Читать книгу Only One Way? - Gavin D'Costa - Страница 31

This talk of God as triune may sound very abstract. But it contains very practical consequences for the way Christians understand and act in the finite world. To experience, and therefore to assert, that there is a divine power that creates, communicates and animates all that exists is to assert a mysterious immanence of God in the world– and of the world in God. The world is alive with the splendour and energy of the Divine. Within the very matter of the earth and within the complexities of human knowing and loving – God creates, communicates, and gives shape. As Paul in the Acts of the Apostles puts it: ‘In God we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17.28).

But if we really take the Trinity seriously, it also works the other way around: In the world, God lives and moves and has the divine being. This pervasive mutual indwelling of the infinite God and the finite world is what process theologians have called panentheism: it’s not just that ‘everything’ (pan) participates in (en) God (theos), but God participates in everything. It’s a two-way relationship: the world exists in God, but also, and just as truly, God exists in the world.14