Sunday, June 11, 2006

God's Being Is in Becoming: Preliminary Remarks

I am starting a series on Jüngel's great work, God's Being Is in Becoming, which will take readers through the entire work, section-by-section. I will label each post with a title that begins "GBB: ..." after the English translation, since that is the version I will be using. I welcome any questions or comments along the way. Please refer to the selection I posted earlier from Jüngel's "Foreword to the First Edition," which is the start of this series. I will quote a couple portions from this foreword again:

The title of this book may be off-putting. However, I ask you to read it carefully. It is not a matter of the ‘God who becomes’. God's being is not identified with God’s becoming; rather, God’s being is ontologically located. [. . .]

Theologically, what we call ‘becoming’ should be understood in its fundamental ontology as a trinitarian category. According to this, God does not leave his present behind him as a past in order to proceed towards a future which is strange to him; rather, in his trinitarian livingness he is ‘undividedly the beginning, succession and end, all at once in His own essence’. And so the title of this book tries to indicate what might be called the axiom of the Christian doctrine of God. (xxv-xxvi)

1 comments:

Shane said...

cf. my last comment on your previous post which quoted this passage.

shane