Parsing “Trinitarian Minimalism”

            “Make everything as simple as possible,   but no simpler.”

                   --  attributed to Einstein

As we exulted earlier, your favorite hangout for Cantorian Realism  is also wearing the yellow jersey in the global sweepstakes for googling that soon-to-be-famous phrase,

~ “Trinitarian Minimalism” ~

Now, one other site does come up for this collocation.  It contains the following delightful passage:

If the hidden identity of divine being is revealed within the revelatory content

of the Gospel story, then perhaps there is yet scope for a via media between the Scylla of trinitarian minimalism on the one hand  and the Charybdis of trinitarian maximalism on the other. One possible solution is to unpack further the content of the trinitarian theologoumenon by means of exploring the person and work of the Spirit.

(Sidenote on theologoumenon.  It is not every day that Dr. J. learns a new word;  this one’s a doozer.  Merriam-Webster defines it thus: “a theological statement or concept in the area of individual opinion rather than of authoritative doctrine”. -- Actually, my friend Jennifer taught me another one earlier this morning, equally a keeper:  hooptie. -- It’s all good.)

Of linguistic interest here is the fact that this syntagm of adjective-plus-noun  is, semantically, actually parsed in opposite ways  in either case.

(1)  The way I’ve been using it, I start from the broad notion of minimalism (a traditional term of the arts), extend it suggestively to mathematics and the hard sciences (largely in the sense of parsimony, but with retention of the echoes of other uses of the term);  then, alarmed at the possibilities of ‘minimalist excess’ (to coin a phrase) -- Nominalism, solipsism, atheism, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless" --   I attempt, in the spirit of Einstein, to buttress it from below, and --  fancifully, metaphorically -- apply the modifier “Trinitarian”.

(2)  Our theologian, by contrast, starts from Trinitarianism, in its usual non-metaphorical sense;  then, seeking to distinguish among stances within this basic viewpoint, avails himself of some nice-sounding nouns lying ready to hand, minimalism and maximalism.   These do not have prior theological standing, and the resultant phrase (which, if I do say so myself, has quite a ring to it) is quite non-standard -- indeed, the page linked to above is the only such use in all of googlespace.

The meanings are thus quite distinct, though not actually at odds.

Now -- what adds a piquant semantic sauce to all this, is that the theological idea of the Trinity was not given to us explicitly in Scripture, but evolved over the centuries, in something like the scenario described in (1) !   It is presumably this fact to which our author alludes, when he applies to the doctrine the modest and cautious term theologoumenon.

The early Church began with monotheism, which it counterposed to the paganisms of the Greco-Roman world:  the which, rather than already-monotheistic Jewry, supplied the bulk of new converts.  But with time and contemplation, it became apparent that there was a danger (if you wish to call it that) that the whole enterprise might bleach out, in the direction pointed by Arianism, and exemplified today by Unitarianism:  a vague feel-good theism without bite. Revelation was sought, and the result is the Credo as we say it today.