"While some may claim that eternal generation is an extra-biblical doctrine without scriptural warrant, Charles Lee Irons and Matthew Barrett demonstrate that the concept is seen throughout Scripture through familial imagery and other significant metaphors." - Credo
"The following theses are from Craig Carter’s new book, Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Baker Academic, 2021). These theses are a corrective to the relational theism so prevalent in Protestantism, and serve to help evangelicals today return to the biblical, classical, and Nicene doctrine of God." - Credo
James R. Gordon argues against the Eternal Functional Subordination view of Ware and Grudem and in favor of the "doctrine of divine simpicity." - Credo
"Taking its cue from social redefinitions of the Trinity, evangelicals have redefined the Trinity as a society, one in which each person has his own center of consciousness and will. As a result, a core doctrine like inseparable operations is foreign to many and sometimes held in disregard." - Credo
"Simply Trinity: The Unmanipulated Father, Son, and Spirit. The book... does two things. First, it shows how a good portion of evangelical theology on the Trinity has drifted from the classical Christian tradition. Second, it recruits a veritable 'dream team' of teachers from across that tradition to lead readers back to the safe harbor of biblical orthodoxy." - C.Today
I’ve been reading Leonardo Boff’s work Trinity and Society. Boff is a Roman Catholic liberation theologian who may or may not be a Marxist. This is perhaps the most thought-provoking book on the Trinity I’ve yet read; right up there with Jurgen Moltmann’s Trinity and the Kingdom. Both these gentlemen are social trinitarians. They had a formative influence on Millard Erickson’s own monograph on the Trinity, which is excellent.
"One could immediately argue that God is the center of everything and deserves our God-centeredness, and I would fully concur. Nevertheless, I’m convinced we can more fully establish the inherent loving, unselfish nature of God by clarifying three important truths." - Rooted Thinking
Read the companion article.
It’s not partisan to declare that social trinitarianism abandons Nicene concepts of divine Personhood.1 It does. It adopts a completely different framework. Many non-confessional evangelicals likely adopt it unwittingly.
With one exception, the most influential social trinitarians are not widely read in evangelical circles; certainly not by the average seminary-trained pastor. They are Jurgen Moltmann,2 Leonardo Boff,3 Wolfhart Pannenberg,4 Robert Jenson5 and Millard Erickson.6 Pannenberg’s influence is profound; Erickson, Jenson and William L. Craig each studied under him.
First, we need to decide whether it’s possible to put a new framework on biblical truth. Millard Erickson suggests three ways to contextualize theology:7
