Like Father, Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in our Humanity -
A
Review Article by Tudor Griffiths
Like
Father, Like Son is the title of the latest book by Tom Smail, published by
Eerdmans in 2005.
Tom Smail is a grand old man of the Renewal movement in Britain who has a
well deserved reputation as an author of stimulating books, such as The
Giving Gift, 1988, and The Forgotten
Father, 1980. In the tradition of his earlier books Tom Smail shows us once
more that orthodox theology can be creative and exciting.
Tom
Smail sets out his stall on the first page.
He wants to explore what it means for our humanity that God is Trinity.
If we are created in the image of God, what it might mean for us that God
is Father, Son and Spirit. Over the last 50 years or so, particularly under the
influence of Karl Barth (1886-1968), theologians have been taking the doctrine
of God as Trinity more seriously as a fundamental datum.
Right through the book Smail engages with Barth as one of his main
conversation partners. He certainly endorses Barth’s emphasis on God’s
revelation as the sole basis for our understanding of God.
On
the other hand Smail’s bete noire (or Voldemort figure?) is Ludwig Feuerbach
(1804-1872) who was the first to develop the now commonly heard idea that
‘God’ is the name we give to our human projections rather than a divine
Creator Being.
In various ways this has been reinforced by Freud, Marx and latterly by
Richard Dawkins. In total contrast the Bible witnesses to a God who initiates
what Smail calls a downward projection of
himself in Christ (p.34). The Christian God is not only One who reveals
himself to us but meets us with transforming power in the Spirit.
At the heart of God’s self-revelation and in our experience of
salvation we meet God as Trinity. The central thesis of the book is that to
be authentically human is to reflect in our relationships with one another the
initiating love of God the Father, the responsive love of God the Son and the
creative love of God the Spirit, in interpenetration the one with the other.
That
last phrase indicates that the book is not a light read, but if we want meat, we
must be prepared to chew and chew hard.
This is not an academic tome with the usual apparatus of footnotes and
detailed references, but nonetheless the reader is expected to grapple with
complex and demanding ideas from great theologians of the past.
Augustine (354-430) is castigated for his psychological interpretation of
the image of God (imago Dei).
Smail sees this as one of the roots of western individualism that has
come home to roost in the fragmentation that we see in our contemporary culture.
In contrast he commends the African concept of ubuntu,
the notion that John Mbiti described as I
am because we are.
This shows us that Smail is keen to locate the imago
Dei in terms of our corporate existence and our relationships rather than in
us as individuals. This is brilliantly illustrated by a heart-warming story from
the autobiography of the Scottish theologian John Baillie.
Baillie came to faith through the almost
unconscious mediation of his family and community (p. 148).
We are shaped by our relationships.
Smail sees this reflecting more of the way in which the Christian East
has interpreted the Trinity more than the Western tradition with which we are
naturally more familiar.
The Eastern tradition begins with the Three Persons of Father, Son and
Spirit and asks how they are One.
The Oneness of the Trinity is expressed through the mutual indwelling, of
which Jesus spoke (e.g. John 14:11). The technical term for this is perichoresis,
a word that we meet on a number of occasions in Smail’s book.
To help us understand this idea he quotes Moltmann (p. 99): The
Father exists in the Son, and the Son in the Father and both of them in the
Spirit, just as the Spirit exists in both the Father and the Son. When we
think of the Trinity we are faced with both unity of God-hood and distinction of
persons.
In
the second half of the book Smail moves beyond the insight that we exist as
people because of our relationships with others and supremely with God himself
to argue that we mirror the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in their
mutual indwelling.
Our sin and fallenness is a reflection of our shortcomings at this point.
In this second half of the book Smail discusses many themes in an attempt
to explore what this notion means in practice.
This is a rather frustrating read in that too many issues are covered far
too quickly. I
found myself moving from sharp intakes of breath to vigorous nods of assent in
fairly rapid sequence.
I was heartened by Smail’s robust response to pluralism in religion.
If the Christian doctrine of Trinity as expounded here is a truth about
God and not merely our apprehension of God, we
are not ashamed of the gospel and believe that it is the power of God for the
salvation of everyone who believes in it, then we are bound to enter dialogue
with other faiths with the sort of respect that Paul showed to the Athenian
philosophers but with the same evangelistic intent to win them out of their
sophisticated and sometimes noble idolatries to the grace and truth that are
mediated uniquely by Jesus Christ. (p. 220) Say it, brother, say it!
Smail
admits that he was uncomfortable writing his chapter on Gendered Image.
To put it kindly, it rather shows.
But the book ends with a glorious chapter entitled Incarnate
Image. He
sets out agenda for us as a Church to show that it is only
in communion with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit that the new humanity can
be born. (294). The imago Dei in
us is both a gift and a promise. We have marred that gift but in Christ and
together in him, the Spirit is at work to restore and we shall be restored.
Tudor
Griffiths Hawarden