Participating in God by Paul Fiddes

Ever since Clark Pinnock's Flame of Love completely rewrote my understanding of this utterly central tenet of Christianity I've been someone whose entire systematic theology has been based on God constituted as Being In Communion. Colin Gunton's excellent work on the One, the Three and the Many helped me build out my thinking and others like Moltmann, Pannenberg etc. have always excited me most when they've headed in the direction of trinitarian epistemologies. I think it was this idea of God being a movement, an exploration - rather than a static grandfather in the stars, beyond knowing and essentially passive except via 'miracles' - that has been the most satisfying element of my own exploration of Christian faith.

That one can conceive of the Trinity as three in one and one in three, as moving, dancing, being in each other and that their entire life is open to us and that that is indeed one of the purposes of God - to draw us into the divine life. I find it compelling and exciting and a million miles away from the intellectually and emotionally stunted notions of God that tend to get bandied around most of the time. I sometimes wonder if modern Christianity hasn't completely missed a core plank of what makes it compelling - that God, in the Trinity, has been man and has taken man into his own life. It's not about stopping this or starting that, it's not about the moral life or the vacant stare of blind faith - it seems, to me at least - to be about participating in God.

So, I'm a bit biased, but this book by Fiddes has reignited so much that I find exciting by these ideas. The concept of the dynamism of God, rooted in suffering and in showing that death has no sting.

Fiddes isn't concerned with hi-falutin theory though, he's concerned with the practical applications of what it means to believe that the Trinity should be core to any systematic theology and how the idea of participating in this dance of the divine life works itself out in the here and now.

He addresses suffering, forgiveness, evil, death and community in refreshingly plain language without sacrificing what is clearly a deeply robust school of thought for him. I'd also add it's incredibly rare to find writers and thinkers who have something substantive to say about these subjects - especially evil and death. Much of what Fiddes says is honest, deep and substantial.

Yet at the same time I find that I'm not completely convinced by the outworking of his ideas. It's not good enough to say that in any broken relationship both parties can find something to say sorry for. Torture victims, the murdered, the raped - none of these can honestly say that they share some of the blame. Nor can victims of racism, social and structural evils into which they are born etc etc. I also don't think it's enough to imply that physical communities should be our focus.

Fiddes is very brave - brave to explore the idea that evil has to exhaust itself when God is man to show that no matter what it does, in the end it is powerless. It is brilliant as well. I think Fiddes is a thinker who sees much of a landscape that too many people are fearful of engaging with because of the consequences of looking at difficult subjects regardless of where that might lead. I want more of this. I want more of an explanation of what trinitarian thinking means for modern, physically dislocated communities, for belonging when society makes that so hard.

Basically I want more and that is a high recommendation indeed.