Trinitarian Grace And Participation

Geordie W. Ziegler offers an exploration of the concept of “grace” in the thought of T. F. Torrance, and what it means for understanding the Christian life as “participation” in Christ’s ongoing humanity. He clarifies Torrance’s claim that Christ’s vicarious humanity intensifies, rather than lessens, the necessity of human response to God in sacrificial and Christ-like service. Specifically, Ziegler demonstrates the centrality of Torrance’s concept of grace across the dogmatic spectrum and argues that grace, for Torrance, is a downward, twofold movement from and to the Father, through the Son in the Spirit. This understanding of grace distinctly defines the Christian life as the gift of sharing in the Son’s relation with the Father through the Spirit. This project is distinct in that it articulates a Trinitarian approach to grace which spans the entire dogmatic spectrum. Part One considers grace as a movement of the Trinity, expressed in the economy of salvation. Part Two applies this understanding of grace to the human person. It traces the way in which human beings, through the Holy Spirit, participate in Christ’s Sonship within the three concentric levels of anthropology, ecclesiology, and personal formation in Christ.

"Miikka Ruokanen is Professor Emeritus of Dogmatics at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Professor of Systematic Theology at Nanjing Union Theological Seminary, China. He is also Guest Professor at the Renmin University of China, Beijing, and Advisory Professor at Fudan University, Shanghai. His publications include The Catholic Doctrine of Non-Christian Religions: According to the Second Vatican Council (Brill, 1992), Theology of Social Life in Augustine's De civitate Dei (Vandenhoeck et Ruprecht, 1993), and Christianity and Chinese Culture (co-edited with Paulos Huang; Eerdmans, 2010)"--.

Refuting the notion that the doctrine of the Trinity may be indispensable for the creed but remote from life and worship, James B. Torrance points us to the indispensable "who" of worship--the triune God of grace. He demonstrates why trinitarian theology is the very essence of Christian confession.

In John Duns Scotus on Grace and the Trinitarian Missions, Mitchell J. Kennard argues that Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus (d. 1308) has been wrongly inscribed in the narrative of the late medieval theology of grace. Scotus is presented here not as the initiation or cause of the low fourteenth-century theology of grace but as the last great contributor to the high thirteenth-century theology of grace as deifying participation in the divine nature. This book argues that Scotus’s signature reflections on the relationship between grace and the Trinitarian missions—the Incarnation of the Son and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit—warrant closer attention by both historical and systematic theologians alike.

Merit winner in the 2006 Christianity Today Book Awards! "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." Those of us called to Christian ministry are commissioned and sent by Jesus, just as he himself was called and sent by the Father. Thus we naturally pattern our ministries after Christ's example. But distinctively Christian service involves the Spirit as well, just as Jesus himself accomplished his ministry in the power of the Spirit. Thus the whole Trinity--Father, Son and Holy Spirit--gives shape to truly authentic Christian ministry. Though as Christians we all affirm the doctrine of the Trinity, many of us might struggle to explain how understanding the Trinity could actually shape our ministry. Stephen Seamands demonstrates how a fully orbed theology of the Trinity transforms our perception and practice of vocational ministry. Theological concepts like relationality and perichoresis have direct relevance to pastoral life and work, especially in unfolding a trinitarian approach to relationships, service and mission. A thoroughly trinitarian outlook provides the fuel for our ministry "of Jesus Christ, to the Father, through the Holy Spirit, on behalf of the church and the world." Essential reading for pastors, parachurch workers, counselors, missionaries, youth ministers and all who are called to any vocation of Christian ministry.

Half a century after the Second Vatican Council called for the active participation of the laity in the liturgy, a comprehensive theology of what liturgical participation actually means remains elusive. While most sacramental studies have highlighted the role and action of Christ, the conciliar reform and the theology that emanated from it call for a deeper trinitarian understanding of the liturgy and sacraments. In this fascinating new work, Gabriel Pivarnik identifies the major theological developments in the concept of active participation of the last century, most notably in Mediator Dei and the Vatican II documents. He also considers the reception of those developments. Drawing especially on the work of Cipriano Vagaggini and Edward Kilmartin, Pivarnik offers a lucid demonstration of how liturgical participation can be viewed in metaphysical, soteriological, and ecclesiological terms through the lens of a trinitarian narrative.

The missio Dei concept has shifted missiological thinking from an anthropocentric view of mission to the understanding that the church and persons are participants in the missio Dei. A Wesleyan perspective of grace and the means of grace inform the development of a theology of participation in the missio Dei that overcomes the repetitive articulations of mission as simply being human action or divine action. Through the means of grace, Christian disciples participate in the missio Dei as those transformed by God’s love and those through whom that love embraces and transforms the world. Missio Dei and the Means of Grace: A Theology of Participation offers a profoundly simple approach and understanding to twenty-first-century missiology that is applicable for all persons, all ages, and all ecclesial expressions of the Christian church, as participation in the missio Dei through the means of grace is understood to be a holistic way of life where spiritual formation is understood as inseparable from justice ministries.

The long-standing tradition of baptizing infants suggests that the sacraments plunge our bodies into salvation, so the revelation of God's love in the sacraments addresses the whole person, not the mind alone. In this work, the contemporary Roman Catholic rite of baptism for infants becomes a case study, manifesting the connections between the human body, the ecclesial body, and the Body of Christ. The sacramental life, for children as for adults, is an ongoing journey deeper into the life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. By examining the church's practice of infant baptism, Kimberly Hope Belcher asks how human beings participate in God's life through the sacraments. Christian sacraments are embodied, cultural rituals performed by and for human beings. At the same time, the sacraments are God's gifts of grace, by which human beings enter into God's own life. In this study, contemporary ritual studies, sacramental theology, and trinitarian theology are used to explore how participation in the sacraments can be an efficacious engagement in God's life of love. Kimberly Hope Belcher is an assistant professor of theology at Saint John's University, where she teaches sacramental theology and ritual studies. She is a member of the North American Academy of Liturgy and writes for the liturgical blog Pray Tell.