Nearly a year since I've posted.  Here's something.

I'm reading Mark Driscoll's Doctrine:  What Christians Should Believe.  Driscoll is an influential pastor, one who has pushed the early emergentist agenda yet is also a sort-of Calvinist; so he is one that attracts evangelical protestants from various sides.  He's also the guy that stirred up some recent brouhaha by making a certain tweet during the President's inauguration.

My problem, however, is with chapter 1 of his book, which "explains" the doctrine of the Trinity.

The subtitle of his book "What Christians Should Believe" makes me think that Driscoll takes the doctrine of the Trinity as he describes it in Chapter 1 as required for Christians.  I take it then that those "Christians" who deny the doctrine of the Trinity as he describes it are violating some epistemic norm for Christians.  But on what basis can he say that such a doctrine as he describes it must be believed by all Christians?  Certainly oneness pentacostals would dissent.  Perhaps Driscoll will cite the Bible as an authority (which is what he mostly does in Ch. 1); yet the oneness pentacostals will also cite Scripture as defending their position of a unipersonal God.  How can Driscoll justify his reading of the Scripture over the oneness pentacostal reading?  Catholics and Orthodox can appeal to Tradition and the Magisterium; but what can Driscoll appeal to other than insisting that his interpretation is the correct one (especially when he later writes that "our authority is not in creeds but in Scripture" p. 28)?

Secondly, I have lots of problems with the doctrine of the Trinity as Driscoll describes it.  Mostly, my problem is that I have no idea what he's describing (and I will be ignoring all the "proof-texts" he uses to defend the doctrine as he describes it; many of those support texts are contentious whether they show what he thinks they show).  What he describes seems confusing at best, incoherent at worst.  Here's his definition of the Trinity:

"one God who eternally exists as three distinct persons--Father, Son, and Spirit--who are each fully and equally God in eternal relation with each other" (Doctrine, p. 13).

By 'person', he means a being that "thinks, acts, feels, speaks, and relates" (ibid.).  So there are three beings (Father, Son, Spirit) that think, act, feel, speak, and relate.  He also says that each member of the Trinity possess properties such as being eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.

He then defends the claim that there is one God, who is denoted in the Old Testament as "Yahweh".  So, Driscoll takes Yahweh to be the "Trinitarian God of the Bible".

Here is where we start to get into trouble.  Driscoll writes:

"Yahweh, The Trinitarian God of the Bible, is a person with the name "Lord"....Yahweh, the Trinitarian God of the bible, begins by telling Moses and us that he is a person" (ibid., p. 17).

But now I'm confused.  Driscoll states that the Trinitarian God is also a person.  So is that a fourth person, another being that "thinks, acts, feels, speaks, and relates" (which is his definition of a person)?  Some people think Yahweh refers only to the Father, so to call him a person is to call the Father a person (no big deal).  But how can Driscoll coherently call the Trinitarian God a person?  Do the three persons somehow make up another person?  But then wouldn't that be a fourth person?  Or if they don't make up another person (and so there are only three persons), then how can he say the Trinitarian God is a person?  Shouldn't it be that the Trinitarian God is a "community of persons" (where a community is not a person)?  Moreover, we can ask Driscoll whether Yahweh is omnipotent or omniscient.  I suspect he would say "yes".  But if so, given that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are omnipotent and omniscient (which he states above), then is Yahweh a fourth omnipotent and omniscient being?

I suspect Driscoll adopts some version of what is often called "social trinitarianism", especially when he writes "The Trinity is the first community and the ideal for all communities...the Trinity is the ideal community in every way" (ibid., p. 12) and his appeal to the notion of "perichoresis" or the "mutual indwelling" of the persons to explain divine unity (ibid., p. 26).  If so, he has to be careful with his language, or at the very least further elaborate what he means.  (aside:  what if someone denies social trinitarians (such as so-called "Latin trinitarians")?  Remember that this book is "what Christians should believe"... does that mean non-social trinitarians are violating some Christian epistemic norm? Driscoll is not being very "mere Christian" here)

More confusing statements:  "John is saying that Jesus Christ is full of Yahweh.  He has come to reveal the Father" (ibid., p. 19).

I admit the language just might not be clear (or I'm not understanding well), but it almost sounds as though Driscoll claims that Christ reveals the Father by being full of Yahweh (which is weird to say; he's full of a community of which he is a member).  It also sounds as though he's identifying the Father and Yahweh; but that can't be since he takes Yahweh to be the Trinitarian God (of which the Father is not identical, at least according to Driscoll's view).  Even if I'm misunderstanding or misinterpreting Driscoll, much of the problem is the slipperiness of the language and a lack of consistent usage.

Hearing a few of Driscoll's sermons, I take him to be a decent representative of a good many evangelicals.  So I am disconcerted when many evangelicals speak of God or the Trinity in the way Driscoll does, using unclear and inconsistent language (which may also evince an incoherent belief-system).

I should note that I do accept the doctrine of the Trinity, but not the doctrine as Driscoll describes it (a qualification I've used throughout this blog).  I just wish we Christians would be more careful with how we speak about it.  This is not to say that we can speak about it so clearly that all the mystery is removed (it is and will remain a mystery).  But we can speak of it without using inconsistent language (as many Christians do).  With that, I commend Fred Sanders' The Deep Things of God or Thomas McCall's Forsaken:  The Trinity and the Cross.  Of course I have some nit-picky concerns with their works, but both works (from theologians, not philosophers) are lucid and use language that makes clear what their view is.  We need more of that in the church.