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How God relates to the world lies at the heart of the most intense debates in modern theology and philosophy. Movements of Nouvelle Théologie, process theology, radical orthodoxy, modern Trinitarian theology and postmodern theology (i.e. Jean-Luc Marion) all seek to reconsider God's relation to the world as a corrective of what they perceive as problematic. Of particular significance is the recent revival of the theology of participation, as promoted by Radical Orthodoxy in UK and Hans Boersma in North America. Facing excessive secularism and fragmentation of the modern Western world, Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma resort to the pre-modern theology of participation as the way forward. Relying heavily on Platonism, however, their participatory theology, as critics pointed out, tends to compromise the intrinsic goodness of the creation. In this book, Ge proposes that a distinctively Christian theology of participation anchored in creatio ex nihilo, developed by Augustine and brought to the fore by Aquinas, provides a more promising solution which not only secures the unity of things in God but also the goodness of creaturely plurality.
Since participation in its origin is a solution to the problem of the One and the Many, Ge employs Gunton's framework of the one and the many in his discussion of Augustine and Aquinas's theologies of participation. By reshaping their concepts of participation in the light of the doctrine of creation, Ge argues, these thinkers have profoundly transformed the metaphysics of participation, making it finally more suitable for describing the unique relationship between God's unity and creaturely plurality. This Christian metaphysics of participation is not only an advance on Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma, but also superior to competing theories of reality such as pluralism and reductionist physicalism. The book will also bring out implications for modern science-religion dialogues, the core of which concerns how God relates to the world.
List of contents
Introduction
Part One: Augustine's Participatory Ontology
Chapter One: Augustine's Participatory Ontology and the Question of Unity
Chapter Two: Multiplicity and Matter in Augustine's Participatory Ontology
Chapter Three: Transcendence and Immanence in Augustine's Participatory Ontology
Part Two: Aquinas's Participatory Ontology
Chapter Four: Aquinas's Theology of Participation and the Concept of Unity
Chapter Five: Multiplicity in Aquinas's Theology of Participation
Chapter Six: Transcendence and Immanence in Aquinas's Participatory Ontology
Conclusion
About the author
Yonghua Ge is assistant professor of theology and intercultural philosophy at ACTS Seminaries of Trinity Western University.
Summary
Ge argues that by transforming participatory ontology in light of creatio ex nihilo, Augustine and Aquinas have developed a distinctively Christian metaphysics that offers a promising solution to the modern dialectic of the One and the Many.
