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Document Details :

Title: Het triniteitsdenken van Catherine M. LaCugna onder de loep van Jan van Ruusbroec
Author(s): UYTTENHOVE, Lieve
Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie
Volume: 51    Issue: 3   Date: 2011   
Pages: 298-315
DOI: 10.2143/TVT.51.3.3203390

Abstract :
This article shows that Jan van Ruusbroec’s 14th-century trinitarian mysticism has an impact on contemporary trinitarian theology. To demonstrate this, the author presents Ruusbroec’s (virtual) response to Catherine M. LaCugna’s thoughts on the Trinity. LaCugna is one of the exponents of modern, renewed trinitarian theology. Precipitating factor for this response is LaCugna’s conviction that the doctrine of the Trinity can eliminate the rift between contemplative (mystical) and speculative theology, and the fact that LaCugna, like Ruusbroec, accentuates the spiritual experience of the Trinity in the here and now. Via Ruusbroec’s (virtual) response, the author demonstrates that LaCugna’s thoughts on the Trinity display anomalies that Ruusbroec’s trinitarian theological thinking clears away. She also suggests that, unlike LaCugna’s spiritual experience of the mystery of the Trinity, Ruusbroec’s work preserves the link between experience of the Trinity and mystical theology. There are two parts to the essay. Part A treats LaCugna’s revision of Rahner’s axiom that ‘Die 'ökonomische' Trinität ist die 'immanente' Trinität und umgekehrt’; LaCugna’s updated version; her relational theology as developed from the new paradigm and her practice-based experience of the mystery of the Trinity. In Part B – the virtual response – the author has Ruusbroec respond to the anomaly in LaCugna’s trinitarian theological starting point, to the terminological formulation of her new paradigm, to an anomaly in her thinking on relational theology and to LaCugna’s spiritual experience of the mystery of the Trinity. In practice, this means that Ruusbroec would probably have responded to LaCugna’s emphasis on God’s action in salvation history, to the disadvantage of God’s eternal mystery, by saying that time and eternity are one in God, that he had revised LaCugna’s paradigm, that he had explained God’s relation to human beings from within the inner divine relationship of love, and that he offered a new perspective on LaCugna’s spiritual experience of the Trinity. The essay concludes that the doctrine of the Trinity can truly bridge the gap between speculative and contemplative theology. Speculative trinitarian theology may not, however, serve as guideline for contemplative theology, which must be practice-oriented in word and deed as LaCugna defends. According to the author, we can learn from contemplative theologians, such as Ruusbroec that there need be no question of a separation when the spiritual experience of the Trinity is understood as a mystical relation of love between God and the human being in which God reveals himself in the human being as a trinitarian mystery of love. In other words, the article ultimately concludes that contemplative theology as locus theologicus or source of all knowledge about God forges an actual and factual link with speculative theology.

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