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QUESTION: Does the doctrine of the Trinity require that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be a divine Person in essentially the same way, or is it theologically acceptable to understand the Holy Spirit as significantly different than the Father and the Son?
KARL BARTH (1886–1968) was a Swiss-born pastor, professor, and theologian whose career was primarily in Germany. He was educated in the liberal German theology of his time but became concerned with the outbreak of World War II and how many church leaders and liberal theologians supported the Nazi regime. He therefore initiated a theological movement away from liberalism into what is now called neoorthodoxy. Karl Barth is therefore known as the Father of Neoorthodoxy. Barth set forth his neoorthodox system in his multi-volume work Church Dogmatics. Our readings are from five of the sections contained in the chapter titled, “The Triune God.” These correspond to revelation, the triunity of God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Each section starts with a thesis statement. I present each thesis statement followed by an additional excerpt from the associated section.
READING 1: Church Dogmatics, I.1 §8
Thesis: God’s Word is God Himself in His revelation. For God reveals Himself as the Lord and according to Scripture this signifies for the concept of revelation that God Himself in unimpaired unity yet also in unimpaired distinction is Revealer, Revelation, and Revealedness.
Excerpt: What we are saying is that revelation is the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity; the doctrine of the Trinity has no other basis apart from this. We arrive at the doctrine of the Trinity by no other way than that of an analysis of the concept of revelation. Conversely, if revelation is to be interpreted aright, it must be interpreted as the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity. The crucial question for the concept of revelation, that of the God who reveals Himself, cannot be answered apart from the answer to this question given in the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is itself the answer that must be given here. When we say, then, that the doctrine of the Trinity is the interpretation of revelation or that revelation is the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity, we find revelation itself attested in Holy Scripture in such a way that in relation to this witness our understanding of revelation, or of the God who reveals Himself, must be the doctrine of the Trinity.
READING 2: Church Dogmatics, I.1 §9
Thesis: The God who reveals Himself according to Scripture is One in three distinctive modes of being (German: Seinsweisen) subsisting in their mutual relations: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is thus that He is the Lord, i.e., the Thou who meets man’s I and unites Himself to this I as the indissoluble Subject and thereby and therein reveals Himself to him as his God.
Reading: By preference we do not use the term “person” but rather “mode (or way) of being,” our intention being to express by this term, not absolutely, but relatively better and more simply and clearly the same thing as is meant by “person.” The fact that God is God in a special way as Father, as Son, and as Spirit, … [not] that of the “rational nature” of Father, Son and Spirit, which can hardly be called threefold without tritheism … Hence, we are not introducing a new concept but simply putting in the center an auxiliary concept which has been used from the very beginning and with great emphasis in the analysis of the concept of person.
READING 3: Church Dogmatics, I.1 §10
Thesis: The one God reveals Himself according to Scripture as the Creator, that is, as the Lord of our existence. As such He is God our Father because He is so antecedently in Himself as the Father of the Son.
Reading: Part of the distinction is the appropriation in which we equate the Creator with God the Father and God the Father with the Creator. It is only an appropriation to the degree that it does not also express the truth of perichoresis, of the intercommunity of Father, Son and Spirit in their essence and work … It expresses the truth to the degree that with its specific emphasis on the Father or Creator it points to the affinity between the order of God’s three modes of being on the one hand and that of the three sides of His work as Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer on the other.
READING 4: Church Dogmatics, I.1 §11
Thesis: The one God reveals Himself according to Scripture as the Reconciler, i.e., as the Lord in the midst of our enmity towards Him. As such He is the Son of God who has come to us or the Word of God that has been spoken to us, because He is so antecedently in Himself as the Son or Word of God the Father.
Reading: But what does it mean for us – for this must be our starting point as well – to confess Jesus as the revelation of His Father and therefore as His true Son? … Over and above the reality of God’s lordship over our existence it implies God’s lordship in the fact that He turns to us, that indeed He comes to us, that He speaks with us, that He wills to be heard by us and to arouse our response. It signifies the reality of an intercourse which He has established between God and us. God does not just will and work. In His revelation in Jesus Christ, He discloses to us His will and work. He does not treat us as dust or clay, even though we are this as His creatures. He does not just subject us to His power as Creator or cause us to be controlled by His power as Creator so as to fulfill His purpose in us. He seeks us as those who can let themselves be found.
READING 5: Church Dogmatics, I.1 §12
Thesis: The one God reveals Himself according to Scripture as the Redeemer, i.e., as the Lord who sets us free. As such He is the Holy Spirit, by receiving whom we become the children of God, because, as the Spirit of the love of God the Father and the Son, He is so antecedently in Himself.
Reading: Thus, even if the Father and the Son might be called “person” (in the modern sense of the term), the Holy Spirit could not possibly be regarded as the third “person.” In a particularly clear way the Holy Spirit is what the Father and the Son also are. He is not a third spiritual Subject, a third I, a third Lord side by side with two others. He is a third mode of being of the one divine Subject or Lord. He is the common element, or, better, the fellowship, the act of communion, of the Father and the Son … The Filioque expresses recognition of the communion between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is the love which is the essence of the relation between these two modes of being of God.
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