IN DIALOG

ABSTRACT

While (post)modern philosophy (Mark Taylor—atheology) and theology (Barth) often elevate Abraham as the preeminent “knight of faith” for his silent acceptance of a totally other God, Trinitas points us to an even more scandalous buried treasure just beyond Abraham, whose unquestioning submission merely represents the penultimate aspect of faith. This obedience prepares the way for Jacob's ultimate act of faith.

Shifting the theological paradigm from silent obedience (servant of God) to passionate entanglement (friend of God), Trinitas explores the following critical breakthroughs:

• Sharing a co-conditional moment within the eternal: Jacob decisively expresses his desire, freedom, and self-determination through an impassioned struggle with God—an eternal moment of co-conditioning within the interaction that changes God.

• Emergence of the co-creator: Because Jacob passionately affects God, he emerges as the initial divinely celebrated co-creator in history. Peter is the second.

• New relational ontology: Jacob’s definitive victory establishes a perichoretic ontology and relational metaphysics—highlighting a universal dynamic of relationality in which all things different mutually relate through the analogia spiritus.

• Mutual dance of spirits: Transcending the totalitarian immanence of collective consciousness, true faith becomes a harmonizing dance of individual persons in analogical relation with God's eternal Spirit.

Readers will discover how Jacob's passion in the night bridges the infinite qualitative distance between humanity and God through the grace of a relational theosis, in which heaven and earth emerge simultaneously.

* In this brief essay, Vestigio Trinitas is so bold as to playfully stretch the tapestry of Kierkegaard and his various voices to appropriate, question, honor, and further his project.