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The Trinity: A Guide for the Perplexed.

The Trinity: A Guide for the Perplexed. By Paul M. Collins. London: Continuum, 2008. 194 pages. Paper. $24.95.

The "Guides for the Perplexed" series is intended to offer "clear, concise and accessible introductions ... that students and readers can find especially challenging." My intuition is that readers will indeed find this book challenging. Author Paul Collins has amassed tremendous detail about the church's long discussion over the significance and meaning of the confession that God is triune. It is not likely that one would find as much information about the Trinity amassed in such few pages and, in that regard, this is an excellent overview of the doctrine of the Trinity.

This book delivers: 1) a summary of the historical development of the doctrine of the Trinity from the Patristic era to the present; 2) current appropriations of the doctrine with respect to both metaphysical and social relationality; 3) responses to classical objections to the Trinity, such as the Arian, the Socinian, and some feminists; 4) the bearing which the doctrine has on the Christian understanding of God and the nature of the church; and 5) the relation between the economic Trinity (God's life for us) and immanent Trinity (God's own life as such) and the role of the Trinity in divine agency. Collins, an Anglican priest, specifies his criteria for examining theological truth as the same as that of the pivotal Anglican theologian, Richard Hooker: scripture, tradition, and reason; however, following John Wesley, he also adds a fourth: experience (p. 5).

In the wake of Claude Welch's pioneering work, Collins points out that his study must address three Trinitarian matters: first, the relation of the immanent to the economic Trinity, particularly as the revelation of God through Christ and the Spirit in history and salvation; second, the co-eternity and co-equality of the three hypostases; and finally, the internal relations in the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit, particularly with respect to the perichoresis or interpenetration of the three persons in their singular agencies. With John D. Zizioulas, Collins affirms that "the rediscovery of the importance of the world of particulars and the economy of salvation and revelation during the course of the twentieth century leads back to the realization that it is necessary to begin with the concrete events, as well as with an event conceptuality" (p. 26). For Collins, the tendency of the last four or five decades has been--with Theodore de Regnon--to favor the Eastern or "social" model of the Trinity which highlights the interrelationship of the three persons over the Western or "Augustinian" view which privileged the divine unity. Collins believes that this is a false opposition and needs to be debunked. Further research has indicated that Augustine and the Greek Cappadocians were more aligned than has previously been acknowledged. Indeed, for Augustine, the three persons are "subsisting relations" just like Zizioulas' view (p. 59). Hence, for both East and West, there is no unity prior to the Trinity, nor Trinity prior to the unity (p. 61).

Collins' discussion of the social and psychological implications of the concept of per-sonhood as based on the triune relations between the divine persons in Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, and Zizioulas is helpful. Of note is L. Boff's supposition that perichoresis serves in a sense as the model for all reality--since on the basis of contemporary physics one can affirm that every actual event contains aspects of all actual events, even if only in a minor way (p. 82). And, the discussion of "otherness" as an inherent aspect of the triune identity merits attention (p, 122).

This book is fairly meaty for the neophyte of Trinitarian theology. The best audience for this book would be students who have some basic theological understanding. This book accurately portrays the best of contemporary directions in Trinitarian theology.

Mark Mattes

Grand View University

Des Moines, Iowa
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Author:Mattes, Mark
Publication:Currents in Theology and Mission
Article Type:Book review
Date:Aug 1, 2010
Words:646
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