Do We Need to Go Through Trinity to Relate Person, Grace, and God?

Abstract

I. Some Opening Observations In Person, Grace, and God, Philip Rolnick develops an understanding of personhood that is both sensitive to the historical development of ideas about the person and responsive to contemporary criticisms that arise from sociobiology and post-modern critical theory. He seeks to overcome these criticisms by appealing to classical Christian Trinitarian theology since it is his conviction that human personhood is best understood as analogous to divine personhood (189). That conviction requires Rolnick to explore Christological and Trinitarian debates, for those debates have shaped a Christian (and western) understanding of the person. The book does more than recount doctrinal developments, however, for Rolnick's task also requires him to engage a wide range of non-theological sources, including evolutionary biology, psychology, physics, cultural anthropology, and various post-modern philosophers. Rolnick treats these sources irenically and acknowledges insights that Christians should take from them, even if their larger claims are ultimately untenable. In short, the book exemplifies the kind of mutually-critical conversation that should take place between theology and other intellectual disciplines. For our interests in this Society, we should also note that Rolnick brings Polanyi to bear on the argument at two points. There is much to like about this book. It is clearly written, effectively structured, and engages a topic of interest to philosophers, theologians, and ethicists. However, I do offer for our reflection two issues raised by Rolnick’s project. One is theological in nature and I suspect