The Catholic Message Board

I have a new book out, based on my PhD from Durham University (in the UK).

https://wipfandstock.com/9781666771251/ ... icipation/

Endorsements:

“The metaphysics of participation, rooted in Christian Platonism, claims that creation exists not in itself, but by receiving a share in the divine life. Kjetil Kringlebotten argues that participation is fundamentally liturgical. It finds its source and end in Christ, the master theurgist. Christ calls down the Holy Spirit to gather all people to Himself, that we might rise with Him in glory. This is a bold and inspiring contribution to theological and liturgical scholarship.”

- Simon Oliver (my PhD supervisor)

“Kjetil Kringlebotten works skillfully between doctrine, history, prayer and worship, and the life of the church, all with an infectious enthusiasm. His book is wonderfully ecumenical and, indeed, also an excellent example of one of the church’s first, crucial interfaith exchanges with Neoplatonism. I heartily recommend Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation to anyone wanting to explore the relation between liturgy and philosophical theology.”

- Andrew Davison (external examiner of PhD thesis)

“This is a striking, important, and original book. It makes the case that the liturgy is a divine work and not a human action. ‘Participation’ in the liturgy should be construed as a participation in the divine work, rather than in a more sociological and congregational sense of ‘being practically involved.’ This leads to an understanding of metaphysics as the original source of practices. The thesis of the book is bold and distinctive and is presented with great clarity and charity.”

- Christopher Insole (internal examiner of PhD thesis)

Metaphysics of participation? I'm not sure I understand the summary of the book's contents

Congrats!

Whoot!!!

Doom wrote: ↑Fri Sep 22, 2023 11:00 pm Metaphysics of participation? I'm not sure I understand the summary of the book's contents

The point of pointing to a metaphysics of participation is that it holds that we do not exist outside of being kept in existence by God, and such an existence is a kind of participation. We do not participate in the essence of God, which is unparticipated or imparticipable, but in a likeness of God. Here’s a quote from the book (p.20-21, where I have altered the footnotes to include the full citations):

The being of creatures is not identical to God, as ipsum esse,* in a univocal sense, and they do not exist in themselves but only in relation to God: “Likeness of creatures to God is not affirmed on account of agreement in form according to the formality of the same genus or species, but solely according to analogy, inasmuch as God is essential being, whereas other things are beings by participation.”24 Though I use the language of “participation in God” or “participation in the divine” throughout this book, it needs to be noted that this is a shorthand for participation in the likeness of God, participation “through similitude.”25 It does not mean that we participate in the divine essence. As Aquinas notes,26 the divine essence is uncommunicated, incommunicable, and unparticipated, as God by His very nature cannot be known or participated directly but only by similitude or analogously. According to Wisdom 14:21, cited by Aquinas, idolatrous people “bestowed on objects of stone or wood the incommunicable name.”27

24 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (ST) I, q.4, a.3, ad 3, cf. Jan A. Aertsen, Nature and Creature: Thomas Aquinas’s Way of Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 79–89 (cf. 54–91).**

25 Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Spiritual Creatures (Quaestiones Disputatae de spiritualibus creaturis, a.1, corp., cf. ST I, q.104, a.1. Also see Rudi A. te Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 92–93, n2; Rudi A. te Velde, “Participation: Aquinas and His Neoplatonic Sources,” in Christian Platonism: A History, eds., Alexander J. B. Hampton and John Peter Kenney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 122–139 (esp. 130, n18, 134–35, n26, 136–38).

26 ST I, q.13, a.9, cf. II-II, q.94, a.4; q.97, a.4 ad 3.

27 A New English Translation of the Septuagint, ed. Albert Pietersma and Benjamin Wright (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Cf. ST I, q.13, a.9, sed contra.

* Ipsum esse is very hard to translate accurately. It is sometimes translated ‘Being itself’ but the problem is that being in Latin is ens, not esse, and Aquinas is adamant that God is not a being, an ens. He says, in his commentary on the Book of Causes (Liber de causis), that the cause of being is beyond being (Lt. supra ens) and beyond understanding (Lt. supra intellectum). That which is the ground of being is not itself a being. Esse means ‘to be’ but ‘simply to be’ sounds weird in English. I like it however, as it both points out that God is, indeed, real and the cause of being, yet He is not intelligible. We cannot grasp God.

** For Aquinas’ works, I have used Opera Omnia of St. Thomas Aquinas, Latin and English (Lander, WY: TheAquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012–).