Participation in God A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics

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.

Andrew Davison is Starbridge Lecturer in Theology and Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, and fellow in theology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His previous books include The Love of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy for Theologians(2013), Why Sacraments? (2013), and Blessing (2014).