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Art and the Theology of God as Trinity: Exploring Belief and Praxis Through Symbol
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Gloria L. Schaab
This essay engages the notion of art as theological symbol. Focused upon the doctrine of Trinity, it explores representations of the Trinity in religious art as a means of expressing theological insight and shaping Christian life. The movement of this essay is threefold. First, it considers the question of Trinitarian doctrine as practical and relevant to Christian life. Second, it discusses one particular method of expressing Christian belief, that of artistic symbol. Finally, it reflects upon artistic representations of God as Trinity to see how each might form, inform, and transform Christian life and praxis in practical ways.

Keywords

Trinity; Symbol; Andrei Rublev; Lucas Cranach; Religious Art; Spirituality; Christianity; Community

n his influential work The Trinity, Catholic theologian Karl Rahner makes a startling declaration: “Despite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists.’ We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.”1 According to Rahner, “The venerable classical doctrine of the ‘vestiges’ and the ‘image of Trinity’ in the world is thought to be–although one would never

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explicitly say so–a collection of pious speculations.”2 In spite of Rahner’s appraisals of the Trinity in the practical life of Christians, the latter part of the 20th century witnessed a resurgence of interest, energies, and imagination in theological circles concerning the doctrine of the Triune God. This renaissance focused not only on the theological understanding of the Triunity of God, but also on the practical implications of this central doctrine for the life of the Christian community. The 20th-century Protestant theologian Karl Barth saw fit to begin his Church Dogmatics with an extensive treatment of the Doctrine of the Trinity and declared this doctrine to be the prolegomena to dogmatics, that is, the foundation of all other aspects of the Christian faith.3 Taking a similar view of Trinity as divine revelation, Catholic theologian Karl Rahner firmly contended that the doctrine of the Trinity is the expression of the very life of God’s own self. In more recent years, theologians such as Jürgen Moltmann and Catherine LaCugna have expanded their theological deliberations from a theoretical consideration of the Trinity to a closer study of the impact of Trinitarian doctrine in Christian life and community. In The Trinity and the Kingdom, Jürgen Moltmann proposes a social doctrine of the Trinity based upon the interrelationality of the persons of the Trinity. On this basis, Moltmann calls the doctrine of the Trinity a “doctrine of freedom”4 which calls forth a community capable of transforming systemic structures and interpersonal relationships in Church and in society.5 In God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, Catherine LaCugna focuses her energies on a retrieval of the relationship between oikonomia and theologia, between God’s comprehensive plan for the salvation of creation and the mystery of God as a communion of persons.6 While some have sought to emphasize the practicality of Trinitarian belief through social models of God or through God’s

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activity in salvation history, I intend to approach the practicality of the doctrine of the Trinity through the notion of symbol, particularly the symbol as expressed through art. Like Elizabeth Johnson in her essay “Trinity: To Let the Symbol Sing Again,” I use the notion of symbol in “a dense, doctrinal sense, as a word or image that participates in the reality being signified, opens it up to some understanding, yet never exhausts it completely.”7 Through the notion of symbol, I suggest that God as Trinity serves to model and to inspire a way of life that has significant consequences for relationships within the Christian community and, by extension, within the global community. The fundamental questions that guide this exploration are these: If we, as a Christian community of faith, profess belief in the Trinity of God, in the personal and relational three-in-oneness of God, then how shall we live? Moreover, if we, as individuals and as a community, are made in the image of this Triune God, what practical difference does this reality make in our life and relationships with God and with one another? Engaging Doctrine through Symbol Why approach the doctrine of the Trinity through artistic symbol? There are three fundamental reasons. The first is the essential ineffability of God. As expressed in the words of Paul Tillich: “Nothing can be said about God as God which is not symbolic.”8 This is due to the fact that God as God–as infinite, as ultimate, as mystery–is essentially incomprehensible and ineffable. However, we have not always understood talk about the Triune Mystery of God in this way. According to Johnson, “Too often talk about the Trinity has been conducted in implicitly literal, descriptive language, as if we were peering into the divine mystery with a telescope. Who is processing from whom? And what are their relationships? In truth, however, this is a religious symbol that reveals its truth only according to the power of symbol…All

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religious speech is like this, like a finger pointing to the moon…To equate the finger with the moon or to acknowledge the finger and not perceive the moon is to miss the point.”9 Thus, the most one can hope to do with the finite human power of expression is to point toward God in varied and fragmentary ways. However, humanity can do so with some confidence for a second reason based on two theological insights that have been well elaborated by Karl Rahner. The first insight is strictly Trinitarian and is often referred to as Rahner’s Rule: “The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity.”10 To say, as Rahner does, that the economic trinity is the immanent trinity has several important practical implications for Christian life. First, it implies that the God whom one encounters in religious experiences, in liturgical celebrations, and preeminently in the compassionate and liberating love of Jesus Christ and of the Spirit within history, is the reality of God as God is from all eternity. It says that “we are not duped” by God’s self-revelation in Christ, in the Spirit, and in human experience.11 Consequently, the identification of the economic and immanent Trinity also implies that the eternal reality of God is essentially a unity-in-diversity, is essentially relational. Furthermore, to say that the God encountered in distinctive ways through prayer, worship, and community is the God who is Holy Mystery enables the Christian to use the analogies, the metaphors, and the symbols that arise from these experiences of God to express God’s personal relation to individuals and to the community. Finally, to give precedence to the economic trinity as Rahner did in his axiom implies that the experience of God’s activity in the world is the primary means to insight concerning God’s essential nature in Godself.

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With this last realization comes the fundamental understanding of God operative in Rahner’s insight about the Trinity, the understanding that God is self-communicating in and through creation and incarnation. Although God utterly transcends limited human existence, human beings nonetheless have profoundly palpable experiences of the immediacy, the nearness, of God. Within finite existence, human beings experience the genuine breaking in and through of the infinite God in and through cosmic creation and in and through human history, particularly in that human history named Jesus the Christ.12 According to Rahner’s Thomistic theology, “God provides for all things according to their natures. It is natural for humans to attain knowledge through the use of sensible things, for all of our knowledge begins with sense experience.”13 And it is such sense experiences that take shape in symbols, and, in terms of this essay, in artistic symbols for the Triune God. The final reason to approach the doctrine of the Triune God through symbol is because of the capacity of symbols to transform human existence. Theologically, the use of symbol enables persons to move their engagement with the doctrine of the Trinity from the intellectual level to the experiential level where it influences and transforms individual and communal lives. By means of symbol, the imagination contemplates and assimilates elements of reality that are inaccessible to other modes of cognition. Furthermore, through symbol, the imagination comprehends and communicates inner realities–affections, dispositions, habits–that are inexpressible by means other than the symbolic. Hence, although always deficient and fragmentary, the use of symbol in theology has a twofold potency in religious and personal lives. First, symbols enable believers to express with great power their personal and communal experiences of God. Furthermore, symbols possess great potential to transform lives as believers actively engage the

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personal and communal symbols that strain and crack to express the inexpressible mystery of God. The Nature and Function of Symbol What does a symbol do that makes it so expressive and transformative? Calling to mind a powerful visual symbol of Trinity derived from art or architecture reminds one that the symbol of Trinity suggests certain dynamic qualities. First, this visual symbol points beyond itself.14 It reveals and proclaims a particular interpretation of the Triune nature of God and is full of the God symbolized. Second, this symbol gives rise to thought. It is pregnant with an abundance of meanings and allows a wealth of interpretations.15 Third, this symbol invites participation. It invites one to inhabit its environment and discover new possibilities, interpretations, and values.16 Finally, the symbol of Trinity functions. It represents profound truth. Consciously or unconsciously, it molds religious identity, highlights values, directs praxis, and inspires particular types of relationships with God and with others.17 Nevertheless, symbols are “a curious phenomenon.”18 They require a process of interpretation that is able to account for the complexity of their imaginative nature, as well as for the intentionality and the historical context of their creators and interpreters. Moreover, a symbol will not yield its excess of meaning through the mere perception of its visual sign. Its aim cannot be fulfilled without subjective engagement in the symbol itself and, in consequence, in the symbolized. With regard to the artistic symbol, a number of factors must be taken into account. These factors include the genesis of the symbol and its creative contexts.

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In his essay “Interpretation and Its Art Objects: Two Views,” Michael Krausz elucidates some of the salient issues concerning the locus and limits of meaning as related to the artistic symbol and suggests two models from which to approach the issue of meaning: the constructionist model and the realist model.19 According to the realist model, “an object-of-interpretation is fully constituted independently of interpretation as such.”20 This constitution focuses on the form, composition, texture, and color of an object. However, it is widely accepted that the creator “constitutes” an object-of-interpretation not only through sensual elements, but also through intentions that arise from historical, ideological, and psychological contexts.21 The realist would contend that, precisely because of this, the locus of interpretation must reside primarily in the object itself as bearer of meaning indelibly shaped in a particular structure and within a specific context. To suggest that an interpretation has any constitutive authority would be to grant too much authority to the interpreter.22 For the constructionist, conversely, the historicity of an object-of-interpretation is, in and of itself, sufficient warrant to wrest constitutive authority from the hands of the creator. Regardless of its intentional structures, the object-of-interpretation is a cultural object. While the interpreter may well take account of the creator’s original intentions, no individual intention or history has precedence over an interpretive response to it.23 In this study, the interpretative contributions of both the realist and the constructionist approaches come into play. Combined, they reveal the expressive capacity of the symbol as true theological text that communicates its understanding of the Triune God to believers in a particular historical context and that transcends its productive milieu in order to challenge and transform each new generation of those who participate in its dynamic and living discourse.

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Art and the Theology of God as Trinity I now demonstrate this interactive and mutually illuminative approach to theological symbols with three works of art depicting the Triune God. The first engagement with each of these pieces represents the realist approach in which the work is considered constituted by its particular structure and by the intentions and historical context of its creator.

Lucas Cranach 1515-1518 CE Trinity 1515-1518 Oil on Wood Kunsthalle Bremen

Andrei Rublev - 1410 CE The Holy Trinity Wood and Tempura Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Margie Thompson 2001 CE Trinita Oil on Wood Mount St. Joseph, Philadelphia, PA

Realist Approach The depiction of Trinity by Cranach is oil on wood, largely focused through the areole of angels. His use of untamed landscape with architectural ruins, windswept trees, and effects of light and weather give his work the emotional force of the Danube school.24 Additionally, his setting of the crucifixion within the Trinity historically reflects Cranach’s role in the Reformation period in which he became an artistic herald of the burgeoning reform movement. There are no human figures or social references within

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the piece, which could suggest, as does Aquinas, that Cranach’s Trinity has no real relation to the world. Nevertheless, historians speculate that this divine isolation may well have contributed to the popularity of his work “because his contemporaries, who in public life were the protagonists of embattled ideologies, yearned for… for peaceful refuge from the world’s turmoil.”25 Scholars widely agree that the three angels of Rublev’s Holy Trinity represent the hypostases of the Trinity. The prototype for this icon is the biblical story of the visitation of three angels to Abraham and Sarah at Mamre; however, it has come to represent the understanding of the Triune God as Persons equal in dignity and in trinuity. In order to express such equality in diversity, this icon depicts these figures in modes of both similitude and distinction. By way of similitude, monk Gregory Krug notes, “All three angels are blessing the chalice, in which lies a sacrificed calf, prepared for eating…All three angels have staffs in their hand as a symbol of their divine power.” The distinction of Persons in this icon is reinforced both through color and through symbolism. The blue undergarment of the first angel identifies the Father in his celestial nature, verified by the background image of an abode that denotes the divine plan for creation and the Father’s primacy in this plan.26 Placed centrally in the icon, the middle figure represents the second Person of the Trinity. This angel is vested in dark crimson and blue, which symbolize the dual natures of Christ in incarnation and divinity. Behind this angel, are tree branches that represent both the tree of life and of the cross. Finally, the third figure at the right of the icon represents the Holy Spirit. The combination of blue and green in the garments of this figure signify the heavens and the earth and suggest “the life-giving force of the Holy Spirit, which animates everything that exists.” This perspective, moreover, is reinforced by the mountain that rises above this last figure.27 The God-world relationship indicated in this iconography is intriguing

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and open to various interpretations. Its mood has been characterized as detached, meditative, contemplative, and intimate, “void of any noticeable energy of earthly life, of corporeality of forms and external manifestations of love.” Nevertheless, commentators indicate that “equally absent from it is that cold soaring of the spirit, so remote from humans. The image determines the subtle struck balance between soul and spirit, the corporeal and the imponderable, endless and immortal sojourn in the heavens.”28 Of the third piece, Trinita, artist Margie Thompson writes, “This particular image of the Trinity symbolizes the primacy of relationship, a unity empowered by diversity, and an embrace of active, inclusive love, drawing us toward one mind, one heart. The hands in particular symbolize the Spirit of God, incarnate for mutual service, in the reality of mutual vulnerability. In this image, the tenderness and reverence which energize the members of this divine community empower our participation in ‘Great Love of God’ which is made flesh in and through us.” The circular structure of the piece intimates the dynamic perichoretic interrelationship of the Triune God and communicates the inclusivity and participation of humanity in the divine love of the Trinity. Not limited, however, to the human beings in the embrace of God, inclusivity and participation extend through the cosmos to God’s own self, depicted in a multiethnic, male and female representation of the Trinity of persons. The prominence of the heart and the wounded hands serve to convey the vulnerability and tenderness of the Crucified, Incarnate one, while the warm, yet vibrant colors of the piece transmit the fiery and energizing love of the Spirit. In her reflection on Trinita, Thompson proceeds to suggest the impact for theology and for praxis that such art possesses when read as theological text. Directing the reader toward the theological implication of her art, Thompson raises the questions, “What image of God might help us to deepen our understanding of the power of

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our life together in community? What image of God might help us to foster our own flourishing, the flourishing of the human community, and indeed of the whole cosmos?” Attending to the theological content of her own work, she asks, “How might this image of God as Trinity help us in our present efforts toward deepening our life as communities of unity and reconciliation?”29 Constructive Approach As Thompson’s reflections suggest, the realistic interpretation of sacred art can point to the viability of the alternative constructive approach to such art. This latter approach permits the viewer to read these texts theologically beyond the historical and aesthetic contexts from which each derives and to do so within his or her own historical, cultural, and experiential location. Moreover, this constructive stance toward a work of sacred art obviously converges with the theological approach to art as visual symbol through which this essay proposes to explore the belief and praxis surrounding the doctrine of Trinity. From this perspective, I now ask not only what theological understanding of Trinity is expressed through each work of sacred art above, but also, more significantly, what quality of Christian life and praxis each inspires. How might they differ, one to another, to form and transform Christian life and praxis? Does a particular artistic symbol promote relationships of equality and freedom or relationships of supremacy and subjection? Does it communicate the compassionate and inclusive love of God revealed in Jesus Christ and in the Spirit? Finally, does each have the liberative power to transform both Church and society into the image of the Trinity, the ideal of relationality and community? The constructive-symbolic approach to Cranach’s Trinity draws one’s attention to the same structure that was prominent in

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the realistic approach to the piece–the areole of angels. As noted above, this artistic convention tends, like much of Western theology, to focus attention on the intradivine relations of the Trinity. Despite this intradivine focus, however, Cranach’s work suggests little or no relationality among the Persons of the Trinity themselves. The Father’s gaze is transfixed forward, the Crucified Son’s head is turned away, and the avian Spirit perches precipitously upon the orb. Moreover, the regalia of the Father imply a majestic, hierarchical ordering of relations that clearly communicate the monarchy of the Father at the expense of the subordination of Son and Spirit. Finally, although the areoled Trinity is set in a landscape near a city, there is no intimation of God-world relationship in this work. Returning to the questions posed by this study, therefore, one wonders how such a representation of Trinity functions to inspire Christian life, relationship, and praxis. The inevitable conclusion drawn from the interpretation above suggests that a Christian life modeled on such a symbol of Trinity moves toward separation from the world, rather than engagement with it. It exemplifies the image of the Triune God critiqued by Rahner as “absolutely locked up within itself.”30 It functions to reinforce isolationism and hierarchical relationships of dominance and subordination, rather than to encourage communal relationships of intimacy and equality. In the words of Kieran Scott, it communicates a Trinity that is “abstract, impractical, a-historical, [and] immune to the concerns of ecclesial, spiritual and liturgical life.”31 Rublev’s Trinity, when considered from a constructivesymbolic perspective, seems to correct the isolationist, hierarchical emphasis of Cranach’s piece. As demonstrated above, the realistic approach to this icon through the rubrics of iconography belies that impression, at least with regard to monarchy and hierarchy. Nonetheless, employing the constructive-symbolic approach

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enables the viewer to read the visual symbolism through a lens not controlled by Greek iconography. Through this alternative lens, Rublev’s icon is able to convey equality, relationality, and invitation to the believer drawn into its compass. This relationality is reinforced by the representation of the Three Persons themselves. The Father looks toward the Son and Spirit and they return the Father’s gaze. Both lean toward the Father, as if in intimate exchange and careful listening. The cup that draws the attention of not only the viewer, but the Trinity, represents the Eucharistic cup, symbol of sharing and oneness. According to Catherine LaCugna, “This icon expresses the fundamental insight of the doctrine of the Trinity, namely, that God is not far from us but lives among us as a community of persons.”32 Elizabeth Johnson echoes this insight: “This is a depiction of a Trinitarian God capable of immense hospitality who calls the world to join the feast…The mystery of God is not an isolated monad but rather a living communion in relation with the world.”33 While Rublev’s icon The Holy Trinity certainly moves past the isolationism and a-historical nature of Cranach’s piece, it nonetheless retains a certain rigidity and non-engagement with the viewer. Certainly the openness of the circle suggests invitation to the shared life of the Trinity; yet none of the Persons encourages this participation through gaze or gesture. Thus, it communicates the potential for God-world relationship and waits for the viewer to take the initiative. Thompson’s Trinita, however, clearly takes the next step toward communicating the Divine as both transcendent and immanent in relation to the cosmos and its creatures. The heart of the Trinity envelops God’s beloved creation and the wounded, inflamed, and encircling hands of the Divine Persons provide secure embrace. Without sacrificing the sense of intradivine intimacy, the gaze and gesture of the Persons direct themselves outward, inviting, engaging, vivifying, energizing, and empowering

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the viewer to join in the dynamic dance of the Trinity with and within the cosmos and its creatures. This sacred work of art communicates profound relationality and interpenetration of the Divine Persons one with another and each with the beloved creation. In so doing, it preserves both mystery and mutuality. Moreover, the multiethnic, male and female, non-hierarchical representation of the Trinity challenges the exclusivity of male, monarchical metaphors characteristic of the classical doctrine of Trinity. Mirrored in the male and female faces of the multiple races and ethnicities made in the divine image, it proclaims that unity in diversity is the reality of divinity. In Thompson’s Trinita “God is one with Godself and, simultaneously, in communion with the world.”34 Through Thompson’s Trinita, the challenge to truly live in the image and likeness of such a God is issued to humanity. The Symbol of Trinity in Belief and Praxis In view of these interpretations of art as theological symbol, this essay now asks whether belief in the Triune God is truly of no sort of use in Christianity? Is it really of no practical value? Are Christians actually “mere monotheists?” The reflections on Trinitarian symbols in this essay lead to an emphatic “no.” However, if one judges belief in our Triune God to be practical and relevant to our Christian life and praxis, then one is called to enter into the dynamic life that it offers. The Triune God challenges Christians to move from intellectual belief to the threshold of transformation and to respond to the question “What practical difference does this Triune reality of God make in our life and relationships with the Divine and with one another?” Inspired by the symbols of Trinity that demonstrate the most practical, powerful, and profound capacity to impact Christian life, I propose that a community who lives in the image and likeness of the Triunity of God manifests distinctive characteristics. Such a

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community is one that allows the essential meaning of the doctrine of the Triunity of God to function practically, creatively, redemptively, and transformatively in its communal existence. What might such a community look and act like? First, a community that endeavors to live in the image and likeness of the Triune God is one that fosters relationships of equality, unity, and love in the image of the God who is the incomprehensible mystery of relation. Such a community does not seek to shore up its institutional hierarchies or to preserve them from accountability. Rather, it devotes itself to collegiality and communication in the image of its self-revealing God. Secondly, it is a community that cultivates inclusivity in the image of our God who is a hospitable God. Such a community would assure that no member is isolated, marginalized, or ostracized by human judgment or social class. Third, it is a community that celebrates diversity and uniqueness in the image of our God who is Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. At its table of Eucharist and of companionship, it embraces all persons, regardless of race, sex, ethnicity, class, or sexual orientation. Fourth, it is a community that nurtures interdependence and mutuality in the image of our God who is the community of Divine Persons interacting compassionately and salvifically in and with the world. It does not isolate itself within an areole of self-righteousness and pious indignation, but recognizes itself as saints and sinners in need of forbearance and reconciliation. Fifth, it is a community that elicits the giftedness and participation of each and every member in the image of our God who is both Giver and gift, unlimited by gender, tradition, historicity, or culture. Like the Giver of the gift, each creature adds to the flourishing of all by offering what God has ordained to be developed and shared. Ultimately, a community that endeavors to live in the image and likeness of the Triune God welcomes and embraces a diversity of metaphors and symbols for the Divine–male and female, human

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and non-human, individual and communal, ancient and new–in the image of our God who is eternally and temporally selfcommunicating mystery. In so living its image of the Triune God, moreover, the community itself becomes a particular kind of symbol of this triune God. Ideally, the community becomes a symbol that points beyond itself to the reign of God in its midst, initiated already in Christ and the Spirit, but yet to come in its fullness. It becomes a symbol that gives rise to thoughts of human dignity and liberation and that invites participation in its communal and liturgical life. It becomes a symbol that functions powerfully to mold its corporate identity as the Body of Christ in healing and prophetic ministry to those who are marginalized and oppressed. Ultimately, it becomes a symbol that functions powerfully to highlight its values of compassion, justice, and peace. Guided by such values, it becomes a symbol that functions effectively to direct its praxis toward the coming of the reign of God in which “a flourishing humanity on a thriving earth in an evolving universe, [is] all together filled with the glory” of the Triune God.35 _____________

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Permissions for Use of the Artwork Lucas Cranach the Elder. Trinity. c. 1515-1518. Available from http://www.wga.hu/index1.html (Accessed 24 August 2007). “The Web Gallery of Art is copyrighted as a database. Images and documents downloaded from this database can only be used for educational and personal purposes. Distribution of the images in any form is prohibited without the authorization of their legal owner.” Andrei Rublev. The Old Testament Trinity. c. 1410. Available from http://www.abcgallery.com/I/icons/rublev1.html (Accessed 24 August 2007). “Images from Olga’s Gallery are made available for limited noncommercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws. Users must, however, cite the source of the image as they would material from any printed work, and the citations should include the URL www.abcgallery.com.” Margaret Thompson. Trinita. C. 2001. Used by permission of the artist.

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ENDNOTES
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Karl Rahner, The Trinity (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 10-11. Ibid., 14. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of the Word of God (Edinburgh: Clark, 1960), 1. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 218. Ibid., 192. Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1973). Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Trinity: To Let the Symbol Sing Again,” Theology Today 54 (1997): 300. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1967), 239. Johnson, “To Let the Symbol Sing Again,” 304. Rahner, The Trinity, 22, italics in the original. Ibid., 303. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1985), 81-89. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.9, The Medieval Sourcebook, accessed 8 February 2006, available from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ source/aquinas1.html.

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Roger Haight, Jesus, Symbol of God (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1999), 197. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 347-348. Paul Avis, God and the Creative Imagination: Metaphor, Symbol, and Myth in Religion and Theology (New York: Routledge, 1999), 106. Johnson, “To Let the Symbol Sing Again,” 300. David M. Rasmussen, Symbol and Interpretation (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974), 1. Michael Krausz, “Interpretation and Its Art Objects: Two Views,” Monist 73:2 (April 1990): 222-232. Ibid., 224. Krausz uses the term “object-of-interpretation” since he considers his insights applicable to the range of literature, art, symbol, and the like. Laurent Stern, “Factual Constraints on Interpreting,” Monist 73:2 (April 1990): 205-221. Ibid., 208. Ibid., 223. “Cranach, Lucas, The Elder,” Encyclopædia Britannica Online, accessed 25 February 2006, available from http://search.eb.com/eb/article-1597. “Cranach,” Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Ibid.

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Gregory Krug, “Andrei Rublev’s Icon of the Holy Trinity,” Online Orthodox Library of Transfiguration of Our Lord Russian Orthodox Church, accessed 1 March 2006, available from http://www.holy-transfiguration.org/library_en/lord_trinity_rublev.ht ml. “Andrei Rublev,” RusPhoto, accessed 1 March 2006, available from http://park.org/ Guests/Russia/moscow/sergiev/rublev.html. Margie Thompson, “Reflections on Trinita,” Deepening Day Gathering of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Philadelphia, September 12, 2001, Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Rahner, Trinity, 17. Kieran Scott, “Practicing the Trinity in the Local Church: The Symbol as Icon and Lure,” Review and Expositor 99:3 (2004): 433. Catherine M. LaCugna, “God in Communion with Us,” in Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in a Feminist Perspective, ed. Catherine Mowry LaCugna (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 88. Johnson, “To Let the Symbol Sing Again,” 311. Scott, 438. Elizabeth A. Johnson, “God's Beloved Creation,” America 184:13 (2001): 12.

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