Time&Eternity

194 chapter 4
Order, Chaos, and Relationality
According to Gunton, the doctrine of the Trinity was developed “to
show that God’s being is not motionless, impassible eternity but a personal
taxis of dynamic and free relations.” 42 That this is more wishful thinking
than fact is shown not least of all by Elizabeth Johnson’s discussion of Trinitarian
theology. Johnson also develops her doctrine of the Trinity in the
light of the concept of relation. Her rhetorical question—“Not an isolated,
static, ruling monarch but a relational, dynamic, tripersonal mystery of
love—who would not opt for the latter?” 43 —outlines her Trinitarian theological
approach. With regard to the traditional Trinitarian frameworks, she
criticizes the use of exclusively male images, which tend to place men and
the role of God on the same level and to put women in the role of dependent
and sinful humanity. She also takes issue with the notion of a hierarchical
structure of the Trinity whose sole goal is to define who proceeds from
whom, who gives what to whom, and who receives what. As an alternative,
Johnson chooses the approach for which I have also opted in this study: She
does not proceed from definitions, but rather from relationality. For this
reason, she distances herself from the attempt to base a doctrine of the Trinity
on a definition of what constitutes a person. 44 Instead, she develops her
thoughts from a relational model of mutual giving and receiving, in order
to bring the equality, the mutuality, and the reciprocal dynamism of the
Trinitarian relationships into the discussion. 45
Two Trinitarian understandings of God oppose each other: a Trinitarian
God understood as the guarantor of order who establishes what is to be,
and a Trinitarian God who is experienced as the guarantor of life who liberates
what is bound, so that a life in community is possible in the presence of
diversity. The ontological priority of relation to substance implies that relationality,
and not a solitary ego, is the heart of all reality. 46 There is no absolute
divine person, but only the three relative persons. God is not a
monolithic, undifferentiated block, but rather a living mystery of relationship
who has turned to the world. The divine secret is not monarchy, but
rather community; not an absolute ruler, but rather a threefold koinonia. 47
Here it becomes clear how theological reflection is linked to the criticism of
social order in Church and society. A social order that is modeled on
monarchy must look quite different than one that is oriented toward a divine
communion of persons that is constituted in free loving relationships.
Even if a warning here against projections in one direction or the other is
appropriate, it can hardly be denied that an interaction exists between the
conception of God’s nature and the understanding of the natural and social
orders. 48 The reflections on Newton and Leibniz already showed this (see