Traces of the Trinity : Signs, Sacraments and Sharing God's Life

WARNING: Not written by a Catholic, although St. Thomas Aquinas is quoted (certainly the title is inspired by him). The author also calls the doctrine of transubstatiation a "distortion of the eucharistic sign". * * * *Traces of the Trinity* is a masterful exploration of Christian theology through the lens of semiotics – the study of signs. Andrew Robinson provides helpful analogies and clear explanations throughout to lead even the non-specialist through the subject with ease. Although the variety of signs is endless, all signs and sign-interpretations have the same basic structure: sign, object and interpretation. Further, Robinson shows how this triad rests upon the existence of three ‘elemental grounds': Quality, Otherness and Mediation. He proceeds to develop a highly original ‘semiotic model'of the Trinity, illuminating and integrating key areas of Christian thought: creation, incarnation, and atonement; the roles of baptism and the Eucharist; the nature of the church and the basis of participation in the divine life. Robinson makes belief in the Trinity relevant to ordinary, everyday experience, and challenges the church to recognize the implications for its calling to be transformative, truthful, and inclusive.

The essential argument of this new work by Andrew Robinson is that we live, move and have our being within a sea of signs, but that we are largely unaware of this for most of the time. When the structure of these signs is analysed it turns out to rest onthree recurring 'elemental grounds', which the author calls Quality, Otherness and Mediation. The kaleidoscopic, ramifying patterns of Quality, Otherness and Meditation which underpin representations and interpretations at every level and dimension of the processes of signification offer a model of the dynamic mutual indwelling of the Father, Son and Spirit within the eternal life of the Trinity. This 'semiotic model' of the Trinity would be of rather limited interest in itself unless it can also illuminate other areas of Christian theology. Robinson suggests that the model leads to a helpful way of understanding how the entirely human person Jesus of Nazareth may be understood to have been the full and perfect embodiment (representation) of the quality of God's being. This in turn helps us to understand how the processes of representation and interpretation enable us to be drawn into the very life of God. This has practical implications for the church and for the individual lives of Christian believers.It also offers, via a re-articulation of the neglected concept of vestiges of the Trinity in creation, a form of 'spirituality of the everyday'.