Incarnational Realism: Trinity and the Spirit in Augustine and Barth

by Travis E. Ables

Overview

In the last half of the 20th century, a consensus emerged that Christian theology in the Western tradition had failed to produce a viable doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and that Augustine's trinitarian theology bore the blame for much of that failure. This book offers a fresh rereading of Western trinitarian theology to better understand the logic of its pneumatology. Ables studies the pneumatologies of Augustine and Karl Barth, and argues that the vision of the doctrine of the Spirit in these theologians should be understood as a way of talking about participating in the mystery of God as a performance of the life of Christ. He claims that for both theologians trinitarian doctrine encapsulates the grammar of the divine self-giving in history. The function of pneumatology in particular is to articulate the human reception and enactment of God's self-giving as itself part of the act of God; this "self-involving" logic is the special grammar of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780567564696
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	07/18/2013
Series:	T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	407 KB

About the Author

Travis E. Ables (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Historical Theology at Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis, USA.
Travis E. Ables (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Historical Theology at Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis, MO, USA

Table of Contents

1. The Problem of the Spirit in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology\2. A Pneumatology of the Knowledge of God: The Aporetic of Perfomance and Ascent in The Trinity\3. The Apophaticism of Ethical Performance: The Totus Christus, Relation and Deification in Augustine\4. The Knowledge of God as Election: Barth's Dialectical Pneumatology of Participation\5. The Hypostatic Union and the Vicissitudes of Augustinian Trinitarianism in CD4\6. The Problem of Trinitarian Ontology and the Ethics of Gratuity After Hegel.

Editorial Reviews

All in all, Ables's book is carefully researched, historically attuned, and written in clear prose. Scholars of Augustine, Barth, and Trinitarian theology, systematic theologians, and graduate students in theology will find the book informative and well worth their time, as will more advanced undergraduates.” —Cynthia R. Nielsen, University of Dallas, Anglican Theological Review

“In Incarnational Realism, Travis E. Ables offers an analysis of Augustine and Barth's respective pneumatologies in order to counter this 'standard narrative' of a supposed trinitarian decline in Western and Augustinian theology … Much is to be commended in Ables' work. He is a clear writer with a gift for lucid explanations of complex ideas and schools of thought. As such, the book is as helpful for demystifying contemporary trajectories in trinitarian theology as it is for analyzing the thought of Augustine and Barth … Ables' volume is an important work for those interested in Augustine, Barth, and contemporary trajectories in trinitarian theology. Ables succeeds in presenting Augustine and Barth as exemplars of Western trinitarian thought at its best: namely, of God as a singular act of self-giving revealed in Christ and in which we participate through the Spirit. Both students and critics of Augustine and Barth will find much insight and value in this book.” —Luke Zerra, Center for Barth Studies

“Scholars of Augustine, students of Karl Barth, intellectual historians and systematic theologians are all indebted to Ables for this forceful yet elegant book.Writing with an intellectual marutirty and a scholarly grasp that is especially remarkable, ables plunges deeply and creatively into the thought of two great masters of Trinitarian speculation in order to uncover the all too often obscured or misread implications of their models for conceiving the personhood of the Holy Spirit.” —Paul DeHart, Vanderbilt University, USA

“This learned, wide-ranging, ad impressive study merits close attention.” —Paul Dafydd Jones, University of Virginia, USA

From the Publisher