Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T23:49:15.685Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. Author's Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Catherine Mowry LaCugna
Catherine Mowry LaCugna*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Review Symposium
Information
Horizons , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , Spring 1993 , pp. 135 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Zizioulas, John, “The Teaching of the Second Ecumenical Council on the Holy Spirit in Historical and Ecumenical Perspective” in Credo in Spiritum Sanctum, Atti del Congresso Teologico Internazionale di Pneumatologia (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983), 51.Google Scholar

2 Finan says “we cannot afford to abandon the truth that God's triune being did not need our existence in order to be.” The precise issue is whether the communion between God and all creatures, which takes place through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, requires that God first exist in an eternal, intratrinitarian communion with Godself, to the degree that God would be a Trinity of persons without or apart from creation. Finan would answer in the affirmative (though she does not give reasons why), whereas both Haight and I (and other scholars) believe that it is possible but not necessary to posit such an intradivine community of persons and, moreover, that we are lacking the information needed to make such a decisive claim. Even Thomas Aquinas was very cautious about questions like these. In answer to the question about whether creation could be eternal, he replied that there were no convincing philosophical reasons against the eternity of creation, since even an eternal creation would still be a creature. In the end he appealed only to the text of Genesis 1:1 against the idea of an eternal creation.