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Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience
As the Triune God created the world, so creation bears the signs of its Creator. This evocative book by an influential Christian thinker explores the pattern of mutual indwelling that characterizes the creation at every level. Traces of the Trinity appear in myriad ways in everyday life, from our relations with the world and our relationships with others to sexuality, time, language, music, ethics, and logic. This small book with a big idea—the Trinity as the Christian theory of everything—changes the way we view and think about the world and places demands on the way we live together in community.
176 pages, Paperback
First published March 10, 2015
24 people are currently reading
585 people want to read
About the author
Peter J. Leithart
87 books356 followersPeter Leithart received an A.B. in English and History from Hillsdale College in 1981, and a Master of Arts in Religion and a Master of Theology from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1986 and 1987. In 1998 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in England. He has served in two pastorates: He was pastor of Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church (now Trinity Presbyterian Church), Birmingham, Alabama from 1989 to 1995, and was founding pastor of Trinity Reformed Church, Moscow, Idaho, and served on the pastoral staff at Trinity from 2003-2013. From 1998 to 2013 he taught theology and literature at New St. Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho, where he continues to teach as an adjunct Senior Fellow. He now serves as President of Trinity House in Alabama, where is also resident Church Teacher at the local CREC church. He and his wife, Noel, have ten children and five grandchildren.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
August 23, 2018
Neste livro -- particularmente um dos melhores publicados este ano --, Leithart retoma, embora de um modo em parte singular, a tradição da especulação trinitariana, mais especificamente a meditação sobre a pericorese (a interpenetração das Pessoas da Trindade) e sua relação com as coisas e relacionamentos humanos. Compreendendo que a própria estrutura cósmica assemelha-se antes a uma Fita de Möbius, um corpo que se dobra sobre si mesmo, o autor demonstra como indivíduo e sociedade, o ato sexual, a música, o tempo e a própria ética envolvem sempre, e analogicamente, a habitação mútua de elementos vistos por vezes como dicotômicos. Numa elegante tradução fiel à densidade do texto, esta edição só acrescenta àqueles que apreciam a tradição especulativa que teve seu ápice em Santo Agostinho.
May 8, 2018
Good book. The point of the book comes into focus in the last chapter, so wait for it. Until then you might think the book should have been better named as Trace Elements of the Trinity.
July 21, 2018
Livro impressionante. Escrita criativa e cativante. Tradução impecável de Leandro Dutra.
June 11, 2015
Peter Leithart is like a little kid. He points things out that "adults" have learned how to ignore because those things are so childish. Have you ever listened to children talk about the world they live in? They notice things for the first time and make observations that make you smile.
For my kids, the embankment behind our house isn't an embankment full of sage-brush. It's a mountain to climb. It's a house for the rabbits. It's a wall to dig a hole into for a hide-out. It's the border to a land of higher elevation and an escape route to mysterious part of the neighborhood. It's a wilderness where you can readily find buried treasure. They play on that embankment for hours and come into the house covered in its dust full of stories.
Somehow Peter Leithart hasn't lost the ability we all had as children to see real things imaginatively. So when he thinks about the Trinity, it's everywhere. By the end of the book you can't imagine how anyone could ever deny God's existence. Everything reveals Him.
For my kids, the embankment behind our house isn't an embankment full of sage-brush. It's a mountain to climb. It's a house for the rabbits. It's a wall to dig a hole into for a hide-out. It's the border to a land of higher elevation and an escape route to mysterious part of the neighborhood. It's a wilderness where you can readily find buried treasure. They play on that embankment for hours and come into the house covered in its dust full of stories.
Somehow Peter Leithart hasn't lost the ability we all had as children to see real things imaginatively. So when he thinks about the Trinity, it's everywhere. By the end of the book you can't imagine how anyone could ever deny God's existence. Everything reveals Him.
April 15, 2018
Reviſão de minha tradução. Fiquei menos crítico quanto ao texto e quanto a minha própria tradução neſta terceira leitura — uma lendo mesmo, outra traduzindo e agora reviſando. Deu para apreciar melhor o uſo de imagens e analogias, e contextualizar melhor as partes que me incomodaram na primeira leitura.
January 12, 2020
"Adoramos um Deus que é Palavra; ele falou, e espera que falemos suas palavras após ele. Ele espera que aprendamos a usar tudo que revelou e nomeou para honrar, louvar e falar dele, porque esse é o destino para o qual tudo criou." pg. 192
August 17, 2018
In an innovative treatment, the ever-keen Peter Leithart examines a wide assortment of features of the world we live in - the way we relate to the world around us, the nature of human relationships and sexuality, time, music, language, and so much more - and makes the winsome case that each one involves the phenomenon of 'mutual indwelling' or perichoresis. (In a sense, you could say the underlying structure of the universe is love - a fact Leithart does, indeed, suggest. He envisions his examination as a Dantesque ascent up a mountain toward love: "If the ethics of mutual penetration is an ethics of love, then the ontology of mutual indwelling is an ontology of love. ... At every terrace, it seems, even when we were only looking through a glass darkly or hoping for some insight into the way things are, we were glimpsing traces of love, love wired into the world, love as the operating system of creation" [110-111].)
Why would this be? Why is perichoresis the pattern for creation and for human experience? We must continue to look up, "and as we look up to the peak, we might begin to see the outlines of a love that moves the sun and all the other stars" (111, alluding keenly to the last line of Dante's Paradiso). Leithart suggests that "we have finally come to the conclusion that the world everywhere bears traces of love, and we've begun to suspect that that something at the peak has the same shape. ... I want to introduce you to Love" (133).
And indeed Leithart does. For a God who is Love, a God whose inner life is constituted by perichoretic relationships, is precisely the Triune God spoken of in Christian theology, devotion, and worship. Reviewing all he has found about the nature of reality, Leithart sees "the traces, fingerprints, and footprints of the God who is Trinity" (145). (He insists, though, that his project is not meant as one of "working up to the Trinity from creation," but rather of looking "through the doctrine of the Trinity to see if it illumines the way the world is. I believe it does, and I hope the results are edifying" [ix].)
Along the way, Leithart is insightful and moving, and the visions he offers have the power to stimulate a fuller existence in your life. For instance: "Hospitality is not universal approval. It is universal welcome for the sake of renewal. We make room not to tolerate but to transform" (110). And the chapter on music is profoundly sublime, in my opinion. Not a book to be missed!
Why would this be? Why is perichoresis the pattern for creation and for human experience? We must continue to look up, "and as we look up to the peak, we might begin to see the outlines of a love that moves the sun and all the other stars" (111, alluding keenly to the last line of Dante's Paradiso). Leithart suggests that "we have finally come to the conclusion that the world everywhere bears traces of love, and we've begun to suspect that that something at the peak has the same shape. ... I want to introduce you to Love" (133).
And indeed Leithart does. For a God who is Love, a God whose inner life is constituted by perichoretic relationships, is precisely the Triune God spoken of in Christian theology, devotion, and worship. Reviewing all he has found about the nature of reality, Leithart sees "the traces, fingerprints, and footprints of the God who is Trinity" (145). (He insists, though, that his project is not meant as one of "working up to the Trinity from creation," but rather of looking "through the doctrine of the Trinity to see if it illumines the way the world is. I believe it does, and I hope the results are edifying" [ix].)
Along the way, Leithart is insightful and moving, and the visions he offers have the power to stimulate a fuller existence in your life. For instance: "Hospitality is not universal approval. It is universal welcome for the sake of renewal. We make room not to tolerate but to transform" (110). And the chapter on music is profoundly sublime, in my opinion. Not a book to be missed!
July 18, 2018
This is a really profound book that explores the analogy of divine perichoresis in creation and human life. Ie it shows how , just as the Father, Son and Spirit mutually indwell one another, do that Indwelling is reflected in creation. A great meditation that will enrich our living.
December 22, 2021
While the book is definitely well written and there were plenty of interesting parts, I can't say that I got much from it in terms of the Trinity.
April 8, 2023
Refreshing as always! Peter J. Leithart is proving unceasingly good at recapitulating the unseen and forgotten truths in the Biblical worldview.
'Traces of the Trinity...' would read well with Yannaras' 'Variations...' and Schmemann's 'For the Life of the World...'; Leithart makes the profound but often overlooked point that the Trinity is immanent in everyday life, consonant with a sacramental worldview, which has been so well laid out by Schmemann. He shows how signs not only point to the Triune reality but how we participate within that reality through them.
In so doing he highlights the folly in abstract analogising which would sever the ties between creation and creator. (This is addressed briefly in the postscript but is reaffirmed elsewhere.)
This point, which Leithart shows evidenced in language, sex, music and more, has been developed in a few quarters, but needs work if we are to do justice to God's good creation. (Particularly in relation to the Eucharist and Marriage in Philip LeMasters' wonderful writings, or food in Norman Wirzba's work.)
Trinitarian Theology, rightly understood, offers a corrective to Christians who don't think in such terms, whether 'liberal's or 'conservative', they be the more abstract 'trinitarians', univocal thinkers, modernists; dialectians of various sorts or proponents of a panoply of 'postmodern' forms, which are still too often rooted in a shady nominalism. (See William Desmond or DB Hart.)
Leithart is right to use The Word as authoritative against a strict creator-creation dichotomy and helps us remember, as Ben Witherington or Eastern Christian Theology has elsewhere, that the image of God was damaged but not destroyed with the fall.
Like his work on 'Gratitude...', this is wonderful preliminary effort. It lacks some of the academic rigour of that work and some of his positions could be developed in greater detail but is readable/relatable for almost anyone and that's no bad thing, especially given what he's laying out.
I do have much more questions that I'd like to ask the author but he's at least getting the reader to ask more interesting ones, which will bring the Trinity to the forefront of their minds.
'Traces of the Trinity...' would read well with Yannaras' 'Variations...' and Schmemann's 'For the Life of the World...'; Leithart makes the profound but often overlooked point that the Trinity is immanent in everyday life, consonant with a sacramental worldview, which has been so well laid out by Schmemann. He shows how signs not only point to the Triune reality but how we participate within that reality through them.
In so doing he highlights the folly in abstract analogising which would sever the ties between creation and creator. (This is addressed briefly in the postscript but is reaffirmed elsewhere.)
This point, which Leithart shows evidenced in language, sex, music and more, has been developed in a few quarters, but needs work if we are to do justice to God's good creation. (Particularly in relation to the Eucharist and Marriage in Philip LeMasters' wonderful writings, or food in Norman Wirzba's work.)
Trinitarian Theology, rightly understood, offers a corrective to Christians who don't think in such terms, whether 'liberal's or 'conservative', they be the more abstract 'trinitarians', univocal thinkers, modernists; dialectians of various sorts or proponents of a panoply of 'postmodern' forms, which are still too often rooted in a shady nominalism. (See William Desmond or DB Hart.)
Leithart is right to use The Word as authoritative against a strict creator-creation dichotomy and helps us remember, as Ben Witherington or Eastern Christian Theology has elsewhere, that the image of God was damaged but not destroyed with the fall.
Like his work on 'Gratitude...', this is wonderful preliminary effort. It lacks some of the academic rigour of that work and some of his positions could be developed in greater detail but is readable/relatable for almost anyone and that's no bad thing, especially given what he's laying out.
I do have much more questions that I'd like to ask the author but he's at least getting the reader to ask more interesting ones, which will bring the Trinity to the forefront of their minds.
February 17, 2016
Leithart has as his central theme divine perichoresis, the indwelling of the members of the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit. He takes it further, extending it to Creation and all human relationships. We all indwell each other and we only are ourselves because of and through our relationships to each other and to our environment. Every new person you meet changes you in some way and you them. Our whole point of existence, of course, is the indwelling of the Trinity and communion with God. Summed up in Jesus' prayer in John:17.
July 1, 2016
Not quite what I expected when I picked it up, this is nevertheless an intriguing and well-reasoned book. Leithart attempts to show "traces of the Trinity" in a number of different areas of life, from relationships to music and more, that he thinks reflect a mutual indwelling, inter-penetration, etc that reflect the periochoretic reality of the Trinity. This is not the kind of book that will explain the Trinity to those who need an introduction, but it can help Christians understand the impact our understanding of the Trinity can have on the way we view the world.
April 5, 2018
A very intriguiŋ, challengiŋ text. Could not avoid þinkiŋ it ſeemed to ſide wiþ Grudem & Pipe againſt Trueman & Jones, but I could be wroŋ; anyway, its point is ſo much bigger & loftier ðan T&J’s miſreprentative vendetta!
Eßentially, it argues for the Univerſe declariŋ not only God’s glory, but more ſpecifically the Trinity’s mutual indwelliŋ glory.
Eßentially, it argues for the Univerſe declariŋ not only God’s glory, but more ſpecifically the Trinity’s mutual indwelliŋ glory.
June 21, 2016
very thought-provoking and will probably be a re-read in the future
September 10, 2016
A series of meditations on the Trinitarian shape of reality.
January 20, 2017
Top notch stuff from Leithart. A popular and wonder-ful look at the world created by our triune God.
April 7, 2015
Outstanding work
January 20, 2017
This is a beautiful and thoughtful work by Leithart.
December 5, 2024
I almost never write reviews, but it’s hard to express how much I liked this short book. Midway through, I put the book down, deciding not to go to the next chapter - yet. This was not from fatigue or disinterest, but more from a sense of bewilderment at what I was reading. I needed to pause and muse a bit. It wasn’t so much that I was reading something conceptually new to me. It was that someone had written THE book. The book that was saying all the things I have in my head (in seed form). It was uncanny and a sense of relief – someone polished, organized and extended my own thoughts without me knowing it. How convenient.
Reflecting on this, I was also struck by how it won’t have the same effect on other readers, and it is precisely because of the truth of the book’s main premise. We are, as it were, all coming at it from different “worlds” with more or less (or different) revolutions around the Möbius strip. As Leithart argues, “It’s fairly easy to see that the boundary between me and the world is porous, and that it has to be so – physically, intellectually, metaphysically. It’s a little harder to see that the pores open in both directions, that I make the world by dwelling in it as much as the world makes me by dwelling in me. It’s even harder to see that objects in the world are what they are by indwelling one another” (p. 15). Even borrowing from Heidegger, the great disenchanting feature of our reality is a failure to understand that “A ‘bare subject without a world’ never exists” (p.26). The one and the many, the individual or society, being and becoming, or unity and diversity are in an “equi-primordial” dance; they only “exist” by means of and through interaction (p. 32). For any two that are one, “Each begins to indwell the narrative of the other” (p. 42). The other’s narrative isn’t something I observe from the outside but something that actually constitutes me and gives me being. We need to learn how to “exist in a ‘mode’ of relation” (p. 46).
Even so, and given my history, “My body is a placard of the past, a living past that invades the present.” The paradoxical present, that exists on the knife’s edge of what has been and what will be, IS the mutual indwelling of the past and future (p. 60). And, extending it to language, “Each word has to make space for the next and the next in succession. As the sentence performs, each word becomes a home to, and makes its home in, every other” (p. 76). So, “Words contain other words, even as they are contained by words,” and texts indwell texts (p. 79). And, this “mutual penetration is not something imposed on the world but the basic pattern of reality” (p. 78). “Without prior texts” there would be no “new texts,” but more importantly no text “would make sense as a text without the indwelling presence of” the other texts (p. 80). From text to sound is no different, for a “C would not be a C without the other sounds” of the same chord (as it exists as a complex unity of sounds) and “The tones of a chord can be heard sounding ‘through’ each other” (p. 87).
All that sketch to say: I’ve been struck with the concept of a relational ontology for some time - that to exist just “is” the set of relations we have. We don’t exist as substances that then interact; our relations are “us”, without a denial of the individuality of the person or the community. To exist is to be related, it’s the “I” and “Thou” of being. Remove my status as husband, father, this or that, all the way back to the beginning, and you won’t find any real “stuff” underneath it all – you’ll find non-being. My first act of existence is coterminous with my relation to mother and Spirit.
As such, the texts indwelling my “text,” which are unique to me, inform my reading of this text. It is impactful to me, at this time and in this way, just because of the preparatory “word-home” that this particular book has come to reside in. In part, extending (or applying practically) the Van Tillian concept that there is something necessary not just about “God,” as the precondition for the intelligibility of the world, but more specifically that there really is something about the ontological and perichoretic Trinity in particular. Monadic gods don’t just not exist, they can’t exist, by definition. Additionally, Gunton’s work on “The One, The Three, and The Many”, Frame and his perspectivalism, Esther Meek’s “Covenant Epistemology,” “The One and the Many” by the “Existentialist Thomist” W. Noriss Clarke, etc. all are underneath and formative of "me." Merging the implications of these texts and ideas together, in my mind, results in exactly (as a starting point) what “Traces of the Trinity” delivers.
In short, the world is perichoretic, up and down, because it is constituted by and responsive to the music or active speech of the perichoretic Trinity. In many respects, this book is like a transcendental or teleological argument in the form of poetic beauty. (side note, I put ear buds in and listened to Allegri's "Miserere" and "Angus Dei, Op. 11" while reading chapter six, "Chords". I highly recommend).
Reflecting on this, I was also struck by how it won’t have the same effect on other readers, and it is precisely because of the truth of the book’s main premise. We are, as it were, all coming at it from different “worlds” with more or less (or different) revolutions around the Möbius strip. As Leithart argues, “It’s fairly easy to see that the boundary between me and the world is porous, and that it has to be so – physically, intellectually, metaphysically. It’s a little harder to see that the pores open in both directions, that I make the world by dwelling in it as much as the world makes me by dwelling in me. It’s even harder to see that objects in the world are what they are by indwelling one another” (p. 15). Even borrowing from Heidegger, the great disenchanting feature of our reality is a failure to understand that “A ‘bare subject without a world’ never exists” (p.26). The one and the many, the individual or society, being and becoming, or unity and diversity are in an “equi-primordial” dance; they only “exist” by means of and through interaction (p. 32). For any two that are one, “Each begins to indwell the narrative of the other” (p. 42). The other’s narrative isn’t something I observe from the outside but something that actually constitutes me and gives me being. We need to learn how to “exist in a ‘mode’ of relation” (p. 46).
Even so, and given my history, “My body is a placard of the past, a living past that invades the present.” The paradoxical present, that exists on the knife’s edge of what has been and what will be, IS the mutual indwelling of the past and future (p. 60). And, extending it to language, “Each word has to make space for the next and the next in succession. As the sentence performs, each word becomes a home to, and makes its home in, every other” (p. 76). So, “Words contain other words, even as they are contained by words,” and texts indwell texts (p. 79). And, this “mutual penetration is not something imposed on the world but the basic pattern of reality” (p. 78). “Without prior texts” there would be no “new texts,” but more importantly no text “would make sense as a text without the indwelling presence of” the other texts (p. 80). From text to sound is no different, for a “C would not be a C without the other sounds” of the same chord (as it exists as a complex unity of sounds) and “The tones of a chord can be heard sounding ‘through’ each other” (p. 87).
All that sketch to say: I’ve been struck with the concept of a relational ontology for some time - that to exist just “is” the set of relations we have. We don’t exist as substances that then interact; our relations are “us”, without a denial of the individuality of the person or the community. To exist is to be related, it’s the “I” and “Thou” of being. Remove my status as husband, father, this or that, all the way back to the beginning, and you won’t find any real “stuff” underneath it all – you’ll find non-being. My first act of existence is coterminous with my relation to mother and Spirit.
As such, the texts indwelling my “text,” which are unique to me, inform my reading of this text. It is impactful to me, at this time and in this way, just because of the preparatory “word-home” that this particular book has come to reside in. In part, extending (or applying practically) the Van Tillian concept that there is something necessary not just about “God,” as the precondition for the intelligibility of the world, but more specifically that there really is something about the ontological and perichoretic Trinity in particular. Monadic gods don’t just not exist, they can’t exist, by definition. Additionally, Gunton’s work on “The One, The Three, and The Many”, Frame and his perspectivalism, Esther Meek’s “Covenant Epistemology,” “The One and the Many” by the “Existentialist Thomist” W. Noriss Clarke, etc. all are underneath and formative of "me." Merging the implications of these texts and ideas together, in my mind, results in exactly (as a starting point) what “Traces of the Trinity” delivers.
In short, the world is perichoretic, up and down, because it is constituted by and responsive to the music or active speech of the perichoretic Trinity. In many respects, this book is like a transcendental or teleological argument in the form of poetic beauty. (side note, I put ear buds in and listened to Allegri's "Miserere" and "Angus Dei, Op. 11" while reading chapter six, "Chords". I highly recommend).
September 19, 2024
This book checks a lot of boxes for me, with it's theological depth, sanctified speculations, philosophic tie-ins, and mapping multiple layers of different disciplines together. This is one I'll need a physical copy of to return to later. It's classic Leithart in that there are no wasted words. My only light critiques are that some of the arguments of the different "traces" are relatively uneven (for example, I did not really buy his argument about arguments), and there are some parts that I do wish were more drawn out. All in all, very good book, and right in my niche.
January 31, 2021
Fantastic.
I struggle to read or think philosophy as a genre, and the first half of this book at least had a lot of philosophy woven in. However, as per usual, Dr. Leithart brings it all home in profound, reverberating ways. Chapter 7 alone was worth the price of admission. I tend to think all humanity's woes could be solved if (in addition to Scripture and good literature) everyone read at least one Lewis and Leithart a year.
I struggle to read or think philosophy as a genre, and the first half of this book at least had a lot of philosophy woven in. However, as per usual, Dr. Leithart brings it all home in profound, reverberating ways. Chapter 7 alone was worth the price of admission. I tend to think all humanity's woes could be solved if (in addition to Scripture and good literature) everyone read at least one Lewis and Leithart a year.
April 23, 2019
An interesting little book reflecting on the phenomenon of “mutual indwelling” in all of life and how the author sees these things as pointing towards God. Regardless of the author’s thesis, the book serves as a good example of how careful observation and meditative investigation can be done and can sometimes offer remarkable insights.
April 9, 2021
(Read for a seminary paper)
Excellent thesis: the world is like it is because the God who is made it like it is! I’m behind that argument. Although, the reader has to wade through 8 beefy chapters of philosophical pontification to get to that thesis. The last chapter is the only REALLY necessary one, I think.
Excellent thesis: the world is like it is because the God who is made it like it is! I’m behind that argument. Although, the reader has to wade through 8 beefy chapters of philosophical pontification to get to that thesis. The last chapter is the only REALLY necessary one, I think.
April 1, 2018
The author's initial theses is laid out at the start and then reinforced with various examples in the different chapters. I found it good for reflective reading.
August 22, 2018
This is the kind of book I wish I had when taking philosophy courses in college. Great stuff.
October 8, 2018
It's hard for Christians to see practical manifestations of the Trinity in the world. They're everywhere, and Leithart points them out.
January 12, 2020
Muito bom!
January 11, 2021
Beautiful little book - 150 pages or so - about how everything indwells everything else. The passages about time are especially poignant.
February 10, 2021
Well written but I was a bit disappointed.
March 12, 2021
Amazingly helpful and intriguing look at how a trinitarian perspective illuminates the realities of all of the world around us!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews