Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine

Preface page ix
Acknowledgements xvii
part i the threefold nature of the divine being
1 Introduction: Talking about the Trinity 3
2 Why We May Need to Restate the Ways in Which We
Talk about the Trinity 6
3 The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity 11
4 Cosmological and Axiological Explanation 18
5 Divine Potentiality and Temporality 23
part ii the biblical sources of trinitarian thought
6 Three Centres of Consciousness? 33
7 The Synoptic Gospels 43
8 John’s Gospel 52
9 The Trinity in the Epistles 66
10 The Idea of Incarnation 73
part iii the trinity, immanent and economic
11 Why Three? 85
12 The Trinity and Revelation 92
13 Hegel and Modern Theology 98
14 The Immanent Trinity 102
15 The Identity of the Immanent and the Economic Trinity 108
16 Hegel Again 111
17 What Creation Adds to the Trinity 116
18 The Epistemic Priority of the Economic Trinity 120
19 The Trinity and Naive Realism 128
20 The Trinity and the Cosmos 133
21 Revelation and the Immanent Trinity 137
part iv the social trinity
22 Persons and Substances 145
23 The Idea of a Personal and Free Creation 151
24 The Logical Uniqueness of Persons 155
25 The Divine Nature and Freedom 158
26 Freedom in God and in Creatures 166
27 Persons as Necessarily Relational 171
28 An Ontology of the Personal? 176
29 Intra-Trinitarian Love 184
30 Infinite Gods 188
31 Divine Love and Necessity 191
32 Love and Alterity 199
33 Trinity versus Monotheism 204
34 The Passion of Christ 207
35 God and Abandonment 211
part v the cosmic trinity
36 The Doctrine of Perichoresis 219
37 The Convergence of Social and One-Consciousness
Models of the Trinity 232
38 Life-Streams and Persons 239
39 Modalism and Necessity 246
40 The Cosmic Trinity 257
Bibliography 263
Subject Index 267
Name Index 270