Participation in God
A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics

Offers a substantial discussion of a central theme in Christian theology – that everything comes from and depends upon God.

Andrew Davison (Author)

9781108483285, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 August 2019

434 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.8 cm, 0.74 kg

'… Davison offers an impressive and wide-ranging study of the doctrine of participation, effectively demonstrating how it provides a metaphysical framework for theology that allows us to see the world as a gift from God, bearing some trace of his likeness, and creation as profoundly precious because of the one who gives it to us, and whose likeness it bears: God himself.' Daria Spezzano, The Living Church

Few ideas have excited greater interest among theologians in recent decades than the idea of 'participation'. In thinking about creation, it is the notion that everything comes from, and depends upon, God, inviting the language of sharing, or of an exemplar and its images; in thinking about redemption, it points to the restoration of that image, and is expressed in the language of communion with God and with the redeemed community. In this volume, Andrew Davison considers these themes in unprecedented breadth, investigating the fundamental character of participation as it can be applied to a wide range of theological topics. Exploring what it means to know, to love, to do good, and to live together well, he shows how these ideas animate a particular understanding of human life and how we relate to the world around us. His book offers the most comprehensive survey of participation to date, contributing to detailed discussions of these themes among academic theologians.

Part I. Participation and Causation: 1. By and from God: efficient causation and God as the origin and agent of creation
2. Causes and the Trinity: 'from Him and through Him and to Him are all things'
3. Not out of God: God is not the material cause for creation
4. After God's likeness: formal causation and creaturely characterfulness
5. To and for God: final causation and God as the origin and goal of creation
Part II. The Language of Participation and Language as Participation: 6. Characterising participation
7. Analogy: participation in being and language
Part III. Participation and the Theological Story: 8. Participation and christology
9. Participation and creaturely action
10. Evil as the failure of participation
11. Redemption I: restoration and union
12. Redemption II: justification, merit and transformation
Part IV. Participation and the Shape of Human Life: 13. Truth: knowing and the lucidity of things
14. Beauty: praying and loving
15. Goodness: ethics
Conclusion: participation, relation and common life.

Subject Areas: Theology [HRLB], Christian theology [HRCM], Christianity [HRC], Nature & existence of God [HRAB1], Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Religion & beliefs [HR]