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Persons in Communion: Singular and plural (Part II)

The idea of a truly trinitarian anthropology is chiefly associated with St Gregory of Nyssa, the most speculative of the Cappadocians. In little tracts dismissed rather hastily by his detractors as works of philology he attacks the ‘erroneous custom’ whereby Man is spoken of in the plural and God in the singular; in both cases personal plurality is quite consistent with unity of essence. We ought to say that in Christ, the new Adam, ‘Man

Persons in Communion: Singular and plural (Part I)

Personal existence has a ‘vertical’ dimension, a desire to be plunged into the fullness of God. And this fullness is not a solitude but an ocean already alive with the movement of infinite love. The depth is not unrelieved gloom; it contains reciprocal activity, interchange, the presence of the other, while duality is avoided in the communion of the Three in One. The depth itself suggests the inexhaustible character of the Persons and of their

Persons in Communion: Singular and plural (Part II)

The idea of a truly trinitarian anthropology is chiefly associated with St Gregory of Nyssa, the most speculative of the Cappadocians. In little tracts dismissed rather hastily by his detractors as works of philology he attacks the ‘erroneous custom’ whereby Man is spoken of in the plural and God in the singular; in both cases personal plurality is quite consistent with unity of essence. We ought to say that in Christ, the new Adam, ‘Man

Persons in Communion: Singular and plural (Part I)

Personal existence has a ‘vertical’ dimension, a desire to be plunged into the fullness of God. And this fullness is not a solitude but an ocean already alive with the movement of infinite love. The depth is not unrelieved gloom; it contains reciprocal activity, interchange, the presence of the other, while duality is avoided in the communion of the Three in One. The depth itself suggests the inexhaustible character of the Persons and of their

Persons in Communion: Singular and plural (Part II)

The idea of a truly trinitarian anthropology is chiefly associated with St Gregory of Nyssa, the most speculative of the Cappadocians. In little tracts dismissed rather hastily by his detractors as works of philology he attacks the ‘erroneous custom’ whereby Man is spoken of in the plural and God in the singular; in both cases personal plurality is quite consistent with unity of essence. We ought to say that in Christ, the new Adam, ‘Man

Persons in Communion: Singular and plural (Part I)

Personal existence has a ‘vertical’ dimension, a desire to be plunged into the fullness of God. And this fullness is not a solitude but an ocean already alive with the movement of infinite love. The depth is not unrelieved gloom; it contains reciprocal activity, interchange, the presence of the other, while duality is avoided in the communion of the Three in One. The depth itself suggests the inexhaustible character of the Persons and of their