The Many and the One

Yonghua Ge

doi:10.5771/9781793629111

Summary

How God relates to the world lies at the heart of the most intense debates in modern theology and philosophy. Movements of Nouvelle Théologie, process theology, radical orthodoxy, modern Trinitarian theology and postmodern theology (i.e. Jean-Luc Marion) all seek to reconsider God’s relation to the world as a corrective of what they perceive as problematic. Of particular significance is the recent revival of the theology of participation, as promoted by Radical Orthodoxy in UK and Hans Boersma in North America. Facing excessive secularism and fragmentation of the modern Western world, Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma resort to the pre-modern theology of participation as the way forward. Relying heavily on Platonism, however, their participatory theology, as critics pointed out, tends to compromise the intrinsic goodness of the creation. In this book, Ge proposes that a distinctively Christian theology of participation anchored in creatio ex nihilo, developed by Augustine and brought to the fore by Aquinas, provides a more promising solution which not only secures the unity of things in God but also the goodness of creaturely plurality.

Since participation in its origin is a solution to the problem of the One and the Many, Ge employs Gunton’s framework of the one and the many in his discussion of Augustine and Aquinas’s theologies of participation. By reshaping their concepts of participation in the light of the doctrine of creation, Ge argues, these thinkers have profoundly transformed the metaphysics of participation, making it finally more suitable for describing the unique relationship between God’s unity and creaturely plurality. This Christian metaphysics of participation is not only an advance on Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma, but also superior to competing theories of reality such as pluralism and reductionist physicalism. The book will also bring out implications for modern science-religion dialogues, the core of which concerns how God relates to the world.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2021
ISBN-Print: 978-1-7936-2910-4
ISBN-Online: 978-1-7936-2911-1
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 188
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. Table of Abbreviations No access
1. God and the World in Modern Debates No access
2. Participation in Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma No access
3. Outline of the Chapters No access
4. Notes No access
1. 1. Augustine’s Metaphysical Concept of Participation No access
  2. Creatio ex nihilo and Participation in Augustine No access
  3. Unity in Augustine’s Metaphysics of Participation No access
  4. Notes No access
2. 1. The Nature of Multiplicity in Augustine’s Thought No access
  2. Augustine on the Goodness of Matter (the Body) No access
  3. Goodness of Matter and Trinitarian Creation No access
  4. Notes No access
3. 1. Transcendence and Immanence in Greek Philosophy No access
  2. Transcendence in Augustine’s Thought No access
  3. Immanence in Augustine’s Thought No access
  4. The Immanence of God and the Relevance of the Cosmos No access
  5. Notes No access
1. 1. The Metaphysics of Creation and Participation in Aquinas No access
  2. The Concept of Unity in Aquinas’s Participatory Ontology No access
  3. Notes No access
2. 1. The Nature of Multiplicity in Aquinas’s Thought No access
  2. The Derivation of the Many from the One No access
  3. Notes No access
3. 1. Relationship in Aquinas’s Metaphysic of Creation No access
  2. Transcendence and Immanence in Aquinas’s Thought No access
  3. The Implications of Radical Transcendence No access
  4. The Implications of Radical Immanence No access
  5. Notes No access
1. Notes No access
Bibliography No access Pages 169 - 182
Index No access Pages 183 - 186
About the Author No access Pages 187 - 188