Trinity: Tom McCall Critiques Zizoulas as Tom Torrance Critiques the Cappadocians

In Tom McCall's critique of Eastern Orthodox and Trinitarian theologian, John Zizoulas; McCall offers a proposal that is highly similar (if not self-same) with that of Thomas F. Torrance's. McCall is appreciative of Zizoulas' emphasis on Being-As-Communion as definitive for how we should conceive of the divine Monarchia or God-head, but like Torrance, contra the Cappadocians; McCall finds concern with Zizoulas' retrieval, as it were of the Cappadocian grounding of the God-head in the Person's, or Person (the Father), instead of the Being of God (ousia) which is given shape by the mutual in-dwelling, subject-in-being kind of onto-relating (as Torrance calls it) that as Torrance has highlighted someone like Epiphanius or Athanasius has offered in the Patristic Tradition. McCall sketches, and develops what is called the Sovereign Aseity Conviction, which is the belief that God alone gives himself his own being. McCall is worried that when this reality is correlated with Zizoulas' belief that 'Being-As-Communion' is understood as definitive for God, and further, when the conception of Sovereign Aseity is grounded in the Person of the Father, rather than an actual Being that is indeed in communion; that we end up with a non sequitur (and I share his worry). For if the definition of God-ness is indeed given primary shape by BAC, then to posit (as Zizoulas does) that there is principle of God-ness, such as Father, prior to the possibility for genuine communion to inhere; then we end up with a non-starting conception of God-ness if this conception is going to be defined by being-in-communion. [There is further discussion needed to parse this out further, and McCall provides it; discussion on person-hood in the Monarchia etc. But I am not going to provide that here, at the moment---maybe in the comments if someone wants. I am highlighting McCall's critique of Zizoulas here because it sounds very very similar to Thomas Torrance's critique of the Cappadocians in his book Trinitarian Faith]. Here is McCall on Zizoulas, and McCall's counter-proposal to Zizoulas:

[T]he first adjustment [to Zizoulas' view] is this: the SAC [Sovereign Aseity Conviction] must be seen as a property of the triune God rather than as a property of the Father alone. As we have seen, to predicate the SAC of the Father alone is to raise several concerns, not least of which is whether this means that the Father is of a different essence than is the Son or Spirit. To assert that the Father alone is unthrown and a se is to say that the Father has different essential properties than does the Son or Spirit --- properties that are not either accidental properties (after all, this seems to be what it means to be the Father) or "onto-relational" properties. But to predicate the SAC of the Trinity alleviates this problem; it makes the SAC an essential property of divinity, one that is had by each and all of the divine persons. Furthermore, the ascription of the SAC to God is the way the biblical writers think of it (e.g., Exod. 3:14). [Thomas H. McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?, 207]

I agree with McCall's call for an adjustment relative to Zizoulas' conceiving of things; just as I agree with Thomas Torrance's call for a dependence on Athanasius, Epiphanius, Didymus the Blind, et alia in contrast to the Cappadocians. A contrast that sees the importance of grounding God's being-in-communion in the Sovereign-Aseity of all the Persons mutual-indwellment of the other; instead of annexing this to the person of the Father alone (which would be contradictory because of prior conflict given the defined premises).

Anyway, besides the important theology being noted here; it makes me wonder how much McCall has depended on Thomas Torrance's proposal, contra the Cappadocians, for his (McCall's) own proposal contra Zizoulas? Let me close with a quote from Torrance, quoting Epiphanius, in Torrance's 'Trinitarian Faith':

[G]od is one, the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father with the Holy Spirit . . . true enhypostatic Father, and true enhypostatic Son, and true enhypostatic Holy Spirit, three Persons, one Godhead, one being, one glory, one God. In thinking of God you conceive of the Trinity, but without confusing in your mind the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the Father, the Son is the Son, the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit, but there is no deviation in the Trinity from oneness and identity. (Epiphanius, “Anc., 10,” cited by T. F. Torrance, “The Trinitarian Faith,” 234-35)

Tom McCall and the Need for Scholasticism in Trinitarian Theology

I am just starting to read Tom McCall's book, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?: Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology. McCall is associate professor of biblical and systematic theology at TEDS (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), in Chicago. I am friends with McCall on Facebook; so I offer this initial impression to the introduction to his book as a friend :-).

McCall opens his book on the Trinity, as any good analytic theologian might do; by setting up the dialogical landscape (or lack thereof) that has inhered (or not) between constructive/dialectic theologians (which is where I am coming from), and McCall's camp, the analytic/philosophic theologians. He introduces his book this way to be clear about one of his intentions for writing this book, and for writing it in the way he does; one of the reasons he is writing this book is to bridge the chasm that is in place between the constructive/dialectic theologian and the analytic. With this context understood, let me quote some of the sentiment that McCall thinks would be good for Systematic Theology in general (it is something that repels me, just to give you a heads up):

[...] The theologians need --- sometimes desperately need --- the kind of assistance that might be found in the analytic toolkit. The theologian R. R. Reno sees this clearly, and he sounds a clarion call for theologians to employ the conceptual tools offered by the analytic tradition. As he sees things, analytic methodology bears a close resemblance to scholasticism, and he thinks contemporary theology could use a good does of it. He says that although the "overwhelming majority of theologians today sift through Heideggar and his philosophical children and grandchildren to try and find useable material," this impulse is fundamentally "misguided." Reno concludes that analytic philosophy might be an important ally for theology, and this is "because analytic philosophy is unequivocally and fundamentally a force for the strengthening of truth, not its weakening. [emphasis mine] [Thomas H. McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?, 4-5]

Without wanting to be too foreboding, and wanting to give McCall a fair reading; let me just assert up front that exactly what contemporary theology does not need is a good dose of scholasticism! If what Tom means by this is that contemporary theology needs to constructively retrieve the substance metaphysics that classical theism hath bequeathed to us in Christian Theology through the seminal kind of work in this direction provided by the Thomist synthesis with Aristotelian categories and Christian Theology; then I object! I think this is what Reno means, and thus what McCall thinks is clarion.

What we need is an onto-relational metaphysic (or some such nomenclature) that emphasizes a Trinitarian theology that is given shape by an understanding of a personal God who has his being as a Subject-in-Being distinctiveness. In other words, we don't need to work from philosophical categories, like substance metaphysics offers up, that primarily think of God through monadic (unitary) categories. It is this ground that Federal Calvinism (amongst other developments within the Christian theological tradition) has developed; which has given us a God who must relate to his creation through impersonal decrees and Law-like precision.

So, four and five pages in; I object, Tom McCall! We'll see where you lead me ...