'… Davison offers an impressive and wide-ranging study of the doctrine of participation, effectively demonstrating how it provides a metaphysical framework for theology that allows us to see the world as a gift from God, bearing some trace of his likeness, and creation as profoundly precious because of the one who gives it to us, and whose likeness it bears: God himself.' Daria Spezzano, The Living Church
Part I. Participation and Causation: 1. By and from God: efficient causation and God as the origin and agent of creation; 2. Causes and the Trinity: 'from Him and through Him and to Him are all things'; 3. Not out of God: God is not the material cause for creation; 4. After God's likeness: formal causation and creaturely characterfulness; 5. To and for God: final causation and God as the origin and goal of creation; Part II. The Language of Participation and Language as Participation: 6. Characterising participation; 7. Analogy: participation in being and language; Part III. Participation and the Theological Story: 8. Participation and christology; 9. Participation and creaturely action; 10. Evil as the failure of participation; 11. Redemption I: restoration and union; 12. Redemption II: justification, merit and transformation; Part IV. Participation and the Shape of Human Life: 13. Truth: knowing and the lucidity of things; 14. Beauty: praying and loving; 15. Goodness: ethics; Conclusion: participation, relation and common life.