Trinity and Biblical Theology

It was one of those “blinding flashes of the obvious” that Jim Jordan often talks about (and apparently, experiences). I was asked the other day if the effort to formulate a thorough-going Trinitarian theology was an exercise of systematics, and if so how this fit with my bias (and that of many others, especially of the Biblical Horizons crowd) toward biblical theology.

I had answered before I realized fully what I was saying: Yes, of course, Trinitarian theology is systematics, but it’s systematics with a necessary connection with biblical theology. Since our access to the Trinity comes only in the history of redemption, in the economy, we cannot do Trinitarian systematics without a heavy dose of biblical theology.

On the other hand, inconsistently Trinitarian theology tends to be abstracted from history and philosophical. It has no inherent need to deal with the incarnation or the cross; those events have no role in theology proper. For a Trinitarian theology, the incarnation and the cross become central motifs of theology proper.