In his monograph From Pentecost to the Triune God, Steven M. Studebaker argues that theological reflection upon “fundamental pneumatology” and Trinitarian theology has not played a significant role in Pentecostal thought. Consequently, he presents two goals for his text. The first is to show the importance of experience in theology. The second goal is to examine scripture for teachings on the trinity, especially its focus upon pneumatology. Methodologically, Studebaker advocates that theology should begin with experiences of the Spirit, move to an analysis on scripture, and end with reflection upon the trinity. He justifies this method on two grounds.  First, since the Spirit is “indispensable” to the trinity and theology, it is logical for Pentecostals to move in this manner without subordinating Christ. Second, he ascribes to Rahner’s maxim that the immanent trinity reveals the economic trinity. The Spirit contributes to the identity of the Father and the Son, so anything that is learned about the Spirit reveals something about the trinity.

Studebaker begins his book by emphasizing the importance of experience within theology. He states that the writers of scripture draw upon experience, and experience, as it is conveyed in narrative, serves to teach. Furthermore, personal encounters with the Spirit can illuminate scripture because the text is also the result of the Spirit’s work. This does not mean that experience should be on the same level as scripture, but he suggests that what was once experience is now tradition. Studebaker proposes that, for Pentecostals, Spirit-baptism is a unique practice that should inform Trinitarian theology.

Studebaker continues by arguing for the priority of scripture, including what it reveals concerning the many facets of the Spirit. For example, it conveys that the Spirit is involved in both the creation and redemption of the world, including the incarnation and eschatology – which is evidenced within the resurrection. Furthermore, Pentecost, according to Studebaker, reveals that the Spirit is not merely an addendum but an essential dynamic of God’s activity within the world.

In chapter three, Studebaker discusses Eastern and Western trinitarian theology.  He argues that explications of the processions are helpful but, generally, inadequate because they tend to subordinate the Spirit. Within the trinity “each person mutually conditions the others’ personal identities” (138). So, for Studebaker, the Spirit shapes the identity of the first and second articles as much as they shape the Spirit’s. The Trinitarian relations are “mutually contingent” (146).

In the subsequent two chapters Studebaker, discusses trintiarian theology within American Evangelicalism and the Charismatic movement. First, he predominantly focuses upon the work of Jonathan Edwards, pointing out shortcomings in Evangelicalism that can also be found in traditional Western theology. Specifically, Studebaker proposes that the Spirit’s work in redemption is not fully appreciated in this camp. Next, he examines the development of Trinitarian thought through several Pentecostal/Charismatic theologians. Although, among PC’s there is a general desire and an attempt to emphasize the role of the Spirit, Studebaker argues that they are only preliminary. PC theologians tend to remain within traditional frameworks and do not fully implement the role of experience in constructing a Trinitarian theology.

Studebaker, in the final section of the book, addresses Pentecostal theologies of religions and a theology of creation. In the penultimate chapter, he argues that the Spirit operates in the lives of people, regardless of their religion. It is not the religion that saves; rather, they are ways in which people respond to the Spirit. Studebaker suggests that from Pentecostal there is a universal outpouring of the Spirit and that Christian missions are acts of participation within the mission of the Spirit. In the final chapter Sudebaker explores how a theology of creation, which is guided by pneumatology and Trinitarian concerns, can impact Christian ecological concerns. The Spirit does not work from outside but within human-situatedness. The Spirit actualizes the inner communion of the trinity within creation.

Jim Purves, The Triune God and the Charismatic Movement: A Critical Appraisal of Trinitarian Theology and Charismatic Experience from a Scottish Perspective, Paternoster Theological Monographs (Cumbria, UK: Paternoster, 2004), 242 pages, ISBN 9781597527538.

Jim Purves has provided an important contribution not only to Charismatic studies but also to the specific field of Trinitarian theology. A word of caution, however, is in order: this work is not easily accessible to non-specialists. It is a publication of the author’s doctoral dissertation in systematic theology, and thus contains highly technical language and intricate distinctions among already complicated concepts in the history of theological reflection on the Trinity. In addition to this, Purves’ use of a degree of Scottish idiomatic language and coined conceptual phrases make for slow going if one wants to follow the argument carefully without missing anything. The difficulty is, however, relieved to an extent by Purves’ inclusion of a glossary of the more difficult terms (especially those that are original with him) in the back of the book.

Purves’ thesis is that Scottish theology, nurtured almost exclusively by the Reformed tradition, affords little Trinitarian or pneumatological (doctrine of the Holy Spirit) grounding to account for the direct experience of the Spirit had by participants in the Scottish Charismatic renewal. Reformed thought has primarily taken a functional view of the Holy Spirit, focusing on what the Holy Spirit does rather than who the Spirit is. Purves sees this as a fateful and false distinction based on the assumption of the Western view of the Spirit as the bond between the Father and the Son, which has notoriously depersonalized the Spirit in most of Western Christianity since the time of Augustine.

Purves spends the first chapter acquainting the reader with the history of the Charismatic renewal in the Scottish context, noting key figures and events, including tensions with the established Reformed churches. Chapter Two is devoted to an historical overview of the foundations of Trinitarian thought among the Patristics (Church Fathers). Purves notes that the earliest church theologians were primarily concerned with discussing the Trinity in terms of how the Triune God accomplishes our salvation. Historically, the Trinity as perceived in God’s relationship to the world in salvation history is designated the “economic Trinity.” Due to a spate of heresies that led to the great Christological conflicts of the fourth century, orthodox theologians came to focus much more on the “immanent Trinity,” how God exists within God’s own eternal triune self, apart from any considerations of God’s relationship to creation. In the West, with Augustine’s development of the Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son, theology in general, and Trinitarian thought in particular, became much more rationalistic, as the Spirit’s role was seen as informing us of Christ, who in turn revealed the Father. The Spirit, while acknowledged as a Person, was nonetheless almost always discussed in non-personal, functional terms and the Spirit’s mission was virtually always subsumed under that of the Son.

As appearing in The Pneuma Review Winter 2007

Stanley J. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 289 pages.

This book should be in every theological library. Stanley Grenz (1950-2005) offers a splendid account of the story of trinitarian thought in the twentieth century. The lucidly written volume is destined to become a standard textbook in colleges and universities. At the same time, it also holds great promise to revive the popular understanding of the Christian God as one god in three persons. Rediscovering the Triune God addresses both historians and theologians and contributes a highly valuable review of both contexts to what the back cover calls “the contemporary revolution in Trinitarian thought.”

The book surveys the development of a renewed interest in the doctrine of the Trinity during the twentieth century. More precisely, Grenz focuses on the time period marked by the publication of Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans, in 1919, which is frequently seen as the initial impulse for the renewal of trinitarian thought, and by the publication of T. F. Torrance’s The Christian Doctrine of God, in 1996, which Grenz considers the last comprehensive theology of the triune God of the twentieth century. As a result, Grenz presents the reader with a list of eleven theologians who he considers the most significant contributors to the revival of trinitarian thought. Each of these voices comes from theological giants whose work has influenced much of the layout of the theological landscape since World War I. This list of trendsetters marks the framework for the entire book.

The overview is ordered topically, and the eleven theologians are grouped together in four chapters that follow the historical development of trinitarian thought in the twentieth century. In addition, the first chapter provides a historical basis for the overall theological discussion and sketches out “The Eclipse of Trinitarian Theology,” especially in the West, before the renaissance of the doctrine. The subsequent four chapters tell the story of the rediscovery of trinitarian thought by means of an unexpectedly brief list of central themes: the restoration of the trinitarian center (Chapter 2), the focus on the Trinity in history (Chapter 3), the idea of trinitarian relationality (Chapter 4), and the rediscovery of the immanent Trinity (Chapter 5). A brief epilogue concludes the book.