Book Review Essay (Part Two): Mystery Unveiled by Paul Lim
Paul C.H. Lim, Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 488p. $82 Hardcover. I would like to thank OUP for graciously sending me a free review copy, which in no way guaranteed a favorable review.
Paul Lim in one sense or another takes up all of these themes in
his massive recent study, Mystery
Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England. The central pressure of sola scriptura, the notion of assent as opposed to doxology and
invocation, the place of mystery (or lack of it) in theological discussions, and
how the Trinitarian controversy was tied up with the political atmosphere of
England at the time. He even repeats at
several points the “gap” language of Babcock: given how texts of scripture and
the Fathers become “a liminal space where multivalent notions of orthodoxy [are]
formed and controlled” nonetheless “this narrative of [textual-interpretive]
reception history tends to skip over the seventeenth century.”[1] And in fact, quite ironically there is “a
strange lacuna regarding either the
doctrine of the Trinity or the place of Socinianism within the large
intellectual history of early modern England” (7-8).
Broadly speaking Lim is in agreement with what we have just
outlined from Babcock, Dixon, and Vickers (though less with Placher since—as
Lim does not hesitate to point out—it seems far fetched that Placher condemns
the pro-Trinitarian Westminsterites while completely ignoring the
anti-trinitarian Socinians, (Lim Mystery,
19)). And yet all of these themes arise
with a central suspicion: “To what extent can we trust the accusers’ and the
defendants’ account of their putative heresies and orthodoxies?” (6)
One of Lim’s primary goals, therefore, is to demonstrate that it
is much harder to draw a straightforward narrative—as his predecessors outlined
above have—because “the controversy over the Trinity often occupied [a]
polemical, political gray area, the nexus where the line of demarcation between
theological lying and accusatory truth can get blurry” (4). In this context, Lim cites approvingly a
quote by historians Peter Lake and Michael Questier: “[In the English
Reformation attributions of] orthodoxy and conformity are not stable quantities
but rather … sites of conflict and contest” which thereby necessitates “a move
away from the somewhat hypostasized labels and categories to a more
self-consciously fluid and processual [sic]
notion of identity formation” (7).
As such, since we cannot hope to do justice to Lim’s nearly
five-hundred page work, we can organize it along the lines of three themes he
broadly picks up from our foregoing discussion of his textual predecessors, but
also seeks to complexify: the contest of competing hermeneutics regarding both
scripture and tradition, the valency of the term “mystery” and its place within
theology, and finally the intertwined political nature of Reformation England
and its impact upon the Trinitarian controversy. We treat the first two themes in the next
section, and the theme of politics in the section after that.
The Valence of
Mystery
Without necessarily wanting to impugn all versions of sola scriptura, Lim nonetheless
forcefully makes the point that we must carefully pay attention to how (mostly
implicit) concepts of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” play out and intersect in the
sixteenth century. Orthodoxy is always,
of course, a matter of interpretation.
Even with an “authoritative” council like Nicaea one can have three
different adherents who in good conscience can “sign off” (literally or
figuratively) on the creed, but have three radically divergent interpretations
of the material implications of the language involved. This is exactly what happened with Eusebius
of Caesarea, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Athanasius of Alexandria: three men who
held an allegiance to Nicaea, but who all diverged on what exactly that meant.[2] So too, Lim wants to emphasize that any
“orthodoxy vs. heresy” narrative will simply obscure. As an example Lim makes the provocative
statement that “rather than seeing [Paul Best’s Socinian] theology as a
cataclysmic differential [from
traditional orthodoxy], one can see how Best’s exegesis was possible … within the context of Puritan piety and
the emphasis on sola scriptura …”
(25). In fact it was precisely for this
reason that the anti-trinitarians were often seen as so dangerous. They were treated with even more severity
than were “sexual deviants”:
Ironically, antitrinitarian heresy was deemed
far more sinister than the radical religious groups marked by certain
putatively deviate sexual or social mores.
How was this possible? Whereas
the fringe groups—their ideologies and actions—were easily identifiable as
blasphemous and heretical, [but] the antitrinitarians of Best and Biddle’s type
were upstanding, rational, pious, and Bible-quoting Puritans with equal
aversions to Popery and Laudianism (39).
As such Lim notes his emphasis is on watching “exactly how this
material principle of sola scriptura worked
itself out in the way these disparate thinkers wrote … about the Trinity” (21). In essence, in the pure jettisoning of
tradition (to “complete the Reformation” was the frequent cry of the
anti-Trinitarians) the search for certainty in one’s interpretation affected
the nature and mode of scriptural exegesis itself (282). “It seems most ironic,” says Lim, “that [the
centrality of sola scriptura] in the rule of faith controversy contributed to
the further hardening of the Socinian commitment to the nonscriptural nature of
the Trinity.” This was itself
exacerbated by Catholic pressure on Protestants who feared Socinians, saying
scriptural exegesis could not save them, only assent to the tradition
(133). One was pressed between the
(seemingly fideist) Catholic Rome and (purely rationalist) Socinian Rakow. If we can take one thing from this for our
contemporary purposes, it is how this false binary shows the desperate need for
thoughtful education in theological hermeneutics.
The story gets more complicated here, however, precisely because
accusations begin to fly between parties that we with our modern categories
(Trinitarian, anti-trinitarian) would often see as general allies against a
common enemy, or, on the other hand, commonalities between groups we should
think enemies. The Laudians, for
example, dismissed the Geneva Bible as essentially on par with Arianism because
Puritans were leery about using non-biblical terminology. “In other words,” says Lim, “for [Laudian
Bishop John] Howson, the hesitation of the Puritans [in the Geneva Bible] to
appropriate non-biblical terms as part of the fundamental articles of faith,
especially the Athanasian Creed, was what made the Arians and Puritans kindred
spirits, irrespective of their [for example] radically divergent Johannine
exegesis” (280). As such Lim gives a
very helpful overview and historical caution:
To translate the biblical text was one thing: to
agree on textual authenticity let alone its interpretation, was another matter
entirely. For every proof-text from the
Fourth Gospel adduced to convincingly show the deity of Christ and the Trinity,
an equally compelling argument was made by the antitrinitarians from the very
same text to show a diametrically opposite conclusion. The elusive quest for the pure text of
Scripture and equally pristine interpretation often belied the futility of
imposing a ‘univocal orthodox of opinion.’
Words such as popery, Pelagianism,
Socinianism, Arianism, Arminianism, and atheism
were often used simultaneously as symbolic markers and as real conceptual
limits. Yet the problem lay not with the
terms themselves, but with the protean valence of how these terms functioned
within polemical contexts, including biblical translation and annotation. As Peter Lake and Anthony Milton have argued,
the ‘precise meaning’ of these polemical labels were ‘up for grabs, almost
infinitely glossable and contestable’ (274).
And, as in Dixon’s account in Nice
and Hot Disputes, Lim, too, picks up on the increasing distrust of the
appeal to apophatic theology and theologically robust concepts of “mystery.” Even while wanting to contest the claims of
Hugh Trevor-Roper that Socinianism and Arminianism were direct precursors to
Enlightenment rationalism as Trevor-Roper overlooks the centrality of
theological and scriptural argumentation (18), nonetheless Lim concludes
“mystery was dealt a hard blow” on all sides of the debate. He continues:
Equipped with a better sense of the quotidian
orchestration of the universe God had created, abetted with a higher notion of
the human’s moral potential and epistemic capacities, it was easy to disband
the idea of mystery. The doctrine of the
Trinity survived in the Enlightenment, even as the idea of the ‘ineffable
mystery’ that had undergirded the defense of the Trinity in the previous
centuries had to be rephrased in different guises. It simply became a matter of
evident truths from the sound reading of Scripture; then, the trinity
transposed itself, no longer a mystery that, even with the best of our
exegetical and epistemic capacities, cannot be known without the gracious gift
of revelation and illumination (327).
In his own reluctant way, then, Lim seems to confirm Vicker’s
thesis as well (while also earlier chastising him for his neglect of John Best
and Paul Biddle) of the Trinity moving from “invocation” to “assent”—from a
more ontological and doxological understanding into one of proposition to be believed
and handed on as the litmus of a “religious” orthodoxy whose inner logic had
been hollowed out precisely by those who most judiciously guarded it.
Bishops Behaving
Badly
One of the most curious features of the early modern English
controversies over the Trinity as Lim represents it—given my own fascination
with historiography—is that despite the anti-traditionalist tenor of most
involved on all sides, nonetheless there was a “war of historiography” to claim
the Fathers (220). There was “an intriguing
presence, indeed, persistence, of patristic voices in these debates,” and Lim
tells the fascinating tale of how this reveals to us “how theological authority
was constructed, contested, and reconfigured” (29). Not all of the Fathers were claimed, of
course, but that it should be felt necessary for any of the Fathers to be
claimed as pedigree when sola scriptura was
the absolute litmus, is surprising indeed.
It becomes slightly less surprising, however, when one realizes
this was done precisely to construct competing genealogies of what constitutes orthodoxy. “How one viewed and appropriated these
historical texts [scriptures and the Fathers], the patristic writings in
particular, was predicated on how one interpreted the past itself, in toto” (216). And it is here that, much as we still often
do tonight, we see a coordination between claims of the “Platonization” of
scripture along with the “Constantinian” corruption of ecclesiastical hierarchy
by the Socinians—these two things part of one and the same issue, or so they
thought.
Hence, in order to undermine this conjunction of historical error,
Biddle could, for example, place “heavy emphasis on the ante-Nicene fathers …
as he sought to dislodge the Nicene and post-Nicene formulations on the Trinity
as a corruption of the pristine and primate orthodoxy of Christian monotheism”
(53). Nicaea was for Biddle and any
like-minded contemporaries “a major hiccup” in orthodox history, as Lim
humorously puts it (54). As such, he
insists (in a somewhat tortured reading) that Irenaeus is not “a Trinitarian”
due to his sole focus on the economy and God’s absolutely simple unity (53-60).
In the intriguing final chapter, Lim notes how this accusation of
the “Platonization” of scriptural thought actually began to feed back into what
constituted “scripture” itself. “Whereas
for Biddle, the corruption of Christianity took place after the completion of the New Testament,” writes Lim, “for Nye
and Souverain, the fissure in the foundation of Christianity might have already
existed in the New Testament writing itself, particularly in the highly reified
notion of Christ’s deity, found in the Gospel of John” (306). Thus precisely within the Trinitarian
controversy we see a key theme of the polemic transition from a hermeneutical
to a textual-critical theme. As Lim puts
it: “to see the rise of critical biblical scholarship as a discrete
intellectual development hermetically sealed from, and thus any due regard for,
the culture of polemic between the warring factions of the trinitarian divide
would be to miss the point” (274). The
highly rationalistic, anti-mystery, anti-Trinitarian reading of sola scriptura thus became—not just a
hermeneutic for the canon—but the critical key determining what constituted
authentic canon itself.
This war of historiography did not end with theological and
textual-critical reconstruction, however.
One of the prime sites of contesting the Trinity was not so much denying
the doctrine, as attempting to undermine the ground it stood on: the very
notion of orthodoxy (217-271). This
constituted, less a critique of the Trinity, and what Lim states as a
“metacritique” that aimed itself at “power mongering among the bishops at the
councils and an emphasis on the radically historicized, thus contingent, nature
of orthodoxy and heresy, thereby destabilizing the historical basis of
Trinitarian orthodoxy … for example the authority of the Council of Nicaea and
Ephesus” (219). A famous quote by Hilary
of Poitier exemplifying this idea found its way into many works: “Since the
Nicene Synod .. we do nothing but write Creeds … The first Decree commands,
that the Homoousion should not be mentioned: the next does again Decree and
publish homoousios … we decree every year of the Lord a new Creed concerning God:
Nay, every change of the moon our faith is alter’d. We repent of our decrees, we defend those
that repent of them; We anathematize those that we defended … we are now all of
us torn in pieces” (320).
We should note that this was not in every instance invoked as an
explicitly anti-Trinitarian stand.
Thomas Hobbes never denied (and in his own way, explicitly affirmed) the
doctrine of the Trinity. In fact, this
is what obscures the use of either “heresy” or “orthodoxy” when it comes to
many of these figures: “Hobbes, as he
tirelessly inveighed against his opponents, never denied the Trinity; he thus
cannot be declared a heretic [by his opponents], neither by the first four
ecumenical councils, nor by the Elizabethan statute [Act of Supremacy, 1559]”
(229). Of course, these categories were
largely meaningless to Hobbes anyway, for “orthodoxy and heresy were more
functions of realpolitik than some
willful perversion of the perennial Christian truth concerning the savior”
(232). When confronted with the idea
that, while individuals can err, councils can not, Hobbes responded “this was
tantamount to saying every single soldier may run away, but the whole army
cannot” (239).
This charge of the tyranny of the priests loops back around to the
revulsion to mystery: such a hermeneutical claim was seen as legerdemain to
create the illusion of priestly insight and power (251f). Hobbes could use the perspicuity of
scripture—seeing himself as indebted to Luther at this point—by noting no one
needed the magisterium or clergy to interpret the scriptures for them. In a similar (but quite bizarre) way, this is
why anti-trinitarianism and anti-nomianism were polemically linked in the mind
of many pro-Trinitarians (72ff). The
antinomian Ranters, as they were called, utilized a radical notion of theosis
(deification) to claim that they themselves as individuals had become the Son
(or the Holy Spirit)(95ff). While not
explicitly anti-trinitarian per se, the Ranters collapsed God into man, and
radically re-wrote the Trinity ontologically speaking (84-85). “The justification for paving the polemical
pathway between anti-nomianism and antitrinitarianism [was] by claiming oneself
to be invested with divine attributes, one was de facto in denial of the
Trinity, at least as promulgated at the council of Nicaea” (102).
And such a direct communion with God—as is often noted with
mysticisms of all types—completely circumvents the need for hierarchical
priestly intervention, or the administration of the sacraments, and so was seen
as undermining both church and state: “At the core of Ranter ideology was the
near-collapse of ontological and moral distinction between God and the
creature, so much so that not only were there individual Ranters who proclaimed
themselves to be divine, but also there were direct ramifications in the way
one construed the ethical norms of society” (114). If all things in God were good, than no
matter how despicable the activity for the Ranter it could not be sin.
Conclusion
Lim’s study itself demands that we can derive no easy conclusions
from the complex realities of 17th century English conflicts over
the Trinity. That said, I will venture
three tentative ones that I take away from this book (and yes, they do reflect
my typical hobby-horses, so take them with a grain of salt).
The first: when many reflect today upon the perceived irrelevance
of the Trinity, or the wooden rationalism of “classical theism” we must agree
with the sentiment of William Placher: as he investigated the issue of
“classical Christian theism” more and more, “I [Placher] began to conclude that
some of the features that contemporary critics find most objectionable in
so-called traditional Christian theology in fact came to prominence only in the
seventeenth-century” (Domestication of
Transcendence, 2). What this means
(for my purposes at least) is that often when “classical theism” or an
Augustinian-Thomistic pathway of Trinitarianism is being critiqued by modern
theologians (read: contemporary to us), often what is actually being attacked
is a later transition that occurred in reception history, not the original
sources themselves. This of course does
not mean one must therefore accepted the original sources of an Augustine or
Thomas wholeheartedly. It does mean,
however, that they must be re-evaluated.
The second is that the contemporary equation of Trinitarianism
(especially of its “social variety”) with political and ecclesial
egalitarianism of some sort, while monotheism is politically oppressive, is
simply not true historically speaking.
At the very least it can be spoken of in those terms only if one keeps
to very specific historical cases. For
those like Hobbes and Marvell, precisely the opposite was the case: the Trinity
(in its Platonic form) was a sign of tyrannical priestcraft, and was linked
with dogmatic violence, and the seemingly arbitrary execution of heretics. Moreover, for the Ranters, a type of
modalistic Trinitarianism (at best) coupled with an extreme form of theosis was the only path to
egalitarianism.
The third, and final point, is that with Lim, Dixon, Vickers, and
Babcock, we can note that the Trinity died precisely when it merely became a
datum of Christian “religion”: a dogma to be believed. Thus Trinitarian theology is actual part and
parcel of a wider framework regarding what theology itself is, and how it is to operate in relation to God, humanity, and the
world. With the lose of the proper sense
of mystery, “mystery” itself simply came to mean “that which must be believed”
rather than “the excess of God’s reality to our categories, however
provisionally useful they are.” It is at
this moment, as we have seen, that a key transitions occurs: the inner content,
logic, and justification of Trinitarian doctrine is lost (not totally, but in
many quarters) to abstract speculation.
The Trinity, instead of being part of a larger theological project to
read scripture and the world, becomes a virtually self-contained puzzle to be
pieced together. And this destruction
often came precisely at the hands of its defenders. How careful must we be, then, to not emaciate
God, to eject the theologically robust components of Christian theology as an
emergency measure to defend God. To do
so is to trade Christ for some bloodless myth.
[1]
Paul C. K. Lim, Mystery Unveiled: The
Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012), 272.
[2]
Jon M. Robertson, Christ as Mediator: A
Study of the Theologies of Eusebius of Caesarea, Marcellus of Ancyra, and
Athanasius of Alexandria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
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