This logic commends liturgical prayers that seek the apt pairing of praise and intercession, as can be found in any good collect. For example, consider the collect "Eternal God, you have called us to be members of one body. Join us with those who in all times and places have praised your name, that, with one heart and mind, we may show the unity of your church and bring honor to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen." Here, the acknowledgment of God's act of gathering the church is the ground for a petition concerning the unity of the church. The tight logical structure of the collect is a liturgical outworking of the confession of the unity of the divine economy.

In sum, the doctrine of the Trinity is a doctrine that calls for presenting the themes of the gospel and the teaching of the church in balanced and integrated ways. It militates against partial and incomplete treatments of Christian teaching in preaching, hymnody, and prayer.

5. The Redefinition Theme

Suppose that we take the divine economy as the source of our knowledge of God (theme 3), and then provide a comprehensive and integrated interpretation of it (theme 4). If that is our methodological claim, then what is the material pay-off? A fifth theme in recent work has been to engage in Trinitarian redefinitions of the images and attributes used in theology proper.

The primary targets of this work are (a) vague, impersonal notions of distant deity, especially in popular piety, and a corresponding notion of worship as detached, disinterested, aloof contemplation; (b) unwittingly fearsome, tyrannical depictions of God's power, and corresponding notions of worship as fearful obeisance; (c) any unwitting depiction of God as a contractual deity of obligations (certainly a primary worry when it comes to liturgical piety); and (d) any view of God that is especially sentimental, a liturgical worry any time we get near Christmas. Arguably, the central thrust of this work is summed up by Jan Lochman when he argues that "the central intention of the Trinitarian dogma" is to convey "the personal, social, and compassionate character of God."⁵⁸

Recent work on the doctrine of the Trinity features five key metaphors, metaphors that depict divine life as personal, agential, relational, self-giving, and speaking. These fundamental images or root metaphors, in turn, influence every other adjective, attribute, characteristic, property, virtue, perfection, and predicate that is used to speak of God. As Daniel Migliore argues, "Our reflections on the triune reality of God point to the need for a thorough rethinking of the doctrine of the attributes of God, which have all too often been presented and debated without any reference to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ or to the doctrine of the Trinity."⁵⁹ As Paul Jewett suggests, the divine economy should be the "yardstick" against which any divine attribute is measured, so that, in Hendrikus Berkhof's words, theologians may "pour biblical content into these abstract concepts."⁶⁰

A representative effort at redefinition along these lines, the Trinitarian refashioning of the attribute of divine omnipotence, is a central aspect of the work of Daniel Migliore. Migliore argues that concepts of God's power must be revised in light of Jesus Christ, the "power of God" (I Cor 1:24):

The doctrine of the Trinity represents a revolution in the understanding of the power of God....Christians do not worship absolute power. They worship that divine power narrated in the gospel story and symbolized in the doctrine of the Trinity. The power of God is shared power, power that makes for just and inclusive community. Here is a radically new beginning in our understanding of God and especially of God's power.⁶¹

The doctrine of the Trinity, Migliore concludes, provides the over-arching framework in which conceptions of divine power can be refined. It points to the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit as revelatory of God's very being:

The doctrine of the Trinity identifies God and the coming kingdom of his liberating, life-giving Spirit. It redefines the power of God and the presence of God. The power of God is defined as the self-imparting love of the crucified Christ and the presence of God is understood as the re-creating, liberating, reconciling Spirit of Christ at work in the world as the "first fruits" (Rom 8:23) of God's coming kingdom....The primary function of the doctrine of the Trinity is to speak of God not as a lifeless absolute but as a living history which must be narrated.

In this way, Migliore concludes, the doctrine of the Trinity "safeguards against oppressive, sub-Christian conceptions of God."⁶²

Migliore's work clarifies the concept of divine omnipotence. God's power certainly entails the ability to accomplish unfathomable activity: to create a cosmos or to raise someone from the dead. The category of power is not to be abandoned altogether. What is crucial for Migliore is that God's power is not unleashed capriciously. This power is revealed on a cross. This power is directed toward particular ends: toward the establishment of right relationships and cosmic redemption. And it is power engaged through particular means: not through "terror, torture, destruction, or threat" (to use a phrase from John Bell's hymn quoted below). This power is worthy of praise both because of its magnitude and the way in which it is deployed.

The resonances of this Trinitarian redefinition effort in the area of worship lie primarily in the central concepts, images, and metaphors that describe and shape liturgical events. Central images and root metaphors in theology proper are inevitably linked with central images and root metaphors in the theology of liturgy. Metaphors of divine identity generate and ground metaphors for liturgical activity.

A Trinitarian doctrine of God posits that God is a personal, relational being who acts in self-giving love. This paradigm, root metaphor, or key conceptual model suggests that the worship of this God, as enacted in public liturgy, should be construed as a series of personal, relational actions. In this view, liturgy is not the contemplation of an impersonal, ubiquitous higher power, nor is it primarily an act of obeisance to a divine tyrant, nor an act of propitiation to a divine judge, nor, to use a phrase of Hughes Oliphant Old, "a sacred drama unfolding some sort of Neoplatonic ascent to divine reality."⁶³ As Colin Gunton suggests, "Worship is not an activity in which we contemplate or observe a being who is over against us—though in a sense God is that also—but it is relational, something that happens between persons."⁶⁴ If the Christian God is best described by personal, relational, and dynamic metaphors, then so too is the liturgy of the Christian church.

This, too, has concrete corollaries in practice. First, these root metaphors suggest viewing each liturgical act as personal and relational. In this view, hymns of praise, sermons, sacramental celebrations, and corporate prayer do not exist for their own sake, but for the larger purpose of enacting a personal, relational encounter. They are means by which God speaks, and by which the gathered community responds. The various elements of worship are all functional; or, to use the language of speech-action theory, they are "illocutionary." We do things, interpersonal things, with the words and sounds of worship: namely, we enact the divine-human relationship.⁶⁵

Second, a theology of worship as a personal, relational encounter suggests a natural criterion for the form or deep structure of liturgy. As Hendrikus Berkhof suggests: "The point [of liturgy] is always the encounter with the same God whom we come to know in Christ through the Spirit. The liturgy is to structure the encounter and therefore must itself be structured as encounter."⁶⁶

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