Review of Paul and the Trinity: Person, Relations, and the Pauline Letters by Wesley Hill
Chapter ONE: The Eclipse of Relations in the Interpretation of Pauline God-Talk
Wesley Hill begins his book by canvassing the various models of Pauline interpretation as they relate to identifying the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and their relation to each other. Hill’s contention is that exegesis of Paul’s writing should return to a trinitarian interpretive model, as opposed to the more common/modern monothestic emphasis that leads to christological categories such as high and low (designation that denote Christ’s relation to God).
“The conceptuality of a ‘low’ or ‘high’ christology threatens to obscure the way in which, for Paul, the identities of God, Jesus, and the Spirit are constituted by their relations with one another.” (p.25)
For Hill, the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, each have their own discrete identity. He proposes the only adequate way in which to describe their identity is through their interrelationship.
Much of chapter one is dedicated to an analysis of the history of this line of Pauline exegesis. Beginning with Athanasius and the Cappadocians and proceeding through Augustine and Thomas.
Interestingly, the cover of the book was taken from El Greco’s The Holy Trinity which is displayed at the Prada Museum in Madrid where we had opportunity to see it earlier this year.