Karl Rahner's The Trinity

I found Karl Rahner's The Trinity, to be highly engaging, picking up and dealing with a lot of the issues I myself have seen in Christians conception of God as Triune. The work has many criticisms for the way in which Christians have dealt with the doctrine of the Trinity and it is a work I suggest you read if you have not.

In his work “The Trinity” Rahner develops a doctrine of the Trinity. Rahner does this for two reasons: lack of emphasis on God as trinity and false tritheist and modalist attempts to understand the trinity. Rahner claims that Christian’s in their practical Christian life are for the most part mere ‘monotheists’, if the doctrine of the trinity were to be dropped  the vast majority of Christian literature remaining untouched. Rahner thinks this is the case because of the Christian emphasis of God becoming man rather than the man Jesus being God. This entails that the Trinity is not a necessity as God would still be able to become man, something every day Christians already grasp, without necessarily being Triune. This results in Christians developing a doctrine of the incarnation with God only becoming man without deriving any truth in relation to God as Triune from it. This entails the doctrine of the Trinity being formulated and then never being bought up again. Rahner thinks that there are two extremes that one can take in trying to understand the trinity- tritheism which pushes the matter of three persons too far, resulting in a conception of separation in the Trinity entailing three different Gods and modalism which pushes God’s oneness too far claiming when the son came the father was over, and when the spirit came the son was over.  Rahner’s formulation of a doctrine of the trinity entails critique of these opposing Christian  tendencies as a result and I think Rahner develops a great trinitarian alternative.

Karl Rahner was a leading Catholic 

theologian of the 20th century

Rahner notes that past formulations of the doctrine of the Trinity claim God is Triune because of his essential nature as three yet one, something Rahner sees as locking the truth of God as Triune away in isolation. This is because metaphysical discussion of Gods essential nature has no relation to Christian experience of God as their saviour. It is for this reason that Rahner argues that there must be a formulation of the Trinity which brings a connection between the Triune God and man. For Rahner the Trinity is a mystery of salvation, one not able to experience or understand fully their salvation without it in place. Rahner formulates this doctrine in the following way- The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity. What Rahner means by the economic Trinity is God is Triune in his action in the world, a God who passes through a process to bring man to God. The immanent Trinity is God in his essential nature or essence as three yet one. It is crucial to Rahner that the God that passes through a process is the same God as the God that is three yet one in his essential nature. This requires that the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be made distinct from the process the Triune God goes through for there to be salvation. 

The book The Trinity is a classic by Rahner

From this formulation Rahner derives claims about the relation of the Triune God to the world, for example the incarnation being an instance in God’s economic process, where the Triune God can be seen, the only begotten Son of the Father entering into creation, birthed of the Holy Spirit. This shows there is a relation of self-communication between the three persons of the Trinity which are inseparable yet distinct in their relation to each other and the World. Therefore, each person of the divine Trinity does not become man, only the Son taking on this role, however all the Divine Trinity is present in the way the Son lives and acts as a divine human.

Rahner sees the Father as the source of the word which is expressed through Christ as the word became flesh, hence for Rahner we can say that man is possible because it was possible for God to take on the form of man. Hence Christ is the revealing of the Logos himself, the reality of the logos as salvation amongst us, the logos with God and the logos with us, the immanent and the economic logos are the same. The Logos is the Word of God, or principle of divine reason and creative order, identified with Jesus Christ.

Rahner further unpacks his economical and essential view of the Trinity through the doctrine of Grace expanding on God as inseparable yet distinct, with each person of the Trinity in communication to man in gratuitous grace in their own personal particularity and diversity. For Rahner this communication is the ontological ground of man’s own grace and allows for a consummation of a direct vision of the divine persons in eternity. It is God’s indwelling uncreated grace that is not only a communication of the divine nature but also the personal act of each person of the Trinity as a communication of persons. This entails a coinherence of each of the divine persons of the Trinity in one another through this uncreated grace, at the same time each person of the Trinity being distinct in their own peculiarity and personal act. For Rahner this means that the three self-communications are the self-communications of the one God in the three relative ways in which God subsists. The Father is the source existing as the great I am, essentially with himself and utters himself, communicating with the Son who is the personal self-manifestation and expression, drawn inseparably in love and by the mutual love of the Holy Spirit. It is in this way that God relates to us, a threefold manner, not an analogy or copy of the Trinity, but the Trinity itself, freely and gratuitously communicated.

From this Rahner unpacks the direction and connection between the immanent and economic Trinity. The Triune God communicates himself in self-utterance and love, Gods self-communication truly being a self-communication. God did not give an indirect creature that has some share of himself, but rather gives himself through Christ. God in Christ is self-uttered truth, freely and historically disposing sovereignty. This means humans who receive him receive loving welcome, this love being distinct from communication at a created level. This self-communication is not merely verbal, rather it is played out in salvation history where we can see each person of the Triune God is distinct and real, there being experience of faith, based on witness of the Scripture, the Father, the word and the Spirit which point to a true distinction within the immanent Trinity as self-communication. Economically this Triune God passed through a process of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension to the heavens, ultimately consummating as a life giving spirit. One can also see the distinctions between the persons of the Trinity here, the Father becoming incarnate in the Son, the Son being crucified, resurrecting and ascending and consummating as the Spirit which indwells man. 

It is with this economic process that Rahner begins, the salvific history and experience of the processed God forming his starting point for a doctrine of the Trinity. In the Old Testament God is seen as an absolute mystery, he can’t be seen while alive, however it was God who conversed with the Fathers through his actions in history. This mediation between God and man mainly comes through the “Word” which causes God to be represented and present in power, which can then be understood by man through the Spirit causing announcement of this “Word”. When neither the Word nor Spirit are active God has retreated from his people, the bestowing of the “holy remnant “in renewed and forever victorious mercy, is revealed in the sending of prophet with his Word in the fullness of the Spirit, God being present in the unity of Word and Spirit.

These realities of God, the Word and Spirit are not distant realities, God’s presence in the Word in the Spirit must be distinct from him, but it cannot replace or hide God as if it were something different. It is therefore not the case that the Word and Spirit disappear in the presence of God much like prophets did, rather the Word and Spirit persist, revealed as truly divine as God himself in unity with, yet distinct from the God of revelation.  In doing so Rahner exposes the danger of Tritheism that can come in the average Christians conception of the Trinity. Rahner thinks this as talk of three persons in God entails talk of three separate consciousness, spiritual vitalities centres of activity and so forth. This is increased by the fact discussion of person in scholarly works on the Trinity the concept of person is derived from experience and philosophy, independent of the doctrine of the Trinity in revelation and history. This gives Rahner further reason for starting his formulation of the Trinity from the economic process. Distinction between the economic and immanent trinity also exposes modalism which teaches that the one God goes through modes of being as the Father, Son and Spirit, as opposed to the Father, Son and Spirit being the same God. Rahner’s main concern is with Christian understanding of God as being latently monotheist and tritheist, however his own formulation has been criticised as having modalist tendencies.

Jurgen Moltmann in his work “The Trinity and the Kingdom of God” has been critical of Rahner’s doctrine of the Trinity, claiming it to be dangerous in its misunderstandings. One reason for this is that what Rahner identifies as person is not in line with the modern concept of person. Moltmann argues what Rahner sees as person is in fact extreme individualism, self-possession and disposition causing a separation from other persons. Moltmann claims this is overcome by the ‘I’ only being understood in light of the ‘thou’, which makes the concept of person a concept of relation. Moltmann is also critical of Rahner’s formulation entailing that the Father gives us himself in self-communication through the Son in the Holy Spirit, claiming it makes the Trinity superfluous as the self-communication of God can be associated with the Father, Son and Spirit, but it does not have to be. Furthermore, if Gods self-communication is his essence the trinitarian differentiation in God is surrendered, alongside the distinction between God and the world. This results in mystic solitariness of God, overemphasis on inner experience obscuring Biblical history creating a dangerous ‘modalism’.   

I find Moltmann’s critique unconvincing- whether Rahner’s discussion of person is accurate or not his formulations emphasis on “The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity” causes the persons of the Trinity to be inseparable, important as some Christians latently separate God. Furthermore, Rahner’s case that the Father is the source, the Son the expression and the Spirit the indwelling consummation within man is on firm ground Biblically. This can be seen in John 16:15 where we have “Father,” “I,” “He,” and “you.” “Father” is the Father, “I” refers to the Son, “He” refers to the Spirit, and “you” refers to humans. Therefore, in this verse four persons are mentioned: the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and humans. As such the Father is transmitted into the Son, the Son transmitted into the Spirit, and the Spirit transmits into humans. The Triune God therefore goes through a process of transmission, however this does not entail that the Father ends once he has transmitted to the son and the son ends once he has transmitted to the spirit, and the spirit ends once he has transmitted into us as this would entail that God no longer existed- this is why it is that God in his essential nature as self-communicated never changes, existing as Father, Son and Spirit eternally, however processed in relation to the world through transmission- “The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity”. The Triune God as immanent therefore exists regardless of whether the world does, it being more accurate in Rahner’s formulation to state that the world is because God is Triune- his self-communication and love allowing for him to want to work himself into man through transmission.

This is a wonderful work by Rahner which I enjoyed engaging with.