The Gospel and God's Self-Communication

Dan,

Thanks for the qoute from Dr. Vanhoozer. He was one of my son's profs when David was at TEDS and was very influential in helping shape my son's thinking.

In reflecting on your quote from Vanhoozer I was reminded of material I had read previously in his work. "The Trinity serves the role of what Kant calls a 'transcental condition': a necessary condition for the possibility of something humans experience but cannot otherwise explain, namely, the experience of meaningful communication. From a Christian perspective, God is first and foremost a communicative agent, one who relates to humankind through words and the Word. God's very being is a self-communicatve act that both constitutes and enacts the covenant of discourse: speaker (Father), Word (Son), and reception (Spirit) are all interrelated... The thesis underlying the present work takes God's trinitarian commuicative action as the paradigm, not merely the illustration, of all genuine message-sending and receiving. God is a speaking God. The Father is the one who, in the words of the creeds, est locutus per prophetas. Most of what God does - creating, warning, commanding, promising, forgiving, informing, comforting, etc. - is accomplished by speech acts... Speech act theory serves as handmaiden to a trinitarian theology of communication. If the Father is the locutor, the Son is the preeminent illocution. Christ is the definitive Word, the substantive content of his message. And the Holy Spirit - the condition and power of receiving the senders message - is God the perlocutor, the reason that his words do not return to him empty (Is. 55:11). The triune God is therefore the epitome of communicative agency: the speech agent who utters, embodies, and keeps his Word." (Vanhoozer: Is There a Meaning in This Text?, pp. 456 - 457)

Based on these quotes and the one you cited I cannot help but come to the conclusion the the whole process of redemption is a trinitarian endeavor. I wonder if in our reductionistic approach to the gospel we have failed to fully appreciate the process of redemption and the part played in this process by all the persons of the Godhead.

I will say that based on your ministry in September there is a greater consciousness of the involvement of the Trinity in the redemptive process. One of the ladies who attended has noted to me that she cannot read her Bible now without looking for those aspects of redemption that involve all three persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I, myself, have been working through Torrance and wondering how I could have missed the teaching of the Scriptures on the involvement of the Trinity in my own salvation. Thanks for directing me to his writings.

Again, your posts have stimulated a lot of questions. Too many to be considered here in this venue.

Blessings,
Highlander

Dan, what book is this from?

Rob: It's from his book The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology. It was just published this year. I began reading it a week ago and am thoroughly enjoying it thus far.

Hi there

Odd that I stumbled across this today, and I can see that it's been up for awhile. But I've been studying on the atonement and fellowship with God lately. (Speaking of a Tolkien theme, fellowship doesn't get enough attention amongst his themes.) I wonder sometimes if we've forgotten what a startling idea it is ... fellowship with God ... communion with God.

Thanks for posting.