The Trinity

Gordon Clark has given a careful, yet brief summary of one of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, the doctrine of the Trinity. Clark always has a way of giving such depth and clarity while limiting himself to such brevity in such a complex, yet essential teaching of the Christian Church. In a little over a hundred pages, Clark gives biblical support, historical developments, and deals with the objections to this doctrine. What this reader found as most helpful was Clark's relentless emphasis on defining terms throughout his work. Though Christian philosophers and theologians have always taken great care to teach God as one essence/substance (homooúsios) and three persons (or subsistences within the Divine substance/essence), Clark is keen on emphasizing how important it is to go beyond this in terms of definition, since our definition of Trinity and its persons sometimes is not as helpful as we think. This leads Clark to delve further in defining the meaning of Trinity more as "definition" than substance, though he doesn't seem greatly bothered by defining the unity of God as one essence/substance as long as its fleshed out in better detail. In terms of Persons, Clark turns to defining the term by a set of propositions and not merely a subsistence within the essence (what he designates as "definition"). The majority of his work focuses on this area, which is extremely important. I would recommend this work as an intermediate treatment on the doctrine of the Trinity as it interacts heavily with the historical Christian tradition, debates within that tradition, and historical philosophical thought. Though Clark's writing is compact, reading him is well-worth every word. Those who read Clark will be interacting with one of the giants of Christian Reformed philosophy and gain a wealth of truth through careful reflection on his work.

Clark begins with Old Testament anticipations. And seems to think that there are such anticipations. But I tend to think that any doctrine anticipates a foregone conclusion. Calvin, rightly ignores vague Old Testament Trinitarian texts (at least he says so in his introduction to the book of Genesis). You won't find any serious exegesis in these pages--though a light smattering transliterated Greek and minor grammatical consideration of John 1:1 (2 pgs.). Rather you will get proof-texts and analyses of Augustine, Calvin, Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary, Athanasius, John Gill, and finally Hodge, Bavnick, Van Til, Shedd and Berkof. If you notice most of those names, this book is written from a Reformed point of view. Given the good amount of historical information in the book, I would not class it as merely that but add that this is a work that is also useful to the systematician since written by a philosopher and theologian. My favorite section is entitled, "Philisophical Elucidations." Very useful in one's quest to understand the trinity within the larger scope of theism. His other section titled "Individuation" actually tries to solve the problem of the trinity in that he tries to solve how there can be three persons yet one God. His answer is that a person is a set of propositions and not merely a substance. If substance was the principle of individuating the persons in the trinity, then you could not have three. Furthermore, space-time could not be the measure as well since three persons of the trinity are not bodies located in those dimensions. Interesting? You will have to get the rest from the book.