Theology Today - Vol 35, No. 1 - April 1978 - BOOK REVIEW - The Doctrine of the Trinity: God's Being Is in Becoming

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The Doctrine of the Trinity: God's Being Is in Becoming
By Eberhard Jüngel
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1976. 110 pp. $6.50.

Eberhard Jüngel, Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen, describes this book as a "paraphrase" of Karl Barth's doctrine of the Trinity. Published in Germany in 1966, the work was prompted by an important debate between Herbert Braun, a Bultmannian, and Helmut Gollwitzer, a Barthian, regarding the nature of responsible Christian thinking and speaking of God. Whereas Braun reduced language about God to language about the event of faith, Gollwitzer contended that God's independent reality is the basis of God's gracious relationship to us.

Jüngel joins the debate in this volume. He argues that Gollwitzer's way of asserting God's independence-and in particular the problematic distinction between God's being "in and for himself" and God's being "for us"-inadvertently implies that God is essentially unhistorical and unrelated. According to Jüngel, this is surprisingly unlike Barth's own description of the reality of God which is radically and consistently Trinitarian. For Barth the purpose of the doctrine of the Trinity is to make clear that "God's being ad extra corresponds essentially to his being ad intra in which it has its basis and prototype" (p.23). If theology takes God's self-revelation as normative, then God's being must be understood as essentially relational. "As relational being, God's being for us is the reiteration of God's self-relatedness in his being as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit" (p. 106). Jüngel summarizes the "historicality" of the Trinitarian life of God in the statement: God's being is in becoming.

As Jüngel convincingly shows, Barth's doctrine of the Trinity provides the hermeneutical foundation for the whole Church Dogmatics. Located primarily in his theological prolegomena, Barth's exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity accomplishes what Bultmann was also after in his program of demythologization. Far from indulging in wild speculation, the doctrine of the Trinity, as Barth understands it, protects the Christian understanding of God from mythological or metaphysical distortions. In teaching us that God is Father, Son, and Spirit, the doctrine of the Trinity calls our attention to the fact that God is "already ours in advance" and yet is "completely his own" (p. 25). Jüngel's paraphrase of Barth's train of thought culminates in the discussion of God's passion. God is not incapable of suffering as maintained in the classical metaphysical doctrine of God; nor does God abdicate divinity by suffering and dying. Rather, God is supremely

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God, supremely alive, in the act of surrender, even unto death, for our salvation. The event of God's passion can be properly interpreted only in Trinitarian terms. This theme has been developed more fully by Jüngel in other writings.

According to a reliable report, Barth himself judged that while Gollwitzer was right vis-a-vis Braun, Jüngel was right vis-a-vis Gollwitzer. Even with this imprimatur, however, Jüngel's essay raises several important questions. While contending that for Barth God's being is in becoming, Jüngel never adequately clarifies the term "becoming." He says it is to be understood as a Trinitarian rather than as a general ontological category. Repudiating the idea of a "God who becomes," i.e., whose being increases or decreases, Jüngel asserts that "God's being in becoming is a becoming proper to his being" (p.100). The doctrine of the di-polar' nature of God in American process theology is criticized by Jüngel, but his brief comments constitute at best the beginning of what could be an important theological encounter.

Jüngel must also be criticized for failing to point out the cost that Barth paid for developing the doctrine of the Trinity primarily in the context of theological prolegomena and in terms of an analysis of the event of revelation (involving revealer, revelation, and revealedness). Does not this approach contribute to the speculative appearance of the doctrine which Barth wanted to overcome? Must not the starting point of the doctrine of the Trinity be the concrete history of God with us in Jesus Christ through whom the transforming Spirit comes? In his most recent work, Gott als Geheimnis der Welt (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1977), Jüngel agrees that Barth's approach to the doctrine of the Trinity in Church Dogmatics 1/1 is open to serious misunderstanding, and argues that the doctrine is to be grounded in the concrete history of Jesus rather than in a formal analysis of the event of revelation.

Finally, Jüngel's study gives no attention whatever to the sociopolitical implications of Barth's doctrine of the Trinity. Since 1966 the frontline of theological debate in Germany has shifted from the BarthBultmann controversy to the foundations, direction, and limits of "political theology." Recent interpretations of Barth's theology have emphasized the political dimension of his thought, and this is bound to raise new questions about the right understanding of his doctrine of the Trinity. If Barth was so thoroughly Trinitarian in his thinking, and if he was at the same time always a theologian who insisted on the integrity of Christian faith and praxis, what was the inner connection between his Trinitarian understanding of God and his understanding of what the Christian hopes and works for in society?

Now in its third German edition, Jüngel's book is both provocative and very demanding reading. Despite its modest size, it will challenge graduate students of theology more than it will help readers who are looking for an introduction to the doctrine of the Trinity. (Responding to the charge of excessive subtlety, Jüngel wryly expresses regret that he was unable to deal with the topic in even more subtle terms!) Unfortunately, the English translation occasionally adds confusion to an

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already complex text. For example, Jüngel's statement that God's being is, in a certain manner, "already historical in advance" is rendered: God's being is "being which, in a certain way, is already in advance of history" (p. xvii). This sort of thing does not make the reader's task any easier.

Daniel L. Migliore
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey