Divine Persons Research Articles

Theolatry and the Making-Present of the Nonrepresentable

In this essay, I place Buber’s thought in dialogue with Eckhart. Each understood that the theopoetic propensity to imagine the transcendent in images is no more than a projection of our will to impute form to the formless. The presence of God is made present through imaging the real, but imaging the real implies that the nonrepresentable presence can only be made present through the absence of representation. The goal of the journey is to venture beyond the Godhead in light of which all personalistic depictions of the divine person are rendered idolatrous. Perhaps this is the most important implication of Eckhart’s impact on Buber, an insight that may still have theopolitical implications in a world where too often personifications of the God beyond personification are worshipped at the expense of losing contact with an absolute person that cannot be personified absolutely.

Mistyczne małżeństwo Jezusa i św. Siostry Faustyny jako paradygmat budowania miłości i relacji małżeńskich. Dyskurs na podstawie analizy „Dzienniczka”

The Mystical Marriage of Jesus and St. Sister Faustina as a Paradigm for Building Love and Marital Bond based on the Analysis of The Diary of Sister Faustina. Looking at the title of the article, a reader may wonder whether two different realities, namely a mystical betrothal and marriage relations, have something in common and whether such distinct realities can be juxtaposed. The answer is affirmative, but with one important exception. The comparison can be made only per analogiam, as not every reality which takes place in a mystical marriage finds its reflection in marriage relationship. The basic reason is the difference of persons. The mystical marriage is a direct encounter of the Divine Person with a human, the Creator with the creation. It exceeds the possibility of description and rendering in a linguistic way. A marriage consists in the encounter of two beings who are equal when it comes to their nature. Thus, in the reflection it is not possible to translate one reality into the other in a simple manner. However, there exist elements which may serve as a paradigm for building a marital bond relying on the mystical marriage of Jesus and St. Sister Faustina. The foundation of it is the thoroughly human feelings of St. Faustina towards Jesus. On several occasions she behaves towards Jesus like a person who is in love. Thus, her entire emotional sphere can be analysed. Moreover, Jesus is God and man and as a man he possessed and expressed his feelings towards Faustina, which is visible when analysing The Diary . St. Faustina was united with Jesus in love. Thus, this relationship might be characterized from a psychological point of view proposed by Bogdan Wojciszke who distinguishes three basic ingredients of love, which are intimacy, passion and commitment. Relying on those elements the analysis of the love relation between Faustina and Christ has been carried out, offering examples of behaviour which strengthened their bond and deepened love. Intimacy is shaped through frequent conversations, sharing inner experiences, creating the sense of security, trust and personal development for the sake of the other person. Passion is deepened through hugging, touch, the feeling of mutuality and exclusiveness, longing and emotional excitation. Commitment denotes maintaining the decision concerning the choice of a spouse, engagement in the relationship, overcoming difficulties and crises together. The article offers concrete suggestions on how spouses can build their love relationship.

Poor, Wayfaring Stranger: Erik Peterson’s Apocalyptic and Public Witness against Christian Embourgoisement

With the present collection of essays reflecting upon the complex convergences and divergences between Eschatology and genuine transcendence, there is perhaps no greater modern Catholic figure to recall than that of the great, German Catholic convert Erik Peterson (1890–1960). As an immediate forerunner to twentieth century Catholic ressourcement, eschatology, for Peterson, not only factors as the central arc within his diverse corpus of writings, yet he himself is equally credited for having coined the phrase, ‘the eschatological proviso’ in describing the coming of the Kingdom as both ‘already’ and ‘not yet’. Fundamentally, Peterson’s proviso presents a historical view of the suffering Church as necessarily beyond political confinement and ideological capture. As a pilgrim community in-between the “earthly Jerusalem, which is at once polis and temple” and its “ever drawing closer to the eschatological, heavenly temple and its own…polis”, Peterson bears witness to this ontic difference in his writings by framing the Church’s distinctly public act, the liturgy, as the site of a transversal commericum. That is, an angelic participation within the earthly cult as well as her “participation in the worship that the angels offer to God.” In this following contribution, I will examine this eschatological provision as the primary governing optic by first contextualizing Peterson’s critical reception of historicism and its methodological atheism (Troeltsch, Harnack) within German liberal Protestantism and the Religionsgeschictliche schule as the necessary precursor to his conversion. Secondly, I will build upon these critiques in view of Peterson’s concise and influential 1950 essay, “Kierkegaard und der Protestanismus” that theologically focuses specifically upon his attack against Barthian dialectic and its inability in approaching the very concretissimum of revelation and its ecclesial extension of dogma as none other than the “concrete continuation of Christ’s assumption of a body”. Lastly, in view of genuine transcendence, the ambivalent influence of Kierkegaard will be more positively assessed in terms of Peterson’s long held attack upon the bourgeois character of much of modern Christianity. As an immediate parallel to the critique of secular, historical immanentism, focus will center upon the martyrological witness of the poor as aptly encapsulating Peterson’s theopolitical vision. Herein, the invisible poor function as an “eschatological symbol” that lays at the porous threshold of genuine transcendence (Lk. 16, 19–31) wherein Christ recognizes the depths of his very divine person and in whom the poor are integrally inseparable through their witness.

A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dialogue with Thomas Aquinas by Michele M. Schumacher

Reviewed by: A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dialogue with Thomas Aquinas by Michele M. Schumacher Roch Kereszty, O.Cist. A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dialogue with Thomas Aquinas. By Michele M. Schumacher. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 451. $79.95 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8132-2697-2. Schumacher's work is a detailed, competent study of one of the important issues in contemporary Catholic theology: a careful comparison of the theological anthropology of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr with that of Thomas Aquinas. Such a serene, objective treatment, combined with Schumacher's respect and empathy for all three theologians, is indeed rare. Balthasar characterizes his theological method as distinct from, but complementary to, the Thomistic approach. Saint Thomas chiefly uses analogies of the created world to illuminate supernatural mysteries. Balthasar employs the analogical approach too, as well as what he calls the katalogical method. If analogy moves upward from created perfection to divine perfection, the katalogical method is directed downward from the revealed divine truths or archetypes to an understanding of created realities. In Balthasar's theology, which he shares with Adrienne von Speyr, the divinely revealed Trinitarian mystery sheds light on the many aspects of human realities. Just as the Trinity is a mystery of unity in difference, so too are anthropological mysteries characterized by "unity in difference," all of which can be explicated on the basis of the Trinitarian archetype. Schumacher analyzes five of these mysteries: the relationship between the act and object of faith, nature and grace, body and spirit, individual and community, man and woman. Schumacher accepts Balthasar's multiple attestations that his work and Adrienne von Speyr's are two sides of one and the same mission, and that Balthasar's work only unfolded in its full scope after he began working with Adrienne. In fact, Balthasar adopted most of his unusual images, metaphors, [End Page 134] and phrases from Adrienne's work and made them his own. (Therefore, I will refer to their common work and beliefs as B-A.) While St. Thomas theorizes that the eternal generation of the Son from the Father and the eternal procession from the Father and the Son both take place by way of the divine essence, which is the same in each divine person, B-A believe that the two processes—generation and procession—happen by way of the persons, since the Trinity is a communion of persons. B-A are convinced that only personalist images and metaphors can express analogically the Trinitarian mystery. Balthasar accepts from Adrienne the term Hingabe—surrender—to describe the mutual relationships between the Father and the Son, and between the Father and the Son on the one hand and the Holy Spirit on the other. From all eternity, the Father surrenders to his Son all that he has and is. The Son, in turn, receives the self-donation of the Father, and in the Son's very act of acceptance, he returns himself to the Father in thanksgiving and praise. Both the Father and the Son together give themselves to the Holy Spirit, who accepts and returns all that he has received in love. According to B-A, these relationships in God suppose both an infinite distance and an infinitely intimate union among all three divine persons. Creation is not simply the act of God in his unity, B-A explain, but it has a specific relationship to the divine person of the Son, who is creation's divine archetype. That the Father creates the universe in the Son means no new relationship on God's part but rather creation's participation in the Son, who returns the universe in and with himself to the Father. We participate in the archetypal unity and distance between the Son and the Father through the relationship of our act of faith and the object of our faith. "The Christian [and, in particular, the theologian] participates in Christ's mission of giving expression, or more correctly said, to be the expression, or 'the definitive "interpretation" (Jn 1:18)' of...

Hegel on the Proofs and Personhood of God: Studies in Hegel's Logic and Philosophy of Religion by Robert R. Williams

Reviewed by: Hegel on the Proofs and Personhood of God: Studies in Hegel's Logic and Philosophy of Religion by Robert R. Williams Kevin J. Harrelson Robert R. Williams. Hegel on the Proofs and Personhood of God: Studies in Hegel's Logic and Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xiv + 319. Cloth, $95.00. Hegel endorsed proofs of the existence of God, and also believed God to be a person. Some of his interpreters ignore these apparently retrograde tendencies, shunning them in favor of the philosopher's more forward-looking contributions. Others embrace Hegel's religious thought, but attempt to recast his views as less reactionary than they appear to be. Robert Williams's latest monograph belongs to a third category: he argues that Hegel's positions in philosophical theology are central to his philosophy writ large. The book is diligently researched, and marshals an impressive amount of textual evidence concerning Hegel's view of the proofs, his theory of personhood, and his views on religious community. Many of Williams's sources are lectures from the 1820s, when Hegel gave more detailed presentations of his philosophy of spirit. This material has long belonged to the received corpus of Hegel, but it is only due to recent critical editions that we have a sense of how Hegel modified his approach during his final decade. There are thus plenty of unanswered questions, and Williams poses some of the right ones. What is the relationship, for instance, between Hegel's many texts on logic and his later lectures on the ontological argument? How should we understand 'personhood' such that it captures the famous chapters on recognition from the Phenomenology, the theory of positive freedom from the Philosophy of Right, and the comments about divine personhood from Hegel's final lectures on religion? The former question is the topic of part 1: Hegel on the Proofs of God. Williams demonstrates convincingly enough that Hegel's endorsement of the proofs is rooted in his view of logic. Hegel allows, with the Kantians, that the traditional forms of these arguments are invalid. Knowing this much, one might expect Hegel to reformulate them. This has been the source of disappointment for many readers: revised arguments are not to be found in Hegel's lectures in the form of well-defined premises and conclusions. Williams makes clear that Hegel's view is rather that traditional logic was not suitable for arguments about this subject matter; and he explains how Hegel saw the proofs as insufficient attempts to "elevate the mind to God" (45–46). The cosmological argument, for instance, is supposed to show that the world depends on God. But in its classical form—since there are contingent entities there must be a necessary one—our knowledge of this relation is inverted. If contingent things depend on God, Hegel reasons, then they are not contingent. A more adequate approach requires that we unlearn, so to speak, the sense of contingency asserted in the premise. Syllogistic argument cannot bring about such unlearning. Hegel purported, and Williams exhaustively documents the fact, to have done a better job in his Science of Logic when he argued that the category of 'contingency' collapses into necessity. Readers may wonder about Williams's argumentative purposes in this part of the book. He succeeds in showing that the Hegel of the Berlin lectures believed himself to have secured, in his earlier work, an adequate basis for theology. Did Hegel's logic, however, commit him to his later theological views? Revisionist Hegelians hedge on this, and Williams offers little to persuade them to his side. Should we view Hegel's positions on these topics as mounting a good defense of cosmological or ontological proofs? Williams seems to think so, but he does little to persuade anyone who is not already versed in Hegel's theory of logic. Part 2, Hegel on the Personhood of God, is more successful. Williams defends a version of recognition theory, and he argues that Hegel's understanding of self-consciousness commits him also to a defense of divine personhood. Williams is more at home with this material, having written previously several books on it. He explains Hegel's...

“Strong hold and fountainhead of their idolatry”: The Juggernaut in the Work of Claudius Buchanan and Shelley’s The Triumph of Life

JOSEPH DEFALCO LAMPEREZ “Strong hold and fountain­ head oftheir idolatry”: TheJuggernaut in the Work of Claudius Buchanan and Shelley’s The Triumph ofLife A mong theories aiming to decipher the titular procession of Shelley’s The Triumph of Life (1824), a few mention that the Car of Life, the pageant’s elusive centerpiece, evokes the Indian god-cummetaphor known as the Juggernaut. Edward Duffy writes suggestively of “the brilliant but sinisterjuggernaut ofthe ‘Triumph,’ for example, while Harold Bloom observes that the Car’s parade “is an exact parallel ... to the procession ofjuggernaut,”2 though he does not ask what this mirroring im­ plies about Shelley’s poetic intent. The most focused inquiry into this ques­ tion, James Mulvihill’s “Hazlitt, Shelley, and ‘The Triumph ofLife,’ ” notes that Hazlitt “may have . . . inspired the central symbol ofShelley’s last ma­ jor poena”3 in casting the Car as a sign of growing irrationalism within British institutions. But while Mulvihill writes that the import of Shelley’s carriage matches Hazlitt’s—“just as Shelley’s Car of Life is an irresistible, relentless force against which many seem powerless, so Power as depicted by Hazlitt is a sinister vehicle of seductive pomp and circumstance”4—this parallel overlooks how the vehicle first evolved in the British imagination from god to metaphor, and thus does not address how far Hazlitt and Shel­ ley each diverge from past depictions. To understand what is unique to I. Duffy, Rousseau in England: The Contextfor Shelley’s Critique ofthe Enlightenment (Berke­ ley: University of California Press, 1979), 137. 2. Bloom, Shelley’s Mythmaking (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), 244. 3. Mulvihill, “Hazlitt, Shelley, and ‘The Triumph of Life,’” Notes and Queries 233 (1988): 305-74 . Mulvihill, “Hazlitt, Shelley, and ‘The Triumph of Life,’” 305—7. SiR, 56 (Winter 2017) 423 424 JOSEPH DEFALCO LAMPEREZ Figure i: “Procession ofJuggernaut, at the grand Hindoo festival of the Rutt Jattra,” Church Missionary Society Missionary Papers, Midsummer 1817. University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom. their respective visions of the Juggernaut we must look instead to Claudius Buchanan, an East India Company provost and chaplain whose own reimagining of this divine personality transformed it from Indian deity to British idea. The distance separating what the Juggernaut heralded before and after Buchanan is mirrored in the gap dividing the Church Missionary Papers' de­ piction of the god (fig. 1) from Thomas Rowlandson’s contemporary portrayal in The Grand Master, or, Adventures of “Qui Hu? in Hindustan: A Hudibrastic Poem (fig. 2). While the Missionary Papers presents an almost realistic view of the festival, Rowlandson reveals how versatile the Jugger­ naut proved in the wake of Buchanan’s writings. Alluding to Francis Rawdon-Hastings’s tenure as Governor-General of India from 1813 to 1823, The Grand Master depicts the company figurehead across a series of satirical illustrations as “a bellicose representative of an overly ambitious class, bent on the ruin of the metropole through the destruction of India.”5 While Rawdon-Hastings is absent from this image, his stewardship of an unscrupulous institution is in full view: here Britons in place of Indians 5. Christina Smylitopoulos, “A Nabob’s Progress: Rowlandson and Combe’s The Grand Master, A Tale ofBritish Imperial Excess, 1770-1830” (PhD diss., McGill University, 2010), 49. THE JUGGERNAUT IN BUCHANAN AND SHELLEY 425 Figure 2: Thomas Rowlandson, “The Modern Idol Jaggemaut,” in William Combe, The Grand Master; or, Adventures of Qui Hi? in Hindostan, illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson. London, Printed by T. Tegg, 1816. Graphic Arts Collection, Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey. haul a “modern idol Jaggernaut” suggesting that paganism has set up shop in the midst of the East India Company and, by implication, British gov­ ernment more generally. If the Papers uses idolatrous ritual to showcase an alien society ripe for discipline, in The Grand Master Rowlandson presents an allegory of institutions so ruinous in their coalition that they too evoke the glamour and inevitability ofpaganism itself. Yet this displaced god not only heralds a corrosive institutional arrangement: it also consolidates the forces emblazoned on its strange form, offering a handy visual cheat sheet of opaque alliances in order to license their critique. As I will show, it...

A new logical problem for the doctrine of the Trinity

AbstractIn this article I develop a new problem for the doctrine of the Trinity that I call the Problem of Triunity. Rather than proceeding from the fact that God is one and the persons are many, as the traditional problem of the Trinity does, the problem of triunity proceeds from the fact that, in one sense or another, God is many, and yet each divine person on his own is just one.

Jonathan Edwards's Reformed Doctrine of Theosis

Amid a scholarly rediscovery of Protestant forms of theosis, questions of whether Jonathan Edwards developed a theotic account of redemption have received increased attention. Ironically, however, interest in Edwards's doctrine of theosis has emphasized the philosophical rather than the theological bases in ways that seem to set him outside the boundaries of Reformed orthodoxy. Yet if we shift our attention away from the neo-Platonic explanations of Edwardsian theosis and place it instead where Edwards himself focused—on the communicable nature of the triune God within the economy—we see that his notions of theosis rest on firmly Protestant foundations and result in recognizably Reformed conclusions. But to say that attention to Edwards's trinitarian and incarnational theology reveals an orthodox form of theosis is not to say that his theotic soteriology lacked distinctive and even innovative elements. Unlike other theologians whose accounts of theosis bifurcated God's communicable nature from the creatures’ relational participation among the divine persons, Edwards's theology made room for and insisted on both.

Trinitarian Inseparable Operations and the Incarnation

The present article argues that the doctrine of the inseparable external operations (opera ad extra, hereafter OAE) of the Trinity is consistent with the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son alone. To demonstrate this, it will be shown, first, that the assumption of human nature can be ascribed to the Son alone when taken as a state, as opposed to an action. Secondly, I will defend John Owen’s claim that the Son is not the “immediate” agent of Christ’s actions. Finally, an appeal is made to Trinitarian “missions” to show the coherence of OAE with our having communion with distinct divine persons.

The Treasure of St. Thomas’ Theology of the Trinity

AbstractOne of the treasures of Thomas’ theology of the Trinity is his attention to the mission of the Spirit, to the gift of the Spirit (and not just to the gifts of the Spirit). In this slightly modified version of the 2016 Aquinas Lecture Oxford, three texts are read that show the richness of his attention to the Spirit and that show, too, that often repeated criticism that Thomas forgets the Spirit is incorrect. First, Thomas’ remark that the knowledge of the divine persons is necessary for a correct understanding of creation and salvation (STh I q. 32, a.1 ad 3m). Second, his commentary on the opening verse of ps 50, (‘the great mercy of God’). Third, two articles on the mission of the Spirit (STh 1, q. 43, a.3 and 5, especially the ad 2m).

“Praying in the Holy Spirit” Spirituality and Pneumatology

AbstractWhile “praying in the Spirit” may evoke “charismatic” prayer, this paper argues that from a scriptural point of view it defines all Christian prayer as having the Holy Spirit as main subject, who leads us to pray and prays in us, by showing us to whom, how and for what we should pray. This has implications for spirituality and pneumatology. On the one hand, prayer is to be understood as much more than the extension of our human desire towards God: it means entering into the divine will, the divine life, and the relations between Father, Son and Spirit – and relating to each in a different way. This actually helps to catch the essence of charismatic prayer as well, which is precisely letting the Spirit pray in us: charisms and “enthusiasm” are an expression of this and are in their right place when they are referred to it. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit manifests itself as a unique type of divine person, which acts and speaks in and through others. The paper contends that this economical specificity needs to be re-elaborated on the level of the immanent Trinity in a novel way: the divine names of Ruah and Pneuma allow us to conceive the Spirit as the most intimate Breath which the Father breathes (spires) into the depths of the Son.

Authority in Absence? Shi‘i Politics of Salvation from the Classical Period to Modern Republicanism

Shi‘i Islam is often considered to be political per se because of its emergence historically as a movement with a strong position on authority and legitimacy in governance. This piece demonstrates how the politics of salvation in the tradition tie together one’s loyalty to the divine person of the Imam to one’s final destination, and how that relationship is complicated in the physical absence of the Imam. Such a politics guards against a sacralisation of everyday politics and recognises that sanctity arises from the person of the Imam and not the office of his delegate.

The Subject of Creatio Continua and Its Ecclesial Aspect

It is God who is the subject of creatio continua ; in Christianity it is a triune God. Fundamentally divine nature, Divine Persons: God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit, who in the logic of the internal life of the Trinity is third and in relation to the world the most direct. The personal specificity of the Third Divine Person predestines it to activity, creativity, to stirring creative power and action in created beings. The Holy Spirit develops and unites, creates the interior of the beings, combines them and strengthens the link with the Creator. This ongoing creation is encoded in the act of creation and is in keeping with the workings of Providence, which also is a creation of the Trinity, and indirectly a creation of people: individuals and societies. Participation in the act of creation stands in proportion to the growth in holiness, which means it is proportional to becoming a person. Created beings personalize themselves through participation in creatio continua , and by participating in this act, they personalize themselves. All this is implemented though the activity of the intellect, will and emotions. It is Jesus Christ in his capacity of God and man who occupies the centre stage of the ongoing creation.

The Will as Key to Christology

In the last decades naturalism, the view that everything works by complex natural processes, leaving free will an illusory phenomenon, has gained influence in the intellectual climate of the West. This article addresses this issue from an unusual angle: the almost forgotten debate about the will(s) of Christ. It shows that classic Christian theology, during the course of its development, has come to articulate a non-naturalistic view of human nature, by stating that the nature ‘assumed’ by the second divine person includes a proper human free will. Theologically this means that, pace mainstream modern and postmodern orthodox theology, even in Christology human nature cannot be a mere instrument of God and his will.

Otherwise than Identity, or Beyond Difference

This paper locates in the philosophy of Maximus the Confessor a remarkable concern for the temporality, finitude, and historicity of the human soul, that at once anticipates Heidegger’s “fundamental ontology,” but which is also capable of overcoming the limitations of philosophical nihilism. In taking up Heidegger’s claim that the recovery of ontology (and philosophy itself) depends upon the understanding of Being always in relation to its self-revelation in the finite and historical reality of human existence, it becomes clear that contemporary philosophical expression requires a “turning away” from the conceptual unity of finite beings and eternal Being, and a movement toward a radically subjective negativity. In contrast to his Neoplatonic forebears, Maximus presents a mode of thinking which is capable of surpassing Heideggerian negation, not through a denial of human particularity or finitude, but rather through a transformation of the very categories of Being and non-being themselves through his understanding of divine personhood. For Maximus such personhood is conceived of as transcending both Being and time, and yet without any loss of transcendence comes also to partake fully of both through the mystery of the Incarnation. According to Maximus, this radical event of be-coming forever transfigures the sphere of beings, bringing the historical into the transcendent, non-Being into Being, and death into life.

Schleiermacher’s Transcendental Reasoning: Toward a Feminist Affirmation of Divine Personhood

I suggest that it is beneficial for Christian feminist theologians to affirm divine personhood on the basis of the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Doing so allows feminist theologians to connect the doctrines of God and Christ within systematic theologies. Moreover, by affirming divine personhood in concert with an extension of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s transcendental reasoning about redemption, feminists could contribute to the disruption of sexist ecclesial belief and practice. I examine Schleiermacher’s account and rejection of Nazareanism, Manicheanism, Pelagianism, and Docetism, inferring from them four marks of personhood as conditions for the possibility of redemption. These include the communicability of difference, material activity, differentiated relationality, and discerning attention with circumscribed ineffability. In this way, I link feminist anthropologies with Christologically regulated soteriological claims vis-à-vis the doctrine of God.

Difficulties in Defining the Concept of God: Kierkegaard in Dialogue with Levinas, Buber, and Rosenzweig

This article investigates difficulties in defining the concept of God by focusing on the question of what it means to understand God as a ‘person.’ This question is explored with respect to the work of Soren Kierkegaard, in dialogue with Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinas. Thereby, the following three questions regarding divine ‘personhood’ come into view: First, how can God be a partner of dialogue if he at the same time remains unknown and unthinkable, a limit-concept of understanding? Second, if God is love in person and at the same time a spiritual reality ‘between’ human agents, in what ways are his personal and trans-personal traits related to each other? Third, what exactly is revealed through God’s ‘name’? By way of an inconclusive conclusion, divine personhood is discussed in regard to prayer, where the problems of predication that arise in third-personal speech about God are linked with the second-personal encounter with God.

„Duch Páně je nade mnou.“ Základní prvky teologie a praxe duchovního vedení

The article introduces spiritual direction in relation to the mystery of the Trinity. Based on the existing terminology (direction, fatherhood and support), it distinguishes three basic dimensions of spiritual direction, defined according to their relation to the three divine Persons. It concerns the charisma of direction, discernment and fatherhood, which enables the Holy Spirit to work via spiritual director on the guided in order to become the follower of Jesus Christ in a more radical way, to resemble Christ and to be united with him. The relation with the persons of God determines also the requirements to the guided person (modesty, trust and good judgement) and to the director (knowledge, experience and prudence). This theological concept is complemented with anthropological observations: the author offers his own model for spiritual direction (with the personal and temporal structure of human being, the instances of censor and mirror and the dynamics of thoughts and Word), suggests the interaction between the guide and the guided and criticises the itineraries of spiritual development.

God and eternal boredom

AbstractGod is thought to be eternal. Does this mean that he is timeless? Or is he, rather, omnitemporal? In this article we argue that God cannot be omnitemporal. Our starting point, which we take from Bernard Williams's article on the Makropulos Case, is the intuition that it is inappropriate for persons not to become bored after a sufficiently long sequence of time has passed. If Williams is right, then it follows that, if God were omnitemporal, he would suffer from boredom. But God is the greatest possible being and therefore cannot be bored. God, hence, is not omnitemporal. After the presentation of our argument, we address several objections by examining possible differences between human and divine persons.

God’s Relation to Evil: Maritain and Balthasar on Divine Impassibility

Comparing Jacques Maritain and Hans Urs von Balthasar on God’s relation to evil from the perspective of divine impassibility, I argue that Maritain’s usage of metaphorical analogy is more coherent than Balthasar’s theory of trinitarian ur-kenosis precisely because of his understanding of divine permission, according to which God merely ‘suffers’ the creature’s free initiative of moral evil. It is therefore unclear why one must affirm an original analogue of creaturely suffering that is constitutive of God’s immanent identity rather than, simply, the free kenotic tendency of the divine Son to incarnate the affectivity common to the three divine persons.