Alleging Heresy Where There Is None -- By: Bruce A. Ware

Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 16:2 (Fall 2011)
Article: Alleging Heresy Where There Is None
Author: Bruce A. Ware


Alleging Heresy Where There Is None

A Review of Thomas H. McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010.

Bruce A. Ware

Professor of Christian Theology

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, Kentucky

Tom McCall has provided a very helpful description and assessment of several leading Trinitarian proposals of recent years. His endeavor to engage some of the most influential contributions from philosophical and systematic theologians together succeeds well, in most ways. He is a clear writer and is able to summarize complex discussions from both fields, and he does so in a way that both can benefit from understanding more clearly the strengths and weaknesses of the various proposals he discusses.

The book divides into three sections. Section one discusses major proposals on both Trinity and Monotheism. McCall presents summaries of key contributors within “schools” or models of Social Trinitarianism (e.g., Cornelius Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, Stephen Davis, J. P. Moreland, and William Lane Craig), Relative Trinitarianism (e.g., Peter Geach and Peter van Inwagen), and Latin Trinitarianism (e.g., Brian Leftow). In each case, he discusses these positions in sufficient detail for the reader to follow the main lines of argument, and he provides substantive critique both here and later in the book. McCall then discusses historical, philosophical, and theological issues related to Monotheism, providing helpful assessment and evaluation.

Section two turns to some of the key conceptual tools of analytic philosophy that are also accessed in Trinitarian theology. Here he focuses special attention on Robert Jenson’s stress on God as the one who raised Jesus, Jürgen Moltmann’s use of Perichoresis, Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware’s proposal of “eternal functional subordinationism,” and John Zizioulas’s stress on holy love and divine aseity. In each case he provides summary of the view in question and then engages in critical assessment.

Section three provides something of a map for further endeavors of Trinitarian development as McCall sets forth certain conclusions and commitments he suggests are important for a correct understanding of the oneness and threeness of God.

I found most of the book clear and helpful in thinking through a host of issues related to understanding this complex doctrine. Some readers would find McCall’s favorable assessment of some version of social Trinitarianism problematic, but I stand with him in his positive (with qualifications) advocacy of this model. His eighth concluding principle ...

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