Trinity, Freedom and Love: An Engagement with the Theology of Eberhard Jngel

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By critically engaging Eberhard Jngel's doctrine of the Trinity, this volume makes a broader, constructive contribution to contemporary trinitarian thought.The argument centers on the question - posed by the inconsistencies uncovered in Jngel's doctrine of God - of how one can assert both divine freedom and the inter-subjectivity of God's trinitarian self-determination. Can one maintain God's freedom in the interest of divine spontaneity and creativity, while remaining committed to inter-subjective vulnerability which the Cross entails as an event of divine love Malysz suggests that a resolution to this problem lies in a logic of divine freedom, which, next to the trinitarian logic of love, constitutes a different and simultaneous mode of trinitarian relationality. To develop this logic, Malysz draws on Jngel's understanding of human freedom as rooted in the "elemental interruption" of the self-securing subject. Malysz thus not only brings Jngel's view of divine freedom into correspondence with the anthropological effects that Jngel ascribes to it, but, above all, offers an imaginative, new way of closely integrating the doctrine of God and theological anthropology.

Reviews

In this highly challenging work, Jngel's theology is subjected to a searching and substantial analysis. Ambiguities in his doctrine of the Trinity are not only pin-pointed but also creatively resolved. Much light is case in the process on his difficult and distinctive ideas of freedom and love. Malysz's work will be a standard point of reference for all those interested in these questions. * George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA *
In this ambitious and carefully argued work, Malysz offers a skilful and illuminating analysis of the core concern of Jngel's project, to rethink the interplay of love and freedom as definitive both for theological anthropology and for the doctrine of the trinity. Malysz provides not only an interpretation of Jngel, but something rarer: a constructive proposal which joins the trajectory from Barth to Jngel, and then boldly carries it further. * Paul De Hart, Vanderbilt University, USA *
In this exciting new study of Jngel's trinitarian thought as it relates to the problem of human freedom, Malysz balances immaculately courteous exposition of Jngel's position with a penetrating critique of its final coherence. This is a timely reassessment of Jngel's trinitarianism from a young theologian of notable originality and flair. * Sarah Coakley, University of Cambridge, UK *

Author Bio

Piotr J. Malysz is Assistant Professor of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, Birmingham, USA.