The migration of monism and the matrix of trinitarian mediation

Abstract

The history of Western society is marked by the migration of monism. Christendom's concept of God was that of an Absolute Individual that enslaves: God is everything and humanity is nothing. It was replaced by its opposite – the Enlightenment's hero, man come of age – the absolute individual. Here humanity is viewed as everything and God as nothing, or at least off on holiday. Today, in keeping with the easternisation of the West, many are willing to sacrifice their autonomy for a view of reality wherein everything is God. Each outlook betrays the same fundamental weakness: a failure to provide space for otherness. What is required then is a concept of being that provides space for otherness within itself. The doctrine of the Trinity offers such a matrix of mediation. God is a sovereign community of persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – who exists freely in mutual love, and who therefore creates out of an overflow of gracious love rather than from need for communion or a drive towards consumption. There is relational space for otherness and freedom within the Godhead as Father, Son and Spirit mutually constitute one another. By extension, there is freedom to be other outside the Godhead, demonstrated in Christ's self-giving through the Spirit in the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection. In closing, it will be argued that such a model safeguards appropriate space for otherness while at the same time fostering a more profound dynamic of mystical union, which so many today seek in the easternised West.