Review article
https://doi.org/10.31192/np.15.3.3
Trinitarian Theology of the Cross - Jürgen Moltmann’s Reception and Critique of the Early Church’s Trinitarian Dogma
Lidija Matošević
orcid.org/0000-0001-9199-7931
Andrej Bukovac-Mimica
orcid.org/0000-0003-2562-5333
Abstract
Jürgen Moltmann’s trinitarian theology of the cross rethinks and, in a manner, corrects the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. While combating various Christological heresies, the theologians of the early church had to defend Christ’s divinity, while at the same time explain how it is still possible to believe in one God. In order to achieve this, they chose philosophical monotheism as their starting point, in order to then find a way to conform to it the Biblical testimony of the Father, Son, and Spirit. This allowed the early church theologians to resist the heresies of triteism and arianism, but not the modalism. Instead of starting from monotheism, Moltmann takes the reverse course, and begins his thinking with the biblical testimony, which reaches its apex on the cross of Christ, in order to then speak about the nature of God. Since the locus of God’s revelation is the cross of Christ, the traditional concept of God, as an immovable, apathetic substance, which exists in three persons, does not match the Christian God. For this reason, according to Moltmann, the proper way of describing the relations between the persons of the Trinity is perichoresis. Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross is not an event where only the human nature was affected, while the divine nature remained untouched, but an event of relationship between the persons of the Trinity, constitutive for those persons. The experience of the cross represents, even for God within the Trinity, something new. Only in communion with such a God – who takes upon himself the suffering, forsakenness and sinking into nothingness – salvation of man and creation is possible.
Keywords
Moltmann; the Triune God; trinitarian theology; theology of the cross; perichoresis; suffering; Christology
Hrčak ID:
189512
URI
Publication date:
21.11.2017.
Visits: 2.892 *