CHAPTER SIX
THE TRINITARIAN PRINCIPLE

The two previous principles teach that God has remained active as a Trinity from the beginning. He remains Suzerain and Restorer of the universe He created and upholds by his spoken word. That Word when revealed in the Bible interprets all of life and culture:

The comprehensive work of the Triune God as Sovereign Creator is the explicit foundational axiom of the Trinitarian Principle (Eph 1:3-21; Rom 8:18-39; Jn 14; see the Three Forms of Unity). Kuyper summarizes Calvinism’s focus

However, one aspect of the being and work of the Trinity has been relatively neglected in the history of dogma: the implications of the doctrine of the Trinity upon the growth and transformation of culture. As the review of literature showed, there has been considerable debate about the relationship of unity to diversity in the Trinity and how the varying views on that relationship have influenced the old and new social theology of the NGK.

Dooyeweerdian and Afrikaner ethnic theologians especially have noticed a divergence from the orthodox norm in this crucial area within C&S. A fundamental question this dissertation must ask is what view of the Trinitarian Principle does C&S hold?

Dooyeweerd’s Culture Analysis

Philosophers of the Dooyeweerdian school correctly analyze Western cultural history as deeply influenced by dialectical, anti-creational grondmotiewe (culture-themes): form-matter (Greek), nature-grace (Catholic Scholasticism), nature-freedom (modern humanism) (Dooyeweerd 1980, see 1953-1958, 1979). All of these themes, which place two antitheses in conflictual tension, as seen earlier, are hostile to the biblical grondmotief of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation (see Restorative Eschatology Principle).

Although Dooyeweerd was correct in analyzing the Christian grondmotief as the only antidote to these conflictual dualisms, he did not go far enough in analyzing the underlying philosophical root problem, the relationship of the One to the Many. The dialectical motiewe are actually controlled by presuppositions which attempt to define the relationship of unity to diversity in an anti-Trinitarian manner. The analysis of this basic presupposition remained to be comprehensively addressed in the works of C. A. Van Til and his disciples.

The Problem of the One and the Many, Unity and Diversity

According to Vantillians, this philosophical problem is "one of the most basic and continuing problems of man’s history" (Rushdoony 1978, 1). An understanding of the biblical answer to the relationship of unity to diversity, is also foundational to the understanding of C&S.

First of all, "the One" implies not a number but undivided "unity and oneness." Thus, for example, in metaphysical terminology it was the Good, or the absolute: Plato’s Supreme Idea, Parmenides’ "universe," or for Plotinus’ neo-Platonism, it meant "Being as Such." Furthermore, "the one" can be either a "transcendent one, which is the ground of all being, or it can be an immanent one" within the creation. Lastly, "the one can be a separate whole, or it can be the sum of things in their analytic or synthetic wholeness" (Rushdoony 1978, 2-3). "The many," on the other hand, implies, "particularity or individuality of things" (Rushdoony 1978, 2).

How the one and the many relate to one another is crucial. Within the multitude of things and creatures of the universe, is Being "inherent in their individuality," divided from each other; or is Being within their assumed oneness?

Most Greek, Babylonian, Egyptian, and medieval scholastic thought has been deeply influence by "Realism." Marxist materialism, Western Logical Positivism, and empiricism are in essence Nominalistic.

Most of these philosophies only lean towards the One or the Many. Hence in essence, they hold both one and many in various types of dialectical tension as Dooyeweerd has shown. Only monistic Brahmanism of silent meditating monks and revolutionary Nihilistic Anarchism attempt to hold the extremes of the twins poles of the one-and-many dilemma. However, because both one and many are inescapable in this universe created to glorify the Trinity, all such polar philosophies are self-contradictory.

Basic Religious Commitment

Reformed philosophers, especially those influenced by the Amsterdam school (Kuyper, Dooyeweerd, Vollenhoven, Stoker, Van Til) and their disciples show that this problem of the One and the Many, with its many implications, are fundamentally religious. Nothing is neutral. Since man is in rebellion to the Triune God, he is in rebellion to the implications of the Trinity in every area of life. Though He cannot ever escape the knowledge of God, he suppresses that knowledge and refuses, as much as possible, to "retain his knowledge" (Ro 1:18-30). Man must serve the Lord or himself, God’s truth or the Devil’s lie in the Garden that man must make his own truth and morality.

For ethical standards, mankind has only two choices. Either man must define good and evil according to Scripture. In other words, God word must determine his choice, or he must choose "autonomy" (self law). Thus this and all other philosophical problems ultimately revolve around the nature of the Ultimate Good to which man owes his personal and collective allegiance.

Allegiance is intimately connected with worship. Religious worship causes man to become like the object worshipped (Ps 115:2-8; Rom 1:21ff; 2Co 3:18). Man’s image of his god, of his Good, in turn, impels him as a dominion creature, to rule and remake his world in the image of his Good, his god. For true worship, that ultimate Good must be the Triune God. For real truth and justice to prevail on earth, then, God Triune must be worshipped and believed in as He is revealed in Scripture. From that religious fountain flows all biblical culture. False worship and a false god, however, lead to a culture increasingly built upon a false Ideal, a false concept of Good, in sum, Idolatry.

In other words, a correct knowledge, allegiance to, and trust in the true relationship of Unity and Diversity found in the Godhead is not incidental, nor neutral. It is of vital importance to culture and is deeply religious. The same applies to all other definitions of the relationship of Unity to Diversity. They too are thoroughly religious and non-neutral.

Lastly, the Amsterdam apologetic (including Van Til) show that this problem of the one and the many cannot by solved by deductive or inductive "reason alone." There is another means of arriving at certainty than these two methods.

Religious allegiance is also intimately involved here as well. This other means is necessitated because "basic to [both deductive and inductive] reason itself are pre-theoretical suppositions or axioms which represent essentially religious commitments." (Rushdoony 1978, 1-2).

Please note that this in no way implies that the "other means" to certainty is irrational. It is itself reasonable. Furthermore, these commitments are not arbitrary, reducing Christianity to merely one among many religions. Instead, these basic axioms are inescapable and unmistakable (Rom 1:18ff).

Whether man’s darkened mind recognizes it or not,

Though Vantillians make much of the supposed circularity of this argument, basically all they are saying is this. Without already, pre-consciously knowing the truth that the universe reflecting God includes both unity and diversity as equally ultimate, all thought and rationality are impossible. No culture is possible that consistently denies and acts upon the denial of who God is and how He has created all things.

Though this will be discussed thoroughly below, it is sufficient to illustrate this principle with the following. The act of speaking words to deny the fundamental biblical axiom, "equal ultimacy of the one and the many," is self-defeating because sentences are complex wholes built upon meaning (unity) conveyed by diversity (phonemes and morphemes). Logic is another example. Both the epistemological and ontological form of the law of non-contradiction are derived ultimately from the Trinitarian foundational axiom not Enlightenment philosophy, Descartes or Newton.

Thus any philosophy, not founded on Christ and his word, must make a basic, autonomous religious commitment to prioritize either the oneness of all things or the manyness. Rebellious men, who suppress the truth clearly seen through that which God has made, will not honor or glorify the Trinitarian principle found in the Godhead or of his creation (Rom 1:18-21; 1Co 3:18-20). This will be discussed extensively below.

Before we discuss a biblical solution to the one and many problem, we must examine one important example of autonomous reason’s rejection of the Trinitarian principle. This is the post-modern philosophy of Holism. Van Aarde defines "postmodernity" as the "advocacy [of] . . . holistic thinking [over] . . . against the alleged fragmentation [of] . . . epistemology in the Modern Time" (Van Aarde 1990, 293).

The actual term "holism" was coined by the late South African Prime Minister, Jan Smuts in Holism and Evolution (Smuts 1926/1987; see also Kolbe 1928, Stoker n.d.(a, b, c); Brugger and Baker 1972, Settanni 1990). Smuts, however, was not breaking new ground here. He merely updated ancient dialectical philosophy, giving it a further tilt in the direction of the One:

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the unorthodox Jesuit priest-anthropologist, was another pioneering thinker in holistic, evolutionary philosophy. Together with Smuts, Teilhard De Chardin clearly saw the radical implications of evolutionary dogma and modern physics for theology, philosophy, and comprehensive culture transformation. His classic, The Phenomenon of Man, published posthumously (De Chardin 1959) concludes with a classic statement putting him clearly in continuity with ancient philosophical thought: "Fuller being is closer union; such is the kernel and conclusion of this book" (De Chardin 1959, ??).

This means, in other words, that as nature evolves towards ever increasing centralization and unity, nature, specifically man, partakes more and more of the fullness of universal Being, the Omega Point. Settanni explains and summarizes this basic thesis:

"Holism," then, as M. J. Schoeman, rightly states, is a "recovering [of] an old wisdom in a modern context" (Schoeman 1990). True, "wisdom," he writes in terms reminiscent of ancient Gnosticism,

The result of this ancient insight, according to Schoeman, citing Claude Lévi-Strauss, is a humanistic philosophy which re-orders and re-prioritizes all things. The total universe is put before living things. That which is alive is prior to humanity, other humans before self-love (Schoeman 1990, 288).

Greater wholes are thus prior to parts. Individual and even collective humanity is no longer Steward of creation but only a part of an evolving natural Whole. Humanity’s meaning and purpose, thus, is to fit into the inter-related working of the whole, in other words to lose himself in a greater unity.

Holism Summarized

Many are in agreement with Van Aarde, cited above, that the holistic presupposition is becoming increasingly dominant in post-modern Western culture, taking the place of the Christian and Enlightenment religious motives (Kolbe 1928, Stoker n.d.(a, b, c), Settanni 1990). This includes certain forms of Theology such as, for example, Process Theology as only one very obvious example.

Stoker, writing before the Second World War, foresaw that Holism would become a new consensus of the Western elite. As such he called it a "new [humanistic] religion," displayed "in the cooperation of natural science, philosophy, art, a religion from humanity, out of humanity, and to humanity" (Stoker n.d.(b), 4). It is "antithetical" to and in reaction to the older "mechanistic, materialistic, individualism" of the Enlightenment as well as to "Scriptural Christianity" (Stoker n.d.(b), 4).

This summary, can be broken down into seven further sub-points:

(1) History is moving (evolving) the cosmos towards ever greater unity. "Evolution is an organic process, directed by the entire organism . . . mov[ing] itself toward higher and higher degrees of organization" (Settanni 1990, 112). Every smaller part is an essential subsection of an ever-increasing whole.

Hence all things are interconnected including matter, life, and mind, each of which arises in order from the former. Holism, therefore, Stoker states, "accepts the possibility of more evolving out of less, which logically means: the possibility of something evolving out of nothing" (Stoker n.d.(a), 2).

(2) Unity (i.e., the whole) is "more than the parts, i.e., the sum of the parts is still not a whole." The reason for this, as the Philosophical Dictionary explains, is that "a whole demands the order and organization of the parts and this presupposes a special wholeness factor" (Brugger and Baker 1972).

(3) Diversity, the particulars, the parts, are "not decisive for the reality of the whole, but rather what the whole makes out of them," therefore, diversity, the particular, the parts "are subordinate to the whole — they are there for the whole" (Brugger and Baker 1972; emphasis added).

(4) Ultimately this means, that the Whole (i.e., Unity), is spiritually and eternally ultimate, and the moral good towards which all is continually moving "from Chaos to Spirituality" and "from nothing to infinity" (Kolbe 1926, 38, 66). All that divides and every individual part of a whole find their essence and meaning in the One, the Whole, which has an essence greater than the parts. "Holism by its very nature denies reality to the particular by itself and in itself and apart from the context of its field" (Smuts 1928, viii).

(5) Thus "the one," as undivided unity, has an existence greater than and prior to "the many," that is, to diversity, the particular, or part. "The whole is more than and formally prior to the parts" (Stoker n.d.(a), 1). True diversity, thus, is not, of necessity, equally ultimate with unity as in the Trinitarian worldview.

Holistic philosophies, biased toward the One, have a tendency to teach that (a) all division, (b) every "particular", (c) every group smaller than the whole, (d) the individual, (e) physical particularities, as well as (f) true diversity is somehow less perfect than Oneness or is, at least, implicitly evil.

(6) Note that modern Holism does not deny diversity. In this sense

Indeed it accepts such particularity as a necessary given within the creation. Diversity is "of essential importance to the survival of all . . . systems, because it means that [evolutionary] flexibility is maintained" within the system (Schoeman 1990, 287). Diversity in itself, however, leads to conflict apart from "an intuitive realization that every[thing] . . . makes up a part of a greater ecological system" (Schoeman 1990, 288).

Diversity thus must be accepted but never allowed to divide the social whole. It seems that this is one foundational premise, whether consciously recognized or not, for the post-modern emphasis upon "social pluralism." Every viewpoint is valid because all perspectives are needed in the onward push of evolution.

Thus, in sum, holism always subordinates diversity to the ever greater Whole or Collective. Diversity is not a good or an end in itself. It exists to facilitate the Whole. As a result, Holism assigns superior priority and value to unity. Holistic assumptions will thus describe the relationship of the one to the many in terms which emphasize the moral superiority of Unity (e.g., Unity-in-diversity, or diversity-in-Unity).

This implies that if someone clings to particularity and diversity without tolerating all other parts of the whole, then this always leads to the evil of division disharmony and disunity. Therefore, if unity is morally superior, then part of Christ’s work of redeeming evil is to destroy such disunity and to convert those clinging to exclusive particularities.

Conclusion

Holistic philosophy accepts a type of the form-matter dialectic that Dooyeweerd shows is the foundational grondmotief against which the biblical worldview has had to contend with in the growth of Western culture.

The main difference between "Christianized," heretical holism and non-Christian holism is that the latter tends to impute to the total ecosystem, "Being" or "Mind." In other words, in some mystical way, "rationality," and "rules" governing evolutionary movement towards ever greater wholes (unity), is implicit in the universal whole (see Schoeman 1990, 284). "Christianized" forms, on the other hand, suggest that this movement is directed by "God" as that Mind (see Kolbe 1927).

Both forms, however, actually reject the necessity of eternal, divine existence and divine personality. If everything is indeed evolving toward ever greater unity, what place does divine guidance and analytical rationality have in perfect synthetic, undivided unity? Design, rules, logic and thought, essential to the Godhead (and to holistic evolutionary theory), partake both in particularity and unity, as do meaning and purpose.

Thus in the end holistic theory is self-contradictory and contradicts Scripture. Chaos plus time and chance cannot ever produce direction towards unity, meaning, morality, purpose, or harmonious design. To explain these concepts, Stoker states that Holism must reintroduce the concept of "miracle" [wonder] "in a concealed way" "through a concealed and fine form of animism" into Western culture. It makes "miracles" (matter out of nothing, life out of matter, mind out of life, etc.) "something inherent in nature" (Stoker n.d.(b), 3). South African Missiologist, Phillip Steyne, in Gods of Power: A Study of the Beliefs and Practices of Animists, summarizes the essence of Holism: "Holism is foundational to animism and leads logically pantheism" (Steyne 1990, 59).

Holism, therefore, as a dialectical philosophy, is actually closely related to the philosophical error behind Gnosticism, Pantheism and Unitarianism (Sabellianism, Socinianism, and Arianism)(see Rushdoony 1978b). Because of its bias towards the One, it has some similarities to German Idealism (e.g., Kant, Fichte), New Age Humanism, and both Secular and Marxian, Revolutionary Humanism. All possess an equalitarian and undivided world-unity Ideal.

Eric Voegelin, citing a vast array of sources calls this phenomenon nothing less than "the political expressions of modern gnosticism" (Voegelin 1968, 6; see also Voegelin 1990).

Holism in its many forms entered the Western world especially though the philosophy of Plato and his socio-political ideal State. Plato’s socialist, equalitarian Republic, in turn, has been an inspiration of many modern humanist, unitarian-utopian ideologies.

Holism is clearly a key presupposition in much of the theorizing of such social sciences as anthropology, sociology and political science. In fact, Social Democracy and its close cousin, neo-Marxism, which is replacing classic Marxism in the former East Block states (and now South Africa) is clearly holistic.

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy virtually equates "methodological holists" in the social sciences with "collectivists, as some prefer to be called." For these collectivistic holists, "social wholes . . . not their [particular] human elements, are the true historical individuals" (Edwards 1967). Thus, collective wholes are to be studied at a macro-analytic level (hence economic "macro-analysis" and Marxian sociology’s "social analysis") not at the particular or individual level.

The application of such holistic social science (and by implication, theology that has holistic biases) has resulted in large scale social engineering projects.

Anthropology Professor, J. S. Malan, discusses the potential results of holistic, neo-Marxian social engineering for South Africa.

Thus, in Teilhardian terms: "The age of nations is past; the task now is to build the earth."

Inescapability of Trinitarianism in Social Theology

However, biblically and experientially, one cannot escape from the unmistakable presupposition that in all things, both unity and diversity exist in systemic (i.e., covenantal) interrelation and without priority. This reflects analogically the Triune nature of the Creator who made all things to reflect his glory (Rom 1:18-21). This includes all just religious, social, political, and economic institutions, such as the family, church, and civil governments.

If any of these God-instituted social structures are to be truly just, neither human unity, e.g., collective humanity, nor human diversity, e.g., the individual or any social group less than the whole of humanity, must be judged morally better than or logically prior to the other (see Kreitzer 1991b, 5).

"In God’s being there are no particulars not related to the universal and there is nothing universal that is not fully expressed in the particulars" (Van Til 1967b, 26). God has thus created every diverse given, every separate fact, every distinct piece of data with an overarching unity, resulting in order, coherence, ultimacy and meaning. Every universal unity is connected inseparably with diverse data. "All aspects being equally created, no one aspect of reality may be regarded as more ultimate than another" (Van Til 1967b, 27).

Hence Plato’s data-less realm of form does not exist. So is the Materialists’ and Nominalists’ world of man created universals, also mythological. "Thus the created one and many may in this respect be said to be equal to one another; they are equally derived and equally dependent upon God who sustains them both" (Van Til 1967b, 27).

Rushdoony brilliantly shows that any denial of the "equal ultimacy of the one and the many," of unity and diversity, results in a constant pendulum swing between philosophies emphasizing unity and those emphasizing diversity (Rushdoony 1968, 1978a, b). The same phenomenon is also noted in various religions and ideologies which, in turn are based upon one or the other leg of the dilemma or will assume a conflictual, dialectical relationship between the two principles.

Understanding this, belies the fundamental assumption of Western pluralistic, multi-culturalist ideology which "which permits an ignorant equalization of various religions and diverse ideologies" (Rushdoony 1978, 1). Religious ideas have long term consequences. Each religious and even Christian denominational worldview presupposition, in the long term, logically works itself out into culture, effecting every institution.

Hence, as Rushdoony shows,

Therefore, any dialectical philosophy underlying a denominational theology or an ideology will inevitably "go critical" and self-destruct into either anarchism or totalitarianism because the dialectic is an unstable combination of mutually hostile principles (see Rushdoony 1978a). Theologically, dialectical theories not founded upon "the equal ultimacy of the one and the many" degenerate into ever splintering sectarianism (individualistic pietism) or into monolithic ecumenicism.

Barthianism, biased toward the One, must lead to monolithic ecumenicism in the long run even if the post-modern emphasis upon holistic-diversity is adopted. Indeed, historically, all forms of dialecticism, similarly biased, lead to theological Unitarianism. Theological Unitarianism (a.k.a. Arianism) can be masked for years for the sake of the laymen who give tithes and offering to pay salaries of church leadership (see Williamson 1996 for this process in the PCUSA).

Usually the first sign of the dialectic breaking down to a pure emphasis on the one, is the ideological holism in social theology. Thus, Unitarianism and social Unitarian ideologies go hand in hand (see also Rushdoony 1963, 1978d, 1978e, Scott 1979, Blumenfeld 1984, 1985).

Christianity is not holistic but wholistic, integral, comprehensive. Either the triune God, his justice, truth, and creational-design order transforms culture, or the opposite works as leaven, corrupting throughout until it becomes so rotten Yahweh must destroy it as He did Sodom, the Amorites, and Israel. "The plea that this is a pluralistic culture is merely recognition of the problem — not an answer" (Rushdoony 1978, 1).

Christians, under their Suzerain, are called as his dominion agents to apply his comprehensive answers to sin-created problems. There is no ontological problem in the universe, only a harmartiological problem.

It is man’s sin problem that leads him to overemphasize the One (pantheism, idealism, realism, monist, collectivism, holism) much more often than the Many. Perhaps this is because man is a social being and fears the social consequences of rampant individualism and its concomitant anarchy. In fact, it is sin which constantly struggles toward what Kuyper, in a lecture in 1869, called, Eenvormigheid, De Vloek van het Moderne Leven [Uniformity, the Curse of Modern Life] (Kuyper 1870).

In another work, Kuyper sums up the classic Reformed answer to this issue in the immanent creation: "Hadde ook hier de zonde niet alles bedorven, dan had de pluriformiteit zich moeten ontwikkelen zonder de eenheid prijs te geven" (Kuyper 1945, II:231). CHECK

Ultimately, however, the basic issue boils down to the nature of the immanent-transcendent Reality, that is the nature of God himself. The creation only reflects his glory.

Trinitarian Principle and the Belgic Confession

According to the Belgic Confession (BC), Article 8:

No one may divide the simple unity of God’s essence nor unite the three "divisions", the true diversity, of his three self-conscious, self-determining Personalities (persona). The Son is exclusively the Son and is not the Father. Nor is the Father the Spirit, and so forth. "The persons of the Trinity are mutually exhaustive of one another. The Son and the Spirit are ontologically on a par with the Father" (Van Til 1967, 25). God thus has three wills yet one will; three minds or consciousnesses yet one common consciousness that all three Persons know; three "emotions" yet one emotion all feel together in unity.

That God is really three Personalities and yet is truly one in essence is a mystery that can not be explained away. God, thus, to put it is unusual terms, is a divided-unity, in other words, within the triune God there exists both true unity and real diversity: "The diversity and the unity in the Godhead are therefore equally ultimate" (Van Til 1953, 8), or "using the language of the One-and-Many question we contend that in God the one and the many are equally ultimate" (Van Til 1967, 25).

Because everything about the Godhead is per definition good, thus both unity and diversity are good. This means, among other things, that within the Trinity neither true unity nor real diversity are prior to the other either logically or ontologically. "Unity in God is no more fundamental than diversity, and diversity in God is no more fundament than unity" (Van Til 1967, 25).

No qualitative "better than" or "worse than" nor quantitative, "more real than" can be attributed to unity or diversity. Therefore, all monistic and covert monistic, dialectical theories assume that unity is better than, more real than or in contradictory tension with true diversity. All deny the biblical, Trinitarian Principle as well as its foundation, the Sola Scriptura Principle.

Trinitarian Principle and Christology

The same principle holds for the one Person of Christ. He has two distinct, separate natures divided from each other yet still inseparable (achoristos), unchangeable (atreptos), and indivisible (adiairetos) and not to be confused (asuffutos). Thus, to use biblical deduction, Christ’s humanity is not his divinity.

The formulation of the ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) substantiated this doctrine. In the words of Berkhof,

The implications of this are profound. Christ has two complete natures, each nature (separate humanity and distinct divinity) has a separate and unique "identity" of its own. A separate "identity," then, is part of the essence of real distinctiveness of nature. In sum, these natures are never to be confused.

Furthermore, both the two distinct natures of Christ (as well as each Person of the Trinity) has a separate and distinct will, yet, at the same time, there is no disharmony within the unity of the Person of Christ (or of the Persons of the Trinity).

Each will is by definition self-determining otherwise it could not be a real will. Philosophically, the essence of the conflict between the orthodox dithelite theologians and the heretical monothelites was whether self-determination must be included within the definition of real distinction. That self-determination is essential to real distinction was settled once and for all by the Council of Constantinople (680-681).

Both real identity and true self-determination, as the essence of true distinction, must be applied to the social world God created. Everything must reflect his triune glory which one day will fill the whole earth (Hab 2:14).

In this creation, any just social institution that glorifies God must, then, include both a visible form of real unity and a visible form allowing for the free functioning of a true self-determining, diverse identity. The invisible Trinity is manifest analogically in the visible creational unities and diversities.

Marriage Example. A marriage according to God’s plan is the physical and spiritual unity of two individuals each with an own will and identity. Each person in a marriage maintains their own uniqueness (diversity), yet at the same time, the marriage creates a new visible identity, the "one flesh" resulting in a family (unity). The visible marital identity, as determined by God’s Word, provides for each unique will to be structurally ordered in a vertical-complementary relationship to each other. The Council of Chalcedon demonstrated that the economic trinity works in a similar manner (see Rushdoony 1978).

Hierarchy of Christ’s wills. Interestingly enough, the Council of Constantinople showed that the two, diverse wills of Christ are ordered in a true hierarchy according to the Scripture. Christ’s human will is separate from, yet in submission to, the other, the totally sovereign, divine will.

Preview

The foundational roots of the Arian heresy involved a fundamental rejection of the concept of a unified Trinitarian community (unity) consisting of equal persons with truly distinct roles (diversity). Arianism’s foundational presupposition is closely related to philosophical Holism. This presupposition can clearly be seen in much of the debate about voting rights and the justice due to individuals in society. It applies to the debate about woman in church office, the critique of apartheid, the demand for the lowering the voting age, and the demand that every person has a right to an equal vote because he is "a person."

Philosophical Roots

Presbyterian church historian, C . Gregg Singer, describes these philosophical origins:

Definition of Arianism

Arius and his disciples could not reconcile role difference with equality of essential value. They claimed that since Jesus is functionally subordinate to the Father, he must at the same time be subordinate, that is inferior, in essence. The Council of Nicea condemned Arianism as heresy, claiming that Jesus and the Father are equal in essence ("of one being with the Father;" see e.g., Jn 1:1, 8:58). At the same time the council taught that Jesus was eternally subordinate to him in function (see e.g., Jn 4:34, 5:30).

Implications of Trinitarianism for Social Theory

As has been discussed (see Restorative Eschatology Principle), the nature of the Creator is reflected in his creation. John Vertefeuille in Sexual Chaos: The Personal and Social Consequences of the Sexual Revolution states that gender differentiation is an "obvious biological fact" necessary for the future of the human race. However, "it is also a theological fact. . . . Perhaps no other attribute of man so defines who he is as does his maleness and femaleness" (Vertefeuille 1988, 11).

He deduces from this the following:

Social Arianism and Social Role

For liberationists of all sorts, thus, any complementary relationship of equal value but different role is by definition an oppressor-oppressed polarity. Such neo-Marxist conceptualization always seeks exactly symmetrical relationships with similar behavior for each of the parts of a relationship. This principle applies to children in the Children’s Liberation Movement, to all servants in radical Emancipationism, to employees in Marxist-Leninism, and to ethnic aliens in a land.

One of the key misunderstandings, thus, of modern liberation movements, whether of the feminist, gay, ethnic, or child, or any other variety is the failure to understand this distinction of role and value. These movement assume that equality of value always results in equality of role and outcome if justice is being served.

Now since this type of interrelationship exists within the Godhead in real justice, it surely can exist between parents and children, immigrants and citizens, and so forth in true justice. Therefore, the liberation movements’ equalitarian ideologies are fundamentally flawed at the level of their basic axiom. They are socially Arian.

Social Arian equalitarianism is contrary to the revealed design-norms of the Creator. The fact of differentiation of role between male and female, employer and employee, owner and worker, servant and master are fundamentally based on the creation (see Restorative Eschatology Principle). Gender role differentiation is important to the proper functioning of society. In itself it is not oppressive nor the source of evil.

This certainly holds true for children and for those of a different ethnic group that immigrate into another land. Their essential created human dignity is not affected in the least if they are denied voting rights for several years, or for that matter until at least the third generation as was the biblical rule for the immigrant alien (see Dt 23:3-8).

This is objectively true though it may not be experienced as such by a person. Human dignity is affected only when the law of a land and the actions of the citizens are not in conformity with the specific demands of neighbor love. These are found in the stranger laws of the Pentateuch and interpreted by Jesus in his various sermons and parables (see Mt 7:12, 22:37-40; Lk 10:25ff). Human dignity is given to man in the fact of the Creation, not in the changing circumstances of treatment by other people in every day life. For example, those suffering for Jesus Christ in Marxist China or Islamic Sudan have great and powerful dignity even though they are denied voting rights, persecuted, and treated with spite before the law.

Furthermore, according to holistic Social Arianism, "justice" demands that no person should be unequally (onregmatig) placed above any other. In sum, Social Arianism is a basic assumption concerning the relationship between authority and being. It assumes that if two persons are equal in being and value, they must be equal in form, function, authority and role. In other words, any person that does not have equal ruling authority or final teaching authority (i.e., in any way submissive), then that person is oppressed and his equal human dignity and value is affected. Further, it destroys the image of God because that image is one and undivided. Equal value and being demands equal role and authority.

Result: Costly Reconciliation

South African Lutheran theologian, Klaus Nürnberger, in The Cost of Reconciliation in South Africa, succinctly sums up the "costly reconciliation" Social Arianism demands:

If this anti-Trinitarian assumption is widely accepted by a church or a culture, then that culture has become equalitarian and individualistic. In effect, it has accepted the basic anti-Christian postulate of the French Revolution (Jacobinism; see Dabney 1980).

Consistent orthodox theology, which Neo-Puritanism follows, must thus conclude that the family, civil, and ecclesiastical governments have both true visible unity and real, self-determining diversity to be biblically just. All non-Trinitarian ideologies (e.g., Dualism, Realism, neo-Platonism; Nominalism, materialism, naturalism, Social Arianism) reject the Trinitarian balance.

Therefore, opting for particularity, the opposite of the Unitarian, holistic ideal, pushes the internal logic of Libertarian and anarcho-capitalist ideologies to their individualistic extremes. Consequent followers of these ideologies oppose moral laws against pornography, enslaving drugs, and prostitution because of the desire to drastically limit or do away with any government (church, family, or state) limiting individual "freedom." These ideologies have a limited following in South Africa and have only limited relevance in our study.

However, ideologies which emphasize Oneness are very well represented in the Republic of South Africa. They all reject anything that divides as evil and oppressive (e.g., Marxism, Socialism, Social Democracy, Fascism, Nazism). They must adopt some sort of holistic or Unitarian ideal (i.e., that the One [unity] is more important and indeed morally better than the Many [true diversity]).

These ideologies are forced by internal logic to destroy, in the long run, all group self-determination and unique identity (i.e., diversity). Unity ideologies major emphasis tends to be upon the largest social unity possible in their social ordering system.

Unitary ideologies must break down each smaller social group than the whole into ever smaller units until the only unit that remains is the individual stripped of all unique group identity and self-determination except that which the largest human whole of the ideology gives it.

Furthermore, to push the logic, unity philosophies must end up sacrificing every individual thing for the human collective. The lonely and groupless individual is then himself ultimately swallowed up, losing all individual meaning and identity in the all which is the Collective. Thus all holistic, or unity ideologies and philosophies are both individualistic and collectivistic at the same time.

To reject true self-determining diversity, then, leads ultimately to the demanding of a unitary, centralized State and one unitary world build upon the individual who then loses his value and distinction. The concept of self-determination of peoples, developed after World War I to justify the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian and other European empires, is rarely if ever invoked within the United Nations which has a definite, bias toward an ideology of collective human "unity" (see Rushdoony 1978d, 1978e).

The Unitarian, holistic ideal, furthermore, leads to the destruction of the true role diversity in the marriage and forces one to accept an individualistic and equalitarian "open marriage" model. It leads to radical homosexual and feminist demands, and abortion as the ultimate proof that males and females are absolutely "equal." This leads naturally to euthanasia, assisted suicide, the Children’s Rights Movement, the de-Christianization of schools, courts and parliaments because there must be no division (i.e., discrimination) between creeds.

In a word, rejecting true self-determining diversity as not on the same moral and logical level as unity, inevitably leads to a totally anti-Christian society.

No Bias to Inclusivistic or Exclusivistic Presuppositions

Furthermore, since both unity and particularity are eternal and good, existing within the Trinity and Hypostatic Union, hence, within God and Christ there exists both the principle of inclusiveness (oneness) and exclusiveness (three distinct Persons, two diverse natures). This means that not all division and not all exclusiveness are evil by definition. Both exist within the good God.

Evil and sin, according to the Scripture, are defined by the Law-word of God. Sin is lawlessness, that is rebelling against and breaking God’s law (1Jn 3:4). Therefore, if breaking the Law of God creates a division in mankind not mandated by God’s Law, then and only then is that socio-institutional division evil (see e.g., 1Co 1-3, 12). Never otherwise.

A further implication is that inclusive equality and exclusive, true-distinction, even subordinate distinction, are complementary not dialectical. God is inclusive of all three persons, yet in the economic Trinity, Christ subordinates himself to the will of the Father. Although this is discussed in the last chapter, it is sufficient here to state that this principle is fundamental to the orthodox refutation of the error of Arianism and its sociological outworking in family, church, and state.

Rushdoony writes concerning this:

Clearly God has created all visible reality to immediately reflect his invisible Triune glory (Ro 1:18ff; Ps 19:1). Although it may sound strange to say that not all division is evil and that God is a divided unity (i.e., a Tri-unity), this is because of the perennial human rebellion against all that God is and says.

No Rejection of Every Type of Discrimination

Mankind is ever trying to deify himself and thus destroy the eternal ontological division between himself and his Creator. This began in the Garden and continues today (Ge 3:5; Babylon’s claim of eternal deity: "I am and there is none besides me" [Is. 47:10]). This rebellion is worked out in every day life in the rebellion against the God created divisions revealed in the law of God. Man wants to destroy these basic areas of "discrimination" (i.e., distinction between two things of different kind).

In his law, for example, God "discriminates" or divides between (1) the Creator-God and the creation (1st and 2nd Commandments; (2) truth and falsehood, good and evil (3rd and 9th Commandments); (3) man and woman (implicit in the 5th, 7th, and 10th Commandments); (4) parent and child (5th Commandment); (5) families: men are divided up among the women, women among the men so that each person receives (ideally) one marriage partner (7th and 10th Commandments); (6) property divided up and held by various private parties (8th and 10th Commandments); (7) citizen (ethno-covenantly defined) and the ethnic alien (implicit in the 4th commandment and explicit in the ger laws of the Pentateuch for resident, believing aliens; and (8) days of work and day of rest (4th Commandment).

Since these divisions are part of the creational Law-order, there can be no negotiations, as some argue, to "reconcile" any of these divisions to "restore" a simple and good, undivided unity. God discriminates between various things that He has created and commands obedient man to also discriminate as He does. However, note that only those discriminations and social divisions that Scripture commands are just for legal systems and righteous for inter-individual behavior.

Lastly, the holistic, Unitarian ideal leads to the destruction of truth because standing for truth, indeed truth itself, is divisive. Rushdoony, states this clearly:

Manley Palmer Hall, writing in a South African New Age magazine, Breakthrough, gives us an accurate illustration of how a Realistic effects ones definition of truth.

Furthermore, the Unitarian ideal leads to the demanding of a structurally centralized, "visible" and monolithic Church unity structure based upon individual believers with no real self-determination for ethno-covenantal groups. In addition, Unitarianism seeks unity without discipline over questions of basic truth. Functional anti-trinitarianism, therefore, demands the destruction of any self-propagating, self-financing, self-controlling indigenous church (volksekerk).

According to theologians unconsciously (or consciously) accepting a non-Trinitarian ideal, this type of church would be by definition exclusive and divisive and such division destroys the "unity" of the one church and hence is evil and oppressive. Therefore, such unity theologians, it seems, are rejecting nearly 100 years of Missiology in their movements towards visible and structural-hierarchical unity without reflecting upon the possibility that the biblical command for visible unity could be manifested in other models more closely related to the Trinitarian dictum of true unity and real diversity.

The works of Missiologists G. Warneck, Henry Venn, John Nevius, Rufus Anderson, J. W. Pickett, Roland Allan, C. Peter Wagner, Donald McGavran, Charles Kraft, et al. on indigenization and planting of contextually/culturally relevant and growing Churches is being rejected in effect.

Conclusion

To conclude, therefore, any attempt to redefine the carefully worked out relationship between true unity and real diversity destroys the Biblical faith. It destroys both the orthodox consensus of Nicea and of that of Chalcedon. It opens the door to the imbalance of several heresies and leads to definite consequences in one’s total worldview including sociological, psychological, economic, socio-political, and ecclesiastical theory.

This has important implications for developing a just Trinitarian-covenantal plan for church and social-civil order in multi-ethnic countries.