We now have come to the end of our Trinitarian exploration of divine-human personhood and divine-human relationality.  We transition now, more explicitly to the horizontal and the historical.  For to engage in a theological exploration of God’s relation to the world as established in Christ is inevitably to ask not only the personal-relational question of human and divine analogy, but also the question of the relationship between the Triune life and created history.  Here again, the transcendence of God and the involvement of God in the world in Christ become contentious issues begging many different interpretations.  What is the nature of the Triune God’s involvement with the created history that is the world?  Does the world affect God in his Triune life of infinite serenity and overabundant joy?  Does God suffer?  These questions, though similar to the question of divine-human analogy, acquire a more cosmologial significance as the theologian seeks to investigate how we may speak fittingly of God’s involvement with the world in Christ.

In the next three sections I explore a few facets of the relationship between God and created history.  First, I look to establish a radically trinitarian theology of divine transcendence.  Against any sort of abstract notion of divine transcendence as sheer otherness or over-againstness, a trinitarian theology of divine transcendence is grounded in the inherently non-competitive nature of the Triune’s God’s relationship to created history.  As we will see a proper understanding of divine transcendence is grounded not so much in God’s otherness (though that concept is not to be dispensed with), but rather in his non-competitive relationship of covenantal lordship with creation.

Second, I explore further the nature of the God-world relationship on the basis of a theodramatic theology of the immanent Trinity.  Our understanding of the relationship between the being of God and history is found in how we understand the relationship between the drama of divine-human interaction in history and the eternally dramatic life of the Triune God.  Under the conditions of fallenness it is impossible for us to concieve of drama without conflict.  However, I argue that the eternal life of the immannent Trinity, revealed in Christ is in fact the “primal drama” which is the source and basis for the theodramatic movement of the economy of salvation.  The eternal dynamisim of Triune fellowship, sociality, and symphonic beauty is the the archetypal drama which forms the context, and indeed the acting space for all created dramatic encounter between God and humanity in Christ.

Finally, I look specifically at the traditional doctrines of the immutability and impassiblility of God and seek to establish a radically trinitarian reconstruction of these classical themes.  On the basis of a christocentric and radically trinitarian theological orientation, we are inclined to view immutability in connection with the covenantal faithfulness of the Triune God as seen in the history of Israel and Jesus.  Likewise, such a methdology yeilds and understanding of impassiblility as the inexhuastibility and overabundance of the Triune life.  These radical trinitarian intonations on these classical themes of the divine attributes and the God-world relation are all designed to complete an introductory dogmatic theology of God and humanity in Christ.