Discussing the filioque, Coakley ( God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ 
“We would not only need to speak . . . of the Son eternally coming forth from the Father ‘in’ or ‘by’ the Spirit (rather than the Spirit proceeding from the Father merely ‘and,’ or ‘through,’ the Son . . . ); but, more daringly, we would also need to speak of the Father’s own reception back of his status as ‘source’ from the other two ‘persons,’ precisely via the Spirit’s reflexive propulsion and the Son’s creative effulgence.”
Just so, but I think that Coakley is wrong to add that in God is “a ‘source’ of love unlike any other, giving and receiving and ecstatically deflecting, ever and always.” In the fact that it is eternal, Triune love is unique. But it is not unique “structurally,” for love is always and ever giving and receiving and ecstatically deflecting. Receptive giving is the only sort of human love there could possibly be.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Rome and the Church in the United States
Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore, who confirmed my father, was a pugnacious Irishman with a taste…
Marriage Annulment and False Mercy
Pope Leo XIV recently told participants in a juridical-pastoral formation course of the Roman Rota that the…
Undercover in Canada’s Lawless Abortion Industry
On November 27, 2023, thirty-six-year-old Alissa Golob walked through the doors of the Cabbagetown Women’s Clinic in…
