Netfriend 1:

Personally, having sought but not found some of the particulars of classic creedal statements regarding the nature of Christ's deity in the scriptures themselves, I would prefer that everyone studying such matters were even a bit more honest about what the NT does and doesn't say. I am in particular thinking of such things as Christ being "eternally begotten, not made," the persons of the trinity being "equal" or of "the same substance," and any description of "the eternal relationship of love among the the three persons of the Trinity" (most annoying in light of its all- pervasiveness in contemporary conservative theology).

Of course, the natural reaction to reading what I've just said is to assume that I deny the deity of the Son of God, which in fact I affirm instead of reject. So, all I'm saying is that I can't find some particular things in the NT. If anyone can, for instance, show me where the NT says explicity that the Son of God, or the Logos of God, is not just pre-existent but also "uncreated," I'd appreciate it. All these things seem to me to be points of doctrine reasoned beyond scripture, which amounts to eisegesis whenever the texts are said to say such things. I'm still looking, and waiting, for my betters to show the way.

Netfriend 2:

I am a Trinitarian through and through. I believe that Jesus was God. However, I do think some of your concerns are quite valid. James Dunn expressed his fear--- one that I share---of sliding into tri-theism. Dunn is not the only orchodox Christian to fear this.

In the past few years, Professor Colin Brown, [(DD, University of Nottingham; PhD, University of Bristol) is professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena. He is a priest of the Episcopal Church, and has served as associate rector of his parish church for nearly 20 years.], favorablly referenced by N. T. Wright on the subject of the miracles of Jesus, had also raised concerns that parallel Dunn's. If you can somehow get a copy of his article, "Trinity and Incarnation: In search of Contemporary Orthodoxy," you may find somethings that will float your boat.

Brown is concerned to uphold the Trinity doctrine without compromising monotheism. He joins Karl Barth in avoiding the conclusion that God is a Triniy of "three centers of consiousness--- or three divine I's--- acting in concert. It was rather, to talk about one divine I three times over." (Reminds me of Wright's own wording of Jesus as "God's second self.") "[Barth] did not see himself as a modalist in the conventional sense of treating the three modes of God's being as temporary manifestations or three ways of looking at God. Rather, the three Siensweisen were three ways in which God was eternally God."

I think it was Barth who said that the Father is 'God over us,' the Son is 'God with us,' and the Spirit is 'God in us.' Not bad im my view.

In addition to Barth, Brown endorses the same concerns expressed by Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, "who warns against the anachronistic misreading of the term 'person' with the unfortunate implication that it means three distinct 'personalities' in God. Rather we must say that 'the one God subsists in three distinct manners of subsisting.' "

So Brown raises some hard questions about the modern misunderstandings of the term "Persons" as doing justice to the biblical materials. Like you, he questions/ wants to critically re- evaluate such concepts as the 'eternal generation of the Son' (based largely on misapplied Gospel texts) and certain potential misreadings of John that might be non-exegetically founded upon theological premises about so-called innner-Trinitarian relationships.

It is hard to say if Wright is on the same exact page with Brown, Barth, and Rahner, but I have a suspicion that he is. For example, Wright often affirms his Trinitarian faith, but is cautious in expressing exactly what that looks like in terms of the orthodox creeds. He seems to allow himself some elbow room when he says that it was in line with the New Testament that early Orthodox theologians would inevitably developed their doctrine or (and this is important) 'something like it.' I hope I'm not overreading him here, but I suspect I am not. It is interesting to note that like Barth, Wright too has been accused by some of his critics as holding to 'modalism.'

In my own thinking on the Trinity and divinity of Jesus I have often proposed an activistic or dynamic relationship between God and Jesus, so that God is certainly fully present to us in Jesus. Jesus is fully representative of who God is, the effulgence of God. This is not to discount entirely a conception of the Jesus as being ontologically God (God is so fully present in Jesus that we are being confronted with no less than God himself existing among us), but it is to stop short of giving the impression that there are three ontological gods as in tritheism. God is one and emphatically not more than one God. And God identifies himelf fully and completely in Jesus the man, thus the shema identity that Paul makes in his letters. But this must always be conceived of in terms that are fully faithful to monotheism. It is this monotheistic truism concerning God that the New Testament affirms throughout. It does not deviate in the least from this affirmation. Thus in Wright's words we are reading in the New Testament, 'a Christological monotheism.'

A friend of mine once heard Wright lecture on Christology and when he was finished, a very dissastified person in the audience asked, 'So do you believe that Jesus was God?' Wright answered, 'If I have to answer that in a simple 'yes' of 'no,' I will say 'yes,' but he who has ears to hear, let him hear.' I think in the Evangelical world, we love to put it in the stark terms of C. S. Lewis that Jesus went around claiming he was God. Wright seems very uncomfortable with that premise. I'm convinced that he can get us to what we really need to understand about the divine Jesus without doing that kind of injustice to the biblical and historical data.

For a clear example of Wright's Trinitarian affirmation, see his larger Romans commentary on Romans 8:28. He clearly defends the fact that Paul's argument takes into respect all three persons of the Trinity. The rest of his commentary is thoroughly orthodox on the nature of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity from what I have read.

In addition, at a conference earlier this year NTW said that some people ask him if he believes that Jesus was God, he said of course I do, just read the books. Re. the books you could read Chapter 4 in WSRS, again the same in ROSOG (can remember the chapter but it essentially the same thoughts), Chapter 5 section 3 in Paul: Fresh Perspectives, Chapter 5 pp 59-61 in Simply Christian. It is all very clear and unambiguously orthodox, it is just approached in a more biblically dynamic way than simple creedal statements which centre philosophically on only one aspect.