Piero Coda’s Theology of History as Ongoing Memory of Humanity’s Participation in the Trinitarian Kenosis

Abstract

This essay was originally delivered as a paper at a symposium on the topic of Translatio Imperii at the University of Hong Kong in February 2010. After the ideological horrors of the 20th century, participants were asked: "Can one still speak in any legitimate way of a divine providence in history?" Piero Coda’s work, particularly his Paschal Event; The Negative and the Trinity; and The Logos and Nothingness, could be read as a development of a humanism expanded to the dimensions of a participation in the Trinitarian kenosis. His grappling with Hegel shows the centrality of Jesus’ forsakenness and of the Trinity to contemporary culture, while his The Logos and Nothingness indicates how the intra-Trinitarian kenosis becomes the context for dialogue with the great oriental religions. Finally, his "Towards a Theological Foundation for a Political Category of Fraternity" develops a Trinity-based understanding of fraternity as an experience overcoming religious, social, and anthropological divisions in contemporary culture. Shining through Coda’s work can be discerned a profound rethinking of divine providence in a history however deeply scarred by evils such as the Holocaust.