Is the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible?  This question, so unthinkable to our ancestors in the faith, has become a near commonplace in the exegetical and doctrinal work of the modern era.  Of course this is not news.  As our author notes, already this question was raised with daring intellectual courage in the Reformation.  But the claim that Holy Scripture does not teach the dogma of the Holy Trinity now does not exact any cost from its modern-day advocates; indeed in most circles, it is taken as given.  At times, a variant to this commonplace is found: not the Old Testament, but the New alone teaches Trinitarianism, or more modestly, its building blocks.  For most systematicians of the modern era, the early Church, rather than the Bible, is the locus of the Trinitarian dogma, and varying accounts of a Theory of Development are wielded to tie the dogma back to its Scriptural roots.  In this way the Prologue to the Gospel of John is taken to be a golden text, out of which can be built by Church Fathers a Doctrine of Trinity; or again, the benediction in Romans 11, or the shining confidence of Romans 8, and its eloquent appeal to the Spirit, serve this role as Urtext.  But in all these cases, systematicians have opened up conceptual space between the Dogma and the Scriptures: the Church under the Providentia Dei must fill in this rupture.  That this is a shaky foundation can be measured by the level of historical sophistication that must be exercised in the very idea of development, and by the deference shown to specialized exegetes and their greater hesitancy about Trinitarian implicatures in the Biblical text.  All these reservations breathe the air of a theology that passes through the trials of modernism.  But another element is at work, too.

The relation of Christians to the Old Testament has taken a sharp detour in the modern era.  Once Magistra, as our author demonstrates from Augustine, the Cappadocians, and the early Scholastics, the Old Testament by the time of Schleiermacher was taken to be 'old' in a most firm and derogatory sense.  Perhaps it was preparatio; perhaps even sitz-im-leben; but not Guide, not Teacher of the faith.  It became a 'Jewish book,' and the relation between Christianity and Judaism was laid bare by the tentativeness and remotion of 19th century theologians to Israel's Scriptures.  Of special preoccupation in this high modernist period was the status of the Prophets: which religion was rightful successor to the Prophets?  Protestant liberals such as E Troeltsch argued vigorously for Christian claim to the Prophetic tradition; it alone, and alone in its Protestant form, exhibited the moral fiber and fearless commitment to self-criticism that the ancient Prophets demanded.  But the Books of Moses, now styled as Pentateuchal Law, could be mined only for a few moral precepts, which were considered elevated and purified by New Testament teaching.  A project such as Peter Leithart's would be found hopelessly 'uncritical' and blind to the findings of the Religionsgeschichtlicheschule; and all that is its very great strength.

But a question from that modern era --our modern era --still demands our careful attention.  How are we Christians to read the Old Testament in light of the long history of Christian supersessionism, and its vicious expression in the 'War against the Jews,' in L Dawidowicz' haunting phrase?  Now, our author is clearly aware of these delicate matters.  He speaks often of the Trinitarian traces in the Old Testament as 'proto-Trinitarianisms,' or 'whispers' or, in a venerable phrase, 'shadows' that are made explicit, audible, incontrovertible in the New.  This essay is not quite ready to say that the Dogma of the Holy Trinity, as enunciated at Nicaea, is taught directly in the Old Testament; rather the elements of unity and difference, of Nature and Person, of differentiated activity are present here, but in part and in a glass darkly.  But Leithart says there are there; and not simply imposed by later Christian hopefuls, reading back their findings into an early text.  And it is here I want to raise my first question. 

Our author does not altogether restrict himself to the language of anticipation or shadow.  He also advances arguments that daringly conclude that only a Triune God can create; only Such can love; only Such is generative and free.  This is strong language indeed!  Arguments of this kind imply that other Monotheists --Jews, especially but also Muslims and some Brahmins --do not in truth have a Creator God, or perhaps, that they are Trinitarians manqué.  'If the God is not productive in himself, he requires something other than himself to become productive.  He cannot be Creator God, because his Creator-Godness, his capacity for producing a world, is dependent on an external catalyst.'  These are strong words; but there is more to come.  'The choice,' our author writes in a firm conclusion, 'is between a God who remains sovereign and independent only by remaining alone and barren, only by having no realm to rule; or, the living Triune God.  And that choice is posed to us at the outset of the Bible, in the proto-Trinitarian (nb!) account of Genesis 1.'  (p 9)  This is our author's rejection of 'mere monotheism,' a term of rebuke made popular by Colin Gunton and Jürgen Moltmann.  In my view, these arguments express a form of Christian supersessionism we should treat with great reserve.   They are stronger, I believe, than Christian claims that we do not worship the same God as do Muslims or Jews --claims that stretch to the outer-most limits the unity of the Canon.  These arguments seem to me to conclude that Jews are mistaken when they teach that the LORD God created the heavens and the earth; or that this LORD is Royal; or is source of Loving Kindness.  As 'mere monotheists' they do not have a God who could enact or express such virtues and mighty works.  These are anti-Judaic claims I would not want endorsed by this larger admirable project of finding grounds for the Holy Trinity in Israel's Scriptures.  Instead, I would advocate for our author's more tentative words: the evocation of vestigium Trinitatis, of 'proto-Trinitarianism,' or even of 'shadow' and 'foretaste.'  Though there are other terms that might be used profitably here, these give a welcome elasticity to the relation Jews have to these Scriptures and to the Christian assessment of those views.  Matters may be more complex with Muslims --of course this is an area of sharp debate among Christians --but in Holy Scripture itself we know that 'salvation is of the Jews,' and all our teaching, I believe, should embrace that truth, both in the days of the Testaments and in our own.

Let me now turn to the central substantive claim this essay advances: that the rudiments of Trinitarian doctrine can be found in the notion of a Creator God, most especially as expressed in the opening verses of Genesis.  Though not unique --Augustine is cited as authority here --this reading offers a great benefit to Christian theology.  It does not rely on isolated and unrelated passages thought to teach the manifestation of Divine Persons, or distinct Personal life within the One God of Israel.  Such theophanies of Divine Persons are often tied to loci classicus: Proverbs 8, Exodus 3, Ezekiel 37, Genesis 32.  The aim in the Christian reading of these passages, also venerable, is to find the forerunners of the Incarnation and the outpouring of the Spirit in the whole testimony of the People Israel.  But as our author notes, as resolute a typological and dogmatic reader of Scripture as  Augustine found problems in these texts, and wished to remain undecided about the Person represented in these texts.  In De Trinitate , for example, Augustine favored a reading that underscored the creaturely instrument set apart and used to express the Divine Presence.  The task of identifying the building blocks of Trinitarianism, for Leithard, then, will be assigned by and large to Genesis 1, and to the singular act of Creation.  'By and large,' I say, for Leithart does move further afield in his consideration of the Spirit in Psalm 104 and the Son in the Angel or Messenger of the LORD.   This latter theme has received full treatment in the Reverend Smith's review, so I will leave that exegesis to one side.  But principally, our author considers Genesis 1 to be sufficient to demonstrate the roots of Trinitarian dogma in the Old Testament, the Trinitarianism of the Creator-God. 

Leithart's attention is drawn to the use of 'abstract plurals' with singular verbs, Elohim chief among these.  These plurals can at times indicate a maximal perfection, as does the Hebraism, Holy of Holies, or more broadly, King of kings and Lord of lords.  Elohim is 'God of gods--superlatively God,' as our author puts it.  Combined with Zanchius' exposition of Elohim and Jehovah, Leithart is prepared to say that 'Elohim is associated with the Father as Creator (in Genesis 1); the Angel-Messenger of Yahweh is already identified with Yahweh, and so easily identified with the kurios Jesus.'  (p 3)  Psalm 104 speaks of the Spirit as Creator, commenting within the Testament on the Creation narrative in Genesis 1. 

The heart of the matter, despite this linguistic work, remain the unique and miraculous act of Creation.  Accordingly, the heavy lifting is done by Leithart's reading of the sequence of days in the Divine act of Creation.  Like Augustine in the Confessions, Leithart discerns distinct acts of Divine seeing and saying: 'the Elohim who makes and the Elohim who evaluates are somehow distinct.  We might say, for instance, that at the end of each day Elohim evaluates and commends the work of His own Spirit, who hovers over the waters.'  (p 7) Parallel to that is our author's reading of Divine Speech and Word, echoed in the Divine instruction to Moses on the construction of the Temple.  His conclusion: 'the Father speaks his plan; the Word is the plan the Father speaks; and the Spirits executes the plan of the Father that is the Word.'  (p 8)

We might term this a communitarian Doctrine of Trinity, in which different tasks are assigned to the Persons, and Each executes a dimension of the singular act of Creation.  Our author terms this a 'prepositional' account, indebted to the Cappadocian reliance upon the catena in Romans 11.  Much has been written on Social Trinitarianism of late, and its dangers are well known.  For my part I would say that the tone of our author's exegesis --his tentativeness and precision --does not neatly match the tone of his conclusions, so firm and far-reaching as they are.  Do we not have in the Creation narrative, its use of Divine titles, and the hieratic repetition of vision and speech, a pattern closer to our author's recognition that in the One God there is something 'somehow distinct' rather than a firm naming of Three?  The Aseity and Unicity of God must be underscored and vigilantly guarded, I say, if the testimony of Israel's Scriptures is to be heeded and honored.  I agree with our author in his conviction that the Livingness of God is demonstrated in the Genesis creation, and that the use of multiple titles, and plural ones with singular verbs, indicates an infinite richness in the One God that is generative and up-building.  I think we can have greater confidence in the conviction that the Processions of the One God are adumbrated here --that Living Unity in Distinction --than that we are shown distinct acts of Persons, and Names to be assigned to them.  In all this I simply echo some of the more restrained language our author at times evokes: the whisper or shadow that becomes clear and explicit, shouted out, in the New Testament.  If we are to receive R Bauckham's daring thesis about the Shema in the Apostle Paul --and I do think the Apostle is under the impress of the Spirit straining to say what he does not yet see face to face --then we have the attempt within the Canon to say what can only be uttered in other idiom, and in another tone, in the Old. 

None of this is to detract from a singularly creative and insightful reading of the Old Testament as foundation for Trinity.  I heartily endorse such a project, and long for the day when the Temple, its cultus, the Torah and its precepts, the Creation and its majestic unfurling of the cosmos, are read as guides to Christian doctrine.  My questions touch on how and in what measure we make this reading; but that it should be done, I can only reply, Amen and hearty thanks.

Katherine Sonderegger is the Chair of Systematic Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary.