Trinity, hierarchy, and difference: Mapping the Christian imaginary.

by Linn Marie Tonstad

The Christian imaginary is structured by three constitutive forms of difference: one, the difference between God and creation; two, the difference between God and God, or Trinity; and three, sexual difference or human difference. In this dissertation, I investigate the relation between these forms of difference in the Christian imaginary.;I structure my inquiry through engagement with Hans Urs von Balthasar and Wolfhart Pannenberg, two of the most significant trinitarian theologians of recent years. I argue that both remain unable to think divine or trinitarian difference without use of metaphors of hierarchy, submission, and obedience. Difference and distinction ordered in such a way threatens the full and equal divinity and personhood of the Trinity and therefore constitutes an inability to think difference. Difference thought as hierarchy further renders the Christian imaginary unable to think communal relations of mutuality, equality, and passionate friendship.;The reason Balthasar and Pannenberg are able to argue for ordered and obedient trinitarian personhood is that they ground the events of the cross in the trinitarian processions. The trinitarian processions are the processions of the Son and Spirit from the Father or the relations of origin of the Trinity. Since the relations of origin set up an ordered structure, the submission of Jesus to God the Father that is read off the events of the cross is then projected onto the eternal trinitarian relations of origin. The relations of origin then have to be read as somehow requiring or enabling what takes place on the cross.;As an alternative, I argue that the missions of the Son and Spirit in the world should not be read as closely corresponding to eternal relations of origin. Instead, focus should be on the "for-us" character of divine action in the world which is oriented toward transformation and eschatological fulfillment best symbolized by the metaphors of friendship and adoption. The result is a feminist trinitarian theology of plenitude.

255 pages, NOOK Study eTextbook