I want to pick up on the issue that Graham Shearer raised in his Evangelicals Now article. As I observed in my previous article, it’s hard to check and assess what others are actually saying because we haven’t been told where the quotes are from. However, it should be possible for us to think a little about the language we use about God.
As a preliminary, here are a few things to remember. First, there are perhaps more helpful and less helpful ways of speaking about God. Personally, I’m not sure that “a united family” is language I would use because it does run the risk of being heard as suggesting that the three persons are coming together in a kind of social unity. Where there are known errors, like the idea of a Social Trinity, some language may be less helpful, not because it is ultimately wrong in and of itself but because of how it is heard.
Secondly, there are some protections in place to help us when we use language that is less helpful and to protect us from error. First, of all, think about how we use analogical language to describe God. We can use human language and imagery because we/those things are a bit like God in some ways (not the other way round). Human fathers are fathers, a bit like God is the true Father. However, because it is analogous, not identical, we need to talk about how the analogy falls short. We want to say that God is like and unlike the language we use and we want to say that God is more than the language we use. On that basis, I would suggest that it is okay to use familial language to describe God but we must be careful to insist that if our families help us to think a bit about God, He is unlike our families and he is greater than them.
One way in which we show that God is unlike our analogies is by talking about the things we affirm and deny about God. So, in terms of the Trinity:
- We affirm the oneness of God but with no denial of the distinctions between the three persons.
- We affirm the distinctions of the persons but with no denial of the equality of the persons nor the oneness of God.
- We affirm the equality of the persons but with no denial of the distinctions of the persons.
These affirmations protect us from the big dangers/errors or heresies seen in subordinationism/Arianism, The Social Trinity and modalism.
With those foundations in place, let’s have a closer look at Shearer’s concerns about “family language” and The Trinity.
Is it unfaithful to Scripture?
Shearer says:
“The first thing to point out is that the idea of “God as a united family” is not taught in Scripture. This may seem counter-intuitive because after all, we are given two familial names, “Father” and “Son”, for the first two persons of the Godhead.”
We should pause on that point a little. Shearer is rather quick to dismiss the evidence of “familial names” here but in fact, it is not just that Scripture uses familial titles. It uses familial language to describe the Father/Son relationship. Consider John 5:19-23
“19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 22 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.”
The names are not arbitrarily chosen but intended to show us something of how the Father and Son relate. The imagery of a father including his son in his work, showing him the ropes is very much familial.
Now, of course, the third person is not referred to with a familial title. He is Holy Spirit rather than Mother/Wife, though some have picked up on the way he is described as a helper, just as Eve is in Genesis 2. There are good reasons for not using mother/wife language to describe the Holy Spirit, specifically that in Biblical imagery, it is God’s people who are identified as Yahweh’s consort. This contrasts incredibly with pagan views where the chief god needed a goddess wife. In the same way, the Holy Spirit is not “brother” because that language is reserved for us, we are Christ’s many brothers.
This naming of the Holy Spirit does not mean that we shouldn’t use familial language. Rather it should remind us that God is more than our concept of family.
Does it “ risks robbing the persons of their deity”?
Shearer writes
“It may seem strange that an approach that starts with the three persons, rather than the one divine essence, would diminish the status of those persons but, if we think the matter through, this is the surprising result of saying that God is a united family. In locating God at the level of the oneness, the three are subtly relegated to less than God. In his discussion of the Trinity, Augustine writes: “Nor because He is three must we think of Him as triple, or three by multiplication; otherwise the Father alone or the Son alone would be less than the Father and the Son together.” Augustine is quick to point out that because the persons have relational names, it is difficult to think of the Father alone, “since the Father is always and inseparably with the Son and the Son with the Father”.
I think that Shearer is here picking up from a second phrase from his evangelistic course where it says that the persons:
““together form the one God.”
There is a danger here that the impression could be given that each person, on their own provide a part of God. This would mean that they are each less than God. We insist however that each person is fully God, having the full nature of God. Yet, this is presuming that the author of the course only has this to say about God. There is, I think a legitimate sense in which we say that it is the three together that is God. You see, we talk about God as “simple” meaning that all that we say about him is essential to who he is. God cannot be God and not be Trinity. This means that Augustine wants to emphasis the full divinity of each person not just by saying that they have the full nature but by insisting that none of the persons is ever alone. They mutually indwell each other.
The risk is not in what is said but in leaving other affirmations and denials unsaid. The question is whether or not they are left that way. It is helpful to remember for example that in this case, Shearer talks about starting with threeness but the author he mentions does not in fact do that. We are in effect joining a conversation mid dialogue. The oneness of God is already assumed and agreed in the evangelistic dialogue (though there are risks with such assumptions). In effect the question now is “one what”. McMunn in his course wants to emphasise that God is not one of a solitary, lonely, needy individual. He is one … Well he is one Trinity isn’t he. This Trinity is described in familial language and is love so that the one God is not dependent on us and did not create us because he needed someone to love.
Does it risk “making God less relational.”
This is Shearer’s argument
The impetus for much of this kind of theological language is to emphasise God’s relational nature. Families are all about relationships and, therefore, if God is a family then God must be very relational. Now, it is true that God is relational, and that is a very important truth about Him. It is ironic, therefore, that this approach which seeks to highlight God’s relational nature, actually renders him less so. How? Because if God is a corporate entity which emerges from the unity of the three persons then God, as such, is an impersonal being. A few years ago, during the US Presidential campaign, Mitt Romney (pictured), running for the Republican nomination, was mocked for saying that “corporations are people too”. His point was that taxes on corporations are eventually paid by people. Now, even if one might agree with Romney economically, semantically he was wrong. Corporations are not people. We might say that “The Such-and-such family really care for us”, but really the Such-and-such family doesn’t care for us, the care comes from Mr and Mrs Such-and-such and their five lovely Such-and-such children. Corporate entities, whether families, football teams, insurance companies or elephant herds aren’t really relational. Their relational characteristics emerge from the persons contained with them. So, if God is a united family, a corporate entity, then ultimate reality, for that is what God is, is fundamentally impersonal. In this construction, while the persons might be able to know, to love, to act, etc, God as God is unable to do any of these things. God as God is simply the product of the actions and relations of the three. If we want to locate relationship at the heart of reality, then God cannot be a corporate entity.
Incidentally, in legal terms, a corporation is legally a “person” and properly speaking to avoid confusion about this, lawyers would pluralise that as “persons”, rather than people. Apart from that Romney wasn’t that far off semantically.
In any case, first, Shearer seems to lean heavily into corporate language and the risk there is that it makes it sound like people are describing God in institutional terms but this isn’t the way the language is being used. Secondly, he seems to be assuming a denial that hasn’t been stated, the denial of the oneness of God. We could get repetitive here but perhaps it is necessary to keep saying that we shouldn’t assume that because a person says x they are therefore not saying y. It is possible to both emphasise the three persons and pray specifically to the Father, as Jesus taught whilst also pray to God as one.
Furthermore, I don’t buy Shearer’s claim that it isn’t a family that wraps itself round, loves and cares for a person. Yes, that love is expressed by the individual family members together but often it is only through their togetherness that a care which is more than the sum of the parts is possible.
Is it true that “God is a united family’ is tacitly atheistic?
Shearer writes
“It may seem strange, but to say that “God is a united family’ implies that really there is no such thing as God, or at least that nothing really possesses what the Bible attributes to God. I realise this may seem the least intuitive of my points, so I’ll try and explain how I come to this conclusion. Let’s say that to be God is to be absolute and infinite. God is absolute in that He is the final explanation of existence, He is the one who gives being to all things and receives being from none, there is nothing behind God that explains Him. God is infinite in that nothing restricts Him, there is nothing at His level of reality that curtails Him. To say that God is absolute and infinite is to say that God is qualified by nothing other than Himself. Now, we have good Scriptural warrant for affirming this because God reveals Himself to Moses as “I am who I am” in Exodus 3:14, the one whose existence is unqualified by another. Now, here’s the question: does saying that “God is a united family” dovetail well with God’s self-description in Exodus 3:14? If God is a united family, then, as we discussed earlier, the three persons are individually not God; God only emerges from the unity of the three. But this means that the three are not infinite since they only become God in combination with each other. They do not possess unqualified infinite being in themselves. On the other hand, at the level of oneness, God as a united family, God does not possess absoluteness. God is no longer the absolute explanation of His existence, since behind God’s oneness sits the three persons who are the cause of the oneness of God, just as a father, mother and child are the cause of the family. So, we have three who are not infinite and a one who is not absolute, since he (or, really, it) emerges from the three. We are forced to conclude therefore, that there is no such thing as an absolute and infinite being. Nothing, either at the level of threeness or oneness fits with the definition of deity given in Exodus 3:14 (and in many other places of Scripture). Therefore, ultimately, there is no God, at least as defined by the Scriptures.”
Again, unfortunately, Shearer is assuming things, reading things in that have not been said.He is assuming that the phrase is intended as an exhaustive statement about God. Incidentally, Shearer here seems to be again struggling with assuming that something is saying more than it is, when we would have no trouble with this in Scripture or indeed in the creeds.
We can talk about the Son being begotten and the Spirit proceeding from the Father, we can say that the Father “ has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” Without those statements being seen to take away from the absoluteness and infiniteness of God.
Is it a problem to describe God as “a unified family” because God is incomprehensible?
Shearer complains that
“It is easy to see the attraction, as an idea, of God as a united family. In an evangelistic setting we want to make the central claims of Christianity as accessible and reasonable as possible and not only is the idea of a family accessible, it is also attractive, since all of us having longings for a happy family life. But there is a hidden danger here, that in our effort to make God familiar we may domesticate Him.”
For a final time, we have the problem of presumption here. As even Shearer acknowledges, we can use accessible language to describe God. God is incomprehensible but this means that we should never treat anything we know about him as full and exhaustive knowledge. It doesn’t mean that we cannot say these things about him.
Conclusion
It is possible that the Evangelistic Course in question does simply stop at God as unified family and that its author has made all the mistakes that Shearer suggests. However, we cannot confirm or refute that without looking at the course.
Whilst I would be personally less comfortable with the exact phrases Shearer references, I don’t think that familial language in and of itself does the things he suggests, nor necessarily risks them.
I am concerned that at the moment, there remains a tendency for evangelical theologians to pick battles over language, finding small errors to write much on. This doesn’t serve the church and it may lead us to miss bigger battles that we do need to fight.
Faithroots 