Was Barth a pro-Nicene theologian? Reflections on Nicaea and its legacy¹

E-ISSN： 1475-3065|64|3|347-359

ISSN： 0036-9306

Source： Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol.64, Iss.3, 2011-06, pp. : 347-359

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Abstract

If this very weighty and important book did nothing else than establish the fact for modern systematic theology that the trinitarian theology of the fourth century cannot be understood properly by dividing Eastern from Western theology with the usual statement that the former begins with the three persons and moves towards the divine unity while the latter begins with the divine unity and moves towards the three persons, then something truly significant would have been accomplished (Nicaea, pp. 52, 384). Why? Because then one would not be able to trace a supposed modalist tendency directly from Augustine through much Western theology to contemporary theologians such as Barth in order to argue for a view of God's triunity which actually could undermine the full divinity of each of the persons of the Trinity who in reality exist eternally as three persons, one being. Consider, for instance, the remark made by Ted Peters that ‘There is no inherent reason for assuming that the three persons have to be identical or equal in nature.’ If one studies the development of fourth-century trinitarian theology, I think one would find many reasons to insist that the three persons are in fact equal in nature, among which are that any other assertion would undermine the divinity of the Son, lead to some sort of subordinationism or adoptionism (what Barth called Ebionite christology), and would ultimately strip the Gospel of its saving power.