Customer Reviews

God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(2)
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This book is quite challenging, intellectually, but worth the effort. Be aware of her bias: her position is that the devlopment of Trinitarian theology lost its way after the 4th century Cappadocians! As a result, she asserts, the doctrine lost its relevance. It has become only a source for academic speculation, detached from "real life." LaCugna wants to "rescue" the Trinity from that irrelevance. In the book, she effectively reformulates the doctrine as a source of theological nourishment for the church today. The doctrine only has value, according to LaCugna, if it describes our experience of how God comes to us, offering salvation. In that context, LaCugna does an excellent job of summarizing the historical background to the doctrine of the Trinity, and of connecting the doctrine to the Christian life.

The Trinity is one of the most challenging and most neglected doctrines in the Church. Lacugna makes learning about the doctrine A VERY REWARDING EXPERIENCE.

She summarizes the development of the doctrine from the first century to today. Her intent, however, is to argue that the doctrine of the Trinity is not an explanation of a God who is somewhere "out there" in eternity, but rather an explanation of the community of a God who is present and inviting us into community. She supports her position well, drawing from the ancients and contemporary Orthodox and Catholic theologians.

The subject matter of the book is very challenging. It will take most people awhile to get through the material. But each page is a pearl and the reward for reading it is great.

I encourage anybody with an interest in the doctrine of the Trinity to prioritize reading this book.

Before I say unfortunate things about this book, I would like to note that LaCugna writes well and appears to have read at least some of her sources (early theologians) carefully. Part one is called "The Emergence and Defeat of the Doctrine of the Trinity". She examines the thinking of early Greek and Latin theologians and Church Councils. In some cases she shows considerable sympathy for their approaches; they have some correct ideas, but they are never quite right, and eventually Thomas Aquinas' unacceptable approach "defeats" the doctrine. And it has remained defeated ever since, waiting for modern theologians to "reconceive" it, which she does in Part Two.

I may not have fully understood the reconceiving, but I am amazed at LaCugna's views of the impact of the [allegedly defective] theology of the trinity. LaCugna states that this defect has had disastrous political consequences. Apparently it has lead to monarchism, racism, sexism, patriarchy, unjust hierarchy, and a view of God as remote from us. LaCugna thinks that most of Christianity has been working with a non-trinitarian theology of God, at least since Thomas Aquinas. My view is that if the textbooks had taught LaCugna's synthesis instead of Aquinas', history, even Church history, would have been much the same. But we'll never know.

I would recommend that anybody who is interested in reading over 400 pages of scholarship aimed at a massive revision of a Church teaching should first familiarise themselves with an equally rigorous and scholarly explanation of what it is, written by somebody who doesn't think it has been a disaster.

The maze of philosophical thought through which the anti-Nicene Fathers traveled, and through which the leaders of the Church traveled following Nicea and Chalcedon, are very difficult to trace. However, Catherine Lacugna has been of great assistance to me in the effort to understand them.

Enjoyed rereading this volume very much. I had read it while in seminary and then it was subsequently destroyed when my study at the church was broken into. I have been reading Barth again recently and so wanted have LaCugna's views on the Trinitarian background info Barth used. I'm very glad to have a copy in my library again.

Excellent, theologically sound. Takes the Trinity from an Incarnational point of view. Stiff sledding in parts but stick with it.

Reading LaCugna's God for Us is like looking at a wreck on the side of the freeway. You know you shouldn't, but you can't help yourself so you continue to stare in morbid fascination and feel awful afterwards.

Despite the praise lavished on this book by theologians who ought to - and, in most cases, undoubtedly do - know better, this is perhaps the worst recent book written on the Trinity. Despite its pretense of scholarship and its copious use of obfuscatory theological jargon (a technique pioneered by Rahner and Schilebeecx, who knew that an honest, straightforward statement of their views would result in their books being placed on the Index) the basic teachings of God for Us are clearly incompatible with the dogmatic understanding of the Trinity as taught in the Ecumenical Councils and as articulated in the mainstream of Roman Catholic theological orthodoxy.

This does not bother LaCugna, who regards this tradition, rooted in Augustine's "one substance" theory of the Godhead (which she rejects), as having led to the "defeat" of the doctrine of the Trinity. In particular, she rejects the distinction between the immanent Trinity, constituted by internal relations within the Godhead, and the economic Trinity, which is the Trinity in its joint actions of creating, redeeming and sanctifying the world. LaCugna's feminist ideology dictates that this distinction be rejected, so that God is neither a substance nor has any sort of "nature" that the persons might share in common. To the contrary, LaCugna's God is literally "God for us" - the whole reality of God is exhausted in his activities in regard to creation, especially in relation to human beings.

This view, if taken seriously, annuls the transcedence of God, makes God a creator by necessity, makes God dependent on His creation and, as such, puts God in no position to make any demands on us in return. Instead, LaCugna's God can do little more than smile indulgently, always give us our own way and then take responsibility for whatever havoc that causes. Daddy loves us and will fix everything, with at most mild chiding. In other words, LaCugna's God is the perfect cut-down God for liberal Catholic feminists - and spoiled children everywhere.

I could go on to say that LaCugna's views are heretical, but they are too silly and metaphysically incoherent to rise to the level of seriousness that merits that appelation. The book carries no imprimatur or nihil obstat; contemporary Catholic theologians no longer seem to need or want these guarantees of orthodoxy. However, those who do care about such matters deserve to be informed that there is no guarantee that anything that LaCugna writes in God for Us reflects the magisterium of the Church. God for Us is a book that is best ignored rather than refuted, however; the effort is not worth the payoff. It is much more profitable to read the works of e.g., Gerald O'Collins, S.J., which take a much more mainstream view of the Trinity and Incarnation despite having conciliatory things to say about LaCugna's work. He also takes pains to explore and explain the spiritual dimensions of the doctrine and its relevance for modern life, something that LaCugna claims it cannot have.

In conclusion, don't buy and don't read God for Us unless your morbid curiosity exceeds all bounds of reason and propriety or you need some easily-critiqued primary source to serve as the grist for a doctoral dissertation.

(The foregoing should be sufficient to dispel the contention that Amazon only prints favorable reviews. The author of this review received no compensation for his work and is happy to make its contents available as a public service out of the goodness of his heart. Enjoy!)

In a time when we do not hear much about The Trinity, this book opens up the complex arguments which have historically occurred on this subject. Her background is obviously Roman Catholic, but her viewpoint is convincingly objective. If you do not have a theological background in this subject matter, you will receive one reading this book.