Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine
Cambridge University Press, 8/6/2015
EAN 9781107112360, ISBN10: 1107112362
Hardcover, 280 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
The concept of the 'social Trinity', which posits three conscious subjects in God, radically revised the traditional Christian idea of the Creator. It promoted a view of God as a passionate, creative and responsive source of all being. Keith Ward argues that social Trinitarian thinking threatens the unity of God, however, and that this new view of God does not require a 'social' component. Expanding on the work of theologians such as Barth and Rahner, who insisted that there was only one mind of God, Ward offers a coherent, wholly monotheistic interpretation of the Trinity. Christ and the Cosmos analyses theistic belief in a scientific context, demonstrating the necessity of cosmology to theological thinking that is often overly myopic and anthropomorphic. This important volume will benefit those who seek to understand what the Trinity is, why it matters and how it fits into a scientific account of the universe.
Part I. The Threefold Nature of the Divine Being
1. Introduction
talking about the Trinity
2. Why we may need to restate the ways in which we talk about the Trinity
3. The doctrine of divine simplicity
4. Cosmological and axiological explanation
5. Divine potentiality and temporality
Part II. The Biblical Sources of Trinitarian Thought
6. Three centres of consciousness?
7. The synoptic Gospels
8. John's Gospel
9. The Trinity in the Epistles
10. The idea of incarnation
Part III. The Trinity, Immanent and Economic
11. Why three?
12. Trinity and revelation
13. Hegel and modern theology
14. The immanent Trinity
15. The identity of the immanent and the economic Trinity
16. Hegel again
17. What creation adds to the Trinity
18. The epistemic priority of the economic Trinity
19. The Trinity and naive realism
20. The Trinity and the cosmos
21. Revelation and the immanent Trinity
Part IV. The Social Trinity
22. Persons and substances
23. The idea of a personal and free creation
24. The logical uniqueness of persons
25. The divine nature and freedom
26. Freedom in God and in creatures
27. Persons as necessarily relational
28. An ontology of the personal?
29. Intra-Trinitarian love
30. Infinite goods
31. Divine love and necessity
32. Love and alterity
33. Trinity versus Monotheism
34. The passion of Christ
35. God and abandonment
Part V. The Cosmic Trinity
36. The doctrine of perichoresis
37. The convergence of social and unipersonal models of the Trinity
38. Life-streams and persons
39. Modalism and necessity
40. The cosmic Trinity.