Under the spell of the Triune God

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Im Banne des Dreieinigen Gottes , originally published under the title Im Banne der Dreieinigkeit , is a text written in the 1930s by an unknown monk of the Carthusian Order . The aim of the book is to help the reader become aware of the grace of God given to children .

Writer and dissemination

The writing of the Carthusian, which remained anonymous according to the order convention , was first published in German in 1933 by the Austrian Jesuit Friedrich Kronseder under the title Im Banne der Dreieinigkeit ; In 1943 a Portuguese edition was published in Brazil under the title No mistério do Deus uno e trino . Despite its spiritual depth and the sometimes difficult style, the little book saw eight editions and was also received by members of the Catholic youth movement. Kronseder referred to the author as a Carthusian Father from the La Valsainte Charterhouse in Switzerland. In 2006 a new edition was published in Cologne with a foreword by Klaus M. Becker.

Preface

Becker recommends to the reader that the almost forgotten script should be prayed through rather than read. He thinks that in every person there is a premonition of a beyond the visible and comprehensible world and comes to the conclusion that this premonition could become a longing that makes the heart of man look out for the ultimate reason, the highest goal of his human existence, because, no one has made himself, and every person knows about his end, so he knows that he is limited even when he wanted to suppress the knowledge of his limits.

Overview of the content

introduction

The Carthusian monk points out in the introduction that the book cannot give a theological-dogmatic treatise on the mystery of the Holy Trinity , the inner life of God. Nor should it be an attempt to deal with particular problems of the spiritual life or to find new solutions. It should simply lead back to the fact that every created life and the spiritual life of man have its origin and goal in the divine. The purpose of the book is to make the reader more aware of the dignity of being children of God.

In God

Garden of a Carthusian cell

The Old Testament ( Ex 20.4-5) countered the attempt to drag God into this world by means of images and myths with a ban on images . But the longing for a face of God remained. Psalm 27 of the Bible puts it this way: Your face, Lord, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me, do not turn away your servant in anger. This psalm verse has a special meaning for monastic spirituality.

God revealed himself to Moses with the words I am who I am. The Carthusian monk therefore defines God in accordance with biblical revelation and Christian theology: God is being that consists of and through itself.

In the New Testament conception, God dwells in inaccessible light - lucem inhabitat inaccessibilem (1 Tim 6:16). The one God reveals himself as the Father who begat the Son without division or change in natural unity . Father and son breathe (spiratio passiva) the Holy Spirit . The begotten gives the begotten his own nature and pours his own life into him. Human beings have become children of God through the Savior Blood of Christ.

The Carthusian monk uses a well-known parable by the Doctor of the Church Augustine to explain the Holy Trinity . Augustine compares Jesus with the air soaked by the sun , which receives all the light from the sun every second in an unchanging renewal. Divine eternity, he further concludes, is thus immovable static eternal presence. The divine begetting of the Son is thus an everlasting divine act that is never interrupted and without end, like the divine being itself. Following his logic, the divine persons are relationships in God that are at rest.

The Holy Spirit

According to the Carthusian view, the person of the Holy Spirit arises as a spiritual flame from the encounter of the father with the son, as the glow of infinite love. The spirit bears a resemblance to the breath of life that moves us. The church fathers gave the spirit different names: Divine fire, spiritual anointing, living spring , bliss .

expenditure

  • Friedrich Kronseder (Ed.): Under the spell of the Trinity. Pustet, Regensburg 1935.
  • Anonymus, Klaus Martin Becker (foreword, ed.): Im Banne des Dreieinigen Gottes . New edition. Adamas Verlag, Cologne 2006, ISBN 978-3-937626-06-2

Reviews

  • Bruno Schulz: The Seal of the Trinity: Discussions about the ribbon: Under the spell of the Trinity. o. O., 1934. (Special print from the magazine Die Schildgenossen 1934, pp. 91–95.)
  • Otto Schöllig: Review of 'Im Banne der Dreieinigkeit . In: Oberrheinisches Pastoralblatt 36 (1934), p. 230.

Individual evidence

The book is cited after the new edition.

  1. ↑ However, the 1935 edition was counted as “first” by the publisher.
  2. ^ Reference in the catalog of the German National Library
  3. ↑ See the reviews in the Quickborn magazine Die Schildgenossen.
  4. ↑ Anonymus : Im Banne des Dreieinigen Gottes, Adamas Verlag, Cologne 2006, p. 7
  5. ↑ Ibid., P. 19

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