A Brief Review of Wesley Hill's Paul and the Trinity

It is often taken as axiomatic in New Testament studies that Paul was not a Trinitarian. There is plenty of variation among the views scholars hold regarding the intersection of Paul's theology, christology, and pneumatology—from those which posit a lengthy legendary development from an angelomorphic or similar christology to the trinitarian dogmas of the later church, to those which argue for an early high (but not trinitarian) christology—but the Trinity is widely seen as a later development: perhaps an adequate synthesis of Pauline material, but nonetheless not derivable from the apostle himself.

Wesley Hill's book Paul and the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2015) challenges this view from a unique perspective. Rather than simply arguing that Paul's writings are trinitarian, Hill argues that trinitarian conceptual resources, culled from the writings of later church fathers, provide a fresh hermeneutical angle from which to consider Paul's christological texts. In doing so, new light is shed on complicated passages. The ease with which later trinitarian categories can unlock Paul's christology thus brings it closer to full-fledged trinitarianism. The entire project calls for the rewedding of biblical exegesis and systematic theology and an exploration of the ways in which they can illuminate each other.

Hill argues that the notion of high christology vs low christology is misguided. In employing that conceptual framework, scholars assume Paul's monotheism as a given—the fixed point against which his christology is measured. God is at the top, so to speak, and christology is the project of determining where Paul put Jesus on the scale from creature to God. Was it halfway up, where Jesus mediated between humanity and God, had some authority from God, but didn't encroach on the divine identity? Or was it basically at the top, where Jesus shared in the divine name and ruled from heaven as divine? Or, perhaps, Jesus started out lower and was then exalted higher? Hill argues that this approach fails to take into account Paul's "meshing" of the identities and relations of God, Jesus, and the Spirit. After surveying the history of Trinitarian dogma with an emphasis on the differing traditions of East and West, specifically as it concerns the priority of the three divine persons or the one God, he argues that the best way to interpret Paul involves recognizing how the identity of each divine person requires the existence of the others. In other words, it is impossible to refer to merely one of the divine persons, because to refer to one is to refer to all of them—their identities are mutually constitutive. Thus, since picking out Paul's monotheism as the given, which can be described with or without Christ, requires isolating God and Christ, a better approach should be proffered.

Hill supports his thesis through exegesis of, among other verses, Romans 4:24, Romans 8:11, Philippians 2:6-11, 1 Corinthians 8:6, 1 Corinthians 15:20-28, and Romans 1:3-4. Along the way, he shows how well trinitarian conceptual categories offer fresh perspectives on contested Pauline texts. For example, he discusses the conflict between Philippians 2:11a and 11b—here Paul is ascribing the divine name to Jesus and yet the worship Jesus receives is for the glory of God. Jesus cannot be lower than God, because he has received the divine name, but then why is the glory given to God? The solution, Hill argues, involves the trinitarian concept of "redoublement". Gregory of Nazianzus put it thusly in his Orations 31.9: "The Three are One from the perspective of their divinity, and the One is Three from the perspective of the properties." In other words, the divine persons have both identical and distinct identities in terms of essence and personhood. In this way, Paul can speak unabashedly of the sharing of the divine name and yet retain distinctions between Jesus and God (one of the Son's distinctives is glorifying the Father). 

My criticisms of the book are fairly minor. For one thing, I would have appreciated engagement with more texts. The volume is a slim two hundred pages and could certainly have examined more than a representative sample of Pauline texts. Second, and this is a point picked up on by Chris Tilling in his essay "Paul the Trinitarian" in Essays on the Trinity, Hill shows very little engagement with Second Temple Jewish literature and the mediatorial figures presented therein. In arguing that a Trinitarian conceptuality is the correct way to interpret Paul, Hill must show how it is preferable to the schemes found in such literature.

My elucidation of Hill's argumentation is bound to fall short, and I encourage anyone interested to purchase a copy of his book and read it for yourself. It represents an important new perspective in the debate over Paul's christology.