| Title | : | The Trinity |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0824516273 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780824516277 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 144 |
| Publication | : | First published May 1, 1997 |
The Trinity Reviews
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Rahner’s essay on the Trinity is a succinct systematization of the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. It is an experimental application of the axiom he posits in the beginning of “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity.”
It is this (in)famous axiom that I knew about Rahner beforehand. Prior to engaging him first hand, I thought his axiom was silly on its face and I was unsure how his theology could have come to influence the Christian world, Roman and beyond, so significantly.
Coming to this text has been a vivid lesson in understanding something before attempting to evaluate it. Rahner is conversant with the broad swathe of biblical, traditional, and magisterial theology in a way that is helpful for bolstering his arguments and also approachable even as someone outside of his tradition. This translation renders his words as readable albeit intricate, clear but dense.
I’m impressed by this work both as a systematic presentation of the Trinity, and as a major monument of 20th century theology. It is well worth the time. -
Still mulling on what I think but its interesting to read about Rahner's take on the economic and immanent Trinity, which is much more modest than many of those who take up the idea after him (ex. Moltmann).
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Rahner’s short work on the Trinity presents some legitimate concerns about modern misinterpretations of the Church’s Trinitarian doctrine, including the tritheism arising from the redefinition of the word “person” by the likes of Leibniz and Descartes, and the “mere monotheism” of many believers who insufficiently understand the Divine Persons, their relations, and the importance of the distinctive Christian doctrine of The Trinity. Unfortunately, Rahner’s solutions to these issues lead him to affirm positions that while being technically interpretable as orthodox, are dangerously close to modalism and creational/incarnational necessitarianism. His famous axiom that “the economic Trinity is the imminent Trinity (and vice versa)” is far too simplistic to solve the issues he identifies without leading him into error in other areas of Theology, namely belief that creation and the Incarnation occurred of necessity. Rahner’s attempt to explain “person” in the traditional Trinitarian formula as “distinct manner of subsisting” likewise fails, avoiding tritheism only to fall into modalism. (There is certainly merit in Rahner’s attempt to clarify and more deeply explain the term “person,” but his effort to clarify one aspect leads to almost certain misunderstanding in another.) Nonetheless, this short treatise is worth the read to understand certain errors in Trinitarian theology, both those Rahner makes and those he critiques; of particular interest is “mere monotheism” which insufficiently appreciates the rich uniqueness of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and its relevance to man’s personal salvation through the Church.
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An essential modern understanding Of the Trinity consist with Church Dogma. Essential argument that the economic trinity is the immanent trinity.And the economic trinity is communicated to humanity in origin-future, history-transcendence, invitation-acceptance, and knowledge-love.
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Perhaps, the most muddled and neglected aspect of my theological speculation has been the concept of the Trinity. When folks have tried to pin me down, I've hedged by stating that I like some aspect of Social Trinitarianism, but I have trouble keeping those ideas out of the morass of tritheism. I sort of like the crude analogy of an individual as parent/spouse/occupation, but find it doesn't do justice to the real distinctiveness for Father, Son, and Spirit as indicated in the biblical revelation. The crude human trinity of parent/spouse/occupation refers strictly to functionality and doesn't do justice to the distinctiveness of each aspect even though it covers the unified substance of the personality.
Since I liked what Rahner did in Foundations of Christian Faith, I plunged into The Trinity with great curiosity. I was immediately assaulted with an observation that put me on my head. After speaking of how often Trinitarian doctrine is relegated to the back shelf simply because it is so difficult to speak intelligibly of it, Rahner asserts "The Trinity is a mystery of salvation, otherwise it would never have been revealed." (p. 21) I was flabbergasted. It was as if he said, "Either the doctrine matters in the way we are accepted by and can approach God or it doesn't." Frankly, from my perspective in the past, I had acted as if it really didn't matter. My prayers intermingled the "identities" within the Godhead so much that the distinctiveness simply didn't matter in any practical way.
Even though this is a very short book, it is the kind of book that would rock me back on my heels every so often so that I had to process the ideas and evaluate them against my own understanding of scripture and tradition. Only a couple of pages later, I came to a complete halt as Rahner spoke of the "mission" of the Logos (p. 23) and wrote, "The second divine person, God's Logos, is man, and only he is man. Hence there is at least one 'mission,' one presence in the world, one reality of salvation history which is not merely appropriated to some divine person, but which is proper to him." To me, this was as profound as reading in Wolfhart Pannenberg about the pre-existent Christ (my imprecise term, not Pannenberg's)"agreeing" with the Father and Spirit about creation, redemption, and eschatology in the light of the interaction of the Trinity. I liked that idea of interaction, but still was up in the air about how this could work (ultimately, I still am, but I'm starting to see the possibilities in a new light).
For example, Rahner powerful observes that it is preposterous from a practical human conception to conceive of an invisible God with no utterable words communicating with humanity. God had to allow God's own self (the verb Rahner uses most often here is "self-determine" and I like it a lot as it fits with the key idea in my Christological thought, self-limitation) to become the Logos, the Word, that would communicate with humanity in word and in flesh/deeds. (p. 29)So, his repeated thesis is that "each one of the three divine persons communicates himself to man in gratuitous grace in his own personal particularity and diversity." (pp. 34-35, 36).
So, this idea of "mission" with regard to the "persons" was helpful to me, but I still had a problem. IF we can speak of "persons," why weren't we speaking of three different beings instead of one, however we disguised it as three-in-one. Rahner helped me with this concept, too. He observed that the modern definition of "person" is different from that of even, say, Thomas Aquinas (pp. 104-5). Person in traditional theology does not mean personality. Rather, "There is only one real consciousness in God, which is shared by Father, Son, and Spirit, by each in his own proper way. Hence, the threefold subsistence is not qualified by three consciousnesses." (p. 107)
Certainly, no effort of slightly more than 100 pages can possibly mine all of the veins of profundity in the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet, Rahner's approach of conceiving the Trinity in terms of two constant, eternal activities--knowing and loving--helps us understand a little more and his insistence on our experience of God in salvation history as being a result of the divine self-communication is extremely helpful. It is impossible to ignore the implications of the Trinity if we are honest enough to admit that the mystery is grounded in God's self-determination but revealed to us through God's self-communication. Yes, the Trinity makes a difference and my understanding is richer as a result of this marvelous work of Catholic theology. That says something when you remember that I was raised and ordained in the Southern Baptist denomination. -
In authoring this work, Karl Rahner has two main goals. First, to correct methodological errors in regards to the typical Western approach to developing the doctrine of the Trinity. Second, to offer a systematic treatment based on correcting those perceived errors while still being in line with official Catholic doctrine.
His methodological complaints are addressed at the Western traditional in general and at Augustine and Aquinas in particular. He gives special attention to Aquinas’ two treatises in the Summa “On the One God” and “On the Triune God.” Rahner claims that by separating the two topics, and especially in starting with God in general rather than God as Father, Thomas has effectively isolated the Trinity and failed to show a satisfactory union between the Economic and Immanent Trinities. The effect of this, according to Rahner, is a practical ambivalence to the Trinity in Western thought and practice. The Trinity is acknowledge in the creed, but has little impact anywhere else.
Rahner’s solution to this is to draw a strong connection, even an equation, between the Economic and Immanent Trinities. His starting point is God as Father rather than God in abstraction. He argues that this is where the Scriptures start and therefore provides the most accurate basis for understanding the Trinity.
For Rahner, the Economic Trinity tells us not only how God has revealed himself but how God actually is. When the Son becomes incarnate, it is inaccurate to assert that the Father and the Spirit could also have done so. The Economic Trinity is not one of several ways in which God could have participated in the economy of salvation; it is how he must participate since what he we see of God interacting as the Economic Trinity is the same as how he exists as the Immanent Trinity.
I found both positive and negative points to Rahner’s analysis. I’ll begin with the positive. First, he correctly points out the pitfalls of the Western view of the Trinity. The post-Augustinian method is in danger of isolating the Trinity to the point of abstraction. In addition, Rahner’s case that the Scriptures, by starting with God as Father, provide a model for us to follow is a point well-made and one worth following. I also found that, for the most part, Rahner’s systematic treatment was successful in staying faithful to Catholic doctrine despite his methodological differences.
I also found Rahner lacking on a couple key points. While his perspective as a systematician is often helpful, it also becomes a liability in places – especially is assessment of Augustine and Aquinas. Particularly in Augustine’s case, Rahner pays little to no attention to the historical realities that led Augustine to select his method. Augustine was attempting to avoid the dual errors of Arianism and Sabellianism, not to mention the persistence of pagan belief in God as a corporeal being, at a time when those heresies were alive and well. While Rahner is also conscious of avoiding those heresies, he has the benefit of writing over 1,500 years after they were defeated. For him those issues are one consideration among many. For Augustine, avoiding them and consolidating the Catholic counter-argument was his primary concern. This led to Augustine needing to adopt a methodology which Rahner has the freedom to leave behind.
I was also not fully convinced by how closely Rahner tied the Economic and Immanent Trinities. While I believe he has a valid point in showing a close relationship between them, I am unconvinced that his argument fully appreciates God’s mystery and transcendence. Equating the two seems to make our theological reflections too experiential and, as a result, says too much about God’s nature.
Overall, I found Rahner’s work to be a helpful, but flawed, corrective to the Western understanding of the Trinity. -
A milestone in Catholic theology indeed. Rahner's desire to overcome the irrelevance of the traditional doctrine of the Trinity led to this remarkably systematic and consistent retrieval. By an historical analysis showing how reflections on the Trinity became more and more divorced from the concrete reality of the manifestation of salvation in history, particularly in the person of Christ, Rahner shows how, particularly in the medieval period, Christian theology became almost completely centered on Christ to the detriment of showing how the three Divine Persons (not to be confused with "person" in the modern sense) were reduced to what was for all intents and purposes a strict monotheism. This is the inheritance of history Rahner tries to overcome. He seeks to show how it is particular to the being of the Person of the Divine Word to become incarnate, and that in doing so Christ expresses the salvific will of the Father, and both together constitute the reality of the Spirit.
Rahner points out that this divine communion, far from being esoteric and separate from our lives is absolutely essential for living a truly Christian life that is concerned for the well-being of 'the other.' One can see in Rahner's perspective on the Trinity a genuine relevance to anthropology, ecclesiology, liturgy, and even social justice. Although a bit individualistic in its perspective on the influence of the Trinity on the particular believer, this milestone is the foundation upon which much subsequent Trinitarian theology in the present has been built. -
Ehhh... I understand that this was (is?) an important book. And Rahner raises brilliant questions... what difference would it make, really (in day to day living or practically in theology) if the doctrine was abandoned, or if we became Binitarian or something else - would it really(!) matter?! The bottom line is for all intents and purposes, we have practically (though perhaps not confessionaly) ignored this key life-giving doctrine... his dictum on the that "the 'economic' Trinity is the 'immanent' Trinity, and the 'immanent' Trinity is the 'economic' Trinity," brought a much needed corrective to Western "Trinitarianism"... and his taking to task the key western/Roman thinkers, I think was great - but in the end, he still makes the same western mistakes so many Papist before him have. Worthy of engaging if you have the (genuine) time to engage it - but NOT a must read as many have claimed. Time could and perhaps should be spent elsewhere.
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I found this text to be helpful in explaining how one should properly approach the doctrine of the Trinity. Matters of terminology aside, I believe Rahner convincingly presents his argument that the way the Trinity is in its distinct persons, and the way the Trinity acts by those distinct persons in the world, are related. Perhaps with this explanation more people would, indeed, understand the Trinity without becoming monotheists or tritheists. The Trinity would then be understood in the way it impacts one’s personal everyday life in grace and salvation.
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Rahner once again surpasses my expectations with his work on the Trinity, a classic for any Theology student or anyone wanting to understand. Definitely a tough read, but incredibly worthwhile and satisfying. Be sure to keep his Theological Investigations vol. 1 for reference; I frequently went back and forth in order to understand certain terms and themes.
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You need some background in both Rahner and the doctrine of the Trinity in order to appreciate this book... And a large dose of caffeine to muster through Rahner's often abstruse language. That being said, this book is helpful for engaging in a deeper theological understanding of the Trinity, and it is not as difficult to read as some of Rahner's other works.
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Excellent primary on the trinity from a famous catholic theologian.
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Rahner has divided this short book into three concise sections, and each are arranged by topic. The first part discusses what he calls “inadequate theologies of Incarnation and grace that characterized new-scholasticism in the twentieth century”. Here he has reviewed theories of the Incarnation to contrast and compare against his own ideas. The second section is devoted to Church doctrine on the Trinity, followed in part three by an explanation of Rahner’s theory on the Trinity. For such an abstract topic Rahner has made most of this book understandable. And like some of his contemporaries, Rahner sees the importance of all three persons of the Trinity in community with each other. He is one seen as a leader in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and writes to bring more attention to this person of the Trinity.
