Theos, Cosmos and Anthropos: Trinity, Incarnation and ...aejt.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/395190/AEJT_6.7_Curnow.pdf · Trinity, Incarnation and Creation in the Framework of

Australian eJournal of Theology 6 (February 2006)

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Theos, Cosmos and Anthropos:

Trinity, Incarnation and Creation in the Framework of

Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandric Vision1

Rohan Curnow

Abstract: This article is an exploration of Raimon Panikkar’s notion of human time-

consciousness.2 Accordingly, the focus of this article is the triune God, the cosmos, and

humanity’s position within it. The first section below outlines the hermeneutic

perspective of this article, the framework developed by Raimon Panikkar. Thence, in the

second tranche, the theological significance of this schema is explored using the

doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Some of these connexions are elaborated

upon in the conclusion to this article.

Key Words: Raimon Panikkar; Cosmotheandric Vision; time-consciousness; Trinity;

Incarnation; cosmos as creation; relationality

STAGES IN HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE COSMOTHEANDRIC VISION

aimon Panikkar writes in The Cosmotheandric Experience: “I am offering a synthesis

which not only remains open but which allows and even calls for differing

interpretations.”3 Panikkar’s work is relevant to this article because it provides an

approach to the question of how humanity has, over time, viewed its relationship with the

divine and the cosmos. It is—with respect to God, humanity and the cosmos—an outline

of three fundamental attitudes apparent in the unfolding of human consciousness. The

synthesis Panikkar writes of is his perception of “the Threefold Structure of Human Time-

Consciousness.”4 This structure consists of the following moments: (a) ecumenic or

nonhistorical, (b) economic or historical, and (c) catholic (universal) or transhistorical.5 It

must be stressed that these three moments of consciousness “exist in most any [sic] given

1 This article began its life a lengthy research project, written after my first two years of theological study. It is essentially an experiment in which I set the theories of Raimon Panikkar and Rupert Sheldrake in relation to one another and sought any possible interesting conclusions. Whilst I would go about the theological task somewhat differently now, there may be something of interest in this work for those interested in eco-theology or Panikkar’s thought.

2 Raimon Panikkar, The Cosmotheandric Experience: Emerging Religious Consciousness (New York: Orbis 1993). It also experiments with Rupert Sheldrake’s notion of formative causation; see Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (London: Blond and Briggs, 1981).

3 Panikkar, The Cosmotheandric Experience, 15.

4 Ibid, 79.

5 Ibid, 24, 32, 46, 80.

AEJT 6 (February 2006) Curnow / Theos, Cosmos and Anthropos

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situation ... it is at once a question of emphasis ... and of boundaries.”6 They represent three

ways of being human, “Because consciousness defines Man.”7 The moments of awareness

are not to be understood simply in an historical, evolutionary manner, but as levels of

pervading individual and cultural awareness.

The Ecumenic Moment

In periods where the ecumenic moment dominates, we find “Man of Nature.”8 That is, in

the ecumenic moment of consciousness, “Nature, Man and the divine are still amorphously

mixed and only vaguely differentiated.”9 It existed extensively as the dominant moment up

until the invention and the spread of writing.10 In ecumenic or nonhistorical

consciousness, time is anthropocosmic; the distinction between Man and nature is not yet

made.11 Mankind is conscious of nature, but does not separate itself from her. Man still

shares the world with the gods. The gods have not been banished or made transcendent;

nature is mysterious and divine;12 the idea of a “collective enterprise different from what

nature does or separated from the rhythms of the cosmos makes no sense to pre-historical

Man.”13 Man relates to nature, fellow human beings, and the gods in much the same way.

Life is an active struggle, lived in the now, not postponed until the future. Resources are

used for the moment and not acquired as a means for political domination in the future.14

All reality struggles together; there is only a limited delineation among God, nature and

Man—and certainly no schism between the three realities. Delineation and classification,

however, are the focus of the economic moment.

The Economic Moment

The economic moment, or the historical consciousness of humanity, is characterised by

the rational-scientific “thrust toward the future ... our destiny is (in) the future.”15 In the

economic moment, a discipline must be rational to retain credibility; theology, ethics and

the natural sciences are all subjected to the criterion of reason. Reason comes to be

identified with the spirit,16 yet even spiritual fulfilment is something for the future. The

thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, read in a particular manner, can provide an

example of spiritual fulfilment being projected onto the future;17 the omega point is the

goal of the cosmos.18 Within the historical consciousness, there is a conviction that people

can be united with God only outside of space-time. As God is no longer immanent, union

6 Ibid, 47.

7 Ibid, 83. The term ‘Man,’ when used in this article, is used following Panikkar, to denote the androgynous human being. Panikkar, The Cosmotheandric Experience, 3 note.

8 Ibid, 24.


10 Ibid, 93.

11 Ibid, 95.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid, 96.

14 Ibid, 96-98.

15 Ibid, 100.

16 Ibid, 35.

17 Ibid, 46 note.

18 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Fontana Books, 1975), 294-299. The cosmos can have a goal without value being centred entirely upon it. The issue is not the existence of an eschaton, but the significance of the ‘end’ to the ‘present.’


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with God is not possible during an earthly lifetime. Hope must always be directed toward

a future beyond this life and this earth; the deliverance of humanity from mundane

surrounds is only possible when humanity can become fully transcendent. And it is only

when humanity is fully transcendent, that it can be united with a God believed to be

transcendent only. For historical consciousness, time is linear. It can thus be divided, recorded and

conquered. The method of argument by logical induction is typical of such consciousness:

what is known now can be projected onto the future, what is true now is true for eternity. According to the historical consciousness, everything can be categorised. The

scientific ‘divide and conquer’ mentality implies that the natural world is quantifiable, and

thus utilisable. Transcendence becomes the goal of the economic moment; time, space,

land, power, all have to be transcended.19 Nature is seen not as a partner in the struggle,

but as something against which humanity struggles. Francis Bacon’s claim that nature is

to be understood and then defeated is symptomatic of the economic moment. God is

banished from the cosmos and relegated to the position of watchmaker. “God has left the

world to the strivings of Men.”20 The notion of divine immanence is understood to be

inversely related to divine transcendence. As God cannot be seen or empirically verified,

God cannot be immanent, and nature becomes barren, subject to the dominance of Man.

Thus God-world dualism thrives during the economic moment of historical

consciousness.21 Copernicus removed the earth from the centre of the cosmos, yet humanity

remained at the centre.22 Man is the centre of the cosmos and humanisms abound.23 God is

gone, or dead, as Nietzsche claimed. All that remains is the rational anthropos. The

economic moment of human consciousness is the moment of anthropocentrism.24

The economic moment is exemplified in the philosophy of Plato. Martha Nussbaum

writes that, for Plato, “The need of human beings for philosophy is … deeply connected

with their exposure to … the element of human existence that humans do not control … the

elimination of this exposure is a primary task of the philosophical art.”25 The supreme

discipline of philosophy is the tool through which the uncontrollable events of the world

can be tamed by humanity. Plato’s Protagoras is devoted to explicating what Plato

believes to be the inversely proportional relationship between techne (craft, art or

19 Panikkar, The Cosmotheandric Experience, 101-102.

20 Ibid, 106.

21 Dualism, in contrast to duality, is a manifestation of the second moment of human time-consciousness. ‘God-world dualism’ may be defined as: the ontological claim that ‘God’ and ‘the world’ are related in a polar manner such that they are distinct and separate from each other. In an extreme form, such dualism construes ‘God’ and ‘the world’ as inversely related to each other, such that, wherever one is present, the other is necessarily absent. Kathryn Tanner refers to such a relationship as “contrastive.” Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 46-47. Tanner writes that “a God who ... transcends the world must not be characterised ... by a direct contrast with it.” She continues: “A contrastive definition will show its failure to follow through consistently on divine transcendence by inevitably bringing God down to the level of the non-divine to which it is opposed.” God and Creation, 46. An example of such a dualism is the God of the deists in which God is understood to be within space-time as an initial cause thence absent from the ‘clockwork’ cosmos.


23 Ibid.

24 Anthropocentrism is elaborated upon below.

25 Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 89-90.


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science) and tuche (element of human existence not controlled by humans).26 Plato

believes that science can and should remove contingency from human life.27 All that exists

can be known and should be controlled by humanity. This is a clear expression of

Panikkar’s second moment of human time-consciousness. Panikkar notes that there is an ecological interlude annexed to the economic

moment.28 It is an interlude in which the desire to know everything is still present, but into

this knowledge falls an awareness of the interconnectedness of all things. In the ecological

interlude, Man becomes aware that if the life of the earth is threatened, humanity is also

threatened. However, such ecological sensitivity may prove more dangerous than no

awareness at all. Ecological sensitivity “arises when Man begins to discover that Nature is

not just infinite passivity and that this planet is a limited vessel.”29 This knowledge

typically results in a “tactical change: now our exploitation must be milder and more

reasonable” as “only treated in this way is the earth going to yield her fruits.”30 The

conclusions of enlightened anthropocentrism remain true to form: our behaviour ought

change because the earth must continue to provide resources for the benefit of humanity.

Thus it is a love of humanity’s own interests that motivates ecological awareness. For an integrated vision of reality, humanity’s intoxication with its own importance

will not suffice. Unless humanity realises it is a part of the cosmos, ecology31 as a

discipline seeking to protect the environment will fail in its aims. An integrated vision of

reality is the outcome of what Panikkar calls the catholic or transhistorical moment of

human consciousness.

The Catholic Moment

The catholic moment of human consciousness “maintain[s] the distinctions of the second

moment without forfeiting the unity of the first.”32 It is at a higher turn of the spiral, where

humanity does not regress to the first moment, but reawakens to the awareness of the

pervading presence of unity.33 Panikkar calls this experience of reality as differentiated

but unbroken “the cosmotheandric intuition,”34 that is, the realisation that “reality cannot

26 Ibid, 89-94.

27 Ibid, 91.


29 Ibid, 43.

30 Ibid.

31 “The term ecology was coined in 1866 by Ernst Haeckel. It derives from ... oikos ... and logos. Therefore ecology means the study of the conditions and relations that make up the habitat of each and every person and, indeed, organism in nature.” According to Haeckel’s definition, “Ecology is the study of the interdependence and interaction of living organisms (animals and plants) and their environment (inanimate matter).” See Leonardo Boff, Ecology and Liberation: A New Paradigm (New York: Orbis Books, 1998), 9.


33 The ‘catholic’ moment of time-awareness accommodates the concerns of Neil Darragh expressed in chapter one of At Home in the Earth: Seeking an Earth-Centred Spirituality ( Auckland: Accent Publications, 2000). The third moment of human time-consciousness is at one time aware that primitive, scientific, and holistic spiritualities are non-linear in their development. Moreover, the third moment of human time-awareness stresses that the interests of God, cosmos, and anthropos do not need to ‘compete’ with each other for importance. A single spirituality can be theocentric, cosmocentric and consider the place of humanity within creation.



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be reduced to a single principle,” and that reality itself has a fundamentally tripartite

structure—freedom/transcendence, consciousness and matter/energy.35 Rather than simply remembering the past as the nonhistorical consciousness is

compelled to do, and rather than projecting the past onto the future as is the wont of the

historical consciousness, the transhistorical consciousness lives the future and the past in

terms of the present.36 All things are intrinsically inter-related. Transhistorical

consciousness is aware that a union with God within space-time is possible. The wisdom of mystics is ratified by the catholic moment. What is true for

transhistorical consciousness is to be found in every instant of time, not by an act of the

intellect, but by acknowledging the limits of rationality. As Rahner writes, meaning for

humanity is, in its fullness, incomprehensible.37 In the transhistorical consciousness, hierarchies collapse, everything becomes itself,

everything is linked and all of creation has a specific role to play in the cosmos. Humans

could not exist without vegetation, yet humans themselves cannot fulfil the role of plant

life. Everything must be allowed to be itself most fully. In the transhistorical

consciousness the divine dimension of nature is rediscovered, while humanity, made in

the image of God, is seen not to eclipse the rest of creation. The catholic moment—which

Panikkar refers to as “mystical awareness,”—relies on the insights of the ecumenic and

economic moments.38 Unity and particularity are unified in the catholic moment, offering

an holistic form of cultural awareness.

Time-Consciousness and a Christian Understanding of History

A Christian scholar reading the above analysis of human time-consciousness may hesitate

to accept the concept of the catholic moment of time-consciousness. If understood in a

linear fashion, the catholic moment may appear to compromise the traditional Christian

understanding of time in which, post-Pentecost, nothing other than the return of the Christ

is anticipated as a possible new stage in the development of the cosmos. However, purely

linear understandings themselves are characteristic of the second moment of time-

consciousness, and Panikkar wishes to promote the ability to transcend such

understandings. It must be stressed that the moments “are three modes of consciousness

which are neither mutually exclusive nor dialectically opposed, but kairologically

related.”39 In the fullness of time, not at any time in particular, within individuals as well as

within cultures as a whole, humanity will become more aware of the divine in all things,

awakening to the cosmotheandric experience. This excludes the possibility of understanding Panikkar in a ‘millennarian’40 sense.

Whether as a cargo cult, or as a three-stage history, millennarian thought postpones any

form of fulfilment until the ‘fullness of the future,’ which it claims is imminent. For

millennarists, it is impossible to find ultimate meaning in the universe as it now exists.

Millennarists delay indefinitely the finding of any means to better the status of this world,

opting either to wait for the new age or to engage in radical campaigns to precipitate the

35 Ibid, 121.

36 Ibid, 127.

37 Karl Rahner, “The Mystery of the Human Person,” in The Content of Faith, eds K. Lehmann, A. Raffelt and H. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 80.


39 Ibid, 80.

40 The word is used here in the sense it is applied in cultural anthropology.


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end of history.41 Panikkar, however, is writing of the hope of improving this world now,

through changes in people and societies.

TRINITY, INCARNATION AND COSMOS

In this section of this article, it is posited that an understanding of the doctrine of the

Trinity can proffer a world-view that is congruent with modern cosmology—unified and

holistic—yet is still able to assert the significance of each part of creation. That is, the

Trinity grounds a cosmology that reconciles with Panikkar’s catholic moment of time-

awareness. Raimon Panikkar, in The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, suggests

that the Holy Trinity can be understood as God above, through, and in all.42 Following this

approach, it can be asserted that the doctrine of the Trinity can challenge God-world

dualism because of the manner in which divine transcendence and divine immanence are

attributed to the Persons of the Trinity. In addition to this more traditional challenge to

God-world dualism—an artefact of the second moment of time-awareness—possible

theological consequences of the work of the holistic biologist Rupert Sheldrake are

explored. These consequences relate closely to the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is

further explored how a Trinitarian understanding of creation can lead to a vision of the

cosmos that does not hold Man to be the acme of creation. In other words, the doctrine of

the Trinity implies a cosmology that is non-anthropocentric. A Trinitarian cosmology is

held to be consonant with the cosmology of Panikkar’s third moment of human time-

consciousness, namely, one that presents a cosmos based upon relationality and unity in

difference: a unified vision of the God-world relationship and a non-anthropocentric

perspective of the cosmos.

Trinity and Relation: Difference in Unity

The notion of a unified and interrelated cosmos has a solid basis in the Christian

theological tradition. For Edwards, the Christian basis of an understanding of reality as

both differentiated and unbroken is derived from an understanding of God as Trinity. As

Edwards writes, “Once the nature of God is understood as relational, then this suggests

that the fundamental nature of all reality is relational.”43 An understanding of God as

Trinity allows reality to be seen as differentiated, yet still unified. Relation is possible only when difference is genuine—relationships signal

difference. Some mystical monistic traditions suggest that particularity is either a

falsehood, or is somehow less ‘real’ than the underlying whole. In a monistic cosmos,

without authentic differentiation among the parts of creation, and without any actual

distinction between creator and creature, there is no real possibility of either relation or

communion. It is in this manner that an understanding of the Trinity is able to provide an

alternative to monism. For unity and relation, and therefore difference, are central to any

understanding of the nature of the Holy Trinity.

41 See Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (London: Temple Smith, 1970), 109, for a discussion regarding revolutionary Marxists, the Third Reich and Comte, having been derived from a mystical form of millennarianism.

42 Raimon Panikkar, The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man: Icon–Person–Mystery (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973), 68.

43 Denis Edwards, The God of Evolution: A Trinitarian Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 26.


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The doctrine of the Trinity highlights both unity and otherness. Elizabeth Johnson

writes of “the mystery of distinction that ... abides in relationship at the heart of God.”44

Johnson is acutely aware that, within the Trinity, the integrity of the other remains

thoroughly preserved without compromising unity. This is clear in both the traditional

understanding of Trinitarian doctrine and in contemporary interpretations of that

doctrine. A precise understanding of the relationality and oneness of God is present in the

Scholastic understanding of the Holy Trinity. Within the Trinity, Scholastic theology

discerns: one nature; two processions; three persons; four relationships; and, five

notions.45 For Catherine Mowry LaCugna such expressions of Trinitarian doctrine do little

to illuminate the mystery: to the 5-4-3-2-1 formula she adds Bernard Lonergan’s quip,

“And zero comprehension.”46 It is not the purpose of the 5-4-3-2-1 mnemonic device,

however, to draw out the implications and scope of the doctrine of the Trinity. What the

formulation does do is to express the Christian belief that the divine Persons are

differentiated and yet still remain of a single nature. A contemporary understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity also assures the

legitimacy of the affirmation that God is one and yet differentiated.47 According to Mark

McIntosh, “The unity of the Trinity is infinite unity; it does not need to convert what is

other to the same in order to embrace the other.”48 Referring to Simone Weil’s thought,

McIntosh continues:

God is constituted by the unity that holds the Trinitarian persons together and equally by the outgoing love of that very unity—which allows the Trinitarian persons to be truly other to each other, to be other in a kind of infinite act of ‘othering.’49

For McIntosh, God is God because of both the unity that binds the persons of the Trinity,

and the outgoing love that defines the persons of the Trinity. For love to be love it must be

given—directed outward—toward that which is other. Concurrently, the love given by the

three persons is not three kinds of love, but one love—it is always given absolutely. In

God, there is never anything not given, there is no remainder from love, there is true

oneness. Within orthodox Christianity, God is understood to be Trinitarian, both three and

one. From a Christian viewpoint, therefore, existence is understood to be rooted in an

ultimate reality that is both infinite unity and authentic difference.

Trinity and the God-World Relationship

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity suggests a cosmology which might be termed

panentheistic;50 “God dwells in his creation, and his creation in him.”51 Trinitarian thinking

44 Elizabeth Johnson, “Trinity: To Let the Symbol Sing Again,” Theology Today, 54.3 (1997): 305.

45 As cited in Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society, 97.

46 Catherine LaCugna, “The Trinitarian Mystery of God,” Systematic Theology: Roman Catholic Perspectives, eds F. Schussler Fiorenza and J. Galvin (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1992), 153.

47 Many contemporary authors could be cited here. David Cunningham, Denis Edwards, Elizabeth Johnson, Mark McIntosh and Raimon Panikkar are authors whose relevance is certain. These authors use varying terminology to refer to God’s being as unity and distinction. Cunningham, in These Three are One, adopts the terms ‘oneness’ and ‘difference’. Denis Edwards, in The God of Evolution, uses ‘transcendence’ and ‘mutual friendship’. Johnson, in She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1995), focuses upon ‘She who is’ and ‘mutual relations’. McIntosh, in Mystical Theology, discusses ‘unity’ and ‘the other’. Panikkar, in The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, opts for ‘He/She/It’ and ‘I-thou’.

48 McIntosh, Mystical Theology, 236.

49 Ibid, 237. Italics McIntosh’s own.


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is able to stress such a cosmology because of the differing roles played by the Persons of

the Trinity. Panikkar evokes the Trinitarian imagery of Ephesians 4:6: God above all; God

through all; and God in all.52 God above all, the Source, allows the transcendence of God to

be asserted. God through all, the Son, is God bound so tightly with creation that, through

the Incarnation, God becomes part of the creation. God in all, the Holy Spirit, enables a

stress upon God’s immanence to be articulated. Kathryn Tanner writes: “The Christian

theologian ... needs to radicalise claims about God’s transcendence and involvement with

the world if the two are to work for rather than against one another.”53 Below it is

suggested how the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, itself the radical claim that ‘three are one,’

may accommodate such claims. The Father is God above all. According to Panikkar, “The Father has no being,”54 God

is beyond being. That God transcends the order he created has always been a central

feature of Christian theology. Of the Father, in post-Nicene Greek theology, Catherine

LaCugna notes that he is “the unoriginate origin, source, and principle of Godhead (fons et

origo divinitatis).”55 God the Father’s transcendence is so complete that patripassianism is

understood as a heresy: the Father does not suffer.56 Of the Father Marius Victorinus

writes:

It is the One without existence, without substance, without knowledge—for it is above all that—infinite, invisible, wholly indiscernible for every other, both for those within it and those which are after it, even those which come from it; for it alone is distinguished and defined only by its own existence, not by act so that its own constitution and self-knowledge are not something different from it; ... without form, lacking all forms, and yet not being that form itself by which all things are formed.57

Simply, Panikkar notes: “The source of being is not being. If it were, how could it be its

source?”58 The Father’s transcendence is taken by Christians as axiomatic. The Son is God through all of creation. An understanding of the Son as being

through creation is closely tied to spirituality. For Mark McIntosh, “The very structure of

Christian spirituality points to all that Christians are trying to say about God when they

confess the doctrine of the Trinity.”59 That is to say:

Christian ‘spirituality’ is really the communal pattern of life by which Jesus’ followers are drawn ever more deeply into his [Jesus’] own ‘encounter with the other;’

50 Panentheism is not Pantheism. Pantheism compromises divine transcendence, equating God with the created order. Panentheism merely stresses the notion of omnipresence by asserting that ‘everything is in God’. Panentheism does not deny the notion of divine transcendence. Denis Edwards writes: “Creation takes place and flourishes within the divine life ... the ‘place’ of the universe is within God.” Edwards also notes, following von Balthasar, that “our play, the drama of creation and redemption, plays within the larger play of the divine life.” The God of Evolution, 30-31. Understanding Edwards on this point allows panentheism to be viewed as the claim that, because the economic Trinity acts in creation, and creation takes place within the divine life, the economy itself is in some sense ‘inside’ the immanent Trinity.

51 John O’Donnell, “The Trinitarian Panentheism of Sergej Bulgakov,” Gregorianum 76.1 (1995): 40.

52 Panikkar, The Trinity, 68.

53 Tanner, God and Creation, 46.


55 LaCugna, “The Trinittarian Mystery of God,” 168.

56 O’Collins and Farrugia, A Concise Dictionary of Theology, 175. God as God cannot suffer. However, because of the union of divine and human natures in Christ, Christ can be said to have suffered upon the Cross.

57 Marius Victorinus, Theological Treatises on the Trinity, trans. M. T. Clark (Washington: CUA Press, 1981), 171-172.




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spirituality, in other words, is the activity of being led by the Spirit into Christ’s relationship with the Father.60

McIntosh is suggesting a particular spirituality in which the Son is the paradigm for

humanity’s mode of relation with ultimate reality. Those who adopt a position of God-world dualism must account for the significance

of the Incarnation, for, as incarnate, the Son became part of the world. Furthermore, the

Son did not cease to be present in the universe after he ascended into heaven. As Panikkar

observes, “The ‘incarnation’ of God [does not] mean exclusive ‘hominisation’ in a single

individual ... the entire reality is committed to the same unique adventure.”61 This point is

also brought out in McIntosh’s definition of “the communal pattern of life,” according to

which Jesus’ followers are being “led by the Spirit into Christ’s relationship with the

Father.”62 Christian spirituality includes more than a single individual in the adventure of

the Incarnation.63 As McIntosh expresses it, the “consummation of [one’s] personal

identity is to become free of all that prevents [one] from sharing by adoption and grace in

the eternal Sonship.”64 It is by sharing Christ’s relationship with the Father that

humankind can participate in the love and life of God. “Nobody comes to the Father except

through me [the Son]” (Jn 14:6). With this pattern of the Christian life in mind, we may find that a useful conceptual

tool for interpreting the concept of ‘sharing in the eternal Sonship’ is provided by the

scientist Rupert Sheldrake.65 Sheldrake has developed the concept of ‘formative causation’

to explain the method by which organisms are organised.66 An understanding of the

significance of Christ as presented by McIntosh, read in the light of the hypothesis of

formative causation developed by Sheldrake, helps to illustrate how an understanding of

the Incarnation can challenge a dualistic notion of the God-world relationship. Prima facie, it may appear that an understanding of the Incarnation would only be

able to challenge the belief that humanity and divinity are mutually exclusive realities.

Thomas Berry argues against anthropocentrism, and points to the limits of

anthropocentrism. He notes that to pursue the needs of the human community as a

discrete entity is to pursue illusory ends:

There is no such thing as ‘human community’ without the earth and the soil and the air and the water and all the living forms. Without these, humans do not exist. There is, therefore, no separate human community. Humans are woven into this larger community. The large community is the sacred community.67 Humanity is part of the world. We are composed, in part, of matter. In Aquinas’

terminology, we are an enfleshed soul. Being surrounded by matter is not testament to

some state of temporary exile from our true condition. We are not merely on the earth,

but are also of and from the earth. And this will, in some sense, always be as Rahner’s

musings on the Ascension indicate: “we Christians are … the most sublime of

60 Ibid. Italics McIntosh’s own.


62 McIntosh,Mystical Theology, 152. Italics McIntosh’s own.

63 O’Collins and Farrugia write: “Already created in God’s image and likeness ... human beings are called by grace to share in the divine life.” A Concise Dictionary of Theology, 53.


65 There are obviously many ways in which ‘sharing in the Sonship’ and ‘God through all’ can be interpreted. This is but one of them.

66 Rupert Sheldrake developed this theory in a scientific manner in A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (London: Blond and Briggs, 1981).

67 Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), 43.


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materialists.”68 If, when incarnate, God became fully and truly human, then concurrently,

God became fully and truly part of the world. The intimate relationship of humanity and

divinity necessarily connotes the intimate relationship of the universe and divinity. This

must be kept in mind in reading the reflections based on Sheldrake that follow. Formative causation, according to Sheldrake, relies upon the notions of ‘morphic

resonance’ and ‘morphic fields.’69 A morphic field is “a field within and around ... a form of

organisation, such as an atom ... animal ... pattern of instinctive behaviour ... element of

culture ... ecosystem ... or galaxy” which organises the structure and pattern of activity of

the form of organisation.70 Morphic fields are shaped and stabilised by morphic

resonance.71 Morphic resonance is “the influence of previous structures of activity on

subsequent similar structures of activity organised by morphic fields.”72 Formative

causation, claims Sheldrake, is the hypothesis that “organisms or morphic units at all

levels of complexity are organised by morphic fields, which are themselves influenced and

stabilised by morphic resonance from all previous similar morphic units.”73 Sheldrake is

suggesting a system which, although unable to explain the coming into being of any

particular morphic field, is capable of explaining the effect of units in history upon current

samples. Although formative causation theoretically applies to any form of organisation,

the relevance of the hypothesis to the present discussion is with reference to humankind. The explicit connection of the hypothesis of formative causation with the Christian

world-view is not Sheldrake’s own. It can be argued, however, that his theory can be

applied to good effect within a Christian framework. In this sense, the goal and task of the

Christian could be conceived as ‘tuning in’ to the ‘field’ reshaped by Christ. In his hypothesis, Sheldrake posits that morphic fields and morphic resonance

operate within the cosmos such that, once a specific unit has achieved something, it

becomes easier, indeed possible, for that accomplishment to be duplicated. According to

Sheldrake’s theory, it could be proposed that, if one believes in the Incarnation—Christ as

fully divine and fully human—then one accepts that 2000 years ago, with Jesus, the human

68 Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations 7, trans. D. Bourke (New York: Crossroad, 1971), 183. Rahner continues on page 183: “we have so to love our own physicality and the worldly environment appropriate to it that we cannot reconcile ourselves to conceiving of ourselves as existing to all eternity otherwise than with the material side of our natures enduring too in a state of final perfection.”

69 It is beyond the ambit of this article to discuss the merits of the theory of formative causation, it must be noted that there are arguments for and against the theory. Irrespective of the state of the scientific debate, the theological relevance of the notion is simply being explored here. See C. Keutzer, “The Theory of ‘Formative Causation’ and its Implications for Archetypes, Parallel Inventions, and the ‘Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon,’” The Journal of Mind and Behaviour, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Summer 1983): 353-367, and A. Mahlberg, “Evidence of Collective Memory: A Test of Sheldrake’s Theory,” Journal of Analytical Psychology, No. 32 (1987): 23-34, and M. Mishkind “A Test for Morphic Resonance in Behavioural Responses to Multiple Choice Stimuli,” Journal of Analytical Psychology 38 (1993): 257-271, and K. Wilber, “Sheldrake’s Theory of Morphogenesis,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 24. 2 (Spring 1984): 107-115, et al. To the contrary, see M. O’Hara, “Reflections on Sheldrake, Wilber, and ‘New Science,’” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 24. 2 (Spring 1984): 116-120. K. Wilber, in “Sheldrake’s Theory of Morphogenesis,” claims that Sheldrake is scientifically agnostic about the theory of ‘Formative Causation,’ 115. Sheldrake himself has assessed the situation as follows: The “hypothesis [of formative causation] is of course controversial and is still being tested ... most of the results so far point towards these effects [of formative causation] being real,” Rupert Sheldrake and Matthew Fox, Natural Grace: Dialogues on Science and Spirituality (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), 22.

70 Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (London: Collins, 1988), 371.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid, 368.


11

morphic field was extended and became able to accommodate divinity.74 Indeed, post-

Incarnation, the entire universe bears testimony to this fact.75 The morphic field to which

the human mind is attuned, and which it influences, has been permanently altered by the

birth, life, and death of Jesus the Christ. Thus, when Mary conceived Jesus she could also

be understood to have conceived the morphic field of theanthropia;76 in Jesus of

Nazareth’s death and resurrection, the morphic field of theanthropia was born. Because of

the existence of Jesus Christ, it is now possible for consciousness in the universe to share

in Christ’s relationship with the Father. This field has been reinforced over the last two

millennia by the actions and lives of the saints—living within the field of theanthropia. As St Paul writes, “In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5).

Christians seek, whilst remaining absolutely dependent upon the grace of the Father, to

align their own minds with the mind of the Christ, which is present in our day in the

morphic field of theanthropia. Indeed Christians are destined “for adoption as [the

Father’s] children, through Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:5). In this fashion it becomes possible for

humanity to dwell in the being of God, and for God to dwell within humanity: Christ is in

the being of the Father and humanity in the Son and the Son in humanity (see Jn 14:20).77 This does not suggest that, by a law-like process, humanity is forced to Christ and

the Father without its consent.78 Humanity does not automatically participate in the field

of theanthropia. The Holy Spirit is always required to lead humanity to Christ. It is the

Spirit who offers the grace of the Father to humanity. John O’Donnell phrases it thus:

The Holy Spirit offers the divine life, won by the Son, to men and women” and “the Spirit awaits the free response of the creature and adapts himself to the limits of creaturely freedom.”79 Formative causation is not contrary to the reality of divine freedom. Nothing can explain the appearance of any morphic field for the very first time; a creative ‘jump’ is required that is “inevitably mysterious.”80 Although Sheldrake does not posit a direct connection between formative causation and Christian doctrine, he does note—suggestively—that formative causation is consistent with “causal efficacy of the conscious self, and the existence of … creative agencies immanent within nature, and the reality of a transcendent source of the universe.81

What the concept of theanthropia does suggest is that, because of the Incarnation, the

universe has been modified such that the deification of humanity is now possible. The

74 McIntosh’s thought can perhaps be said to be in consonance with such an idea when he writes “God and humanity [are] not mutually exclusive realities.” Mystical Theology, 188.

75 St Thomas Aquinas claims that the mystery of the Incarnation did not signal a change in God’s eternal existence, but indicated that the creature had been forever altered, united to God in a new way. Summa Theologiæ, IIIa. art. 1, ad 1. Again it must be recalled that humanity is part of the world. God united to humanity in a new way is consequently God united to the world in a new way. Moreover, wherever in the universe humanity ventures, theanthropia is present, and the whole universe has been altered.

76 The idea of theanthropia, or divine-humanity, was developed systematically by the Russian Orthodox theologian Sergej Bulgakov in a trilogy focussed upon divine-humanity: L’Agnello di Dio (Roma: Città Nuova, 1990); Il Paraclito (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1971); and La Sposa dell’Agnello (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1991). The term is used here to refer to the morphic field of humanity as modified when the Son became Incarnate. Christ, post-Incarnation, is both divine and human. For an outline of the traditional usage, see A Patristic Greek Lexikon, ed. G.W.H. Lampe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 615-616.

77 “On that day you will understand that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.”

78 Sheldrake does suggest that each person is subject to a self-resonance that is particular to themselves. The Presence of the Past, 220-221. The cumulative effect of a person’s past actions may ‘weigh’ upon future decisions made by a person. The notion of ‘habit’, in this sense, is discussed with respect to Christianity in the conclusion of this article.

79 O’Donnell, “The Trinitarian Panentheism of Sergej Bulgakov,” 36.

80 Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past, 321-322.

81 Sheldrake, A New Science of Life, 207.


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notion of theanthropia asserts that God and humanity, and ipso facto, God and the world,

are so closely involved with each other that to conceive of the two separately would be

incoherent.82 God the Holy Spirit is God in all of creation. God’s immanence in the cosmos is not

confined to the life-history of Jesus of Nazareth. The Holy Spirit is God immanent in the

entirety of space-time. God is more immanent to the creature than the creature is to

itself.83 To deny the immanence of God is to deny the reality of the Holy Spirit. Denis

Edwards writes that “the Spirit is the Life-Giver, the Interior Presence of the Divine, the

Power of Self-Transcendence, the Ecstatic Gift of Communion, who enables creatures to

exist and enables evolutionary emergence to occur.”84 Edwards stresses God’s immanence

by noting that the Father and the Son’s ecstasy are directed to what is God’s other, the

creature.85 In this vein also, José Comblin writes that “the Holy Spirit is sent to the entire

universe and since creation has been transforming it.”86 The Holy Spirit is understood to

fill the universe with the life of God. Leonardo Boff believes that “the Spirit has made the

cosmos a temple, the scene of the Spirit’s action and manifestation.”87 Because God

revealed himself to humanity as the triune God, humanity has the knowledge that God is

present in his Spirit to the entire creation. Even in his fullest immanence God remains truly transcendent: “Wherever the Spirit

is, there are the other Persons in the divine Communion that is the being of God ... the

Spirit always unites creatures in Christ, in communion with the one who is the Fountain

Fullness from which all things come.”88 From the perspective of what Panikkar calls transhistorical consciousness—his

third, catholic moment—neither immanence nor transcendence is superior. As Panikkar

elucidates in a description of cosmotheandric spirituality: “If I climb the highest mountain,

I’ll find God there, but likewise if I penetrate the depths of an apophatic Godhead I shall

find the World there ... in neither case have I left the heart of Man.”89 Panikkar is again

highlighting the fact that reality is irreducible in its trinitarian structure. God and the

world cannot be severed from each other. This is not to deny that creation was a free act

in which matter and space-time had their genesis. Rather, Panikkar is asserting that

a theist can certainly think of a God who does not require the existence of any creatures in order to be real, but this ‘God’ does not exist because the actual God, the God that in fact exists, is God with creatures. That God ‘can be’ (without creatures) is a phenomenological feature of God, not an ontological statement about ‘him.’90

As Nicholas of Cusa observes, “Divinity is in all things in such a way that all things are in

divinity.”91 The Father transcends creation, existing ‘above all’ being. The Son is God

82 As Panikkar suggests, cited below, taken from The Cosmotheandric Experience, 70. God is God in, of, and for the world.

83 As Panikkar notes, following Augustine, in The Cosmotheandric Experience, 68. Ruth Page argues for the notion of pansyntheism, or ‘everything with God’, in The Web of Creation (London: SCM Press, 1996), 40-52. This notion may not adequately address the Augustinian notion of immanence. God is not only with the energy of the cosmos, but the ‘ground’ where it ‘occurs’.

84 Edwards, The God of Evolution, 100.

85 Ibid, 96.

86 José Comblin, The Holy Spirit and Liberation (Tunbridge Wells: Burns and Oates, 1989), 75.

87 Boff, Ecology and Liberation, 49.

88 Edwards, The God of Evolution, 98.


90 Ibid, 70.

91 James Yockey, Meditations with Nicholas of Cusa (Santa Fe: Bear and Co., 1987), 28 note.


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‘through all’ of creation, so that creation may know its source. The Holy Spirit is God

immanent ‘in all’ creation, building the cosmos, offering grace, and ready to lead creation

through Christ to the Father. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity thus shows itself to be

incompatible with God-world dualism.

Trinity and Anthropocentrism

Apart from God-world dualism, as noted above, anthropocentrism is also an artefact of the

second moment of time awareness. Anthropocentrism, whether it is scientific or religious

in origin, gives “an exaggerated impression of human significance” and “concentrates

valuation so intensely on our species that intrinsic importance is drained away from the

rest of nature.”92 Reflecting on the doctrine of the trinity may also help to combat this

tendency. The Christian theological tradition long ago developed the idea that God’s

triunity is perceptible in creation. The concept that creation contains vestigia trinitatis, or

‘marks of the Trinity,’ was developed systematically by St Augustine.93 Augustine writes

that “the whole united Trinity is revealed to us in its works,”94 and “as we direct our gaze

at the creator by understanding the things that are made, we should recognise the Trinity,

whose mark appears in creation in a way that is fitting.”95 How the Trinity is observed to be present in creation differs according to the

perspective of any particular observer. For Augustine, it is principally the human mind

that offers an image, albeit an imperfect one, of the triune God.96 St Bonaventure,97 John

Calvin,98 and Johannes Kepler,99 however, consider the entire cosmos to show forth the

image of God.100 Edwards cites Bonaventure: “The First Principle created this perceptible

world as a means of self-revelation so that, like a mirror (speculum) or a footprint

(vestigium), it might lead the human being to love and praise God the artisan.”101 Calvin

writes that “in the whole architecture of His world God has given us clear evidence of His

eternal wisdom, goodness and power … He shows himself to us in some measure in his

work. The world is therefore rightly called the mirror of his divinity.”102 Kepler “saw in

92 John Haught, “Religious and Cosmic Homelessness: Some Environmental Implications,” Liberating Life: Contemporary Approaches to Ecological Theology, eds C. Birch, W. Eakin, and J. McDaniel (New York: Orbis Books, 1990), 159.

93 David Cunningham, These Three are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 90.

94 St Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, trans. H. Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1972), XI.24.

95 As cited in Cunningham, These Three are One, 91. Augustine De Trin. VI.10.12.

96 Augustine, The Trinity, X.12.19.

97 Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God, 101-110.

98 See Randall C. Zachman, “The Universe as the Living Image of God: Calvin’s Doctrine of Creation Reconsidered,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 61.4 (1997): 299-312.

99 See Johannes Kepler The Harmony of the World, trans. E. J. Aiton, A. M. Duncan, J. V. Field (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997). John North believes that the theme of the Trinity observable in the universe is very strong in Kepler’s Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; see The Fontana History of Astronomy and Cosmology (London: Fontana, 1994), 323.

100 As noted above, Panikkar’s scheme develops this notion further to suggest that not only humanity, but also reality itself has a Trinitarian structure – matter/energy, consciousness and transcendence/freedom.

101 Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God, 108. St. Bonaventure, The Breviloquium (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1963), II.11.2.

102 John Calvin, Commentaries: The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews and The First and Second Epistles of St Peter, trans. W. Johnston, eds D. Torrance and T. Torrance (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1963): Heb 11:3, 160.


14

the visible universe the symbolic image of the Trinity.”103 Indeed, for Kepler, God’s

purpose in creation “was to create the most beautiful and perfect world that would reflect

the divine image.”104 That Augustine, Bonaventure, Calvin, and Kepler see God’s image in varying

phenomena points to the cosmos and humanity as different images of the same God.

Indeed, it is fitting that the image of the infinite God is conveyed in many different

modes.105 It remains for humanity to “on the one hand … distinguish between the world

that we see and the God whose image it is, and, on the other hand, [be aware that] there

must be a similarity or analogy between the image and the God representing himself

therein.”106

It may be possible to discern images of the Trinity which are not literally threefold.

We know of God’s triunity because of divine revelation, not because of observation.

Augustine, Bonaventure, and Kepler perceived the image of God as itself tripartite. Yet as

Edwards has noted, it is because of God’s Trinitarian nature that communion is the

fundamental ontological category.107 God’s image thus need not be recognised in creation

only when a suitable triad is located, but God’s image is visible wherever there exists a

reality grounded in communion, that is, in Edward’s words, “Being-in-relation.”108 A central feature of the Trinitarian doctrine is the equality among Persons. “The

Three are radically equal to one another; none is in a position of superiority over the

others ... all imply one another, so that none of them can be understood in a position of

primacy over the others.”109 Such equality is necessary if communion and not substance is

the nature of the Trinity. If one Person were superior, that Person would be the ‘locus of

divinity.’ Equality among Persons ensures that the divine life is defined by mutual giving,

not by the substance of divinity. The biosphere can thus be an image of the Trinity, not because of any literal triad,

but because of the nature of the relationships within it. Although nothing in the cosmos

could ever perfectly mirror the communion that is the Trinity, the biosphere is

nonetheless a reality radically defined by interrelatedness. Cunningham speaks of

“individuality defined by ... mutual participation,”110 a claim that is true both of God, and of

the interaction of species within the biosphere. If a single species is accorded primacy to

such a degree that the needs of other species are disregarded, then the unity and integrity

of the entire biosphere may be compromised. The biosphere relies upon the existence of a

diverse number of species; to threaten diversity or difference is to threaten the whole.

Each species is particular and important—to threaten one may well jeopardise what God

plans in the evolution of the cosmos. Indeed, how many species contributed to the

evolution of Homo erectus?

103 “Kepler,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. C.C. Gillispie (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 307. Kepler likewise asserted that Man was created in the image of God.

104 Johannes Kepler The Harmony of the World, trans. E. J. Aiton, A. M. Duncan, J. V. Field (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997), xv.

105 See St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, Ia. q. 47, 1. trans, T. Gilby, “For he [God] brought things into existence so that his goodness might be communicated to creatures and re-enacted through them. And because one single creature was not enough, he produced many and diverse, so that what was wanting in one expression of the divine goodness might be supplied by another.”

106 Zachman, “The Universe as the Living Image of God,” 304.

107 Edwards, The God of Evolution, 26-27.

108 Ibid, 28.

109 Cunningham, These Three are One, 111-112.

110 Ibid, 160.


15

Humanity can never fully comprehend the mystery of the economic Trinity, nor the

dynamic of the immanent Trinity.111 Similarly, God’s plan for the evolution of the universe

remains beyond the grasp of humanity. We may never understand what role a particular

species may play in the evolution of the cosmos. Would a visitor to earth one and a half

million years ago have predicted that the bipedal ape roaming some areas of the small

blue planet was an ancestor of the Son of God incarnate?

Each function performed by a species in sustaining the biosphere is particular.

Within the biosphere, each species points to the existence of, and is in part defined by, its

very dependence upon another. For example, only species with chlorophyll can perform

photosynthesis, yet without such species, the delicate balance of the biosphere would be

forfeit—humanity along with all other species could not exist. To emphasise the

importance of a single component of creation over any other part is unwarranted. Human

existence relies firmly and absolutely upon the non-human creation, animate and

inanimate. Indeed as each person of the Trinity can be understood as pointing outward to

the other two members of the divine communion, each member of creation points to

everything else in the cosmos. Just as it is with the persons of the Trinity, so too each part

of the creation has a specific mission to fulfil. Thus both anthropocentrism and even an

un-Trinitarian christocentrism are called into question when reality is viewed from a

Trinitarian perspective. It is with humanity on earth as it is too with Christ in the Trinity:

each is unique within the relations by which they are constituted, but not superior to

them. Creation is, in the words Cunningham uses to describe God, “Relation without

remainder.”112

CONCLUSIONS

The ability to understand reality as differentiated and unbroken, in Christian thought is

mandated by the traditional understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. That God is

known to be of one nature, and still be three Persons, provides a vision of the universe in

which reality is both infinite unity and actual distinction. God-world dualism is thus alien

to a Trinitarian understanding of the universe. The Father is forever transcendent, the

Son is throughout the cosmos, and the Spirit “reaches the depths of everything” (1 Cor

2:11). The complexion of the biosphere—balance and interrelatedness—enables the

image of a God of mutual relations to be visible within creation. Each species is created by

God for a purpose known only to God. The very structure of the Holy Trinity guards

against anthropocentrism. Understanding the Trinity reinforces our understanding that

“Man is only Man with the sky above, the earth below, and his fellow beings all around.”113 Raimon Panikkar believes that humanity is now faced with the task of charting a

course between the “Scylla of dualism and the Charybdis of monism.”114 For Christians, it

has been shown in chapter four, that an understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity

is able to assist in such a task. Whilst ensuring a distinctly Christian concept of reality, the

doctrine of the Trinity is understandable in such a manner as to contest the validity of

111 As Boff writes, “Even revealed, the truth of the Trinity remains a mystery ever open to new efforts of human understanding, but finally an absolute mystery handed to us in freedom and love for our divinisation. This mystery is of the essence of the Trinity, and so will remain a mystery for all eternity.” Trinity and Society, 99.

112 Cunningham, These Three are One, 165.


114 Ibid, 121.


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both anthropocentrism and God-world dualism. This challenge is made while remaining

firmly open to the insights of science, in that a universe created by a triune God is

profound in its unity, yet permeated by interrelation. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity aids

in preventing the slide toward monism, as illustrated in chapter four, whilst at the same

time avoiding the pitfall of dualism and the anthropocentrism found in some Christian

understandings of creation.

Above, the Incarnation was interpreted in the light of Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesis

of formative causation and Mark McIntosh’s understanding of spiritual life in the Trinity.

This understanding of the Incarnation may also hold significant consequences for an

understanding of human action in the world. That is to say, Sheldrake’s work may hold

implications for a spiritually based moral stance. This is so particularly with respect to the

notion of habit, which Sheldrake discusses in his book The Presence of the Past: Morphic

Resonance and the Habits of Nature.A virtue is a habit of good behaviour.115 Good habits

make the virtues manifest. Our past helps us form habits, good and bad. Our past affects

us in this way because “we are more similar to ourselves in the past than we are to anyone

else; we are subject to a highly specific self-resonance from our own previous states.”116

Humans have more in common with their ‘old self’ than with anything else in the universe.

A virtuous person may find virtue progressively easier for the very reason that as time

passes, the weight of past actions accumulate and affect the decisions he or she makes in

the future. In the words of the moral theologian James Keenan, “We become what we

do.”117 In this fashion, the notion of formative causation may be relevant for studies of

morality. Our own resonance helps to shape the life we lead. If we consider theanthropia

and human action within theanthropia, resonance from an individual has a very significant

effect upon the actions he or she is likely to perform in the future.118 Each virtuous act

performed by an individual contributes to both an individual’s self-resonance, and to

theanthropia, helping to contextualise Christian virtue for both the individual concerned

and the whole of humanity. That is, all previously performed acts of virtue, individual and

collective, accumulate to shape theanthropia. If a person is to develop Christian virtues, he

or she must exercise free will and choose to emulate the life of Christ. But at all times it

must be recalled that a virtuous act is never performed without the grace of God. With

each act performed a person can contribute to, and be aided by, the already existing field

of theanthropia.119 It is within this framework, that David Cunningham’s concept of Trinitarian virtues

can be set. In his book These Three Are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology,

Cunningham developed an understanding of the Trinitarian virtues in terms of what he

calls polyphony, participation, and particularity.120 These Trinitarian virtues can be given

an ecological nuance.

115 O’Collins and Farrugia, A Concise Dictionary of Theology, 261.

116 Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past, 220-221.

117 James Keenan, Commandments of Compassion (Franklin: Sheed and Ward, 1999), 117.

118 Theanthropia is a universal phenomenon that all humanity contributes to. Understanding virtue in the light of formative causation also confirms the belief that the lives of contemplatives, as well as the sin of even one human, affects all of humanity.

119 The lives of the saints and all contemplatives are present to the universe in theanthropia. Likewise, the life of Christ is present to the universe in theanthropia.

120 Cunningham uses Bill Cavanaugh’s definition of a virtue, “The presence of God’s grace in the development of good habits.” These Three are One, 125.


17

Of polyphony, he writes, “Its chief attribute is simultaneous, non-excluding

difference: that is, more than one note is played at a time, and none of these notes is so

dominant that it renders another mute.”121 Cunningham continues, “Polyphony could

theoretically be either ‘harmonious’ or ‘dissonant’.”122 So too within creation: the needs of

species sometimes conflict, but the value of each species remains. This is an immutable

value because each species is created by, and lives in, an infinite God. Because the

Trinitarian virtue is polyphony rather than harmony, the inherent value of each species is

asserted. Participation, Cunningham’s second Trinitarian virtue, is a virtue that thwarts

attempts to understand anything as a discrete entity detached from everything else. This

virtue suggests that all reality inter-participates in such a manner that any attempt to

understand anything as independent will fail.123 In an ecological sense, this virtue

encourages humanity to awaken to the profound way in which our lives, collectively and

on a smaller scale, both rely upon and affect the lives of other species and members of

species. Thirdly, particularity is the virtue that stresses the importance of each member of

creation to the whole. The essence of particularity is that everything has a role to play.

This virtue can remind humanity that, despite interrelatedness and unity, there is a

particular task, ordained by God, that each species, and each member of a species, is to

perform. As manifested in an ecological sense, humanity would seek not to disrupt

unspoilt ecosystems, and would strive to establish an environment conducive to

polyphony and participation in modified ecosystems. These virtues, in the light of the concept of theanthropia, could be extensively

developed. Understanding the Trinity in this manner would then suggest a moral theology

that is capable of developing an ecological focus. If we broaden the scope of the

Trinitarian challenge to anthropocentrism and God-world dualism, then the development

of a Trinitarian theology of ecology that is grounded upon active co-operation with the

Holy Spirit in the biosphere may well result. Truly, the work of Cunningham, McIntosh,

and Sheldrake may suggest a new way in which the doctrine of the Trinity might allow the

completeness of the third moment of human time-awareness to emerge as action in the

world. As Panikkar notes, however, what remains “is for us to spell it out in our own

lives.”124

Author: Rohan Curnow teaches theology at the Canberra campus ofthe Australian Catholic

University. He has degrees from the ANU, ACU and CIS/SCD. He is due to commence doctoral

studies in the thought of Bernard Lonergan this year (2006).

121 Ibid, 128.

122 Ibid.

123 Ibid, 165.


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