God For Us: the Trinity and Christian Life, by Catherine Mowry LaCugna (HarperSanFranciso 1991) is without a doubt one of the most valuable books I have read in the years of my teaching career.
Catherine LaCugna (1952 – 1997—she died from cancer much too young!) was a very creative Catholic theologian, teaching at Notre Dame University. She had a passion for Christian life and freedom. One of her earlier works was called Freeing Theology—a title that is ambiguous, as she believed theology should bring freedom, as well as it needing to be freed from some of the constraints of tradition.
This book challenges head on some of the emphases and, in her judgment, failures of Trinitarian theology in the Western traditions. This failure is the consequence of giving priority to the conceptual and the philosophical, over what can be known of God through God’s actions in the world. As a result this ‘economy of salvation’ becomes a second element, flowing from the first: what God is in the ‘economy of salvation’, and God’s relationships with the world, are secondary to who God really is. And how we know all that about God remains forever a mystery—perhaps debated by some, but for many simply dismissed.
Through detailed examination of the historical sources, particularly from Augustine through to Aquinas, she outlines the development of this philosophical idea of God: the being of God in relation to Godself, alone, this defines the identity of God. The conceptual is prior to the narrative, the philosophical prior to the biblical, the immanent prior to the economic, the one prior to the many: and, as a result, ‘identity’ is self-constituted rather than emerging through relationship. All this LaCugna suggests is unfortunate and requires a re-valuation of what it might mean for us.
Given her great respect for these traditions, however, she takes many chapters to explore and review their contribution until, on page 397 of the book she declares her conclusion from it all:
What we believe about God must match what is revealed of God in Scripture.
For her, the narrative of God’s being with us and for us must be the shape of our theology. She draws upon the rich emphases of the Cappadocian Fathers, to support the idea of God as ‘person-in-communion’ who exist not as beings who (then) have relationships but who are these relations. Being in relationship is what it means to be persons.
In the spirit of the Cappadocians, and also to speak in a way more consistent with the Bible, liturgy and creeds, we ourselves should abandon the self-defeating fixation on ‘God in se’ (within Godself) and be content with contemplating the mystery of God’s activity in creation, in human personality and human history, since it is there in the economy and nowhere else that the ‘essence’ of God is revealed.
… to speak about God in immanent theological terms is nothing more than to speak about God’s life with us in the economy of Christ and the Spirit. (p.225 & 229)
Christian faith, then, is an epistemology of relationship: knowing God through participation in community—the saving, life-giving community of God.
Those who know his work will warmly identify here a very similar position to Paul Fiddes’ book, Participating in God: A pastoral doctrine of the Trinity.
So the crucial element in LaCugna’s theology I’d like to mention in just a little more detail has to do with the idea of personhood. ‘Persons in communion’ is her vision of the nature and gift of Christian life.
What is really valuable in this book, I think, is the way LaCugna pushes all this scholarship towards its practical implications for Christian life: in personal, ethical and worshipful lives together. ‘Towards an understanding of person in communion’ is the theme. After considering a range of later modern and contemporary ideas of human personhood, she outlines her own vision under these headings:
- Persons are essentially interpersonal, intersubjective.
- A person is an ineffable, concrete, unique and unrepeatable expression of nature.
- The freedom of the deified human being consists in being free-for, free-toward others, poised between self-possession and other-orientation.
- Persons are catholic, in two respects: personhood is a bridge between ourselves and everything and everyone else; and personhood expresses the totality of a nature.
- The achievement of personhood requires self-discipline.
- Personhood is an exponential concept: when we live in relationship with God, we participate in relationships far beyond our own location and circle of relationships.
- Living as persons in communion, in right relationship, is the meaning of salvation and the ideal of Christian faith.
Having outlined these conclusions, LaCugna illustrates them further from the life and ministry of Jesus.
There is so much more we might draw from this immensely rich study. It is indeed a terrific tome. It has I believe ‘rescued’ the idea of God as Trinity for many—not as a doctrine to be believed so much as a life in which we may discover ourselves, our faith community and indeed our God, in new and healing ways.
While it may take a good while to read, that I think is a virtue. This is a tome to live with as its vision is one to live into.