Veli-Matti Karkkainen - Trinity and Revelation: 2

Krkkinen Trinity and Revelation 3rd corrections

A Constructive Christian Theology
for the Pluralistic World

volume 1

Christ and Reconciliation

volume 2

Trinity and Revelation

Trinity and Revelation

Veli-Matti Krkkinen

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

2014 Veli-Matti Krkkinen
All rights reserved
Published 2014 by
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /
P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Krkkinen, Veli-Matti.
Trinity and revelation / Veli-Matti Krkkinen.
pages cm. (A constructive Christian theology for the pluralistic world; v. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8028-6854-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4674-4048-6 (ePub)
ISBN 978-1-4674-4006-6 (Kindle)
1. Trinity. 2. Revelation. 3. Christianity and other religions. I. Title.
BT111.3K36 2014
231.044 dc23
2013044664

www.eerdmans.com

Contents

ANF The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to a.d. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson et al. 9 vols. Edinburgh, 1885-1897. Public domain; available at www.ccel.org

Aquinas, ST The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. 2nd and rev. ed. 1920. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Online Edition Copyright 2008 by Kevin Knight; http://www.newadvent.org/summa/

Calvin, Inst. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. Available at www.ccel.org

CD Barth, Church Dogmatics. Edited by Geoffrey William Bromiley and Thomas Forsyth Torrance. Translated by G. W. Bromiley. 14 vols. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956-1975. Online edition by Alexander Street Press, 1975

DEHF Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation with Masao Abe. Edited by Christopher Ives. Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity, 1995

DV Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Dei Verbum. Pope Paul VI. November 18, 1965 (Vatican II). http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html

GDT Global Dictionary of Theology. Edited by Veli-Matti Krkkinen and William Dyrness. Assistant editors, Simon Chan and Juan Martinez. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2008

HDTHeidelberg Disputation. In Luthers Works, vol. 31. American ed. (Libronix Digital Library). Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehman. 55 vols. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002

IWWLM In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on Gods Presence in a Scientific World. Edited by Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004

LW Luthers Works. American ed. (Libronix Digital Library). Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehman. 55 vols. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002

NPNF A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Edited by Philip Schaff. 1st ser. 14 vols. Edinburgh, 1886. Public domain; available at www.ccel.org

NPNF A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. 2nd ser. 14 vols. Edinburgh, 1890. Public domain; available at www.ccel.org

Pannenberg, ST Wolfhart Pannenberg. Systematic Theology. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. 3 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991, 1994, 1998

SBE Sacred Books of the East. Translated by Max Mller. 50 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1879-1910. Also available at www.sacred-texts.com

Tillich, ST Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951

WAWeimarer Ausgabe (the Weimar edition of Luthers works)

Unless otherwise indicated, all citations from patristic writers come from the standard series listed above.

Bible references are from the Revised Standard Version unless otherwise indicated.

The Quranic references are from The Holy Qurn: A New English Translation of Its Meanings 2008 Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Amman, Jordan. This version of the Qurn is also available online at http://altafsir.com .

Hadith texts are from the collection at the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement of University of Southern California, http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/ .

Buddhist texts, unless otherwise indicated, are from Tipitaka: The Pali Canon. Edited by John T. Bullitt. Access to Insight, 10 May 2011 ( http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/index.html ).

Hindu texts, unless otherwise indicated, are from Sacred Books of the East, mentioned above, available at: http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/index.htm.

This book is one of the five volumes in the series titled C onstructive C hristian T heology for the P luralistic W orld . The goal of this series is to present a dynamic constructive Christian theology for the pluralistic world shaped by cultural, ethnic, sociopolitical, economic, and religious diversity. While robustly Christian in its convictions, building on the deep and wide tradition of biblical, historical, philosophical, and contemporary systematic traditions, this project seeks to engage our present cultural and religious diversity in a way Christian theology has not done in the past. Although part of a larger series, each volume can still stand on its own feet, so to speak, and can be read as an individual work. The introductory chapter gives a brief orientation to the method chosen.

The volume Christ and Reconciliation has already been published; the remaining three volumes to follow the present volume are Creation and Humanity, Spirit and Salvation, and Church and Hope. The ultimate goal of the series is to provide a fresh and innovative vision of Christian doctrine and theology in a way that, roughly speaking, follows the outline, if not the order, of classical theology. Along with traditional topics, theological argumentation in this series also engages a number of topics, perspectives, and issues that systematic theologies are missing such as race, environment, ethnicity, inclusivity, violence, and colonialism. A consistent engagement with religious and interfaith studies is a distinctive feature of this series.

As with so many other books, I owe greater gratitude than I am able to express to my Fuller Theological Seminary editor Susan Carlson Wood, with whom I have had the opportunity to work on more than ten books. She has the unique capacity to help revise my second-language speakers English into American prose. I also want to sincerely thank my research assistant and doctoral student at Fuller Dan Brockway, who checked the accuracy of each and every bibliographic reference. Joshua Muthalali compiled the index.

Constructive Theology as a Dialogue and Conversation

Just a few days before his death, Paul Tillich is reported to have confessed that if he had the opportunity to rewrite his three-volume Systematic Theology, he would do so engaging widely world religions. This was due to his brief exposure at the end of his life to the forms of Japanese Buddhism as well as the influence from his famed Romanian religious studies colleague Mircea Eliade. On top of that, for all these theologians the theological world worth engaging includes merely European (and to some extent North American), almost exclusively male theologies (although Moltmann makes some effort to expand the dialogue partners, particularly in his methodological essay Experiences in Theology, written at the end of his career).

While deeply indebted to these theological heroes as the frequent references to their works throughout the book testify the current project is also critical of the grave limitations of their approaches and seeks to offer a new vision for systematic/constructive theology. That means a robust and consistent dialogue with not only the historical and contemporary theological disciplines including the current diversity of gender, race, geographical, and social location, and agendas such as liberationism and postcolonialism but also the beliefs and insights of living faiths (in this case, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism) as well as the natural (and, at times, behavioral and social) sciences.