Something for you to think about as you consider relational spirituality:
"What I want to stress about the Three is not that they are related to one another (which, to modern ears at any rate, seems to imply some kind of independent existences that presuppose all relations), but that they participate in one another to such a degree that any attempt to understand them as independent existences is undermined. The contemporary emphasis on God's 'relationality' has, at best, issued in an appeal for human beings to recognize the degree to which they are 'in relation' to one another. By contrast, the focus on participation suggests that human beings are called to understand themselves, not as 'individuals' who may (or may not) choose to enter into relationships, but rather as mutually indwelling and indwelt, and to such a degree that--echoing the mutual indwelling of the Three--all pretentions to wholly independent existence are abolished" ("Participation as a Trinitarian Virtue: Challenging the Current 'Relational' Consensus" by David Cunningham).
Cunningham believes "The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us to understand any notion of a pure 'individual' as a sinful construction of humanity." Strong language there. He states "In God, there are no individuals; the Three dwell in each other so completely that we cannot divide one from the other."
He adds "In God, this 'complete mutual participation' means that it is impossible to isolate any one of the Three without fundamentally distorting the entire picture. Unfortunately, such distortion has been a common tendency in Trinitarian theology; writers have focused on one of the Three and built into that one an isolated individual who 'works' and 'acts' independently of the others."
In his essay on "The Trinity" he notes "One of the distinctive features of modernity has been its enthusiasm for classifying everything into discreet categories." He continues "Of course, the hidden cost of such classificatory systems was the certain assumptions had to be built into them from the outset, making them not in the least bit neutral." He believes "This divide-and-conquer mentality exercised a negative impact on Trinitarian theology in the modern era...the entire notion of a God who is simultaneously 'one' and 'three' was sometimes declared inconceivable and irrational. This paradoxical God, who existed above and beyond all human categories of knowing, seemed to be quite thoroughly at odds with the spirit of the age--and particularly at odds with its penchant for rationalization and classification."
Going back to his first essay that I quoted from to begin this post, Cunningham sees such significant depth in the notion of fellowship and or communion. He naturally laments how "fellowship" or "communion" have been viewed as "distant" or "disengaged" forms of participation.
However, he argues "if I ask you to 'take part in' my life, I am asking for a very significant degree of emotional, physical and spiritual intimacy. This is the idea of participation that I am attempting to call forth: not of working alongside others in a common activity, but of dwelling in, and being indwelt by, one another...Under such circumstances, the lines of identity between 'me' and 'you' are blurred. Those who participate fully in one another's lives are no longer 'persons' in the dominant modern sense (individual consciousnesses that are fundamentally detachable from the rest of the world). In the event of true mutual participation, there are no longer substantively distinguishable subjects and objects, for this would imply the possibility of separation and division....From a so-called secular perspective, this mutual participation may be difficult to imagine, let alone achieve. For Christians, however, its worldly archetype is the Church--and its heavenly archetype is the triune God."
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