The Spirit in the Trinity: Mystical Theology
VISITING SCHOLAR: Dr. SARAH COAKLEY
University of Cambridge
The project of this lecture is a bold one: it argues that the divisive problems over the filioque might never have arisen if the Holy Spirit’s radical equality with the Father and Son had not been already implicitly undermined by the historic, conciliar treatment of the Holy Spirit as ‘third’. But another approach had always stood over against this, one in which a priority given to the Spirit in ecstatic, charismatic or contemplative prayer resisted such subordination of the Spirit, and so cut behind and beyond what would later become an entrenched division between ‘East’ and ‘West’. Extending and enriching her earlier work on this theme in God, Sexuality and the Self, Sarah Coakley presses key questions about a distinctive ‘participative’ trinitarianism in the monastic and ascetic traditions of the medieval and early modern periods (both ‘East’ and ‘West’), and about its contemporary ecclesiological and personal significance.
Friday October 5th, 7 – 8:30pm
Epiphany Chapel | 6030 Chancellor Blvd | Vancouver, BC