With two members of the British National Party being declared members of the European Parliament on Trinity Sunday my paniced mind ran to Leonado Boff (right). Who else would I go to, you might ask! Boff is (was?) a professor of theology in Petropolis, Brazil, whose commentaries on society and politics are steeped in good biblical theology. In 1986 he wrote Trinity and Society and there he has a wonderful section on how the inner life of the Trinity provides us with a powerful critique of both capitalism and socialism. Pages. 148f for those who want to read it but here are two short quotations:
The greatness of trinitarian communion, however, consists precisely in its being a communion of three different beings; in it, mutual acceptance of differences is the vehicle for the plural unity of the three divine Persons.
Being a person in the image and likeness of [God] means acting as a permanently active web of relationships: relating backwards and upwards to one's origin in the unfathonable mystery of the Father, relating outwards to one's fellow human beings by revealing oneself to them and welcoming the revelation of them in the mystery of the Son, relating inwards to the depth's of one's own personality in the mystery of the Spirit.
The challenge for me is including those who voted BNP amongst those others to whom I must reach out in order to complete the community of differences to which Boff calls us and in which we, as Christians, rejoice!
The greatness of trinitarian communion, however, consists precisely in its being a communion of three different beings; in it, mutual acceptance of differences is the vehicle for the plural unity of the three divine Persons.
Being a person in the image and likeness of [God] means acting as a permanently active web of relationships: relating backwards and upwards to one's origin in the unfathonable mystery of the Father, relating outwards to one's fellow human beings by revealing oneself to them and welcoming the revelation of them in the mystery of the Son, relating inwards to the depth's of one's own personality in the mystery of the Spirit.
The challenge for me is including those who voted BNP amongst those others to whom I must reach out in order to complete the community of differences to which Boff calls us and in which we, as Christians, rejoice!
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