Monotheism The Trinity And Mysticism

Though trinitarian theology has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the last few years, there is a lamentable lacuna in much of this study, a gap between intellectual rigor and concrete experience. While the contributions of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas are important to any foundational study of the Trinity, a strictly philosophical and scholastic approach has proved to be both contentious and problematic. As a result, many are left wanting for more meaningful expressions of this profound mystery. Anne Hunt fills this lacuna and offers a fresh avenue of reflection. She explores the distinctly trinitarian insights of a number of Christian mystics 'Hildegard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart, Bonaventure and Elizabeth of the Trinity, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, William of St. Thierry and Julian of Norwich. Readers will find that the mystery of the divine life and love that was so tangibly given and so palpably experienced by these mystics is now offered to us through them. Anne Hunt is faculty dean of theology and philosophy at Australian Catholic University. She is currently vice president of the Australian Catholic Theological Association. She is author of Trinity: Nexus of the Mysteries of Christian Faith, What Are They Saying About the Trinity? and The Trinity and the Paschal Mystery.

This Element examines aspects of monotheism and hope. Distinguishing monotheism from various forms of nontheistic religions, it explores how God transcends the terms used to describe the religious ultimate. The discussion then turns to the nature of hope and examines how the concept has been used by Augustine, Aquinas, Kierkegaard, and Moltmann, among others. The Christian tradition to which these monotheists belong associates hope and faith with love. In the final section, Wainwright shows the varieties of this kind of love in Islam, Christianity, and theistic Hinduism, and defends the sort of love valorized by them against some charges against it. He examines why the loves prized in these traditions are imperfect because their adherents invariably believe that the love that they cherish is superior to that cherished by others.

The Bible teaches that God is one in substance and three in person--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Although the Trinity is clearly taught in the Bible, it has been attacked throughout church history, and many Christians today have not studied this foundational doctrine. In this booklet, Dr. R.C. Sproul carefully explains the Trinity and clarifies common misconceptions. While the Trinity is mysterious, it is not contradictory, and it is essential to understanding the nature of God. The Crucial Questions booklet series by Dr. R.C. Sproul offers succinct answers to important questions often asked by Christians and thoughtful inquirers.

The last few decades have witnessed a renaissance of Trinitarian theology. Theologians have worked to recover this doctrine for a proper understanding of the God and for the life of the church. At the same time, analytic philosophers of religion have become keenly interested in the Trinity, engaging in vigorous debates related to it. To this point, however, the work of the two groups has taken place in almost complete isolation from one another. Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Seeks to bridge that divide. / Thomas H. McCall compares the work of significant philosophers of religion Richard Swinburne, Brian Leftow, and others with that of influential theologians such as Jrgen Moltmann, Robert Jenson, and John Zizioulas. He then evaluates several important proposals and offers suggestion for the future of Trinitarian theology. / There are many books on the doctrine of the Trinity, but no other book brings the concerns of analytic philosophers of religion into direct conversation with those of mainstream theologians.

The teaching that God is one was paramount in Old Testament theology, since the introduction of the New Testament the concept of one God continued and was expanded by and through Jesus in Second Temple Monotheism. With this in mind, the Bible does not teach the concept of the Trinitarian doctrine. The Apostles, including the New Testament Church, were pure monotheistic and oneness believers knowing and understanding that God is one and not one substance and three persons. Therefore, this book has addressed a variety of issues and provided a body of literature and authority supporting the position that God is numerically one and that the Trinitarian doctrine is a human construct and product that is unscriptural and unbiblical, which evolved over the centuries being fueled by man made creeds and ideologies. It is not surprising then that even Trinitarians struggle to define the Trinitarian doctrine suggesting it is a mystical revelation, when in fact, others have argued that it is incomprehensible.

Conventional wisdom would have it that believing in one God is straightforward; that Muslims are expert at monotheism, but that Christians complicate it, weaken it, or perhaps even abandon it altogether by speaking of the Trinity. In this book, Muslim and Christian scholars challenge that opinion. Examining together scripture texts and theological reflections from both traditions, they show that the oneness of God is taken as axiomatic in both, and also that affirming God's unity has raised complex theological questions for both. The two faiths are not identical, but what divides them is not the number of gods they believe in. The latest volume of proceedings of The Building Bridges Seminar—a gathering of scholar-practitioners of Islam and Christianity that meets annually for the purpose of deep study of scripture and other texts carefully selected for their pertinence to the year’s chosen theme—this book begins with a retrospective on the seminar’s first fifteen years and concludes with an account of deliberations and discussions among participants, thereby providing insight into the model of vigorous and respectful dialogue that characterizes this initiative. Contributors include Richard Bauckham, Sidney Griffith, Christoph Schwöbel, Janet Soskice, Asma Afsaruddin, Maria Dakake, Martin Nguyen, and Sajjad Rizvi. To encourage further dialogical study, the volume includes those scripture passages and other texts on which their essays comment. A unique resource for scholars, students, and professors of Christianity and Islam.

This book traces the idea of monotheism from Egypt in the 13th century B.C., through Israel's Divine Council down into Greek and Roman times when the rabbis were trying to protect their sacred religion from confusion with the god pantheons of those empires. The book identifies Jewish criticism of heretical Christian polytheism as the watershed which the Trinity doctrine was developed to answer. The Trinity doctrine is then traced through the Nicene Council in 325 A.D., the schism between East and West and into Anglican Archbishop Thomas Cranmer's innovation of a God "without body, parts or passions" in 1553. The book ends with a brief discussion of the Christology of the Unitarian, LDS and Jehovah's Witness faiths and concludes that as intended, 'Constantine's Creed' accommodates differences in Christian belief because he wanted to use that faith as the glue that would hold his Empire together.

In this engaging and provocative study, John Peter Kenney examines the emergence of monotheism within Greco-Roman philosophical theology by tracing the changing character of ancient realism from Plato through Plotinus. Besides acknowledging the philosophical and theological significance of such ancient thinkers as Plutarch, Numenius, Alcinous, and Atticus, he demonstrates the central importance of Plotinus in clarifying the relation of the intelligible world to divinity. Kenney focuses especially on Plotinus's novel concept of deity, arguing that it constitutes a type of mystical monotheism based upon an ultimate and inclusive divine One beyond description or discursive knowledge. Presenting difficult material with grace and clarity, Kenney takes a wide-ranging view of the development of ancient Platonic theology from a philosophical perspective and synthesizes familiar elements in a new way. His is a revisionist thesis with significant implications for the study of Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian thought in this period and for the history of Western religious thought in general.