doubts linger. What difference, we ask ourselves, does such an apparently esoteric doctrine really make after all? Is it not, in the final analysis, more a theological mind game than a creedal statement by which orthodox belief stands or falls? In Knowing the Name of God: A Trinitarian Tapestry of Grace, Faith and Community, Roderick T. Leupp captures our hidden reservations about the Trinity well:

For most people and, sadly, for most Christians also, the Trinity is the great unknown. The Trinity, to use a familiar equation, is viewed as a riddle wrapped up inside a puzzle and buried in an enigma. A riddle, for how can any entity be at the same time multiple (three) yet singular (one)? A puzzle, for the Trinity is so clearly contrary to any rational thought as not to warrant a second thought from sensible people. An enigma, for even if the Trinity could be understood, of what practical value, even what religious value, would it have for ordinary people?

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April 28 1997, Vol. 41, No. 5