UNDERSTANDING HEGEL 17
OR: NO MORE THESIS — ANTITHESIS — SYNTHESIS

Win Corduan

Part 17 Hegel and the Trinity

Over the last few segments we have contrasted Hegel and the "Right Wing Hegelians" with the "Left Wing Hegelians" and we have loosely identified Hegel himself and the RWH's as conservative and orthodox, in contrast to the LWH's who were atheists, pantheists, communists, and just plain heterodox. Now, I need to clarify that labeling Hegel as "orthodox" is only relative. Please keep in mind that I also said a while back that he was a "transcendental panentheist," and panentheism is certainly not compatible with the genuine orthodoxy of biblical Christianity. The term refers to the belief that God and the world are mutually intertwined and interdependent, and we see it clearly exemplified in the fact that God (or the Absolute) is integrated into the system in such a way that he supports the system, while the system supports him (or it). Such is the nature of a transcendental system in which each element is there to support the previous one while simultaneously being in need of support by the next one. This is not the infinite God who lays claim to the attribute of aseity--existing by himself independent of anything else. A transcendental system, which is based on deriving the conditions that make our knowledge of the world possible, could never deduce such a God.

Furthermore, we have seen that, even though Hegel is "trinitarian," the persons of the Trinity take on roles in his system that would have given nightmares to Athanasius and Tertullian, and possibly even to Eusebius and Nestorius. Hegel states that God becomes incarnate in the Son; this language, though precarious without further analysis, could represent an orthodox position. However, further analysis does not yield any such results. The incarnation involves the loss of God the Father, who, in the person of the Son, has merged himself with Humanity ("objective Spirit").

Compare this depiction with the orthodoxy of the Councils:
God is one Nature eternally in three Persons; the second Person has permanently joined his divine Nature with a human nature. The Holy Spirit, the third person, is just as much eternally God as the Father and the Son .
For Hegel, on the other hand,
God and humanity both die on his philosophical Calvary, and from there the system proceeds to the resurrection, which is really the birth of, Absolute Spirit.
Yes, Hegel's system was trinitarian; you find all three Persons of the Trinity there: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, their nature and functions are far removed from Bible-based orthodoxy.

Obviously, I cannot know whether Hegel's personal faith was better than his espoused theology; but when you look at what he wrote in his system, only someone who has already rearranged the boundaries of theology could consider Hegel's view to be orthodox. In The God Who is There, (ignoring his exposition of Hegel), Francis Schaeffer warned us of what he called "semantic mysticism," by which he meant the idea of someone using correct biblical expressions but giving them a new, subjectively derived, meaning. Such is clearly the case with Hegel's view of God and the Trinity. And it's a phenomenon that is certainly not limited to Hegel; it is occurs over and over again. But, let's not be smug about it. One can only stand up to "semantic mysticism" if one knows the originally intended meanings of the phrases. How many Christians today can give an accurate description of the doctrine of the Trinity without resorting to absurd analogies? How many Christians today really embrace a view of God as infinite, independent, and sovereign?