The patience doesn’t seem to last long at all. Schleiermacher attacks the flawed logic on a number of fronts, including:
1) As stated in the previous post, Schleiermacher is willing to acknowledge the emotional logic of clutching onto the doctrine of the trinity for fear of losing Jesus. But he can’t help but go back to the Gospel of John where, in the description of the conception of the Logos, tension builds between those who believe that the Scriptures here refer explicitly to the completion of the doctrine of the trinity, and the Arianians, who generally denied the divinity of Christ. S’s point is that, “Assuming…that John here declares of the divine united in Christ with human nature that it existed in God from all eternity in a distinct form, it does not follow by any means that this was meant in the sense of the doctrine of the Trinity, and that that doctrine is therefore the true and the only natural completion of the Johannine statements.”[1](Italics mine) In no uncertain terms, Schleiermacher makes clear that the Gospel of John does NOT definitively support a doctrine of trinity – especially since he never felt the need to reaffirm Christian monotheism, in order to guard against the appearance of polytheism, which was apparently a primary concern for Trinitarians at the time.
2) Schleiermacher wouldn’t have had a hard time believing the doctrine of the trinity if Jesus and the apostles had every clearly said a thing about it. But there is no such testimony. In fact, the exegetical exploration meant to prove that there is “has never been able to entrench itself so strongly as to escape constant attacks upon it. Hence it is important to make the point that the main pivots of the ecclesiastical doctrine—the being of God in Christ and in the Christian Church—are independent of the doctrine of the Trinity.”[2] Again he references these faith statements as the true cornerstones of the faith, rather than the Trinitarian doctrine, a claim supported by the fact that the Scriptures have never been proved to say otherwise.
3) The doctrine of the trinity, says Schleiermacher, demands that two claims are made simultaneously: that each one of the three persons of the trinity is equal to the united Divine Essence (and vice versa); and that each of the three persons is equal to the other two. He sees the logic in the conclusion – if the three persons were not equal to the united essence, they would be under the Supreme Being/Essence and therefore not truly divine; and if any of the persons were more powerful and important than the others, such as God the Father, than the divinity of the other two would be false and subordinate – meaning that our whole understanding of not only the nature but also the work of Christ would have to change – “In short, everything most important in Christianity would be changed”[3] – and, again, people don’t like their paradigms being messed with. He gets that. HOWEVER, Schleiermacher says that, as soon as you start trying to distinguish between the persons, the creedal statements on which those initial claims are based start falling apart logically. There’s the issue of Unbegotten vs. Begotten, and the creative power which then belongs to one but not the other; any relationship of dependence is not one of equality – and the Holy Spirit comes in last all around. And if the three persons are distinguished by separate qualities (which contradicts the creedal statements), and the Divine Essence does not share these qualities, “either…we must make the unity superordinate as the essence common to all three, in which case the distinction of Persons appears subordinate…or…we must make the trinity superordinate, in which case the unity as being abstract falls into the background.”[4] Essentially, it seems to me, Schleiermacher is arguing that, once you start distinguishing the aspects of God from one another and give them not only characteristics of their own but relationships to one another, it becomes logistically impossible to have them all on the same level of importance. In which case you end up with an almighty God, with his sidekicks Jesus and Spirit (and that’s an okay theology too).
4) We finally get to Schleiermacher’s own theological language and beliefs. He refers to “the divine causality (apprehended in our self-conscious feeling of absolute dependence)” – that’s at least three of his catchphrases – which must not be divided between the persons. We shouldn’t say Father = Creator, Son = Redeemer, Spirit = Sanctifier, because then “the divine unity is obscured in a wholly nominalistic way, and almost nothing is left for it but to represent the equality of the three in essence and will,”[5] undermining its very nature. On the other hand, resisting divvying these causalities up might suggest that all of these actions belong to the Divine Essence as superordinate to the persons. Neither approach is good, as far as Schleiermacher is concerned, since we slip right back into the superordinate/subordinate cycle again.
5) And now we finally get to the argument I would use. In practical terms, in day-to-day usage, the trinity is not only unnecessary, but it’s not even consistently acknowledged. “The doctrine of the Essence and attributes of God is treated apart from the trinity, God being considered in His unity.”[6] THIS is the hierarchy I understood as a kid – when we talked about the big, whole God, we said “God”. When we talked about the three persons, we talked about Jesus and God (no one ever respects the Spirit). I just assumed that Father/Creator/Causal God was one and the same as the big, umbrella “God”, and that Jesus was kind of a sidekick, and the Spirit was the loving presence that kept me feeling safe at night. (That last part might not have been a conscious understanding, but I always did love the Spirit) Here Schleiermacher says that not only were Trinitarians making claims that were impossible to affirm simultaneously and hold together in tension, but they were also outright lying to themselves or to others. This one is the old idea that “the Father is God absolutely, while Son and Spirit are God only by participation in the Divine Essence – an idea which is positively rejected by orthodox Church teachers, but secretly underlies their whole procedure.”[7] Professed faith and lived faith are not always one in the same – so why bother insisting on professing the trinity?
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