MARCH 2007

ISSUE 9 - ISSN 1448 - 6326

An Examination of Karl Rahner's Trinitarian Theology

Vincent Battaglia

Abstract

Karl Rahner has left us with an enduring theological legacy, a legacy that will be continually appreciated in the generations to come. One of his most influential works, a relatively short treatise entitled The Trinity, is examined in this essay. I also consider some of Rahner’s other writings on the Trinity in order to better explicate the theological book under discussion. Whilst I consider what may be regarded as theological ‘limitations’ arising from his work, in no way do I underestimate the ingenuity and theological insight that The Trinity provides us. I locate Rahner’s Trinitarian writings within their ecclesiological and theological context, and then systematically expound The Trinity in order to demonstrate how Rahner attempts to draw out the implications of his Trinitarian propositions for his understanding of Christology and grace. My argument is that Rahner’s doctrine of the Trinity is a unifying doctrine that draws together other aspects of his theology such that the Christian is left with the clear and distinct message that the life of the Trinity is (or should be) the very life of the Christian and the church.

In this essay I examine the writings on the Trinity by the German Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner (1904-1984). In particular, I focus on his seminal work, The Trinity[1], originally published in German in 1967[2], although I also refer to related writings in other publications, especially articles published in the series known in English as the Theological Investigations. I begin by locating Rahner’s trinitarian writings within their ecclesiological and theological context. I then systematically expound Rahner’s key work, The Trinity, and consider how Rahner attempts to draw out the implications of his trinitarian propositions for his understanding of Christology and grace. I survey the limitations and issues arising from an examination of The Trinity. I then evaluate Rahner’s contribution to trinitarian theology by considering the perduring theological significance of his work. I conclude that Rahner’s overall theological concern in his trinitarian writings was to re-establish the Trinity as the central mystery of salvation, a focal point unifying the doctrines of grace, Christology, soteriology, pneumatology, and eschatology, and therefore a mysterious reality that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.

THE CONTEXT FOR RAHNER’S TRINITARIAN WRITINGS

Having entered the Society of Jesus in 1922, Rahner undertook a theological education characterised by the influence of the then dominant system of thought in Catholic education, neo-Scholasticism. Neo-Scholasticism was essentially a refined method of theological inquiry and disquisition that sought to understand the great Scholastic writings, especially those of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), largely through a consideration of post-Scholastic commentaries of the original medieval texts.[3] Designed for confessors and teachers, the neo-Scholastic dogmatic manuals, with their question and answer format, shaped under the influence of rationalism, became removed from the ordinary pastoral experiences of Christians. The narrow theological method of neo-Scholasticism was exemplified in the rejection of Rahner’s doctoral thesis on the grounds that he sought to interpret Thomas through the ‘extraneous’ eyes of Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), under whom Rahner had been a student.

By the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), neo-Scholasticism was widely criticised as being unhistorical, ill-equipped to deal with modernity’s turn to the subject, unresponsive to the challenges of modern science, and fatally based on a rigid and unimaginative simplification of the rich medieval synthesis of theology.[4] In The Trinity Rahner is clear about what he perceived as the pedagogical shortcomings of the way that the doctrine of God was taught in seminaries and theological faculties. Whilst he was influenced by the work of the Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968)[5], Rahner also takes up the Council Fathers’ call of ressourcement and aggiornamento by exploring scriptural and patristic sources of trinitarian theology in an attempt to re-bridge orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

AN EXPOSITION OF THE TRINITY[6]

In his work The Trinity, Rahner says he is attempting a systematic reflection on the dogma of the Trinity (7, 38, 49, 80).[7] Whilst he provides a structured analysis, I shall expound his work using subject categories of my own.

The Stated Purposes of the Essay

Rahner is concerned that, as at the time of writing his essay, there was a theologically unsound and pastorally destructive divergence between Christian doctrine on the one hand, at least as it relates to key trinitarian and Christological teachings, and Christian piety on the other hand (7, 9). This is none other than a dissonance between ‘faith and life’ (7). Despite outstanding exceptions to the contrary, including such figures as Bonaventure, Ignatius of Loyola, and Elizabeth of the Holy Trinity (10), he is critical of the poor understanding of key trinitarian and Christological doctrines by contemporary Christians (10-12). Indeed, for all intents and purposes most Christians are practically ‘mere “monotheists”’ (10). The key doctrinal confusion is that Christians have some vague notion of the incarnation as meaning God becoming man but cannot with much confidence identify the second divine hypostasis as the identity of the God-Man, and even less can they say that this divine person can tell us something about the divinity itself (11-12).

Rahner largely lays the blame at ‘textbook theology’ (i.e., neo-Scholasticism), which, in his view, did not make it clear who it is that is incarnated (11, 14). This ‘textbook theology’ was responsible for the church’s cultic practice of ‘indifferently’ offering the Mass to the three divine persons, addressing the ‘Our Father’ to the Trinity generally, and suggesting that any of the divine persons could have become our incarnate saviour (12). Immediately, one of Rahner’s key Christological and trinitarian themes emerges – that only the Logos (Λόγος), the Son of God, the second divine person of the Blessed Trinity, could have been incarnated (12, 23, 120). This position is different to that of Thomas[8], but consonant with that of Bonaventure[9]. He adds that this second divine hypostasis can tell us something about this person within the divinity, a second key theme (11-12). A third key theme is also suggested in the early pages of his essay – that God’s communication must somehow be a communication of God Himself and not merely the ‘created’ effects of grace (13, 15, 19, 22-23)[10]; something implied by the concept of the ‘real relation’ of God to humanity (14-15).[11] For Rahner, the result of this impoverished ‘textbook theology’ is that ‘the Trinity occupies a rather isolated position in the total dogmatic system’ (14), thus questioning its relevance to theology (17).[12] Motivated by the perceived disconnection between the Trinity and salvation history (21), Rahner states that he wishes to link every dogmatic treatise, especially the mystery of our salvation, to the Trinity itself (21). In this way, rather than the Trinity existing in ‘splendid isolation’ (17), Rahner hopes that it instead resumes its place as a unifying doctrinal bridge for the entire Christian faith.

With these early dogmatic signposts, Rahner’s method is being made clear from the outset. He is critical of what he sees as an unfortunate Thomistic distinction between treatises that first deal with God’s unity, essence, attributes and names, and then with the tri-personal God as such (i.e., processions, relations, persons, proper roles, missions).[13] He says that this is a distinction introduced by Thomas in his Summa theologiæ and is absent in the earlier works of Peter the Lombard (15-17). This regrettable distinction was carried through to the works of the neo-Scholastics, who would then argue that the existence and oneness of God was discernible by reason but that the divine persons could be asserted by revelation alone (14), a position since canonised by church teaching.[14] Rahner instead prefers the theology of Bonaventure (14).[15] Rahner seeks to limit the doctrine of appropriations (13-16, 76-77) not only because he wishes to assert ‘proper roles’ for the Son and Spirit, but also because it effectively undermines the classical Augustinian notion of the vestigia Trinitatis in creation (14).[16] Finding vestiges of the Trinity in creation allows us to learn about the inner life of God by observation of His works and from reflection of humanity in all its diversity (20-21).[17] He says he is appealing to ‘the older tradition’ (i.e., before Augustine), to recover some earlier (and presumably more universal) theologies of the Trinity (11). Indeed, Rahner boldly asserts that he is relying on fresh interpretations of the Bible and on what he sees as the Greek trinitarian tradition, both of which, in his view, undertake trinitarian theology by first considering God who is ‘Father’, before considering the unicity of the divine essence (16-18, 58, 80).

The Basic Thesis: The Axiomatic Unity of the ‘Economic’ and ‘Immanent’ Trinity

Rahner’s ‘basic thesis’ which he says establishes the connection between various dogmatic treatises and ‘which presents the Trinity as a mystery of salvation’ is, ‘The “economic” Trinity is the “immanent” Trinity and the “immanent” Trinity is the “economic” Trinity’ (21-22, also 23, 24).[18] The economic Trinity refers to God’s action and presence in the economy of salvation (‘oikonomia’, οίκονομία), or God ad nos (‘God-for-us’), whilst the immanent Trinity refers to the mysterious existence together of the three divine persons in their eternal life, or God’s life in se (‘theologia’, θεολογία).[19] Rahner has ‘identified’ the economic and immanent Trinity, and this identification is, for him, ‘axiomatic’, his basic axiom (‘Grundaxiom’).

Rather than commencing from a position of considering God’s life in se, which for Rahner can only lead to the split between the treatises De Deo Uno and De Deo Trino, Rahner starts with the economic Trinity and says that we can know the immanent Trinity from considering the economic Trinity (48, 55, 64, 65, 119).[20] To prove this assertion, Rahner needs to show that the ‘missions’ of the Son and the Spirit ad extra are not mere ‘appropriations’ but are revelatory of the inner life of God.[21] To do this Rahner holds that the incarnation belongs to the second divine person alone, and is not merely appropriated to Him even if we say that the incarnation is the work of the whole Trinity (23, 120). In addition, Rahner holds that grace is not to be understood as merely a ‘created’ effect in us caused by God in an efficient manner, or that grace is merely to be appropriated to a divine person (the Holy Spirit) even though it is the work of the Three, but rather grace is to be understood as God’s ‘self-communication’ (selbst-Mitteilen) (22-23). Rahner explains that this self-communication occurs not because of a mere efficient causality, a consequence of created grace (as the Scholastics argue)[22], but rather on account of a ‘quasi-formal causality’, a term Rahner coins to explain that grace is not extrinsic to nature but is none other than the indwelling of the triune God in the human soul, a bestowal of God Himself (35-37).[23] The positions Rahner takes on the incarnation and grace are an attempt by him to limit (but not deny) the operation of two traditional rules, ‘omnia opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt’ (‘all works of the Trinity “outward” are indivisible’), and ‘in Deo omnia sunt unum, ubi non obviat relationis oppositio’ (‘in God all is one, wherever the opposition of relations does not stand in the way’), attributed, respectively, in the West, to Augustine and to Anselm.[24]

Arguments Supporting the Basic Thesis

Rahner initially raises and dismisses three preliminary objections to his Grundaxiom (24-33), and then attempts to demonstrate it in other parts of the essay, especially in Part III (80-120).

In rejecting the first preliminary objection that the hypostatic union is an instance of a general principle, he says that ‘each divine person’ has a proper role in the economy (77), even though the whole Trinity is communicated ad extra in the one ‘outward’ activity of God (27-28, 76). The incarnation, which is the mission of the second divine person alone (24-25), is ‘a dogmatically certain “instance”’ of proper roles in the economy (27). In relation to the second preliminary objection that any divine person could have been incarnated, Rahner responds by stating that this proposition is unsupported by scripture and the early church’s tradition, is not demonstrated, and cannot be said that ‘hypostasis’ is in God a univocal concept with respect to the three divine persons (28-30, 63, 85-87, 120). Besides, such a proposition ‘would create havoc with theology’ because it would mean that there is no revelatory relationship between the divine ‘missions’ and the intra-divine life; thus, the salvific mission of the Son would tell us nothing about His Eternally-Begotten relationship to the Father (30). Rahner dismisses the third objection that the humanity of Jesus tells us nothing about the Logos, and asserts that His human nature ‘is the constitutive, real symbol of the Logos himself’ and thus the economic and immanent Logos ‘are strictly the same’ (31-33).[25]

Rahner also argues that the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity by arguing from the experience of grace (34ff). He states that as God’s communication is a self-communication then it is the whole Trinity that must be communicated, and this communication occurs in a threefold manner with each person communicating the three relative ways in which the one God subsists. As this communication is a threefold, free, and gratuitous self-bestowal then our experience of grace in the economy ‘is not merely a copy or an analogy of the inner Trinity, but this Trinity itself’ (35). Within the triune God there is a ‘double mediation by Word and Spirit’ and this is reflected in God’s self-communication in salvation history (36, 38, 99-101); indeed, the ‘testimony of faith’ and the ‘witness of scripture’ demonstrate this double mediation (37). This mediation ‘is not a created kind of mediation’, but a ‘real’ communication of God in salvation history; it is an ‘uncreated grace’ whereby God gives Himself to us in a ‘quasi-formal’ manner (35-36, 100-101). ‘Created grace’, as an effect in the creature, is merely a consequence of this prior self-communication (100-101).[26]

In a discussion of the magisterial teachings of the church, Rahner posits an argument of the validity of the Grundaxiom on the basis of the image of the Son as the Divine Utterance (64-66). He states that as the ‘economic’ self-communication of the Son as the ‘spoken’ Word (Λόγος προφορικός) is uttered freely, then it must have its condition in the Father’s ‘immanent’ Word (Λόγος ένδιάθετος) as the condition of its possibility (64). To deny this correlation for Rahner is to fall into Sabellianism (65. Similarly, as we ‘experience [in] faith’ the Spirit then the Spirit too must be a distinction within the Godhead, otherwise we would be espousing modalism (67-68).

Rahner provides the main argument for the Grundaxiom in Part III (82-103). Employing the principle of ‘quasi-formal causality’, Rahner wishes to establish how the structure of God (the Father)’s self-communication in Word and Spirit presupposes and constitutes man as the privileged and only recipient of God Himself, a gift received both now in the life of grace and in the future in the beatific vision, and that this divine structure is identical in both the economy and in the intra-divine life.[27] In order to demonstrate that ‘the one self-communication of God occurs in two basic ways which belong together’, Rahner proposes ‘a fourfold group of aspects’ for consideration (88). These aspects of God’s self-communication are as follows: first, origin-future; second, history-transcendence; third, invitation-acceptance; and fourth, knowledge-love (88, 91-94). Rahner proceeds to couple the first and second parts of the aspects (94-98), as he claims they form a unity, and then condenses them into a single pairing, firstly as ‘truth and love’ and, secondly, respectively, as ‘history and spirit’ (98). That is, truth addresses human history and love addresses man’s desire to transcend history (98). He therefore reasons that as the structure of divine self-communication can properly be paired into truth and love, then God has ‘two basic modalities’ of self-communication (98), and these are the Word (truth) and Spirit (love) and they are not separated nor tied together by divine decree (98) but distinct and interrelated (94). The immanent Trinity, however, is the necessary precondition of the possibility of God’s free self-communication in the economy as truth and love, and therefore God is immanently trinitarian just as He is economically trinitarian (101-102). Rahner also concludes from this reasoning that only human nature can be assumed by the Logos, as man is ‘the only one who possesses the “obediential potency” for the reception of such a self-communication’ (89-90, 91), and that since it is God’s truth that must address man’s history then only the Logos can be incarnated (94-96).

The Stated Importance of the Basic Thesis

Rahner states that his basic thesis has three significant implications. First, rather than being an adjunct in theology, or a mere doctrine or abstraction, the Trinity is a salvific reality experienced in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit (39-40). Second, because of the roles of Christ and the Spirit in the divine economy, ‘we must admit an authentic secret prehistory of the revelation of the Trinity in the Old Testament’ (42). Third, trinitarian theology needs to overcome the perennial problem of tritheism, a danger which lurks if Christians misunderstand the term ‘person’ to mean consciousness, spiritual vitality, centre of activity, etc. or some abstract philosophical concept (42-45). Rather, ‘we may start from the self-revelation of God (the Father) as given in salvation history, as mediated by the Word in the Spirit’ (44). This approach, he claims, avoids the two poles of tritheism and ‘a rigid, unmediated sheer monotheism’ (42), and avoids the pitfall of considering two separate treatises, one on the unicity of God and the other on the tri-unity of God (46).

Rahner is confident that his essay both restores the Trinity as a mystery and yet situates it at the centre of the Christian mysteries, always permitting silent wonder at the ultimate incomprehensibility of God (46-47, 50).

Other Aspects of the Essay

In Part II of his essay (49-79) and in part of Part III (103-120), Rahner attempts a systematic presentation of the church’s magisterial teaching on trinitarian doctrine and discusses some traditional points of debate. Three aspects are of interest. First, Rahner provides an analysis of the function of conciliar language, including such technical terms as ‘person’ (πρόσωπον), or ‘hypostasis’ (ύπόστασις), ‘essence’ (ούσία), ‘substance’ (ούσία), and ‘nature’ (φύσις). He says that ‘person’, ‘hypostasis’, and ‘essence’, are defined by the total context in which they appear in the teachings (51-52, 73). Rahner draws a distinction between ‘logical explanations’ and ‘ontic explanations’, the former being explanations that use words to make the meaning of something more precise, and the latter being explanations that take into account another state of affairs to help explain the meaning of something (53). Logical explanations can become unchangeable dogma (54). Rahner says that the terms ‘substance’, ‘essence’ and ‘relation’ are logical explanations, and therefore should be retained in the communication of trinitarian dogma (54, 56, 69-69). The word ‘person’, however, has ‘acquired shades of meaning’ both before and since its use in magisterial teaching (56) and thus theologians have latitude to explain the word ‘person’ and to think of a substitute for it (57, 104). This Rahner does, proffering ‘distinct manner of subsisting’ (subsistenzweisen) as an alternative, and suggesting reasons for the utility of the expression (111-113).

Second, Rahner says that the doctrine of appropriations should operate not only on the basis of some ‘affinity’ of a divine person with some divine activity but on ‘a very essential factual content’ (76-77). In any event, ‘not-appropriated relations’, or ‘proper roles’, are possible when we speak not of a single efficient causality, but quasi-formal causality, a term ‘which implies that each divine person possesses its own proper relation to some created reality’ (77). In relation to grace, Rahner is (elsewhere) prepared to understand the indwelling of the triune God as a conjunctive indwelling of the Three in the soul in a ‘proper’ way for each of them; i.e., grace is not merely ‘appropriated’ to the Holy Spirit, after it has been efficiently caused by God.[28]

Third, as Rahner reasons from the economic to the immanent Trinity, he considers the traditional Latin model (since Augustine) for understanding the immanent Trinity, namely the ‘psychological analogy’ of the Trinity.[29] In brief, Augustine saw the divine processions unfolding within each human ‘inner self’ (mens), being a divine indwelling of the three divine persons in their substantial reality, and the human powers of memory, understanding and will mirror God’s inner, triune life.[30] Whilst he considers such an approach valid (48, 115), which is unsurprising because he respects the Catholic tradition and ‘wants to make sure that [his] theology is the theology of the Church’ (49), he ultimately finds it unsatisfactory because it is based on circular reasoning and is hypothetical only (19, 118).[31]

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE TRINITY

Rahner’s essay has several methodological and conceptual shortcomings and ambiguities, all of which bear upon the faith and prayer of the church, and I consider them as four clusters of related issues.

Issues Centring on Theological Method

There are five issues that can be raised in relation to the ways in which Rahner employs scripture, experience, and tradition in his theological method. First, although Rahner states that he is relying upon the Bible (22, 37, 80), there is scant direct reference to scripture. Whilst perhaps Rahner’s essay reflects the style of theological writing of his time and his own theological education, his claims to biblical evidence for his positions seem prima facie undemonstrated despite the Second Vatican Council’s call for a greater use of scripture in theology.[32]

Second, problems arise in respect of his use of scripture. Rahner states that in the Old Testament, Yahweh, the God of Israel, is the ‘Father’ to whom Christians refer, although the Father always operated through the Word and the Spirit (41, 59-60), because the one God is always a trinity of divine persons. This can only be a claim of faith, and, whilst it is the faith of the church[33], Rahner does not demonstrate how there could have been a salvific experience of the Son and the Spirit before the manifestation of their historical missions.[34]

Third, Rahner has in part relied upon pastoral experience of Christian piety and liturgical practice, and its apparent divergence from a perceived theological aridity at that time. These claims I accept at face value, although should they prove limited to Rahner’s experience then his argument is concomitantly weakened.[35]

Fourth, following the works of de Régnon[36], Rahner caricatures the Eastern and Western trinitarian positions on the Trinity. On the one hand he alleges that the Greeks, just like the New Testament writers, start with the one God who is Father before considering the notions of generation and spiration, and orient their trinitarian theology towards salvation history (18, 58, 83-84). On the other hand, he says, the Latins’ starting point (at least since Augustine) was the unicity of the divine essence thus resulting in a philosophical and abstract disconnection between the Trinity and the life of faith, and a ‘mathematical’ psychological analogy of the Trinity (18-19). These descriptions do not do justice to the common ancient trinitarian tradition between East and West, and misunderstand the profundity of the psychological analogies of the Trinity.[37] Furthermore, the distinction between considerations of the unicity and tri-unity of God is also found in the Greek tradition[38], as are psychological analogies[39].

Fifth, it would appear that Rahner seeks certainty in his trinitarian theology, as opposed to understanding.[40] This is evident by his own admission (24, 27), despite his claim that he is less concerned with precision than the Thomists and neo-Scholastics and is more motivated by pastoral concerns (47-48). Anselm’s dictum, fides quarens intellectum, would serve as a reminder that even systematic theology does not have certainty as an object. The metaphysical concept of ‘quasi-formal causality’, an invention on Rahner’s part to explain what must happen of necessity in God’s communication with humanity, would appear to support this assertion. Similarly, he seems to reject to the psychological analogy (or analogies) of the Trinity because its analogical claims are not sufficiently demonstrable (see 117-118). Yet all Augustine was trying to achieve with his various psychological analogies was understanding, as knowledge of the Trinity was for him derived from scripture and tradition.[41] Whilst Rahner says he challenges ‘traditional school theology’ (90), this pursuit of certainty perhaps betrays his rationalist neo-Scholastic background.

Issues Centring on the Basic Thesis

There are five issues raised by the basic thesis that the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity. First, it is not clear as to how Rahner wants his audience to understand this Grundaxiom. Is he claiming that the economic Trinity helps us to know about the immanent Trinity (an epistemological principle) or is he saying that there is a strict identity between them (an ontological statement)? It would appear that interpreters of Rahner have taken up both options, as his Grundaxiom is able to be read in both ways.[42] This is probably because Rahner himself understands it both epistemologically and ontologically.[43] The different interpretations follow precisely because Rahner reasons by considering the economic Trinity first. The distinction between epistemological and ontological interpretations is important because it has a direct bearing on the kinds of conclusions we can draw about God’s own life from a consideration of our salvific experience of God.

Second, if the Grundaxiom is to be interpreted epistemologically, then Rahner appears to be saying that what we know about God’s inner life is limited to His self-communication in the economy. As God’s divine self-bestowal in the oikonomia is Rahner’s way of describing revelation, then his position is soundly traditional.[44] Rather than affirming a classical apophaticism about the intra-divine life, however, this position can instead lead to the affirmation of an agnosticism about God in se because it claims that all that is knowable is ‘God-for-us’, although this is evidently not a position taken by Rahner.[45] An epistemological understanding of the basic axiom needs to incorporate the faith claim that our knowledge of God is not fully communicated to us until the eschaton, and even then the ontological gap between God and creature is maintained.[46]

Third, if the Grundaxiom is to be interpreted ontologically, then it would appear that Rahner runs the risk of collapsing the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity. Indeed, a strict identification of the economic and immanent Trinity appears to be Rahner’s intention in several places in the text (e.g., see 24, 33, 120). Certainly some interpreters of Rahner, or those who borrow his insights, have collapsed them.[47] Whilst it is incorrect to say that there are ‘two trinities’, it is equally incorrect to state that there is no ‘gap’ between the economic and immanent Trinity, that somehow the divine economy reveals all and contains all that is the perichoretic divine life. This position renders the immanent Trinity and the whole doctrine of appropriations otiose as it claims that our experience of God transposes into our knowledge of God ad intra.[48] Hence, the ‘vice versa’ (umgekehrt) aspect of the Grundaxiom is problematic.[49] Abolishing the distinction between the economic and immanent Trinity is at odds with the whole tradition, both Latin and Greek, which clearly maintains the distinction between theologia and oikonomia.[50] Some have detected Hegelian idealism’s self-revelation of God in the process of history as the root of the tendency to dissolve the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity.[51] The fundamental axiom also implies a necessity in God to create, as God’s self-communicating ad intra would require a self-bestowal ad extra; that is to say that the historical missions of the Son and the Spirit reflect and presuppose the eternal processions of generation and spiration. Yet the definition of hypostasis or person is based on relations of origin, not divine missions.[52] Said another way, the proper roles in the economy are still the work of the one God ad extra, and do not define the immanent divine relations.[53]

Fourth, it cannot be said that the economic Trinity is identical to the immanent Trinity because of the difference in the way that this axiom would operate in relation to the doctrines of the incarnation and grace. In the incarnation, the economic Trinity is not the immanent Trinity because the incarnate Logos has a different relationship to the Father than the immanent Logos. In traditional terms, the Incarnate Word, Who in His human nature suffers on the cross, does not constitute the eternal relationship of the Son and the Father, a relationship defined by filiation/paternity.[54] Also, the Third Council of Constantinople taught that there are two wills in the incarnate Logos, whilst the immanent Logos shares one will with the immanent Father and Spirit.[55] Rahner’s theology of symbol, which he uses to explain the incarnation, also supports the distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity.[56] In grace, however, Rahner tends towards an identification of the economic and immanent Trinity through the operation of quasi-formal causality. That is, grace in the economy is none other than the self-donation of God where the graced person becomes as close to God as possible without removing the ontological difference between God and the creaturely recipient (as grace is a ‘quasi’ communication of the ‘form’ of God).

Fifth, the Grundaxiom does not tell us much about how the event of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ bears on our understanding of the immanent Trinity, despite the fleeting reference to Jesus Christ as the ‘absolute bringer of salvation’ (63).[57] This is because Rahner’s focus of the self-communication in the Word is on His incarnation, yet the incarnation appears to be disjointed from its intrinsic soteriological unity with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Moltmann agrees with the Grundaxiom and takes it further by arguing that the Son’s suffering on the cross causes pain and suffering for the Father.[58] This patripassianism, however, is not a conclusion that Rahner intended.[59] Von Balthasar, like others, interprets the cross as a supra-temporal ‘event’ of suffering love in the inner trinitarian life.[60] In addition, Rahner’s concern for soteriology jeopardises the doxological character of theology; a trinitarian language must be found that is at once kerygmatic, meaningful, coherent, and prayerful, and not just explanatory.[61]

Issues Centring on the Work’s Argumentation

The first issue is Rahner’s basis for the two-fold structure of divine revelation. In The Trinity Rahner considers four couplets of aspects of God’s communication, which he then says demonstrates the Father’s two-fold distinct but related modalities of communication in Word and Spirit. It would seem that the initial premises of his syllogisms, namely the quadriform ‘groups of aspects’, are asserted and not proven, as is his progressive reduction of such pairs to ‘history and spirit’.[62] At best, his reasoning is analogical[63], yet Rahner says he is seeking certainty and partly for this reason has rejected the psychological analogy of the Trinity. In any event, the aspect of ‘knowledge-love’ to describe man is a use of psychological categories, something he said he wishes to avoid (115).

The second issue is Rahner’s key concept of ‘quasi-formal causality’. Rahner is keen to explain that a divine communication is a self-communication, not a created mediation, which causes the created reality to be the worthy receptacle of the divine communication. This is a deliberate shift from considering God’s activity in creation and the economy, to considering God’s presence within it, thus effectively nullifying the concept of created grace and enabling Rahner to reason from his ‘economic’ starting point.[64] In the areas of grace, Christology, and the beatific vision, Rahner says that some created actuation – respectively, sanctifying grace, the esse secondarium (the humanity of Christ), and the light of glory – disposes created reality to quasi-formal union with the Uncreated Act.[65] In such a formulation, however, Rahner wishes to move beyond neo-Scholasticism, but largely confines himself to using its Aristotelian-based categories, thus rendering his work to charges of a misuse of such categories.[66] For example, the distinction between an act and its actuation is illusory, in which case there is nothing ‘quasi’ in quasi-formal causality, and one cannot resort to a formal causality as it would result in an identification of the created reality with God.[67] A formal causality, however ‘quasi’, shifts the ‘change in the other’ from the language of a personal union to a union of natures. In the case of asserting Jesus Christ as being strictly identical to the second divine person (31-33) there is a significant confusion between the Chalcedonian distinction of His ‘person’ and ‘nature’.[68] Hence, those of the Scholastic tradition are content to speak of an ‘efficient’ causality and ‘created grace’, where grace is not substantial but accidental and a formal cause[69] with God being the efficient cause[70], even though this position risks a false conception of grace as ‘extrinsic’ to nature[71].

The third issue is Rahner’s conception of God. Rahner appears to operate out of a model of God where it is envisaged that some kind of ontological gap exists between God’s ‘inner-self’ and God as He appears to us; that somehow there is a ‘hiddenness’ in God that must be penetrated and exposed.[72] Far from being an unfortunate development in trinitarian theology, the distinction between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity is one that has always been maintained in both the East and the West. Furthermore, the distinction must be maintained in order to ensure God’s immanence, for only an absolutely transcendent God can be truly immanent to creation. Rahner’s conception of God would appear to be some kind of relic of middle-Platonism[73], which viewed God’s transcendence as ‘distance’[74], and perhaps it reflects the influence on Rahner of modernity’s Deistic tendencies and Hegel’s (false) distinction between the ‘outer self’ and the ‘inner self’ of personal subjects.

A fourth issue is Rahner’s conception of God the Father. A central claim of his trinitarian writings is that when ‘God’ (ho Theos, ò Θεóς) is mentioned in the New Testament the writers were signifying God the Father, the Unbegotten Begetter, the font and origin of divinity (fontalis), Who communicates the divine essence (102) through Christ and the Spirit (16-17).[75] He says that this approach is also found in the early creeds, liturgical practice, and Greek patristic theology, an approach that precludes the Latin tendency to conceive of God’s essence before the person of the Father (16-18, 83-84). His ‘biblical’ theology of the Unoriginate Father, Who is never to be understood in an ‘absolute’ sense but only in a ‘relative’ sense (17), has been the subject of recent theological debate.[76] For example, questions arise about whether the Father can be truly free to be a ‘father’ or not, and whether ‘innascibility’ of itself sufficiently constitutes personhood.[77] In emphasising God the Father as the fons Trinitatis, Rahner risks conceptualising the Son and Spirit as mere economic manifestations of the Father.[78]

Issues Centring on Appropriating and Communicating the Ancient Trinitarian Tradition

Rahner’s exploratory essay has risked underplaying or underexploring some important aspects of the church’s tradition. The first area of concern is the notion of ‘person’. Rahner says that, unlike ‘essence’ and ‘substance’, which have established usage in logical explanations of dogma, ‘person’ has had such a varied and ambiguous use that that term can be replaced (56-57). It would appear from the history of the development of dogma that other key terms, including ‘hypostasis’ and ‘substance’, have had similar notorious histories of confusion, varied usage, and controversies. For example, Tertullian’s understanding of ‘substance’ (ούσία) suffered from Stoic ‘materialism’, and Origen’s ‘image theory’ was subordinationist and implied a moral union only between the Father and the Son, and between the Son and the Logos. Only with Athanasius did the church have a workable rule to understand homoousios (‘of one substance’, όμοούσιος), namely that what is said of the Father is also said of the Son, except that the Son is Son and not Father.[79] Indeed, by the mid-fourth century, homoousios, originally a Gnostic concept, was rejected by groups preferring other terms, namely homoiousios (Son is ‘like [όμοιούσιος] in substance’ to the Father), anomoios (Son is ‘unlike [άνόμοιος] the Father’), and homoios (Son is ‘like [ομοιος] the Father’).[80] Nevertheless, Rahner’s recommendation of ‘distinct manner of subsisting’, which he claims is better than Barth’s ‘manner/way of being’ on account that that suggests modalism (74, 110)[81], suffers from being less suitable for public worship and private prayer[82]. Rahner nonetheless concedes that it is more formal than the traditional terminology (112). Remaining within Thomistic categories, as he acknowledges (115), Rahner’s somewhat impersonal definition risks undermining his overall theological project of declaring that God acts dynamically in free love to address the world personally in order to save it.[83] Many commentators have offered their reflections on Rahner’s substitution, all of whom would suggest that replacing such a key term as ‘person’ creates more problems than it solves.[84]

The second area of concern is that whilst Rahner refers to the τάξις or ordering of the two processions (e.g., 83, 106, 112, 116, 117), no adequate account of this ordering is ever given.[85] This means that he is not providing an explanation for the Filioque (Spirit proceeds from the Father ‘and the Son’), which he appears to accept as a mere datum of dogma (see 66, translator’s footnote on page 83, 117).[86] Furthermore, the Filioque is not central to Rahner’s thesis or argumentation. This is not surprising given that Rahner rejects the psychological analogy of the Trinity, a method used by Western theologians to give some intelligibility to the logically derived faith formulations. This has resulted in trinitarian scholars in the Rahnerian tradition ignoring the Filioque, rejecting it altogether, or replacing it with a Spirituque (Son proceeds from the Father ‘and the Spirit’). In this way the Filioque either is asserted as a mere fact without explanation, or it is regarded as unimportant.[87]

AN EVALUATION OF RAHNER’S TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

Undoubtedly Rahner is engaging with the rich trinitarian tradition of the undivided church, and attempts to re-present some aspects of it to a contemporary readership. He has responded to widely felt shortcomings in neo-Scholasticism, chief of which was the bifurcation between the intellectual aridity of the (new) ‘school men’ and the prayer life of ordinary Christians. As with other scholars after the Second Vatican Council, at which Rahner was a peritus, Rahner sought to explore the sources of the Catholic tradition in order to freshly re-appropriate them for the benefit of the church in the modern world. Indeed, Rahner’s pastoral concerns are evident in The Trinity.[88] He was concerned to re-establish the Trinity as the central mystery of salvation, and a unifying focal point for the doctrines of grace, Christology, soteriology, pneumatology, and eschatology, and therefore at the heart of the Christian faith. To the extent that he has brought the doctrine of God (theologia) from the recesses of history and the preserve of the academy and onto the doxological lips of the faithful he is to be lauded. Rahner urges Christians to ponder the intimate connection between grace and divinisation, because the life of grace enjoys the same kind of ‘quasi-formal’ union with God as the life of contemplation of the Trinity in the beatific vision. Similarly, he is to be lauded for his attempt to draw together a disparate and compartmentalised theology into a single trinitarian system, and to consider theology anew by taking seriously modernity’s concern for history, subjectivity, personhood, and relationality.

Rahner’s work is both exploratory and explanatory, and seeks to set the agenda for a new inquiry into the importance of the Trinity in the life of the church (at least in the West). He says that even the Second Vatican Council only briefly mentioned the Trinity and did so in the context of historia salutis; there was nothing about the link between salvation history and the immanent Trinity (10). Perhaps he has succeeded in this aim because many have taken up his call, even if all that can be attributed to Rahnerians cannot properly be attributed to Rahner, either to his work or his mindset. The alleged ‘collapse’ of the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity, along with the virtual abolishment of considerations of God’s life in se including the rejection of psychological analogies, are perhaps the best examples of this false attribution.[89] The ‘Spirit Christology’ movement, which, inter alia, explores ways in which the Son can proceed also from the Spirit, is perhaps another Rahnerian trajectory unfairly attributable to Rahner.[90] Understood correctly, Rahner’s Grundaxiom (and his theology that supports it) serves to remind us that God’s very being is present to us in history through Jesus by the Spirit.[91]

Of interest is Rahner’s challenge that Christians should look to creation, and to human cultures and religions, for vestiges of the Trinity. Rahner states that the early church was successful in its mission in part because it was able to appreciate the traces of Christian truth in pagan religions. The universal scope of Christian revelation (i.e., God’s self-communication) beyond the visible boundaries of the church, mirrors Rahner’s vision of the universal offer of grace in Christ to all of humanity, whereby movements of the human spirit to the grace of the Spirit may render such persons, under certain conditions, ‘anonymous Christians’ in some real sense.[92] Indeed, his theological anthropology, which starts from a consideration of the human condition, reflects the ’economic starting point’ of his trinitarian theology.

Rahner’s trinitarian writings are an original contribution to theology in four ways. First, he attempts to challenge Augustine, Anselm and Thomas in some key areas, at least insofar as their subsequent interpreters have understood them. In particular, he re-examines the psychological analogy as an explanation of God ad intra, the doctrine of appropriations, the theoretical possibility of the incarnation of the Son or Spirit, and the consideration of God under the separate treatises of His unicity and His tri-personhood. Rahner seeks to link the Trinity with other doctrines of the church in a systematic way in order to help Christians to move beyond being practical unitarians to affirming that our salvific and gracious revelatory experience of God is itself trinitarian. Second, he re-engages with traditional trinitarian terminology by considering the theological challenges raised by new linguistic usage. In particular, he re-evaluates ‘person’ in the light of the notions of ‘personality’, ‘consciousness’, and ‘subjectivity’, without falling into tritheism. Third, Rahner is willing to leave behind the tired questions of both Scholasticism and neo-Scholasticism in order to re-discover ways in which our relational experience of each of the divine persons, which he affirms as an experience of the one divine essence itself, can illuminate the reality of God’s own inner life. He seeks to engage with experience, scripture and tradition in order to provide reasons for belief; he wishes to avoid the charge that the Trinity belongs to mythology (87). This economic/experiential starting point, which is commonplace today[93], connects with Augustine and other patristic writers, all of whom presuppose faith before doctrine, and recognises that God’s plan (oikonomia) is ‘to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth’ (Eph 1:10). Fourth, Rahner’s theological anthropology constitutes man as the divinely ordained recipient, in history, of God’s self-communication, rather than as the recipient of an interior communication as Augustine would have it.[94] In this way, Rahner’s trinitarian theology deliberately connects with the theologies of creation, grace, incarnation, and salvation. Many theologians since have traversed the paths opened up by these theological explorations, and Rahner himself appears to have modified his trinitarian theology in later writings.[95]

CONCLUSION

Karl Rahner’s The Trinity reminds us that we are called to share in the life of God (cf. 2Pet 1:4) both now in the life of the grace of the Spirit and the liberating truth of the Incarnate Word, and in the future, when we shall see Him as He really is (cf. 1Jn 3:2). The mysterium Trinitatis is thus the mysterium salutis because the Father sent His Son to save us and His Spirit to divinise us. This connection between the Trinity and salvation is explicit when Rahner’s works on the doctrine of God, grace and the incarnation, explicitly linked by him in The Trinity, are considered in toto, and this interconnection is a theological commonplace today.[96] Rahner’s contribution reminds us that there is a single saving plan encompassing creation, redemption and eschatological plenitude, whose order and possibility is the work of the triune God.[97] Despite some significant limitations, if The Trinity can help us know, love and praise the tri-personal God by considering what He does for us in Truth and Love, then this short work of Rahner has achieved much.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary works by Rahner

Rahner, Karl, S.J. ‘Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions’. In Theological Investigations. Vol. 5, Later Writings, 115-134. Translated by Karl-H. Kruger. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966.

-----------------------. Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity. Translated by William V. Dych. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1978.

-----------------------. ‘Observations on the Problem of the “Anonymous Christian”’. In Theological Investigations. Vol. 14, Ecclesiology, 280-294. Translated by David Bourke. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976.

-----------------------. ‘Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise “De Trinitate”’. In Theological Investigations. Vol. 4, More Recent Writings, 77-102. Translated by Kevin Smyth. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966.

-----------------------. ‘Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace’. In Theological Investigations. Vol. 1, God, Christ, Mary and Grace, 319-346. Translated by Cornelius Ernst, O.P. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961.

-----------------------. ‘The Hiddenness of God’. In Theological Investigations. Vol. 16, Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology, 227-243. Translated by David Morland, O.S.B. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979.

-----------------------. ‘The Mystery of the Trinity’. In Theological Investigations. Vol. 16, Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology, 255-259. Translated by David Morland, O.S.B. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979.

-----------------------. ‘The Theology of the Symbol’. In Theological Investigations. Vol. 4, More Recent Writings, 221-252. Translated by Kevin Smyth. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966.

-----------------------. The Trinity. Translated by Joseph Donceel. New York: Crossroad, 1970/1997.

-----------------------. ‘Theos in the New Testament’. In Theological Investigations. Vol. 1, God, Christ, Mary and Grace, 79-148. Translated by Cornelius Ernst, O.P. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961.

Other works

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiæ. Volume 3. Knowing and Naming God (Ia. 12-13). Translated by Herbert McCabe, O.P. London: Blackfriars/Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964.

-----------------------. Summa Theologiæ. Volume 6. The Trinity (Ia. 27-32). Translated by Ceslaus Velecky, O.P. London: Blackfriars/Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1965.

-----------------------. Summa Theologiæ. Volume 7. Father, Son and Holy Ghost (Ia. 33-43). Translated by T. C. O’Brien. London: Blackfriars/Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1976.

-----------------------. Summa Theologiæ. Volume 30. The Gospel of Grace (Ia2æ. 106-114). Translated by Cornelius Ernst, O.P. London: Blackfriars/Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1972.

-----------------------. Summa Theologiæ. Volume 48. The Incarnate Word (3a. 1-6). Translated by R. J. Hennessey, O.P. London: Blackfriars/Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1976.

Augustine. The Trinity. Translated by Edmund Hill, O.P. New York: New City Press, 1991.

Barnes, Michel René. ‘Rereading Augustine’s Theology of the Trinity’. In The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, S.J., and Gerald O’Collins, S.J., 145-176. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. Vol. I. The Doctrine of God. The Word of God. Translated by G. T. Thomson. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936.

Bonaventure. The Works of Bonaventure. Vol. II. The Breviloquium. Translated by José de Vinck. Paterson: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963.

Cary, Phillip. ‘On Behalf of Classical Trinitarianism: A Critique of Rahner on the Trinity’. The Thomist 56 (July 1992): 365-405.

Catechism of the Catholic Church. Homebush/Vatican City: St Pauls Publications/Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994.

Coffey, David. Deus Trinitas: The Doctrine of the Triune God. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Colombo, J. A. ‘Rahner and His Critics: Lindbeck and Metz’. The Thomist 56, n. 1 (January 1992): 71-96.

Congar, Yves M. J. I Believe in the Holy Spirit. Volume III. Translated by David Smith. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1983.

Cross, Richard. ‘Two Models of the Trinity?’. The Heythrop Journal: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology 43, n. 3 (July 2002): 275-294.

Dallavalle, Nancy A. ‘Revisiting Rahner: On the Theological Status of Trinitarian Theology’. Irish Theological Quarterly 63, n. 2 (1998): 133-150.

Flannery, Austin, O.P., ed. Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents. Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1975. Documents considered: Dei Verbum, Optatam totius.

John Paul II, Pope. Fides et ratio. 1998. http://www.vatican.va. Accessed 17 October 1998.

Kasper, Walter. The God of Jesus Christ. Translated by Matthew J. O’Connell. New York: Crossroad, 1984.

LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Lonergan, Bernard, S.J. The Way to Nicea: The Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology. Translated by Conn O’Donovan. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976.

Mansini, Guy, O.S.B. ‘Quasi-Formal Causality and “Change in the Other”: A Note on Karl Rahner’s Christology’. The Thomist 52 (1988): 293-306.

McCool, Gerald A., ed. A Rahner Reader. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975.

Moltmann, Jürgen. History and the Triune God: Contributions to Trinitarian Theology. Translated by John Bowden. New York: Crossroad, 1992.

------------------------. The Trinity and the Kingdom of God. Translated by Margaret Kohl. London: SCM Press, 1981.

O’Collins, Gerald, S.J. ‘The Holy Trinity: The State of the Questions’. In The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, S.J., and Gerald O’Collins, S.J., 1-25. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

----------------------------. The Tripersonal God: Understanding and Interpreting the Trinity. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1999.

Ormerod, Neil. ‘Augustine and the Trinity: Whose Crisis?’. Pacifica 16 (February 2003): 17-32.

-------------------. ‘Wrestling with Rahner on the Trinity’. Irish Theological Quarterly 68 (2003): 213-227.

Phan, Peter C. ‘Rahner on the Unoriginate Father: A Comment’. The Thomist 58 (January 1994): 131-138.

Prades, Javier. ‘”From the Economic to the Immanent Trinity”: Remarks on a Principle of Renewal in Trinitarian Theology’. Communio: International Catholic Review 27 (Summer 2000): 240-261.

--------------------. ‘”From the Economic to the Immanent Trinity”: Remarks on a Principle of Renewal in Trinitarian Theology’. Communio: International Catholic Review 27 (Fall 2000): 562-593.

Pugliese, Marc A. ‘Is Karl Rahner a Modalist?’. Irish Theological Quarterly 68 (2003): 229-249.

Rise, Svein. The Academic and the Spiritual in Karl Rahner’s Theology. Translated by Brian McNeil. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000.

Tanner, Norman P., S.J., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Volume 2 (Trent to Vatican II). London/Washington, D.C.: Sheed & Ward/Georgetown University Press, 1990.

The New Catholic Encyclopedia. 2^nd ed. Farmington Hills: Catholic University of America Press, 2003. S.v. ‘Missions, Divine’, by G. M. Greenewald, ‘Neoscholasticism and Neothomism’, by J. A. Weisheipl, and ‘Processions, Trinitarian’, by P. C. Phan.

Warner, Robert. ‘Rahner on the Unoriginate Father’. The Thomist 55, n. 4 (October 1991): 569-593.

Weinandy, Thomas G., O.F.M. Cap., Paul McPartlan and Kallistos Ware. ‘Clarifying the Filioque: The Catholic-Orthodox Dialogue’. Communio: International Catholic Review 23 (Summer 1996): 354-373.

Weinandy, Thomas G., O.F.M. Cap. The Father’s Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995.