Freedom and necessity in modern Trinitarian theology / Brandon Gallaher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gallaher, Brandon, 1972- author.

Series:

Oxford theology and religion monographs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bulgakov, Sergiĭ, 1871-1944.

Bulgakov, Sergiĭ.

Barth, Karl, 1886-1968.

Barth, Karl.

Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 1905-1988.

Balthasar, Hans Urs von.

Trinity.

Physical Description:

xix, 298 pages : illustration ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2016.

Summary:

"Examines the tension between God and the world through a constructive reading of the Trinitarian theologies and Christologies of Sergii Bulgakov (1871-1944), Karl Barth (1886-1968), and Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988). It focuses on what is called "the problematic of divine freedom and necessity" and the response of the writers. "Problematic" refers to God being simultaneously radically free and utterly bound to creation. God did not need to create and redeem the world in Christ. It is a contingent free gift. Yet, on the other side of a dialectic, he also has eternally determined himself to be God as Jesus Christ. He must create and redeem the world to be God as he has so determined. In this way the world is given a certain "free necessity" by him because if there were no world then there would be no Christ. A spectrum of different concepts of freedom and necessity and a theological ideal of a balance between the same are outlined and then used to illumine the writers and to articulate a constructive response to the problematic. Brandon Gallaher shows that the classical Christian understanding of God having a non-necessary relationship to the world and divine freedom being a sheer assertion of God's will must be completely rethought. Gallaher proposes a Trinitarian, Christocentric, and cruciform vision of divine freedom. God is free as eternally self-giving, self-emptying and self-receiving love. The work concludes with a contemporary theology of divine freedom founded on divine election." -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Foreword / Rowan Williams

Freedom and necessity as trinitarian mystery and 'problematic'

Divine freedom

a dialectical approach: from freedom to necessity

the shape of a 'problematic' (A)

a dialectical approach: from necessity to freedom

the shape of a 'problematic' (B)

'Sophiological antinomism'

Sergii Bulgakov's debt to and critique of Vladimir Solov'ev

God as absolute and absolute-relative in Bulgakov: theological antinomy in the doctrine of God

Divine freedom and the need of God for creation

Trinity and the doctrine of election in Karl Barth

Trinity, freedom, and necessity in Karl Barth

a dialectical approach

The metaphysics of love

four steps

The Trinity, creation, and freedom

more on the fourth step

Christ, creation, and divine possiblities

'sheltered within' the Trinity

Concluding unsystematic systematic postscript.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-286) and index.

ISBN:

0198744609

9780198744603

OCLC:

920446916