Piero Coda’s Theology of History as ongoing memory of Humanity’s participation in the Trinitarian kenosis

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 Evento Pasquale, Il negativo e la trinità, andIl logos e il nulla, 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 Il Logos e il nulla 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.