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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
It used to be thought, in western Christendom, at least, that belief in a triune God was a unique feature of Christian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity was thought to distinguish Christianity from the strict ‘monotheism’ of Judaism and Islam (which deny a plurality of ‘persons’ in the Godhead), on the one hand, and from the ‘polytheism’ or ‘pantheism’ of Greek and Indian religions, on the other. Needless to say, this traditional view reflected an unfair bias toward Christianity and a distorted view of the other religions, especially the ‘pagan’ ones of Greece and India. Since the eighteenth century, however, considerable historical and cultural research has been done on non-Christian religions, and, in our own time, the impact of its results is finally beginning to be felt in the church as a whole. Far from being unique, the doctrine of the Trinity now seems to have been influenced by Stoic and neo-Platonic speculation about God and the world and even to have parallels in the ‘theologies’ of Hinduism and Buddhism. All of a sudden, ‘trinities’ are appearing everywhere in the history of religions as if they were the fulfilment of a universal ‘archetype’ or realisations of a ‘perfect number’, reflecting the subconscious of man more than the objective reality of God. It seems that we must either launch out into a sea of pan-trinitarianism, or else retreat to the safer shores of strict ‘monotheism’ (but, then, the idea of strict ‘oneness’ is probably an archetype of some sort, as well!).
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page 303 note 1 E.g. Eichrodt, W., Theology of the Old Testament, Vol. II (London: S.C.M. Press, 1967), Part TwoGoogle Scholar.
page 303 note 2 E.g. Professor Stead's recent article, ‘The Origins of the Doctrine of the Trinity, 2’, Theology, 77 (1974), pp. 582–588CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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page 304 note 2 Ibid, pp. 201ff.
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page 305 note 3 Athanasius, Letters to Serapion, 1.9, 25, 27.
page 306 note 1 Athanasius, Orations against the Arians, II.24f, 31.
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page 307 note 1 V. Lossky, op. cit., pp. 84ff; cf. Hilary, On the Trinity, IV. 18, V.8f.
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page 307 note 4 Athanasius, Letters to Serapion, 1.12, 14, 24f, 28.
page 307 note 5 Cf. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 4ff.
page 308 note 1 Cf. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 17–21.
page 308 note 2 Hilary, On the Trinity, VIII.31, 38f, 50f; Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 9ff.
page 309 note 1 Athanasius, Orations against the Arians, II.24–30.
page 309 note 2 See Boyd, R. H. S., An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1969), pp. 34, 71ffGoogle Scholar.
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page 309 note 5 Cf. V. Lossky, op. cit., ch. 2.
page 310 note 1 Cf. Hilary, On the Trinity, II.5–8, III.22f.