Three Papers by Karen Kilby

Dennis Bray, 23.11.2021

Biography

• Professor of theology at Durham

• Did Phd Work on Karl Rahner
• Has published on Rahner, Balthasar, and recently God, Evil and the Limits of Theology

Paper 1 – Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity (2000)
Part I – A brief history

• From the late 1960s or so, explosion of writing on the Trinity

• Much of this from theologians who complained that the doctrine of the Trinity (DoT) had become
too obscure, complex, and irrelevant to regular Christians
• They called for a retrieval: DoT must once again be understood, be central to Christian faith, and
relevant to Christian life
• The primary way these theologians worked to achieve the revival was by employing a social view of
the Trinity: Moltmann’s The Trinity and the Kingdom of God was pivotal here
Part II – Description of social trinitarianism

• ‘Minimal basis’ of Social Trinitarianism (ST): God is to be thought of as a society united by mutual
love, shared will, and self-giving of the divine persons; this in contrast to viewing God as a single
agent with three sides or modes of being
• STs also share three “frequently recurring features”
Feature 1: nature of ‘person’

• All orthodox Christians hold that God is (or has) three divine persons
• Non-STs posit that ‘person’ when used of God has little, or nothing, to do with our common notion
of person; there is no conceptual overlap; these theologians prefer to use ‘mode of being’ (Barth) or
similar language
• STs want to retain the idea that ‘person’ means an ‘I’, a centre of consciousness, will, affect
• However, STs want to avoid excesses of our cultural understanding of person: unlike human persons,
divine persons are not autonomous individuals, isolated from others, or having an identity
independent of other persons
Feature 2: reading of history of DoT

• See a sharp divide between Eastern and Western development of the DoT: the East began with three
persons and worked to show oneness; the West began with oneness and worked to show how there
could be three
• When writing, Westerners begin with De Deo Uno, rather then De Deo Trino – this makes the DoT
appear superfluous: we already know what we need about the doctrine of God; the Trinity stuff is an
appendix
Feature 3: enthusiasm for perichoresis

• STs think: Western views struggle to explain how the One God can be three persons; however, we
don’t have a similar problem. The need for us to explain how three persons can be one is an
opportunity to employ the notion of perichoresis
 • Perichoresis: mutual interpenetration (circumincessio) ; each person lives in the other two,
communicates eternal life to the other; engages in deep love and fellowship (Moltmann) – no
isolation, secretiveness, fear of being transparent to another (Plantinga)
Enthusiasm for perichoresis expresses itself in two ways

• 1) “the divine perichoresis, makes God intrinsically attractive” (435-6)

• 2) God’s inner life has implications for human persons
o Eg. Feminist values (Wilson-Kastner)
o Democratic governments and ecclesial structures (Moltmann)
o Metaphysics: persons are to be defined, are identified, as individuals in relation (Gunton)
• [Summary on bottom of p.438]
Part III – Argument against the ST project
Step 1 (of 3) – ST projects created qualities onto the divine

• All theology does this, but ST is particularly guilty

• Speaking of empathy, joy, and other emotions is projective – the problem: humans are
emotional/affective, so we conclude that God is emotional
• So to is saying that divine persons defined by or necessarily engage in mutuality and inter-relatedness
– the problem: humans are social animals, so we conclude that God/divine persons are social
• Also projective is saying that DPs are particular individuals who transcend their individuality to join
in community and love – the problem: humans are individuals, so we conclude that DPs are too
Step 2 – ST necessarily engages in projection

• This is the heart of Kilby’s critique

• STs believe that God is appropriately modelled on three human persons; but to avoid tritheism, STs
must explain how the three are (or can be) one. There must be, and so there is, some activity or
process that DPs have which unites them. STs put a label on this activity or process: ‘perichoresis’.
Since ST’s cannot find a robust explanation of perichoresis in scripture, they look to human
experience: interrelatedness, love, empathy, mutual accord, giving, etc. In other words, they take the
best unifying activities from human experience and apply this God – they put human goods into the
perichoresis box.
Step 3 – ST’s projection is particularly nasty

• STs have began by thinking about God as analogous to groups of people. To explain God’s oneness,
STs then pull out the black box and say, “inside this box is the explanation”. They label the box
‘perichoresis’, and then put inside of it the best unifying things humans have got (such as love and
sharing). STs then say: God is like our loving communities, except God is a perfect loving community
• The final move is this: STs then use there conclusions about God (such as God being a perfect loving
community) to say: “Hey everybody, we ought to be like God; we need to be more loving, communal,
reliant on one another” or whatever else STs put in the box
• [Summary on p.442]
Conclusions

• The solution is not to return to Western views or more monadic or Latin trinitarianism
• Instead: “one should renounce the very idea that the point of the doctrine is to give insight into
God.”
• Indeed, Kilby argues that DoT does not give us insight about God, but rather gives us a grammar: it
gives us a way of speaking and, to a limited degree, acting, about God. But ultimately we don’t know
what we are saying when we say it; we don’t know what exactly we are worshipping when we worship
it. This is the kernel of the project K. will develop in latter two papers
 Paper 2 – Aquinas, the Trinity and the Limits of Understanding (2005)
Intro

• Resurgence and ressourcement of Thomas on the Trinity; a desire – maybe even a rush – to find in
Aquinas theologically rich, positive trinitarian teaching
• The danger: pulling more sense about the Trinity from Thomas than Thomas himself found
• Kilby wants to reread Thomas, but in so doing she finds a different emphasis than the critics or the
recent defenders find: “theological dead ends”
Some dead ends

• Thomas analyses procession language out of material realm, into the spiritual; but further analyses it
out of any realm of created experience (the divine Word is perfectly one with the source from which
it proceeds). Thus, there is no conceptual content to the idea of divine processions that we can hold
What I am suggesting, however, is that by the time the language deriving from this model has been suitably reshaped to make it
appropriate for speaking of God – reshaped, in particular, to bring it into conformity with the principle of divine simplicity – it
cannot serve as a carrier of any insight into God. We do not, from the created analogue, get a glimpse into the nature of God:
rather, we so modify the language drawn from this analogue that when we arrive at a language to talk about God, it is a language
we quite clearly cannot understand. What is a procession which does not occur in time, nor involve change, nor allow of any
diversity between the one who processes and the one from whom the procession takes place? I have no reason to affirm that there is
no such thing, but also no way of grasping or imagining what it might be. Every element in the idea of intellectual procession that I
might, imaginitively, get a grasp of, has had to be denied. (420)

• Thomas gives similar treatment to DPs as subsisting relations. Modifies and remodifies our
understanding of relations applied to DPs so that the finished product has not other instance or
analogue in creation
What Thomas does is simply to begin with the category of relation as he takes it to be normally understood, and then introduce as
many modifications as are necessary to make use of it in speaking of something internal to God – without taking any particular
pains to explain how we are to try to grasp or picture this stretched and strained notion of relation – without taking any pains,
that is to say, to explain what it means. (421)

• The final example is that of persons as subsistent relations. Thomas “serenely declares” that the
persons really are distinct from one another, though identical with the substance. But the logical
problems with this idea are so obvious and devastating that Thomas must be doing something else,
something other than claiming that these statements give us real insight into God.
Her conclusion:
If in fact the doctrine of the Trinity is simply beyond our grasp, then it may be better, more helpful, for theology to display this quite
clearly, than to skirt the issue, to bluff its way along. And this, I am suggesting, is what Thomas is doing – simultaneously
displaying the grammar, the pattern of speech about the Trinity, and displaying it as beyond our comprehension. (423)
Kilby details one central question:
Secondly, how does the not-knowing I am talking about in connection with aspects of trinitarian doctrine relate to a not-knowing of
God in general? Thomas famously affirms that we know of God not what he is, but rather what he is not. In this life we cannot
know God’s essence. Some of the words we use about God, such as good and wise, really do describe God, but they refer to him in
a way which we cannot understand, since we draw our understanding of them from a created context. Some interpreters, such as
Victor Preller, pursue these lines of thought to a radically negative conclusion: we are licensed to speak in certain ways about God,
but we really do not know in the least what we are saying.23 And if this is the case, then it follows rather trivially that when we
speak of processions, relations and persons in God, we cannot possibly know what we are saying. Herbert McCabe in fact argues
quite explicitly that although the Trinity is a mystery, it is not as though things get any worse for our understanding with the
introduction of the doctrine of the three persons – God is entirely a mystery from the beginning.24 Though I have a good deal of
sympathy for these lines of thought, what I am arguing here is something slightly different. Whatever account one wants to give of
our not knowing God in general, the situation gets worse, or at the very least more clearly bad, when it comes to certain kinds of
statements in trinitarian discourse. When we say God is wise or good, for instance, we at least think we know what we are saying,
even if a reflection on issues of the modus significandi of our words means that we then have to acknowledge that our conception of
goodness and wisdom are not adequate to God. But when we speak of processions in God, or subsistent relations, or the Persons in
relation to the essence, we are speaking in a way which we cannot make sense of, even in an inadequate way. My suggestion is,
then, that there are some areas of theological speech where we run aground more dramatically and more obviously than others.
(424-5)

• Kilby’s conclusions about Thomas on the Trinity go beyond other views of apophaticism. Some
language we use of God has at least some point of connection with the created realm – gives us some
glint of light into the glorious divine darkness, however slight. The DoT, though, gives us no such
light; it gives us no insight whatsoever.
Features of Kilby’s view
According to this article DoT gives us three things:

• Informs us of theological dead ends – tells us what we cannot know about

• Gives us a grammar for speaking about that unknown; but, again, our words and patterns of speaking
don’t tell us about that of which we speak
• Directs us contemplation of God in the Trinity, and not contemplation of the Trinity. In the Spirit we
contemplate the Son in the Father; we do not contemplate the three-in-oneness
Kilby ends with what she takes to be a strength of her view
Those who take their position at either end of the spectrum do not privilege the theologian in any dramatic way above other
believers. If the social trinitarians are right, then they really can explain the Trinity to people in a way that people really can grasp.
Their approach has become influential in part precisely because it is so very preachable. And if, at the other extreme, Thomas is
understood as I propose, then the theologian no more than any other believer can understand what they mean in talking about the
Trinity. The position in the middle of the spectrum, however, though on the face of it very cautious, modest and moderate, is the one
to give what is really a rather serious privilege to those who have the time, inclination and ability to engage in sophisticated technical
theology. Come and read theology at a top university, one could say, and if you do really very hard papers with a suitably prayerful
attitude, and do really very well in them, you will be that much closer to the beatific vision. It might be good for boosting recruitment
to the discipline, but it does not quite ring true. (427)

• I do not think this argument adds much to her case. This is a sort of argument ad populum – the gist is
this:
o My view is more democratic/equal/accessible than less apophatic views
o Views that are democratic/equal/accessible are better than views that are less so
o Therefore, my view is better than the others
• This is not a strong argument because the second claim is not a good principle

Paper 3 – Is Apophatic Trinitarianism Possible (2010)

Overview

• This article builds on – more so crystalizes – themes from the previous two
• Reaction to “robust, self-confident”, positive trinitarian theology
Is it possible to suppose that reflection on the doctrine of the Trinity might intensify rather than diminish our sense of the
unknowability of God? Is it possible to accept that it presents us with a pattern which we cannot understand, rather than giving us
some new understanding of God? What if we were to suppose that how the three are one, how to relate divine persons to the divine
substance, what the inner relations between the persons are, are all questions which are quite simply beyond us? On such an
account, the doctrine of the Trinity would confront us with these questions, in some sense force them upon us, but leave us without
any resources with which to answer them. What answers we may appear to have – answers drawing on notions of processions,
relations, perichoresis – would be acknowledged as in fact no more than technical ways of articulating our inability to know. (67)
 • Aims to do the following:
o Sketch the contours of what an apophatic trinitarianism (AT) might look like if it were possible
o Defend against objections: AT denies the reality of the Trinity, or at least the immanent
Trinity; side-lines the doctrine; returns to the abstraction of the Enlightenment or “nervous
liberalism”
Big conclusions
A neighbour once offered the following analysis of the difference between our faiths: ‘We Muslims believe in one God, but you
Christians believe in God and Jesus.’ One response to this comment might have been to say that my neighbour was just
demonstrating a theological naivety: she failed to understand that Christians worship one God because she lacked any grasp of a
trinitarian conception of God. My own view, however, is that Christians, too, lack any grasp of a trinitarian conception of God.
We learn to worship the Father through the Son in the Spirit, but we do not have some very sophisticated idea with which to put
all this together, with which to envisage or explain or understand that the three are one, with which to put to rest on a conceptual
level worries about the coherence of a claim to monotheism. This is why attention to the doctrine of the Trinity should serve to
intensify rather than diminish our sense of God’s unknownness: believing in the Trinity, we are not so much in possession of a
more fully textured concept of God than a mere Enlightenment deist has, but in fact much less than any deist in possession of any
sort of manageable concept of God at all.
By this point it should be clear that while trinitarian robustness may be a reaction against liberalism, the trinitarian apophaticism
I am sketching should not be seen as a mere return to it. To be a liberal is to have as one of one’s overriding concerns the need to
make sense of Christian belief for the surrounding culture: I am suggesting that in fact Christians are, and ought to be, at a loss in
making sense of their belief at all. (75-76)

• So yes, AT does seem possible

• It even seems beneficial, because it avoids idolatry (such as, assumedly, STs flirt with), and it is
accessible to all (i.e., non-professional theologians)