Representation and Interpretation as the Basis of Participation in the Trinity

Journal Title: Religions - Year 2015, Vol 6, Issue 3

Abstract

I suggest that God’s life is the Spirit’s eternal interpretation of the Word as the perfect sign (representation) of the Father. Creaturely interpretations imperfectly mirror the perfect coherence of being and representation that is God’s life. When we respond to the incarnate Word we are adopted into the place occupied by the Spirit within the Trinity. By responding to the Word with the fullness of our being we are incorporated into the divine dynamic of truthful representation and loving response. Ontologically, this approach invites a retrieval of the idea of “vestiges of the Trinity in creation”. Epistemologically, it affirms that the basis of God’s self-communication (revelation) is the coherence of Being and Representation within God’s-self. Ethically, it challenges us to respond to suffering and injustice as these are illuminated by the incarnate Word, and to act as mediators for the incorporation of the whole creation into God’s life. The sacrament of the Eucharist is a sign that actualizes what it signifies, where what it signifies is the gift of participation in the divine life.

Authors and Affiliations

Andrew Robinson

Keywords

Related Articles

The Glorified Body: Corporealities in the Catholic Tradition

The rise of new technologies—robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology among them—gave the American computer scientist Bill Joy certain pause for deep concern; these, he cautioned, carry the very real poten...

Geoffrey Hill’s “Hard-Won Affirmation”: The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy

Sir Geoffrey Hill, long hailed as Britain’s greatest living poet, was devoted to remembering the deceased, those forgotten in the debased din of mass culture—some of them worthy of our emulation, others edifying by the...

Modern Restlessness, from Hobbes to Augustine

Only with difficulty do modern readers grasp the full import of Augustine’s confession, “Restless is our heart, until it rests in you”, or seriously consider that it might be true. An unexpected remedy is to be found i...

Christian Conversion, the Double Consciousness, and Transcendentalist Religious Rhetoric

Despite the theological gulf that separated the Transcendentalists from their Puritan predecessors, certain leading Transcendentalists—Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau among them—often punctuated their writings, published...

“Santísima Muerte, Vístete de Negro, Santísima Muerte, Vístete de Blanco”: La Santa Muerte’s Illegal Marginalizations

La Santísima Muerte, the death saint patron of the marginalized and dispossessed in Mexico, the United States, and beyond, is especially favored by devotees who identify with her duality between dark and light, and goo...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP25471
  • DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel6031017
  • Views 257
  • Downloads 7

How To Cite

Andrew Robinson (2015). Representation and Interpretation as the Basis of Participation in the Trinity. Religions, 6(3), -. https://europub.co.uk/articles/-A-25471