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METAPHYSICS OF DIVINE PARTICIPATION

 PUBLICATION | MAY 2025 | CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Participation has been central to the story of Western philosophy and theology for at least two millennia. It has been employed to conceptualise the relationship between God and creation, between universals and particulars, and between the One and the many. This Element approaches the concept systematically to acquire an appreciation of its breadth and depth under four fundamental themes: creation and the divine ideas, incarnation and salvation, being and multiplicity, and the human activities of naming, knowing and making. In doing so it examines some of the key thinkers in the participatory tradition, including Augustine, Irenaeus, Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa. Readers will be introduced to the key contours and manifestations of participatory metaphysics, and its role in Christianity's self-articulation. Together, these considerations will demonstrate how the metaphysics of participation has shaped the Christian tradition.

PURCHASE & ACCESS

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

1 The Metaphysics of Divine Participation

Participation in Context

Defining Participation

Participation's History

2 Creation, the Divine Ideas, and the Origins of Participation

The Divine Ideas

The Hebrew Bible

Plato and Philo

Augustine

Creation as Revelation

3 Being and Becoming in God through Incarnation and Salvation

Irenaeus of Lyons

Being and Becoming

Divine Economy

Humans in the Participatory Economy: Image and Likeness

Incarnation and Recapitulation 

Balthasar and Participatory Drama

4 Participatory Being in Existence, Multiplicity and Analogy

Aquinas on Participation

The Elements of Participation

Existence and Participation

Continuous Creation

Multiplicity

Analogy

Przywara and the Analogy of Being

5 Participatory Knowing, Naming and Creating

Nicholas of Cusa

Naming

Knowing

Making

Artistic Making

Romanticism and Participatory Making 

 

©2026 AJB Hampton

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