A Relational Model of the Trinity

Introduction

A relationality first like view of the Trinity, and going forward we’ll call the approach here the “Relational-Fullness” model of the Trinity, presents God’s very being as fundamentally relational, which is a dynamic, eternal act of self-giving love. Rather than conceiving of the divine essence as a static, solitary substance, this way of theologizing posits that “to be God is to be in relation.” In this view, God exists as an interpersonal communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in which relationship is not an attribute added onto God’s essence but is constitutive of that essence itself. This idea resonates with insights from both Eastern and Western Christian thought. For example, Orthodox theologian John D. Zizioulas famously described God as “Being-as-Communion,” emphasizing that God’s existence is inherently communal, not monadic1. Likewise, Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) observed that in God “person means relation” – the three divine Persons are their relations of origin, and “relation, being related, is not something superadded to the person, but is the person itself”2. In other words, the Father, Son, and Spirit are eternal relationships of love. This relational vision reframes classic Trinitarian theology by shifting the focus from substance to communion. As one proponent of the model asserts, “to be, for God, is fundamentally to be in relation — a continual act of self-giving love.”3 In this perspective, the unity of God is not a featureless simplicity but the active unity of perfect loving communion. Indeed, relationship is regarded as “identical with the divine essence,” echoing St. Thomas Aquinas’s teaching that the Trinitarian relations “are the divine essence itself.”4

Importantly, this relational ontology does not abolish the traditional divine attributes of unity, simplicity, or immutability; rather, it illuminates their deepest meaning. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) taught that there is “one absolutely simple essence… Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; three persons indeed, but one absolutely simple substance or nature.”5 The Relational-Fullness Model wholeheartedly affirms God’s utter simplicity and oneness, but understands this simplicity in a dynamic sense: not as inert solitude, but as the perfectly undivided unity of an eternal triune exchange of love. In this view, God is “one pure act of being” — an act of subsistent love in which all that is in God is God’s self-giving love6. Even divine immutability and perfection are seen in a new light: not as static aloofness, but as the fullness of an eternal life of giving and receiving. God “needs nothing” for His fulfillment, and indeed, as the First Vatican Council declared, the one true God “of His own goodness and almighty power, not for increasing His own beatitude, nor for attaining His perfection, but in order to manifest His perfection through the benefits which He bestows on creatures,” freely created the world7. Self-giving love, therefore, is no mere quality that God happens to have—it is the very heartbeat of God’s being from all eternity.

Building on these foundations, the Relational-Fullness Model provides a unifying principle that can integrally illuminate all areas of Christian doctrine. It invites us to view everything in theology—God’s inner life, the act of creation, the work of salvation, Christian life and worship—through the lens of God’s agapic relationality. In what follows, we will examine the key aspects of this model in a structured way. First, we consider the inner Triune communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, showing how God’s oneness and threeness coinhere in a relational ontology. Next, we explore how classical divine attributes (such as simplicity, unity, immutability, goodness, and freedom) are coherently reinterpreted in light of God’s triune self-giving love. From there, we turn to the external works of God: creation, incarnation, and salvation. We will see how creation flows as a free overflow of God’s love, and how the incarnation and redemptive mission of Christ reveal and extend God’s triune fullness to humanity. Finally, we consider the practical and spiritual implications of this model and conclude with its ultimate affirmation that “God is Love,” the truth from which all reality originates and to which it is ordered. Throughout, a formal, topic-focused approach is maintained—emphasizing the content of the theological vision rather than any individual author, and grounding each insight in the broader Christian theological tradition.

I. Triune Communion as the Divine Being

At the heart of the Relational-Fullness Model is the claim that God’s very being is triune communion. The doctrine of the Trinity states that there are three divine Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) who are each fully God, sharing one and the same divine essence. The challenge has always been to explain how God is one and three without either dividing the Godhead or collapsing the distinctions of Persons. The relational model addresses this by taking the interpersonal life of the Trinity as the starting point and interpretive key for understanding the divine essence. In fact, it asserts that God’s unity and simplicity itself is triune: the only “components” of God’s simple being are the Father, Son, and Spirit in their mutual relations of love. The Catechism of the Catholic Church beautifully expresses this truth by saying “God himself is an eternal exchange of love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He has destined us to share in that exchange.” (CCC 221)8 Moreover, “in God everything is one, where there is no opposition of relation.” (CCC 255) In other words, the three Persons are distinct only by their relations of origin—Fatherhood, Sonship, and Holy Spirit proceeding—and these relational distinctions do not undermine the divine unity. They are the unity. Each Person is the one God, each wholly possesses the identical divine essence, but each in a unique relational mode: the Father as unbegotten source, the Son as begotten of the Father, and the Spirit as breathed forth (spirated) from the Father (and, in Western theology, from the Son). These relational identities are the only distinctions in God, and they are not pieces or properties of God; rather, they are subsistent relations (relationes subsistentes), each a Person who is the one simple God in a distinct manner of origin4. As Ratzinger noted, Trinitarian faith forced a revolution in the concept of personhood: God is not an individual substance that happens to be in relationship, but is relationship as such – “not something superadded… but it is the person itself.”2 The Father has no “Fatherhood” apart from relation to the Son; the Son is Son only in relation to the Father; the Holy Spirit is Spirit only as proceeding from Father and Son. The divine Persons exist in and as eternal relations. Thus, God’s very essence is an eternal act of relational self-giving.

Building on claims like Ratzinger’s Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas shows just how radical the fourth-century shift from ousia to hypostasis really was:

“The combination of the notion of ekstasis with that of hypostasis in the idea of the person reveals that personhood is directly related to ontology—it is not a quality added, as it were, to beings, something that beings ‘have’ or ‘have not,’ but it is constitutive of what can be ultimately called a ‘being.’ … A particular being is ‘itself’—and thus is at all—because of its uniqueness which is established in communion and which renders a particular being unrepeatable as it forms part of a relational existence in which it is indispensable and irreplaceable. That which, therefore, makes a particular personal being be itself—and thus be at all—is, in the final analysis, communion, freedom and love … the notion of person is to be found only in God and that human personhood is never satisfied with itself until it becomes in this respect an imago Dei.” John D. Zizioulas, The Meaning of Being Human (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2021), 53–55.  (Publisher page: https://sebastianpress.org)

Zizioulas’s analysis underlines the very thesis of this section: being in its most basic sense is not isolated substance but relational hypostasis—communion is ontologically constitutive of identity, beginning with God and extending to every creature made in God’s image.

Because these relations are internal to the Godhead, they do not compromise God’s oneness or simplicity. The Father, Son, and Spirit coinhere in one another in perfect unity. The Greek Fathers termed this perichoresis (mutual indwelling): the Father is wholly in the Son and the Spirit, the Son wholly in the Father and Spirit, and the Spirit wholly in Father and Son, without merging into a single person. The Council of Florence (1439) affirmed that, due to the single divine nature, “each of the persons is wholly in the others”9. We might picture this as an eternal embrace of love: Father, Son, and Spirit eternally give the fullness of divine life to one another and live in one another. Each Person remains distinct, yet each contains the whole of divinity in that exchange. There is no tritheism (no separate gods), because the Three are one reality of love; and there is no modalism (no mere roles or masks), because the Three have real reciprocal relationship, not just successive appearances. In a phrase, God’s unity is the communion of self-giving love shared by Father, Son, and Spirit.

A cornerstone of this model is identifying the Trinitarian relations as metaphysical primaries in God’s being – that is, the most fundamental, irreducible realities about God. Classical Christian theology has long guarded the truth that nothing in God is composite or derived from something more basic; applying that insight here means that one cannot explain the Trinity by appealing to anything deeper than the relationships themselves. Relation is an ultimate feature of God’s existence. The Father, Son, and Spirit are “self-standing relational modes” of the one divine essence: each Person is not a part of God, but is God in full, yet each as a distinct relational standpoint of that one being3. This relational threefoldness is not a secondary overlay on the divine nature; it is the fundamental fact of God’s life. We cannot derive the Trinity from more foundational principles – Father, Son, and Spirit in loving communion simply are the ultimate reality of God. By positing relation itself as primitive within God, the Relational-Fullness Model provides a coherent way to uphold both divine unity and real plurality. The relations are inside the divine essence, not something added from outside, so they do not divide God’s substance (preserving simplicity); yet because the relations are irreducible and not interchangeable, true distinctions abide (the Father is not the Son, etc.), avoiding a collapse into pure monadism. In this way, the age-old puzzle of how “Three” and “One” coincide in God finds its resolution: God’s oneness is not the oneness of a solitary being, but the unity of a triune relationship. The Trinity’s plurality of Persons doesn’t threaten God’s unity because that plurality is the very way in which the one divine being exists. As one summary puts it, “relationality does not divide God but constitutes His very unity”3. Each divine Person fully possesses the one divine essence, and each is distinguished solely by [His] unique relational mode of self-donation3. Thus, the Trinity is not an appendage to how we understand God’s nature; it is God’s nature. God’s essence is an eternal act of Father, Son, and Spirit giving themselves to and receiving one another in love.

II. Divine Attributes in Light of Triune Love

Understanding God as an eternal communion of self-giving love casts new light on the classical divine attributes. Qualities like unity, goodness, immutability, and even omnipotence and freedom take on a profoundly relational character in this model. God’s unity, for example, appears not as the indivisibility of a geometric point, but as the integral oneness of the threefold love shared among Father, Son, and Spirit. We can say that the simplicity of God—the teaching that God is not composed of parts—is the simplicity of a living unity, “the dynamic unity of a triune communion of love.” In other words, everything in God is one because the Three Persons perfectly interpenetrate one another in an eternal relationship without rivalry or separation. There is no tension between God’s unity and God’s triune nature; the Trinity is the internal cohesion of love. As the ancient formula (echoing Gregory of Nazianzus) has it: “No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One.”10 The model thus preserves everything classical theism insists upon (that God is one, simple, and beyond all division) while illuminating that within that one simplicity is an inexhaustible plenitude of life and love. God is not a blank unity; God’s oneness is vivified by relational richness.

A twentieth-century master of Trinitarian metaphysics, Hans Urs von Balthasar, presses this point to its limit. “The divine being is pure, absolute self-surrender; it is never a static possession but the eternal act in which Father, Son, and Spirit hand themselves over to one another without reserve.” ¹ Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. II – Dramatis Personae: Man in God, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 268.

In one stroke Balthasar shows that attributes which appear “static” in abstract metaphysics, simplicity, immutability, aseity are in fact the never-ending overflow of triune love.  Because each hypostasis possesses the one divine freedom wholly, each is that freedom precisely by giving it away; hence God remains changeless because His very identity is the ceaseless actuality of reciprocal self-donation. Read in this light, every other divine perfection, beginning with goodness itself, unfolds as an aspect of that same inexhaustible act of self-giving love.

God’s goodness and love also come into sharper focus. In this framework, goodness and love are not merely properties that God has or choices that God makes; rather, God’s very nature is love. The First Letter of John famously states that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8), which the model takes with full seriousness. The Father eternally pours out the fullness of the divine life in generating the Son; the Son eternally receives and returns that gift in filial love; the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds as the consubstantial Love of Father and Son. This infinite, unconditional self-giving within God is the archetype of all love and goodness. It shows that goodness, in its purest form, is self-diffusive and self-communicative (as the Scholastic axiom says: bonum est diffusivum sui, “the good is self-diffusing”). Because the divine communion of Persons is the absolute Good, it naturally “diffuses” itself in mutual love. Thus, when we say God is all-good and all-loving, we mean that within God there is an eternal act of love as well as an outward movement to share that love (as we will see in creation and grace). Every moral perfection in God (holiness, justice, mercy, etc.) can be understood as an aspect of the one love that God eternally is.

Divine immutability (changelessness) and eternal life also receive a dynamic interpretation. On the surface, saying “God cannot change” might seem to conflict with the idea of an active, loving God. But in this model, God’s changelessness is not the immobility of a static thing; it is the constancy of perfect act. The internal life of the Trinity is often described as a sort of eternal motion of love: the Father always loving the Son, the Son always responding in love, the Spirit always breathing forth as their mutual love. This “motion” never had a beginning and will never end; it is not a passage from potency to act (as created motions are), but an always fully actual act of love. Some spiritual writers have dared to say “God is eternal movement.” In a qualified sense, this is affirmed here: God’s very being is an eternal movement of love – a “changeless change,” an activity that never undergoes development or alteration because it is already perfect and complete3. God’s immutability, then, is not the absence of life or relationship; it is the ever-constant fidelity of the Father, Son, and Spirit to their love. There was never a time when the Father was not loving the Son, nor a time the Son was not delighting in the Father, nor a time the Spirit was not uniting them in the bond of love. God’s life is eternally dynamic without being subject to temporal change. This understanding shows that God’s unchangeable perfection is not inertness but the fullness of life. The model thus reconciles scriptures and traditions that speak of God’s steadfastness (e.g. “I, the Lord, do not change”) with those that speak of the living vitality of God.

Perhaps the most striking application of the relational paradigm is in reconciling divine freedom with God’s internal necessity. Classical theology holds that the Father’s generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit are necessary (since they happen by God’s very nature, not by choice), whereas God’s acts towards creation are free (since God could have refrained from creating). How can something be necessary in God and yet God still be free? The relational view offers a resolution. The Father’s begetting of the Son is indeed “necessary” in the sense that the Father’s very nature is to be Father – He could not be God without generating the Son. Similarly, the Spirit’s procession is necessary as the completion of the Father-Son love. However, this is not a constraint imposed on God from outside; it is simply who God is. The Father eternally and freely is Father; there is nothing external forcing Him to beget. Thus the divine processions are sometimes described as “necessary and freely given” at once11. They are necessary because they belong to God’s essence, yet free because they are identical with the divine freedom itself – God’s self-expression. In other words, God’s nature is to give Himself, and He does so in absolute freedom. The Father’s generation of the Son is not a deliberated choice among options; it is an eternal, free outpouring that flows from the very fullness of His being. The Son’s “return” of love and the Spirit’s procession likewise are simply the free unfolding of who God is. This insight has profound implications. It means that the very essence of God’s freedom is love. God is maximally free precisely in giving Himself, not in holding back. Unlike a creature, whose freedom might be thought of as the ability to choose between alternatives, God’s freedom is the boundless liberty of perfect love. There is no conflict between love and freedom in God; they coincide. As St. Augustine analogized, in the Trinity we find the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love that unites them – indicating that love is not just an action God decides upon, but the eternal act that constitutes God’s being. From this vantage point, freedom is not arbitrary will but the joyful self-donation of the Persons to one another.

In summary, the Relational-Fullness Model shows that relation is as real and fundamental in God as substance – indeed, in God, relation is “substance,” insofar as the divine substance exists in relational form. This “relational monotheism” preserves everything classical theism maintains about God’s unity, simplicity, and perfection, while giving a richer account of God’s inner life. It provides a satisfying resolution to the traditional “one-and-three” tension: God’s simplicity is understood as the unity of threefold relationality, rather than the simplicity of a solitary, impersonal essence enclosed in itself3. Each Person is fully the one God, yet each is distinct by His relational identity as Giver, Receiver, or Shared Love. This principle—that self-donative relationality is intrinsic to the simple divine essence—becomes a master-key for theology. With it in hand, we can now turn to consider God’s relationship to that which is not God: creation, history, and humanity. We will see that the same pattern of self-giving love sheds light on why God creates and how God saves, in a way that preserves divine transcendence even as it highlights God’s intimate presence in the world.

III. Creation and the Outpouring of Divine Love

If God’s inner life is a perfection of self-giving love, how does this relate to the existence of the created world? The Christian tradition carefully distinguishes between God’s internal processions (the begetting of the Son and spiration of the Spirit within the Trinity) and God’s external works (such as creation and redemption). The former are necessary and eternal—God must be triune; He could never be “without” His Son or Spirit—whereas the act of creation is contingent and freely willed—God chose to create and could have refrained from doing so. The Relational-Fullness Model fully maintains this classical distinction12. In line with St. Thomas Aquinas and others, it insists that God did not create the universe to fulfill some need or to gain some perfection He lacked. Prior to creation (speaking logically, not in temporal terms), God already possessed infinite beatitude in the triune communion of love. After creating, God remains the same infinitely perfect being: He knows and loves Himself and His creation in one single, eternal act, without any mutation or augmentation of His essence. As Aquinas would say, the act of creation adds nothing intrinsic to God; it is wholly a gratuitous gift of being to creatures13. God’s decision to create does not arise from deficiency, but from generosity. This point is strongly reinforced by the Principle of Relationality: since God is already an eternal “exchange of love” lacking no perfection, creation can only be understood as an act of pure giving. God does not create in order to have something to relate to (as if His relationality would be unfulfilled without creatures); rather, God’s relational fullness is so abundant that it overflows. Creation is the overflow of divine love, not a remedy for a divine loneliness or lack. One proponent puts it this way: “God does not require creation to actualize relational potential; God is eternally complete in relational love; hence, creation is a free gift – an overflow of divine love rather than a remedy for any deficiency.”14 In other words, the world exists because the triune God, utterly satisfied in the love of Father, Son, and Spirit, freely willed to share the bounty of that love outwardly. The First Vatican Council expressed this in doctrinal form: the Creator “in His goodness and almighty power, not for increasing His own beatitude… but in order to manifest His perfection through the benefits He bestows on creatures,” made all things (Dei Filius, ch.1)7.

Creation, then, is understood as the first gift of God’s love to “the other.” All things were brought forth ex nihilo (from nothing) by God’s Word through the Spirit, freely and in love. The act of creation is of course a demonstration of God’s omnipotence and sovereign freedom, but viewed through our relational lens, it is foremost an expression of God’s goodness and self-diffusiveness. God is the supreme Good who communicates goodness. In creating, God doesn’t increase His glory or being one iota, but He enables beings other than Himself to participate in His goodness and glory. Classical theology often emphasizes that God’s motive in creation was to manifest and communicate His goodness – “for no other reason than His love and goodness,” as the Catechism says (cf. CCC 293). Thus, every creature is a product of divine love. As Genesis recounts, after each act of creation “God saw that it was good” – the goodness of creatures reflects, in a finite mode, the goodness of their Creator who gifted them existence. The Relational-Fullness Model underscores that God created not to get something for Himself, but to give something of Himself. Creation is gift. And because this model holds the Creator–creature distinction with clarity, it avoids any pantheistic blurring: the world is not an emanation of God’s own substance, but it is lovingly embraced and sustained by God’s relational being. All of reality is within the embrace of God’s love without being God. (In the words of an ancient council: “Between Creator and creature no similarity can be so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them.”15 The model readily affirms this: however intimate God’s presence to creation, He infinitely transcends it as well.)

As the sixth-century mystical theologian Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite observes, the very nature of the Good is to overflow: “For it belongs to the Good to do good, and to extend itself unsparingly, so far as may be, to everything that has being.” Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names IV.1, in The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, trans. C. E. Rolt (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1920), 70. https://ccel.org/ccel/rolt/dionysius/dionysius.vii.iv.html

The Relational-Fullness model simply makes explicit what this line implies: because God’s inner life is the plenitude of triune love, self-diffusive generosity is metaphysically inevitable. Creation, therefore, is not a remedy for divine lack but the first outward surge of that inexhaustible goodness.

In this framework, the whole economy of creation and history can be seen as flowing from God’s inner life of love. Creation is the beginning of an outpouring that is further extended in salvation history. God not only brings the world into being, but also communicates Himself to His creatures in stages—through revelation, grace, and ultimately the incarnation of Christ. Traditional theology speaks of this as the distinction between immanent Trinity (God in Himself) and economic Trinity (God as revealed in the economy of salvation). The relational model emphasizes the continuity between the two: the same self-giving love that constitutes God’s immanent being is the driving principle of the economy. God created the world for the sake of sharing triune love.

This brings us to the ultimate gift: the sending of the Son and the Holy Spirit for the salvation of humanity. If creation was the first gift, the incarnation of the Son is the unsurpassable gift – God literally giving Himself to unite with our nature. “The entire drama of salvation history unfolds as the self-gift of God’s love,” as one theologian has observed16. At the climax of that drama stands the Incarnation: the eternal Son of God, through whom all things were made, “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). In Jesus Christ, the self-giving triune God gives Himself to humanity in an intimate, personal way. The Relational-Fullness perspective sees the Incarnation not as an arbitrary act, but as the definitive expression of God’s relational fullness overflowing into the world. The God who is an eternal communion of love now opens that communion to humanity by uniting our human nature to the divine Son. The motive behind the Incarnation is understood as God’s desire to share His love and draw us into communion. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son” (John 3:16). The Son is sent by the Father in the Holy Spirit – we might say, the Father extends His paternal love into the world by sending the beloved Son, and the Son comes in the power and presence of the Spirit. All of this is pure gift.

One might ask: does God undergo change or suffering in the Incarnation and Passion of Christ? After all, Christian faith boldly proclaims that “the Word became man” and that God the Son even tasted death on the cross for our sake. How can this be squared with God’s immutability and impassibility (incapacity to suffer)? The answer lies in the classic distinction (reinforced by our model) between God in Himself and God’s mode of acting ad extra. In Himself (ad intra), God remains unchanged and forever the same infinite love. But in the Incarnation, God the Son unites to Himself a complete human nature (body and soul), and in that assumed humanity He is able to undergo suffering and death. The divine nature does not turn into a passible nature; rather, the Person of the Son experiences suffering through His human nature. Far from compromising God’s perfection, this extraordinary condescension actually manifests the depths of His love. The immutable God shows that His unchanging essence is self-giving love by freely embracing the condition of a servant (Phil 2:6–8). The Son’s human sufferings on the cross reveal, in time, the eternal self-sacrificial love that God is. The Father, Son, and Spirit are so committed to sharing their love that the Son was willing to humble Himself unto death to rescue and elevate us. In doing so, God doesn’t cease to be infinite and impassible in His divine nature; rather, He demonstrates that what God is (Love) is so powerful that it can take on even the contradiction of the cross and overcome it. The resurrection of Christ then is the triumph of that eternal life and love over death. Thus, the model underscores: God does not change in His Godhead, but in Christ He truly acts and suffers for us in a way appropriate to our world, all without ceasing to be who He eternally is (Love). This is a mystery, but it is coherent when one keeps clear the distinction between the eternal Trinity and the temporal mission of the Trinity. The missions (Son sent by Father, Spirit sent by Father and Son) reveal the Trinity without altering it. They are the outward extension of God’s inner love.

Salvation, in this perspective, is nothing less than participation in the triune fullness. God’s aim in all His economy—creation, incarnation, sending of the Spirit, the Church, the sacraments—is to draw creatures into the circle of triune love. The Son of God became human “so that humans might become partakers of the divine nature” (cf. 2 Peter 1:4). The Eastern Christian concept of theosis (divinization) fits naturally here: salvation is not merely having our sins forgiven, but being elevated into the life of God’s family. By the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are made adoptive sons and daughters in the Son, enabled to relate to the Father as our Father (cf. Romans 8:15). In other words, through Christ and the Spirit, we are invited to share in the Son’s own relationship with the Father. This is a real (though created) participation in the triune communion. The Catechism echoes this astounding destiny: God “has destined us to share in that exchange” of triune love (CCC 221)8. All of the traditional elements of Christian soteriology can be framed in terms of relational participation. Justification is being brought into right relationship with God (through the Son’s merits) so that this relationship can grow. Sanctification or holiness is redefined not as mere moral purity but as transformation by the fire of divine love – “Holiness is not aloof purity but the burning fire of love that sacrifices for the beloved,” as one source expresses17. Eternal life is essentially communal: living forever in union with God and the blessed, which is the fruition of that love. Even heaven can be described, in this model, as entering into the “joyous perichoresis” of the saints within God’s own triune life3. The purpose of creation is finally realized when created persons freely receive God’s love and give themselves fully back to God in love; at that point, the “circle” of love between Creator and creatures is complete18.

This approach also provides a lens to interpret all of Scripture and salvation history. The God who reveals Himself in the Bible—making covenants, showing mercy, guiding Israel, becoming incarnate, dying and rising, sending the Spirit—is understood to be acting out His eternal identity as self-giving love. There are certainly passages where God appears angry, or distant, or where God “changes His mind.” The relational model encourages reading these in light of the fuller revelation of God in Christ: God’s wrath, for instance, is not a mood swing but an aspect of His love (love’s refusal to approve sin); God’s relenting or “changing” in response to prayer is a pedagogical way to say He allows genuine relationship with us (without implying He literally undergoes change of mind). Ultimately, how God gives Himself in salvation history truly reveals who God is eternally. There is a unity between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity. The Relational-Fullness Model makes this explicit by providing a systematic framework centered on the idea of self-giving (what one theologian terms a “Self-Standing Givenness Ontology”). In short, everything God does ad extra (externally) is an expression of what God is ad intra (internally). The God who created and redeemed us is none other than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the same triune communion, now communicating itself outwardly. In the words of one summary: “All traditional divine attributes, all of salvation history, and every aspect of creation find their coherence in one thing: God giving God.”18 When at last, in the eschaton, created persons receive God fully and return themselves fully in love to Him, the purpose of all creation will be achieved: God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28), not by annihilating creatures but by fully uniting them to His life in love.

Conclusion: God Is Love – All in God is God

The Relational-Fullness Model of the Trinity culminates in a simple yet profound affirmation: God is Love (1 John 4:8), and everything in Christian faith flows from and returns to this truth. By articulating God’s very essence as relational, self-donating love, this model offers a unifying principle that illuminates every doctrine. The mystery of the Trinity is no longer seen as an abstract puzzle or a mere logical conundrum; it is recognized as the living heart of reality—the eternal loving communion that is the source and goal of all that exists. Even the often daunting doctrine of divine simplicity is transfigured: it is not a “dry” metaphysical assertion, but a description of God’s perfect unity of love—“the dynamic unity of a triune communion of love,” wherein simplicity and intimacy coincide. In this view, divine simplicity means that the three Persons are so profoundly one in their mutual indwelling love that there is no division in God; divine immutability means that God is the ever-constant, unfailing love that freely pours itself out; and God’s transcendence is maintained even as His immanent presence fills all things in love3. The Incarnation and the entire story of salvation then appear as the extension of that triune love to creation—God coming toward us in Christ while never ceasing to be who He is eternally (Love). The grace of the Holy Spirit and the sacraments become the tangible means by which we are invited into the divine exchange; prayer and liturgy become our response of self-gift back to God. Even eschatology (the doctrine of last things) is understood as nothing other than the communion of love brought to its full fruition: the moment when God’s invitation reaches its fulfillment and we enter into “the joy of our Master” – essentially, the joyous eternal perichoresis of creatures with the triune God.

One of the great strengths of this approach is that it marries intellectual rigor with spiritual depth. On the one hand, it provides a satisfying coherence to Christian doctrine—one can perceive a logical harmony when all is viewed under the light of self-donative being. Disparate teachings (Trinity, creation, incarnation, grace, etc.) coalesce around the central theme of relational love, giving a systematic wholeness to theology. On the other hand, it preserves and even heightens the sense of holy mystery that evokes worship and awe. This is no arid, rationalistic theism of an unmoved mover known only through abstraction; nor is it a vague sentimentalism that sacrifices truth for feeling. It is a vision of God that does justice both to classical metaphysics and to the biblical revelation of the living God of love. In fact, one can view the Relational-Fullness Model as a contemporary answer to the modern dilemma of reconciling the “God of the philosophers” (the all-powerful, impassible, simple Absolute) with the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (the personal God who loves, speaks, and saves). It shows decisively that they are one and the same. The God of classical theism—actus purissimus, the One who is pure being and the source of all—is joyfully identified as the very God who “so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” There are not two different Gods, one of reason and one of faith; the one God is the triune Love revealed in Christ. As one expositor eloquently summarizes, “the one God, the Alpha and Omega, is an eternal Act of Love who gives Himself without reserve. All things spring from this love and find their fulfillment in it.”19 In other words, Origin and End are both in Love: the beginning of creation was God’s free gift of being, and the final goal of creation is sharing in God’s own life of self-giving love.

This theological vision also carries profound practical implications. If ultimate reality is self-giving relational love, then to live in accord with reality is to live a life of charity, generosity, and communion with others. We are called not merely to analyze divine things from a distance, but to encounter God personally and be transformed by relationship with Him. As one writer notes, this vision “invites us not merely to study God, but to encounter Him and be drawn into relationship.”20 It suggests that the Christian moral life is not about conforming to arbitrary rules or pursuing individual perfection in isolation, but about reflecting the very structure of reality by making a sincere gift of ourselves in love—first back to God, and also to others (since the triune God’s love is expansive and inclusive). When we love sacrificially, we are, in a real sense, living in the truth of our being, because we image the triune God who made us in His likeness. Conversely, selfishness and proud isolation are a kind of unreality—a living contradiction of the relational nature of existence. In an age marked by alienation and hyper-individualism, this relational theology offers a healing counter-message: we are made for communion. Fulfillment is not found in self-assertion or self-enclosure, but in self-gift. Human dignity and identity are seen as inherently relational (just as the divine Persons’ identities are relational): we truly find ourselves only when we forget ourselves in love (cf. Luke 17:33, Gaudium et Spes 24).

Finally, even as this model gives us a coherent framework to think about God, it maintains a posture of humility before God’s mystery. Theological understanding can take us only so far; ultimately, God’s inner life surpasses knowledge (Eph 3:19). The relational model does not pretend to exhaust the mystery of the Trinity by a neat formula—rather, it points us to the profundity of a God whose essence is love. The terms we use (like “relational self-givenness”) are but pointers to an ineffable reality: the living God who ever invites us into communion. Even as we benefit from clearer conceptual insight, we remain, as it were, worshippers before the divine mystery—drawn to praise and adore the Infinite Love that infinitely exceeds our full comprehension. “Such is the God we worship: ‘all in God is God, and that God is Love.’”21 In that one line—all in God is God, and God is Love—we hear the resonant summary of this entire vision. Everything in God (all that God is and does) is just God Himself—utterly simple—and that God is Love—an eternal triune love, “an eternal exchange of love” into which we are graciously invited. This is a vision at once ancient and ever-new—firmly rooted in Scripture and the Church’s tradition, yet expressed with fresh language for our time. It reminds us that at the core of every doctrine beats a “relational heartbeat”—the heartbeat of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, who out of sheer goodness created us, redeemed us, and is drawing us into His own eternal life21. Here, finally, we arrive at the ultimate ground of reality and the radiant center of the Gospel that gives life to the world: God is Love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (1 John 4:16).

Key Quotes (Appendix)

  • “God is love.” – 1 John 4:8
  • “No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three, no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One.” – St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40, §4110
  • “The soul cannot live without love … and, by love, I created her.” – St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogue of Divine Providence, ch. 88
  • “[God is] a fire ever burning and never consumed.” – St. Catherine of Siena, Prayers 12
  • “[The Trinity] lives and shines… each one God, if contemplated separately… the three God, if contemplated collectively, because their activity and nature are the same.” – St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31, §14
  • “Unity is worshipped in Trinity and Trinity in unity.” – St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 23, §11
  • “It then follows that everything, because it exists, is good. And it also follows that whatever falls from goodness ceases to exist.” – Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Book IV, prose 222
  • “[T]he supreme God is to the highest degree filled with supreme and perfect goodness … true happiness is to be found in the supreme God.” – Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Book III, prose 10
  • “Therefore, whatever is, is good; and evil… is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be good.” – St. Augustine, Confessions VII.12.18
  • “In him we live and move and have our being.” – Acts 17:28
  • “Between Creator and creature no similarity can be so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them.” – Fourth Lateran Council (1215), De fide catholica, ch.115
  • “Man … cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” – Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes §2416
  • “Creaturely being is a suspended middle between God and nothingness.” – Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis, p. 21023
  • “Between Creator and creature every likeness is always outdistanced by an ever-greater unlikeness (maior dissimilitudo).” – Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis, p. 11723
  • “The analogy of being is no bridge constructed from below to above; it is the very oscillation that both separates and relates Creator and creature.” – Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis, p. 6823
  • “All metaphysical (and other) theories have something in common: they all contain primitives.” – Jiří Benovsky, Meta-metaphysics, p. 424
  • “Metaphysical theories are equivalent if they do the same job in the same way.” – Jiří Benovsky, Meta-metaphysics, p. 424
  • “Primitive problem-solvers are the pillars that sustain the structures of our theories.” – Jiří Benovsky, Meta-metaphysics, p. 2224
  • “A problem-solver is a primitive that is there to solve a problem.” – Jiří Benovsky, “Primitives,” in Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, p. 2225
  • “The more the reduction reduces (itself), the more it extends givenness – so much reduction, so much givenness.” – Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness, pp. 203–426
  • “It is therefore necessary to admit the fact of givenness as the ultimate authority.” – Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Hermeneutics, p. 727
  • “There are phenomena of such overwhelming givenness… that the intentional acts aimed at these phenomena are overrun, flooded, saturated!” – Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Hermeneutics, p. 227
  • “If the given gives itself as a call… what is shown always stays behind and late in comparison with what gives itself.” – Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Hermeneutics, p. 1027
  • “Religion attains its highest figure only when it becomes established by and as a revelation.” – Jean-Luc Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 2228
  • “Revelation presents itself in a horizon only by saturating it.” – Jean-Luc Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, p. 3728

Footnotes (Chicago Style)

Bibliography (Chicago Style)

  • Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Prima Pars (Part I), Questions 27–28. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd rev. ed. 1920. Accessed May 28, 2025. https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1028.htm. (Original work composed 1265–1274.)
  • Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. (Original Latin work c. 397–400.)
  • Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus. The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by W. V. Cooper. London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1902. Accessed May 28, 2025. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14328/14328-h/14328-h.htm.
  • Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Edition). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997. Accessed May 28, 2025. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM.
  • Catherine of Siena. The Dialogue of Divine Providence. Translated by Algar Thorold. London: Kegan Paul, 1907.
  • Catherine of Siena. The Prayers of Catherine of Siena. Translated by Suzanne Noffke. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1983.
  • Dryer, Robert. “Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude: The Self-Donative Vision of God.” RobertDryer.com. Accessed May 28, 2025. https://robertdryer.com/defending-divine-simplicity/divine-simplicity-and-relational-plenitude/.
  • Fourth Lateran Council (1215). “Confession of Faith” (Firmiter credimus), Canon 1. In Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, edited by Norman P. Tanner, vol. 1, 230–231. London: Sheed & Ward / Georgetown Univ. Press, 1990. (Accessed online at Papal Encyclicals, May 28, 2025, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum12-2.htm.)
  • Gaudium et Spes. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Second Vatican Council, 1965). In The Sixteen Documents of Vatican II, edited by Marian Schäffer, 513–601. Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1967. (See especially §24.) Accessed May 28, 2025. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_gaudium-et-spes_en.html.
  • Gregory of Nazianzus. Oration 23 (On the Holy Spirit). In Saint Gregory of Nazianzus: Select Orations, translated by Martha Vinson. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003.
  • Gregory of Nazianzus. Oration 31 (The Fifth Theological Oration, on the Holy Spirit). In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 7, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 318–325. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1894. (Accessed at New Advent, May 2025.)
  • Gregory of Nazianzus. Oration 40 (On Holy Baptism). In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 7, 362–384. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1894. (Accessed at New Advent, May 28, 2025.)
  • Marion, Jean-Luc. Givenness and Hermeneutics. Translated by Jean-Pierre Lafouge. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2012.
  • Marion, Jean-Luc. Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998.
  • Marion, Jean-Luc. The Visible and the Revealed. Translated by Christina M. Gschwandtner et al. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
  • Przywara, Erich. Analogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm. Translated by John R. Betz and David Bentley Hart. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014.
  • Ratzinger, Joseph (Pope Benedict XVI). “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology.” Communio: International Catholic Review 17, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 439–454.
  • Ratzinger, Joseph. Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy. Translated by Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986.
  • Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World). December 7, 1965. In Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, edited by Austin Flannery, 903–1001. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1975.
  • Vatican I Council. Dei Filius (Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith). April 24, 1870. In Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, edited by Norman P. Tanner, 804–809. London: Sheed & Ward, 1990. (English translation accessed at Vatican.va.)
  • Zizioulas, John D. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985.
  • Ž (Various authors for Key Quotes). Holy Scripture and Patristic Sayings. (1 John 4:8, Acts 17:28 – The Holy Bible, RSV. Catherine of Siena – The Dialogue & Prayers. Augustine – Confessions. Gregory of Nazianzus – Orations. Boethius – Consolation of Philosophy. Lateran IV – conciliar text. Vatican II – Gaudium et Spes §24.) These sources are quoted within the text and above to illustrate the theological points, with full references given in footnotes.

Footnotes

  1. John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), 15–16. Zizioulas emphasizes that God’s being is inherently relational and that personhood is constituted by communion. ↩
  2. Joseph Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio 17, no.3 (Fall 1990): 439–447. Here Ratzinger writes: “In God, person means relation. Relation, being related, is not something superadded to the person, but it is the person itself.” (p. 444). See also Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 131–132. ↩ ↩2
  3. Robert Dryer, “Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude: The Self-Donative Vision of God,” RobertDryer.com, n.d., accessed May 28, 2025. https://robertdryer.com/defending-divine-simplicity/divine-simplicity-and-relational-plenitude/. Dryer articulates the Trinity as “three irreducible relational modes—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—each entirely manifesting the single divine essence” and argues that “relationality does not divide God but constitutes His very unity.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8
  4. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.28, a.2 (Whether the relations in God are really identical with His essence?). Aquinas concludes that “whatever is in God is the divine essence,” and thus the divine relations are really the same as God’s essence (while conceptually distinct). See Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger, 1947) vol.1, 150. ↩ ↩2
  5. Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Canon 1 “On the Catholic Faith” (Cap. Firmiter credimus). English in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 230: “We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only one true God… Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; three persons indeed, but one absolutely simple essence, substance, or nature.” Accessed via Papal Encyclicals Online, May 28, 2025. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum12-2.htm. ↩
  6. Robert Dryer, “Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude,” RobertDryer.com, accessed May 28, 2025. Dryer uses the phrase “one pure act of being, self-subsistent Love in which all that is in God is God” to describe the dynamic simplicity of God. (See Dryer, Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude, Introduction). ↩
  7. First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius (1870), chap. 1, in DS (Denzinger–Schönmetzer) 3002. The council teaches: “This one true God, of His own goodness and ‘almighty power’, not for increasing His own beatitude, nor for attaining His perfection, but in order to manifest His perfection through the benefits which He bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel created out of nothing… both angelic and mundane creation.” (Latin text in Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 36th ed., and English trans. at Vatican.va). Accessed May 28, 2025. https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/i-vatican-council/documents/vat-i_const_1870-04-24_dei-filius_en.html. ↩ ↩2
  8. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), §221 and §255. Paragraph 221: “God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and He has destined us to share in that exchange.” Paragraph 255: “The divine persons are really distinct from one another… because it does not divide the divine unity, the real distinction of the persons from one another resides solely in the relationships which relate them to one another… ‘In God, everything is one except where there is an opposition of relationship’ (Council of Florence).” Accessed May 28, 2025. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM. ↩ ↩2
  9. Council of Florence, Decree Laetentur Caeli (Decree for the Greeks), July 6, 1439, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner, vol.1 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 527. This decree states that the three divine persons “are one God… because each of the persons is that reality—namely, the divine substance, essence or nature… Because of this unity the Father is wholly in the Son and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Son is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Son.” ↩
  10. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40: On Holy Baptism, §41. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 7, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo: Christian Literature, 1894), 377. Gregory’s famous statement on the incomprehensible interplay of unity and trinity: “No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One….” (Translation accessed at New Advent, May 28, 2025. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310240.htm.) ↩ ↩2
  11. Joseph Ratzinger, Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 25. Ratzinger writes regarding the Trinity that “the processions are both necessary and freely given”—necessary insofar as they belong to God’s nature, yet free because they are identical with the free act of love which God is. (Ratzinger attributes this insight to the Church Fathers and medieval scholastics, showing the unity of freedom and nature in God.) ↩
  12. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.32, a.1 ad 3. Aquinas notes that while we can analogically speak of “external procession” in God (creation), it is fundamentally different from the eternal internal processions; the latter are necessary and internal to the Godhead, the former are contingent effects. The relational model affirms this scholastic distinction: God’s intra-trinitarian life is fundamentally distinct from the free decision to create. ↩
  13. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.19, a.3; q.45, a.2. Aquinas argues that God’s act of creation is not a change in God but a change in the created order: “God does not act out of necessity of nature such that something new would accrue to Him by acting… rather, He freely wills creation, and this willing is eternally in Him.” See also Summa Contra Gentiles II.9, where Aquinas explains that God’s goodness is fully actualized in Himself and creation is a free manifestation of that goodness. (Aquinas’s position is summarized in CCC 293: “God created freely ‘out of nothing’… God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness.”) ↩
  14. Robert Dryer, Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude, sec. “Creation and Goodness.” Dryer emphasizes that because God’s relational life is already complete, creation is not about God becoming more complete but about giving creatures a share in His love. He writes, for instance: “God’s creating adds nothing to God; it is a sheer gift – the diffusion of divine goodness outward.” (Dryer, Relational Plenitude, accessed May 28, 2025, at RobertDryer.com.) ↩
  15. Fourth Lateran Council (1215), De fide catholica, ch.1. Latin: “Inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo notanda.” This line is often quoted (e.g., by Lateran IV and repeated by Vatican I) to caution that no analogy between God and creation is perfect; God always transcends the analogy. It underscores God’s transcendence even in a relational framework. (Translation in Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 230.) ↩ ↩2
  16. Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 1965), §24. “Man, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” (Latin: “homo… se ipsum plene invenire non potest nisi per sincerum sui ipsius donum.”) This conciliar statement highlights the relational nature of human fulfillment, reflecting the imago Dei in us. Accessed May 28, 2025. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. ↩ ↩2
  17. Robert Dryer, Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude, sec. “Salvation and Holiness.” Dryer notes that in this model, “holiness” is understood as the intensity of divine love rather than mere separation: “Holiness is not aloof purity but the burning fire of love that sacrifices for the beloved.” (Dryer attributes this concept to the idea that God’s holiness is His love purifying and transforming us, rather than an abstract apartness.) ↩
  18. Robert Dryer, Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude, Conclusion. Dryer summarizes the entire theological vision as “All traditional divine attributes, all of salvation history, and every aspect of creation find their coherence in one thing: God giving God.” He further explains that the consummation of creation is when creatures fully receive and reciprocate God’s self-gift (Dryer, Relational Plenitude, accessed online). ↩ ↩2
  19. Robert Dryer, Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude, Conclusion (citing “Dryer’s words”). Dryer’s own concluding affirmation states: “the one God, the Alpha and Omega, is an eternal Act of Love who gives Himself without reserve. All things spring from this love and find their fulfillment in it.” This is cited as encapsulating his metaphysical-theological synthesis of the Trinity. ↩
  20. Robert Dryer, Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude, Conclusion. Dryer notes the spiritual challenge of his theology: it “invites us not merely to study God, but to encounter Him and be drawn into relationship.” In context, he stresses that theology should lead to personal transformation and participation in the mystery studied. ↩
  21. Robert Dryer, Divine Simplicity and Relational Plenitude, final lines of Conclusion. Dryer invokes a line to summarize: “‘All in God is God’, and that God is Love – absolute, simple, immutable Love in relational communion, freely shared with us and calling us to communion.” This is presented as the core of the Christian mystery. The phrase “all in God is God” is used by Dryer (and others) to express divine simplicity; coupling it with “God is Love” grounds simplicity in relational love. ↩ ↩2
  22. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Book IV, prose 2. Boethius argues that existence and goodness are convertible (following Neoplatonic thought): “Whatever is, insofar as it is, is good; if something ceases to be good, it ceases to exist.” See Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H.F. Stewart et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973), 401. (The quote in the text corresponds to Boethius’s reasoning that all being comes from the Supreme Good and thus is good by participation.) ↩
  23. Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm, trans. John R. Betz and David Bentley Hart (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014). The quotes are from Przywara’s seminal work on the analogy of being. For instance, p.210: “Creaturely being is essentially a ‘suspended middle’ between infinite being and nothingness.” P.117 emphasizes the maior dissimilitudo (greater dissimilarity) between God and creature despite analogy (citing Lateran IV). P.68 discusses the analogia entis not as a human-constructed bridge, but as the oscillation between God’s transcendence and immanence that both separates and relates Creator and creature. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
  24. Jiří Benovsky, Meta-metaphysics: On Metaphysical Equivalence, Primitiveness, and Theory Choice (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2016), 3–4, 21–22. Benovsky investigates how different metaphysical theories can be equivalent and emphasizes the role of primitives (undefined fundamental entities or principles) in each theory. He states, for example, that all theories have primitives and that these primitives are chosen for their problem-solving roles. (Quotes from pp. 4 and 22 illustrate these points.) ↩ ↩2 ↩3
  25. Jiří Benovsky, “Primitives,” in The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, ed. Ricki Bliss and J. T. M. Miller (New York: Routledge, 2020), 387–394. In this chapter, Benovsky discusses the concept of primitives in metaphysics, describing “problem-solver” primitives (p.392) and how primitives are individuated by their functional role (p.388). (The quote in the text about “a problem-solver is a primitive that is there to solve a problem” is a paraphrase from this discussion.) ↩
  26. Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 203–204. Marion here explains the phenomenological reduction in terms of givenness: the more one reduces experience to its phenomena, the more one finds that phenomena are “given.” He famously says “autant de réduction, autant de donation” (as much reduction, so much givenness) (p. 203). ↩
  27. Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Hermeneutics, trans. Jean-Pierre Lafouge (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2012), 2, 7, 10. Marion argues that givenness is a fundamental philosophical principle. On p.7 he writes, “It is therefore necessary to admit the fact of givenness as the ultimate authority (la dernière instance).” On p.2, he describes “saturated phenomena” that overwhelm intentionality. On p.10, he discusses how what is given (in revelation) exceeds what is conceptually grasped (the given “stays behind” what gives itself). ↩ ↩2 ↩3
  28. Jean-Luc Marion, The Visible and the Revealed, trans. Christina M. Gschwandtner et al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 21–23, 37. Marion’s The Visible and the Revealed collects essays on philosophy and theology. On p.22 he states that religion reaches its apex when established by revelation (indicating the primacy of God’s self-gift). On p.37 he says, “Revelation presents itself in a horizon only by saturating it,” meaning revelation floods our capacity to receive it, fitting with his notion of “saturated phenomena.” ↩ ↩2