The Messianic Disruption of Trinitarian Theology

The unsettling context of late modernity, a terrain of an infinite fragmentation of life, poses a challenge to Christianity to rearticulate its defining doctrine of the Trinity. Christianity's initial messianic weakness—in that its canonical writings attest to a universal message of redemption for the victims of Empire—was subverted into the strong theology of the Empire. This book demonstrates that Trinitarian discourse was profoundly implicated in this development as it essentially absorbed and took the bite out of the messianic language of the early Christian movement. Zathureczky proposes a retrieval of the messianic discourse of Christianity by way of recapturing its redemptive weakness. Relying on an elective affinity between Walter Benjamin's messianism and Jürgen Moltmann Trinitarianism, he attempts to recapture the "weakness" and fragility of the language of the initial messianic impulse of the Christian community. The resulting "weak" Trinitarianism retains the basic character of Christianity as a Trinitarian faith, but now Trinitarian discourse about God is simultaneously messianic discourse, a language that is attuned to give voice to the damaged lives and alienating conditions of our contemporary context.

The unsettling context of late modernity, a terrain of an infinite fragmentation of life, poses a challenge to Christianity to rearticulate its defining doctrine of the Trinity. Christianity''s initial messianic weakness—in that its canonical writings attest to a universal message of redemption for the victims of Empire—was subverted into the strong theology of the Empire. This book demonstrates that Trinitarian discourse was profoundly implicated in this development as it essentially absorbed and took the bite out of the messianic language of the early Christian movement. Zathureczky proposes a retrieval of the messianic discourse of Christianity by way of recapturing its redemptive weakness. Relying on an elective affinity between Walter Benjamin''s messianism and Jürgen Moltmann Trinitarianism, he attempts to recapture the "weakness" and fragility of the language of the initial messianic impulse of the Christian community. The resulting "weak" Trinitarianism retains the basic character of Christianity as a Trinitarian faith, but now Trinitarian discourse about God is simultaneously messianic discourse, a language that is attuned to give voice to the damaged lives and alienating conditions of our contemporary context.