"Revised Standard Model" for the Social Trinity (Davis)

Question 1

Terminology (F, S, HS)

Answer 1

Three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are thought of as analogous, but not identical, in some respects to a community or family of human persons.

Question 2

Term “person”

Answer 2

Definition: “a distinct, self-conscious subject of experiences, with a distinct center of mind, emotion, and will.

Exp: When applied to God, “person” must mean more than when applied to humans, but certainly not to be understood as less. (“God is the original Person.”)

Question 3

What is the heart of the new proposal?

Answer 3

The concepts of “perichoresis” and “communion” (koinonia) need to be recognized as “properly basic” or epistemically fundamental to Trinitarian discourse, as much so as are “substance” and “person”.

Question 4

What is “perichoretic predication”?

Answer 4

Since epistemology and semantics are grounded in ontological or metaphysical realities, the fundamental reality of God’s triune, perichoretic nature should be reflected in our predication or ways of speaking about God.

I.e. explicit reference to one member of the Trinity is an implicit reference to the other two.

Consequently, it provides a way of recognizing semantic variety of terms for God, progressive nature of biblical revelation, and the deeper unity of canonical revelation in pointing to undivided Trinity.

Question 5

What is “analogical complementarity”?

Answer 5

In modern physics, complementary principle originated in discussions of so-called wave-particle duality, with reference to the properties of light and subatomic particles.

Generalized to analogous principle of Trinitarian theology, condition of “analogical complementarity” exists when the following conditions obtain:

1. One or more descriptive terms (e.g. wave, particle, father) with apparently univocal (or “literal” or “pictorial”) senses have, in fact analogical references;
2. the terms have disparate or even apparently contradictory senses;
3. neither term taken by itself is adequate to “save the phenomena” or to describe the full reality in question;
4. both terms, taken together, are necessary for an adequate description.

Question 6

What are the four new elements proposed in Davis’s revised model: “Perichoretic Social Trinitarianism”?

Answer 6

P1: Perichoresis and Communion are “properly basic” in discourse and thinking for both economic and immanent Trinity.

P2: Generation and Procession are not “properly basic” for the Immanent Trinity

C1: Perichoresis communion and analogical complementarity

4. Social analogy of “Jazz Trio” extending and updating “Peter, James, and John” illustration of Gregory of Nyssa.