This article provides foundations for how our God-talk can inform the way we think about and live out belonging. It resorts to three key Christian doctrines: the Trinity, creatio ex nihilo and the incarnation. This exploration begins with some brief observations about the issues Karen Kilby and Kathryn Tanner raised regarding social trinitarianism. It then explores the concept of participation as understood by Tanner as another way of conceptualising theocentric belonging rooted in creation and the incarnation. From this emerges the idea of an expansive theocentric theology of belonging, understood as participation in the divine life through creation and the incarnation. This expansiveness is explored further through the concepts of kinship and deep incarnation.

The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, but there is only one God – this is the traditional problem of the Trinity. Recently, a new problem for the doctrine of the Trinity has been developed. God is triune, the Son is God, but the Son is not triune – that’s the new Triunity Problem. In this article, I show that adopting any solution to a traditional problem makes it possible to solve the new problem without incurring additional costs. I distinguish possible types of solutions to the traditional problem and point out the costs involved. I then show how each of these solutions can be used and developed to solve the new problem.

This is a collection of replies to critics of Divine Contradiction, each critic a symposiast in the Religious Studies symposium on said book.

This article, offered from the point of view of a non-analytic, systematic theologian, admires the freshness, clarity, and simplicity of the proposal at the heart of Beall's Divine Contradiction, while raising three objections. The first is to the style in which the book is written: I suggest that it remains far too technical to reach large parts of its intended audience. The second is to the tendency to speak of God as ‘portion’ or ‘fragment’ of reality. The third, more substantive objection is to the proposal that the denial of the divinity of each of the Persons of the Trinity can be part of the Christian faith: I argue that Beall's position that only the failure to affirm a truth, and not its denial, counts as a real heresy, is under-argued and unpersuasive.

Two doctrines (or axioms) of christian theology sharply distinguish christian monotheism from its traditional monotheistic siblings (viz. jewish and islamic monotheism): the incarnation of God and the triunity of God. Both doctrines, as many have long observed, face a conspicuous so-called logical problem – namely, apparent contradiction. How should the strong appearance of such fundamental contradiction be explained? Beall's answer: the incarnation and trinity appear to be contradictory because God is a contradictory being – a being of whom some contradictions are true. The full truth of God is expressed only via contradiction, which is why the fundamental axioms of christian theology have long appeared to be contradictory. Divine Contradiction presents the target contradictory account of the trinity; its predecessor The Contradictory Christ presents the contradictory account of the incarnation.

This essay endeavors a correlation between Bernard Lonergan’s ‘four-point hypothesis’ – a theological proposal integrating trinitarian theology and the supernatural order of ‘created grace’ – and the sacraments of initiation. The same formal structure that Lonergan discerned in the experience of grace, itself a means of participation in the life of the Trinity, is replicated in the sacramental reception of that grace in those ritual acts whereby one is made a Christian. This at once serves as a ‘proof of concept’, lending credence to the Lonerganian proposal, and provides a speculative framework for understanding how it is that the sacraments introduce Christians into the divine life.

Jc Beall's Divine Contradiction proposes a bold response to the so-called ‘logical’ problems of the Trinity: we should admit without embarrassment that divine reality is flat-out contradictory. Beall defends his proposal against a wide range of objections and contends that it enjoys various philosophical and theological virtues, including the virtues of metaphysical and epistemological neutrality. While I agree that ceteris paribus these are desirable, I question whether the possession of these virtues really gives Beall's approach any advantage over its competitors when the chips are finally counted.

I explore the promise of Beall's proposal for a long-standing challenge for traditional theology. I first offer a sketch of the problem and a brief overview of some of the more common responses to it. I then show how Beall's proposal holds initial promise; following this I highlight some concerns and raise some questions.

The recent recovery of the teaching that the three divine persons share one operation in their outward works raises the question of whether or in what sense the human operation of Christ belongs to the Son alone. My thesis is that all three divine persons move and support the Son's human operation while the Son alone is the proper subject of his human operation. In order to substantiate this thesis, I will consider two main issues: (1) the relationship between divine movement and human energy and (2) the relationship between nature and person in Christ's human action.