The Trinity, by Karl Rahner
Review by Peter Johnston
The Trinity is Karl Rahner’s response to what he perceives to be a lack of a Trinitarian outlook by neo-scholastic theologians and the Catholic Church in the 1960s.[1] The book is a call to bring the reality of the Trinity to the forefront of theology and allow it to permeate all Catholic thinking in light of Rahner’s new and exciting axiom: That the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.[2] Rahner defines the immanent Trinity as “the divine persons in relationship to one another “within” God”[3] and the economic Trinity as “the perpetual self-communication of God under the conditions of time and history.”[4] God, then, does not, so to speak, leave any of Himself behind when He reveals Himself through Tradition and the Sacred Scriptures.
Rahner’s axiom has important theological ramifications. The axiom does away with the notion that any person of the Trinity could become man and God arbitrarily (from our perspective) chose the Second Person of the Trinity to do the job.[5] This is a theologically corrosive idea because it implies that the Incarnation is not proper to the Second Person of the Trinity, and therefore reveals nothing of His immanent self as the Son. Rahner argues that Christ “is precisely that which comes into being when God’s Logos “utters” himself outwards.”[6] Christ, therefore, must be seen as the full reality and truth of the Second Person of the Trinity, not merely a person who happens to be hypostatically united to God.
Catherine Mowry LaCugna, who writes the introduction to The Trinity, argues that Rahner’s axiom cannot be taken as an ontological argument, because it does away with God’s freedom “not to create.”[7] LaCugna does not properly address what Rahner seems to argue about this point (though his argument is very brief and not entirely clear): That saying God has freedom because he could not create does not treat the nature of God’s freedom properly.[8] I think that God’s freedom should not be construed as the ability not to create, but rather as the ability to create man and the universe, and the capability to follow through without fail on that ability. Freedom is not about being able to choose to not do something that is good. Freedom in its truest sense is to see the good and to act on it. To say that God is “free” because he could have chosen not to act on his ability to create man is actually to say that God might not be as free as he could be, which is nonsense because God is perfect in every sense. Creation is good. If God did not create the universe but had the potency to create, then God would not have actualized a potential good. This seems impossible because with God, who is pure act, all potency for good is actualized.
The reason why I am dialoging with LaCugna’s introduction to Rahner’s book as well as the book itself is because I find Rahner’s style difficult to handle. As I read the book I felt as though I was eavesdropping on a conversation between Rahner and himself about a topic that he already knew a lot about, so why should he be careful to make his points clear and define his terms? He does not come to the reader, but expects the reader to come to him. I am new to theology. Perhaps many of the words and terms that Rahner uses are commonly understood by the theological community. Much of the book was over my head, which made the read frustrating. I did catch a few deep and wonderful insights, however, which made the book worth reading.
The insight that struck me the most is Rahner’s axiom that the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity.[9] I think this point is wonderful because it brings man fully into the inner life of God. The Trinitarian God is who man experiences Him to be: Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy Spirit of Pentecost and the Father of the Baptism at the Jordan and the Transfiguration; so man participates in the mystery of the Triune God (though he can choose not to be by sinning). Man is in the Triune God, and his existence and actions are actually involved in the mystery of who God is (though not by necessity). God became Incarnate and Rahner takes this fact to its logical conclusion. I must be careful, however, when I use Rahner’s axiom to describe God ontologically. LaCugna warns against this (in the second of two arguments she gives against applying Rahner’s axiom ontologically): “If Rahner’s axiom is construed ontologically, then it clearly requires qualification…it fails…to maintain both the ontological difference between God and creation, and the ontological relatedness of God to creation.”[10] But as far as I can tell my insight is not heterodox.
I think that Rahner’s axiom is true to the way the Church came to understand the Trinity. God did not tell us that he is Triune; he showed us that He is a Trinity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all reveal themselves as distinct Persons in the gospels. The Church discerned that God is a Trinity by meditating over the witness of the Apostles in the gospels, not by being told by the immanent God: “I am a Trinity”. So the knowledge that the immanent God is a Trinity (which we know is true) comes from the Apostles’ experience of the economic Trinity. The economic Trinity, then, has revealed the inner most mystery of the immanent Trinity to man simply by interacting with man. This leads me to believe that the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity.
I would recommend The Trinity to anyone who has a firm grasp on theology, and an extensive theological vocabulary to go with it. The book requires patience and meditation: patience because many of Rahner’s sentences are not reader-friendly and require multiple readings; meditation because Rahner’s insights are deep and are not immediately accessible (to me, at least).
[1] Introduction to The Trinity, Catherine Mowry LaCugna, page x.
[2] The Trinity, Karl Rahner, page 22
[3] Introduction to The Trinity, Catherine Mowry LaCugna, page xiii
[4] Introduction to The Trinity, Catherine Mowry LaCugna, page xiv
[5] The Trinity, Karl Rahner, page 29
[6] The Trinity, Karl Rahner, page 89
[7] Introduction to The Trinity, Catherine Mowry LaCugna,page xv
[8] The Trinity, Karl Rahner, page 87
[9] The Trinity, Karl Rahner, page 22
[10] Introduction to The Trinity, Catherine Mowry LaCugna, page xv