Reflections on Nondual Christianity
- Thread starter Thomas
- Start date
The Trinity and nondualism
There is a pivotal moment when the Fathers intuit that Creation is not a procession from God in the sense of a 'Big Bang' moment and from then on in an unspecified period of temporal duration. Nor is it a procession in an emanationist sense, as per certain readings of Neoplatonism, with God Most High in some distant Empyrean heaven and creation as a hierarchical succession of stratified beings, from the highest angels (just about all spirit and minimum matter) to the lowest mineral states (just about all matter with minimum spirit).
Rather, they saw in the Trinity the idea of the Divine as located throughout reality, the divine is present in and to all things everywhere because the divine is 'all in all':
"One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in (you) all." (Ephesians 4:6)
"And, when all things have been subordinated to him, then will the Son himself also be subordinated to the one who has subordinated all things to him, so that God may be all in all." (1 Corinthians 15:28)
Creation is a theophany, not something set in motion and then left to run in a deistic sense, but a dynamic mode of qualified being.
In the Trinity God (Father) is absolutely transcendent and God (Holy Spirit) is utterly Immanent. The Spirit is the presence of God participating in life, and humans participate in the Spirit and thus in God.
Being human is a calling to participate ever more fully in the Divine (Genesis 1:26), ever more fully in the Infinite, a journey onward, towards that which has no end.
Human life, our lives, are a temporal play of the divine being made visible in our lives of yearning and seeking more in our spirit, because we are also sharing in the eternal play of the divine, of the invisible being made visible in creation, and the in myriad logoi of all things being sought out by the Spirit.
The Imminent or Theological Trinity (Divine Essence), that is the eternal perichoreisis (Gk peri, 'around' and chōreō 'to go', 'to contain', 'to make room'), the mutual indwelling of the Three Persons, and the Economic Trinity (Divine Energies) are the one Trinity, either one is neither a diminishment nor a distancing from the other.
It is that to which we are called, to participate in and to savour or, as some schools of Hindu philosophy have it, सच्चिदानन्द SatCitAnanda.
There is a pivotal moment when the Fathers intuit that Creation is not a procession from God in the sense of a 'Big Bang' moment and from then on in an unspecified period of temporal duration. Nor is it a procession in an emanationist sense, as per certain readings of Neoplatonism, with God Most High in some distant Empyrean heaven and creation as a hierarchical succession of stratified beings, from the highest angels (just about all spirit and minimum matter) to the lowest mineral states (just about all matter with minimum spirit).
Rather, they saw in the Trinity the idea of the Divine as located throughout reality, the divine is present in and to all things everywhere because the divine is 'all in all':
"One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in (you) all." (Ephesians 4:6)
"And, when all things have been subordinated to him, then will the Son himself also be subordinated to the one who has subordinated all things to him, so that God may be all in all." (1 Corinthians 15:28)
Creation is a theophany, not something set in motion and then left to run in a deistic sense, but a dynamic mode of qualified being.
In the Trinity God (Father) is absolutely transcendent and God (Holy Spirit) is utterly Immanent. The Spirit is the presence of God participating in life, and humans participate in the Spirit and thus in God.
Being human is a calling to participate ever more fully in the Divine (Genesis 1:26), ever more fully in the Infinite, a journey onward, towards that which has no end.
Human life, our lives, are a temporal play of the divine being made visible in our lives of yearning and seeking more in our spirit, because we are also sharing in the eternal play of the divine, of the invisible being made visible in creation, and the in myriad logoi of all things being sought out by the Spirit.
The Imminent or Theological Trinity (Divine Essence), that is the eternal perichoreisis (Gk peri, 'around' and chōreō 'to go', 'to contain', 'to make room'), the mutual indwelling of the Three Persons, and the Economic Trinity (Divine Energies) are the one Trinity, either one is neither a diminishment nor a distancing from the other.
It is that to which we are called, to participate in and to savour or, as some schools of Hindu philosophy have it, सच्चिदानन्द SatCitAnanda.