“You can't divide the functions of God off. Say God the Father's Creator and God the Son is the Redeemer and God the Spirit is love. All of the developed faith of the Christian church is that all God's actions in the world are the actions of the triune God. So it's not a job creation scheme for three different bits of God.”
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From a panel discussion on the history of the doctrine of the Trinity. Soskice has just said that much of that history consists of ruling out things that cannot be said. Asked for an example, she gives this one, and warns that newer formulas such as "Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer" can slide into treating God as three separate parts.
That was also tried. Many things are tried, and the whole history of Trinitarian theology is almost like saying, not saying what works, because as Graham has alluded, what God is in God's self, we don't know, but saying what can't be said. And a lot of it is about saying what can't be said. And
what Conju said, Yoshi.
Well, you can't say, you can't divide the functions of God off. Say God the Father's Creator and God the Son is the Redeemer and God the Spirit is love. All of the developed faith of the Christian church is that all God's actions in the world are the actions. Of the triune God. So it's not a job creation scheme for three different bits of God. And I think this has come up recently when there's been trouble in feminist language with wanting to get away from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, move over to rubrics such as Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but it can lead to a kind of real tritheism where you're saying, oh, this is a bit of God that does this, and not the bit of God that that is that. And that's been shunned.
Okay, Martin Palmer, I think following on from that, one of the bitter disagreements at Nicaea concerned the single word filioque. Can you tell us why that was such a problem then? And it appears to be quite a problem now.
But it wasn't so much at Nicaea, it creeps in much later. And this is a phrase which means
that the Holy Spirit descends from the Father and the Son. So you're of the Son. And this does not appear in the Nicene Creed, neither in 325, nor at Constantinople in 381, nor a Chalcedonian at 451. It starts coming in from the West, from probably the 6th century, probably in Spain. And really, the problem with it is that the Eastern