The infiniscience of the hospitable God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: re-interpreting trinity in the light of the Rublev icon
Date
2019-11-27
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AOSIS
Abstract
Because of the impact of church doctrine and many documents explaining the official confession
of many denominations in Christianity, Trinity was mostly defined in terms of static and
substantial categories (the impassibility of God). The undergirding research assumption is that
the latter reflects, in most cases, more abstract and rather positivistic metaphysical speculation
than representing the vividness of God’s compassionate being-with as explained and revealed
in the narratives of the biblical account on God’s graceful intervention with the frailty of human
life. The relational dynamics between the Father, the Son and the Spirit should be revisited. In
this respect, the Rublev icon on Trinity could help establish the circular and spiral thinking of
divine perichoresis as modes of God’s unpredictable, but faithful, covenantal and redemptive
encounter with human misery. Trinitarian thinking should be directed by hospice-categories
rather than by personhood-categories representing ‘substance’. It is argued that the trinitarian
interplay should be re-interpreted in terms of compassionate categories stemming from the
passio Dei in theopaschitic theology. This approach should be supplemented by the bowel
categories of ta splanchna in order to qualify the infiniscience of the JHWH-Godhead: the being
of divine interventions in terms of verbing terminology.
Description
CITATION: Louw, D. J. 2019. The infiniscience of the hospitable God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: re-interpreting trinity in the light of the Rublev icon. HTS Theological Studies, 75(1):a5347, doi:10.4102/hts.v75i1.5347.
The original publication is available at https://hts.org.za
The original publication is available at https://hts.org.za
Keywords
Trininty, Art, Russian, Icons
Citation
Louw, D. J. 2019. The infiniscience of the hospitable God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: re-interpreting trinity in the light of the Rublev icon. HTS Theological Studies, 75(1):a5347, doi:10.4102/hts.v75i1.5347.