The Promise of Renewal by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ATF Press Publishing Group

A Renewed Psychological Analogy: Observations

It is certainly true that trinitarian theology can no longer be static and theoretical with its categories derived from metaphysics as it was in the era of neo-scholasticism. To be meaningful today it must be dynamic and methodological with its categories derived from interiority and history. A renewed psychological analogy will take the experience of human knowing and loving in its entire historical context seriously. Today’s historical context includes religious diversity; ecological concerns; liberation movements related to class, race and gender; post-modernity and post-Christianity; economic disparities; and rapid technological advancements. New questions arise from this context that require new language and concepts beyond those contained in scripture or patristic sources.

The distinction between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity corresponds to different methodological starting points, whether the via doctrinae or the via inventionis. The distinction is conceptual and not ontological and should not be opposed to one another. The immanent Trinity conditions our reflection on the economic Trinity and vice versa. To privilege one over the other would be to oppose data and understanding. The economic Trinity is, with qualification, the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity joined to created external terms. A ‘higher’ and ‘harmonious’ synthesis found in a renewed psychological analogy seems to correspond to the via doctrinae, presupposing the via inventionis, as in the case of Aquinas, but actually begins with the subjective experience of salvific grace as the starting point for the analogy.

A renewed psychological analogy does not claim to be the only correct analogy but, to cite Neil Ormerod, is perhaps simply not ‘the worst analogy’.71 The aim of the analogy, like systematic theology, is not to ‘increase certitude’ or ‘establish fact’ but to offer an analogical, hypothetical and imperfect understanding of the mysteries of faith as they relate to one another.72 The psychological analogy will function as a higher synthesis not only to understand the various data of the past but equally to integrate the varied meanings of the mystery of the consubstantial unity of the three divine persons. It will speak to a conception of person that is constituted by relationship. Thus, far from neglecting the category of ‘relatedness’ of or ‘relationality’ in the Trinity a renewed psychological analogy confirms eternal and incommunicable relationality as constitutive of the Godhead.

A final observation is that relatedness/relationality not only refers to the movement of God-for-us but also to the relational movement of us-for-God. The renewed psychological analogy that Doran proposes, not only affirms the vestiges of the Trinity in all creation but that God’s very image is imprinted in the human capability to love and to know through the gift of the Spirit given in interiority and history. This gift enables human imitation of and participation in the divine relations by grace and through freedom. A renewed analogy includes the explanatory account of God’s consubstantial tri-unity of Augustine and Aquinas’ analogies to include an account of the actual experience of salvation and the salvific possibilities of the historical growth into the divine image by grace.

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