The decline of the doctrine of the Trinity

Last week in preparing for my "I Believe in the Trinity" sermon, I came across an article written by  the late, great John Murray in his Collected Works. Murray gave a positive review of "In This Name: The Doctrine of the Trinity in Contemporary Theology," written in 1952 (which in the world of theology isn't that long ago!) by Claude Welch.

Welch begins his historical survery of the doctrine of the Trinity by noting that in the first half of the nineteenth century the doctrine was reduced to an issue of second rank. Despite centuries of emphasis on the Trinity, somehow people began to believe that it wasn't that important in the early 1800's. 

Welch gives three reasons why the Trinity fell on hard times:

1. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Schleiermacher was a very influential German theologian and philosopher who sought to intergrate Christianity with philosophical Enlightenment thought. (That is like trying to reconcile the theology of St. Paul with the Thomas Jefferson's cut and paste Bible. This oil and water just don't mix.) Somehow, Schleiermach convinced a whole bunch of people that what mattered wasn't the specific dogma of the Bible, but simply an absolute feeling of dependence on God. Schleiermach tried to turned Christianity into a mere feeling of deep dependence. In the process, he implicitly denied the knowability of truth. Christianity became a feeling. He is sadly known as "The Father of Modern Protestant Theology" because so much of modern day liberal theology began with him.

2. George Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel was a very influential German philosopher who said that various truths evolve and synthesize over time. Hegel did not believe that there is any one, fixed truth out there. Hegel said that there is a thesis and its antithesis. These two battle one another in history until they finally synthesize together and form a third truth. Hegel's philosophy and his view of history, again, undermined a biblical concept of knowable truth revealed from God to us. Without revealed truth, the doctrine of the Trinity is lost. Interestingly, Hegel claimed that his philosophy was based on a kind of trinity. He paid lip service to the trinity, but knocked the legs out from under the stool of it at the same time. (Perhaps the lesson thus far is to beware of anyone of German descent bearing the name Frederick and talking about philosphy! That's a joke for all the defenders of the German Motherland out there.)

3. Albrecht Ritschl. Ritschl was a German theolgian (1882-1889). Ritschl took all of this yet one more step. Ritschl developed an entire system of theology and thought that divorced Christianity from metaphysical truth. Ritschl said that there is a difference between "faith knowledge" and "metaphysical truth". In other words, you can sincerely believe and that is a good thing, but you can't claim that what you believe is based on any objective truth about what's "out there". Entire generations of pastors attending theologically liberal seminaries were trained in the school of Ritschl. As people broadly began to accept the presupposition that "heart knowledge" (a feeling) was somehow to be distanced from "head knowledge" (objective truth based on God's revelation), then the conditions became ripe to begin to devalue the difficult teachings of Scripture, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. Truth became secondary at best.

So what lessons can we learn? 

First of all, ideas have consequences. There is a steep price to pay for apathy in leaving the 'wisdom of the world' unanswered by the church. The church must stay engaged in the debate of big ideas in the culture. We cannot retreat to our corners and bury our heads in the sand. We must be winesome witnesses of Christ (1 Peter 3:15).

Second, ideas have a history. They develop over time. What is taught in one generation is absorbed and expanded upon in the next. It is helpful to our defense of the faith to attempt to gain a little understanding of the history of ideas. One will eventually learn in this study that there is nothing new under the sun. The same old errors are presented every century in new packages.

Third, that Christians must always lean against the culture by standing for the truth that there really is a God out there and that he has really made himself known to us and that he really can be substantially and personally (thought not exhaustively) known by us. 

Fourth, we must avoid the trap of setting religous feeling against knowledge and truth. There is always a kind of false piety among us that pretends that it is too concerned with godly things to do the hard work of studying the Bible and examining difficult ideas in the light of what God has revealed. We must avoid the trap of this kind of false piety in the church. (Of course, it is possible to make the opposite error, which is to be so concerned with examining truth that we don't cultivate any personal piety at all! This error is seen in the lives of those who build careers on attacking other people and finding errors and heresies under every rock.)