Incarnational Realism: Trinity and the Spirit in Augustine and Barth

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Description

In the last half of the 20th century, a consensus emerged that Christian theology in the Western tradition had failed to produce a viable doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and that Augustine's trinitarian theology bore the blame for much of that failure. This book offers a fresh rereading of Western trinitarian theology to better understand the logic of its pneumatology. Ables studies the pneumatologies of Augustine and Karl Barth, and argues that the vision of the doctrine of the Spirit in these theologians should be understood as a way of talking about participating in the mystery of God as a performance of the life of Christ. He claims that for both theologians trinitarian doctrine encapsulates the grammar of the divine self-giving in history. The function of pneumatology in particular is to articulate the human reception and enactment of God's self-giving as itself part of the act of God; this "self-involving" logic is the special grammar of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Reviews

All in all, Abless book is carefully researched, historically attuned, and written in clear prose. Scholars of Augustine, Barth, and Trinitarian theology, systematic theologians, and graduate students in theology will find the book informative and well worth their time, as will more advanced undergraduates. -- Cynthia R. Nielsen, University of Dallas * Anglican Theological Review *
In Incarnational Realism, Travis E. Ables offers an analysis of Augustine and Barths respective pneumatologies in order to counter this standard narrative of a supposed trinitarian decline in Western and Augustinian theology Much is to be commended in Ables work. He is a clear writer with a gift for lucid explanations of complex ideas and schools of thought. As such, the book is as helpful for demystifying contemporary trajectories in trinitarian theology as it is for analyzing the thought of Augustine and Barth Ables volume is an important work for those interested in Augustine, Barth, and contemporary trajectories in trinitarian theology. Ables succeeds in presenting Augustine and Barth as exemplars of Western trinitarian thought at its best: namely, of God as a singular act of self-giving revealed in Christ and in which we participate through the Spirit. Both students and critics of Augustine and Barth will find much insight and value in this book. -- Luke Zerra * Center for Barth Studies *
Scholars of Augustine, students of Karl Barth, intellectual historians and systematic theologians are all indebted to Ables for this forceful yet elegant book.Writing with an intellectual marutirty and a scholarly grasp that is especially remarkable, ables plunges deeply and creatively into the thought of two great masters of Trinitarian speculation in order to uncover the all too often obscured or misread implications of their models for conceiving the personhood of the Holy Spirit. * Paul DeHart, Vanderbilt University, USA *
This learned, wide-ranging, ad impressive study merits close attention. * Paul Dafydd Jones, University of Virginia, USA *

Author Bio

Travis E. Ables (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Historical Theology at Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis, USA.