The Being of God as Relations (Doctrine of the Trinity Class)

*This text is the final paper for my Doctrine of the Trinity class, which I took during the December 2022-January 2023 Winter Term.*

“The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity… no adequate distinction can be made between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the economy of salvation.”[1]Karl Rahner, here, lays out the normative principle governing the Church’s theological language concerning the Triune God. Whereas during the early Church there were numerous groups which combatted such a formulation, Orthodox Trinitarianism maintained its teaching that who God is in His economy is who He is – and must be – in His ontology. God’s Being and God’s Work must be the same in order to safeguard the doctrines of Revelation, Salvation, and the Trinity. Judaism, Paganism, and especially Arianism presented special challenges to the early Church, who were forced to explore language which capture the Trinitarian doctrine the Church had always already practiced. The language the Church decided on using, with the homoosious acting as the guiding yet extra-textual principle, was meant to convey the truth which the Church already held: that the internal and external relations of the Trinity is marked by Generation, Procession, Origination, and Communion. Those who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Eternal Son of the Trinity are brought into the Sonship of the Son and receive the Fatherhood of God, all done by the work of the inner life of God, the Holy Spirit.

God’s Being and God’s Work

Christians have made an important distinction between God’s Being and God’s Work, labeled the “Ontological Trinity” and the “Economic Trinity,” respectively. The Ontological Trinity describes the Creator side of the Creator-creature divide; all that exists on that side of the divide is the Creator Himself. The Economic Trinity describes the ways in which God has entered into and influenced the created realm, shown in Creation, Redemption, Incarnation, etc. How Rahner’s rule applies to such a distinction is that however God reveals Himself to be in His economy is how He exists in His ontology. The insistence of Christian theologians that God is the same in His “inner” and “outer” existence is what informs such theological language. Christian theologians throughout history have waged doctrinal battles primarily in defense of the truth that God is the same in his inner and outer life. All contrasting formulations of God’s Being and Work seeks to hide, confuse, or alienate who God really is in His ontology from how He exists in His Work towards us.

Differing (and Heretical) Perspectives

During the first few centuries following Christ’s ascension, the Church was tasked with distinguishing itself from Judaism on the one hand and Paganism on the other. Judaism, the religion wrongly ascribed to Christianity as its primordial form, used language about God which cancelled out any form of inner-divine plurality. For Jews, God is one Person, one ontologically singular agent. As a single agent he uses ontologically inferior beings to accomplish his will and purpose but remains singular, unknowable, and undifferentiated. For Pagans, in contrast, the pantheon of gods was numerous and each god was separated and ontologically distinct in their Being from one another.

A third and more dangerous perspective arose from within the Church itself which used similar biblical and theological language to describe their doctrine of God but which nonetheless fatefully deviated from the orthodox position. Arianism, named after its popular figure head, held that God was identical solely and exclusively with the Father, and the Son and the Spirit were ontologically inferior agents who served as the means of salvation for humanity. The soteriological implications of the Arian conception of God, though, are manifold; Torrance states, “Like all things created out of nothing he [the Arian Jesus] is altogether alien and different from the being and propriety of the Father. It follows from this that the Father is ineffable and quite incomprehensible to the Son or Word, so that the Son or Word cannot have or mediate any authentic knowledge of God.”[2] Whereas the Orthodox Trinitarians believed that the Son must be fully God like the Father in order for humanity to be saved, the Arians – because of their soteriological framework which insisted salvation consists in something other than union with God Himself – found that for God to accomplish salvation by means of the Son didn’t necessitate His full equality with God in the Trinity.

Orthodox Trinitarianism

Orthodox Trinitarianism, distinct from all other theological language and confessions of divinity during the time of the early Church, asserted that the titles “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” designate the ontological makeup of God’s Being. This view argues that the relations of the Father, Son, and Spirit are the Being of God: neither three gods nor one God with two lesser gods alongside him. All of the perspectives which differ from Orthodox Trinitarianism, in their distinction between God’s ontology and work, conceive of God and his relationship to humanity in terms of distance. The Arian and Jewish God, as a unitary monad, refuses to reveal himself in any humanly comprehensible or knowable way, relying on created, semi-divine mediators to carry out his will. In so doing, he is not revealed to humanity in any substantial sense since who is doing the mediatorial work is not God himself. The modalistic God, too, remains hidden from humanity; if the eternal Son Jesus Christ is only a “mode” of God’s economic working, then God’s modalities act as barriers between God and humanity. The mask that is God’s acting-as-the-Son – or the Father or the Spirit – separates humanity from knowing God as he is in his ontological Being, i.e., who God truly is. Orthodox Trinitarianism, in contrast, always and consistently shows God to be intimately near.

Rahner’s rule becomes important again. The truthfulness of Rahner’s formula ensures the true self-revelation of God as revealed in Jesus Christ as the specifically Triune God. Rahner lays out why God, in order to be truly revealed in Jesus Christ, must be the same in his ontology and economy:

The history of this self-communication, as it reveals itself, has shown ever more closely and more undeniably that this double mediation by Word and Spirit is not a created kind of mediation, in which God would not really be communicated as he is in himself. The testimony of faith tells that the economic self-communication of God is truly and really threefold. Economic Sabellianism is false. The mediations of God among us are no created intermediaries or world powers. Such a conception of God’s communication would basically be Arian, it would do away with a true self-communication of God, it would bring down the eschatological salvific work of Christ to the level of forever provisory and open mediations, after the manner of prophetic-servants, of angelic powers, or of gnostic-neo-Platonic descending emanations. It follows that this real mediation of a divine kind in the dimension of salvation history must also be a real mediation in God’s inner life.[3]

In other words, if God as revealed in Jesus Christ is not Triune, then Jesus does not introduce us to God as God. Furthermore, if Jesus, the economic incarnation of the eternal Son, is not the Son of the Trinity, and if the “fullness of the Godhead” (Col. 2:9) does not dwell in him, then Jesus is lying about God, and humanity has no claim to know or have any sort of union with God. Rahner further reminds us that “God’s self-communication is truly a self-communication. He does not merely indirectly give his creature some share of himself by creating and giving us created and finite realities through his omnipotent efficient causality. In a quasi-formal causality he really and in the strictest sense of the word bestows himself.”[4] Orthodox Trinitarianism, then, which worships the God who is the “same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8), teaches that, in order for humanity to be redeemed, humanity must be in union with who God really and truly is.

Relations of the Persons as God’s Being

The Being of God is the relations which eternally exist between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rather than a conception of God’s Being which emphasizes Aristotelian “stuff” talk, relationality is what should be in focus when thinking about who God is. In the West, the linguistic tendency when thinking about God’s Being is to lean on the Social Trinitarianism model, which sees the Persons as almost indiscriminate who each relate to the other in vaguely communitive ways. The East’s stress, however, on the detriment of the filioque as undermining the right focus on the relations of God acts as the better way to theologize. Athanasius rightly notes the West’s later tendency: “If we have no distinct perception of the separate characteristics, namely, fatherhood, sonship, and sanctification, but form our conception of God from the general idea of existence, we cannot possibly give a sound account of our faith.”[5] The Father’s relation to the Son and the Spirit is one of origination, the Son’s relation to the Father is of Generation, the Spirit’s relation to the Father is one of Procession and to the Son one of Communion.

Eternal Generation

The divine relation combatted in the Nicene debates concerns the Father and the Son. Arius’s teaching that the Father is the sole God, without Son or Spirit as derived from Him in eternity, implied that the title “Son” is really a title without substance; to have a son, the early Church argued, is to have someone completely equal and identical to yourself as father. The eternal relation between the Father and Son, they argued, is defined by “Generation” or “Begottenness.” St. Gregory of Nazianzus writes, “He [Jesus] is called ‘Son’ because he is not simply identical in substance with the Father, but stems from him. He is ‘Only-begotten’ not just because he alone stems uniquely from what is unique, but because he does so in a unique fashion unlike things corporeal… The Son is the concise and simple revelation of the Father’s nature – everything born is a tacit definition of its parent.”[6] The Generation of the Son, then, constitutes the essential relation between Father and Son: not only “for the Son,” so to speak, but also for the Father, since the Father’s very identity as Father is wrapped up in His being the Father of the Son. John of Damascus says, “The Father never was when the Son was not, but the Father and the Son begotten of Him exist together simultaneously, because the Father could not be so called without a Son.”[7] The Father, as Father of the Son, eternally begets His Son.

Eternal Procession and Origination

The relation which exists solely between the Father and the Holy Spirit is one of Procession. Although, similar to the Eternal Begetting of the Son, there can be no adequate definition of such eternal relation and is therefore ineffable, the Procession of the Spirit is nonetheless indispensable to the Being of God. Procession ensures the identity of both the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Father who originates the Spirit. Torrance outlines, “The Son derives from the Father in a way appropriate to the Son as Son, by generation, and the Spirit derives from him in a way appropriate to the Spirit as Spirit, by procession, the Son unoriginally begotten and the Spirit unbegottenly proceeding, both quite ineffably.”[8] Further, Gregory of Nazianzus reminds us, “Insofar as he proceeds from the Father, he is no creature; inasmuch as he is not begotten, he is no Son; and to the extent that procession is the mean between ingeneracy and generacy, he is God.”[9] One large reason the Church in 1054 decided to split is because the East rightfully saw that, in the West’s addition of the filioque clause which gave the relations of origination and procession to the Son alongside the Father, the Father’s originator relation is undermined by the Son who would also possess such a relation with the Spirit. John of Damascus outlines the Father’s relation to the Son and Spirit as the origin: “The Father is uncaused and unbegotten, because He is not from anything, but has His being from Himself and does not have from any other anything whatsoever that He has. Rather, he Himself is the principle and cause by which all things naturally exist as they do.”[10]

Communion

The Son and the Spirit, both finding their origin in the Father, are united in the eternal communion which makes up the divine relations generally. Other terms theologians have used to describe this relation between the Three are “coinherence” or “interpenetration.” While the West, in their discussion of the Procession of the Spirit from the Father, fell into the mistake of positing “two divine Principles”[11] in their addition of the filioque, the East maintained that another important reason to exclusivize the origin of the Spirit to the Father is because the co-inherence of the Three safeguards the true union which exists between the Son and the Spirit. Torrance clarifies that in the writings of the Fathers the “procession from and through the Son relates to the inherence of the Spirit in the Son and to their community of nature with the Father.”[12] One important aspect of the Spirit’s relation to the Persons of God is of the “bond of the Trinity.” The Holy Spirit, in the context of the lover-and-loved relation of Father and Son, acts as the bond or “Spirit of union” between them. Expressed differently, the Holy Spirit is the life, the vibrancy of the Father-Son relation which would not exist without such a dynamic. In the same way a marriage relationship has a certain “vibrancy” or character of its own shown through the relation between the husband and wife, so the embodiment of the Father and Son’s relational love is the Holy Spirit.

Application

The Doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation and always-central doctrine for the Church. Belief in the Trinity not only is the stark difference between Christianity and every other religion but is also the content of the Good News which Christians share. Without a biblical conception of the Trinity, the Good News becomes Bad News. If our doctrine of the Trinity does not proclaim the union of God and humanity in Jesus Christ, and the Godhead as the relations of the Persons of that Godhead, then what people are brought into in the Christian Gospel is something other than true reconciliation between God and humanity. The Divine Persons and their relations are just as important here. The Father must be Father of the Son and originator of the Spirit for the salvation of people to be a true participation in God. The Son must be of the relation of Generation from the Father for the Lord Jesus Christ to truly reveal God and in order that humans may share in the divine Sonship. The Spirit must be the Spirit of Christ, originating in the Father, and be the Life of the Godhead in order for people to understand and partake of the inner Life of God who is the Spirit Himself. Gregory of Nazianzus puts it well: “He [the Holy Spirit] reveals, illumines, gives life – or, rather, is absolutely Light and Life. He makes us his temple, he deifies, he makes us complete, and he initiates us in such a way that he both precedes baptism and is wanted after it. All that God actively performs, he performs.”[13] Humanity’s salvation, then, is in the Son, by the Spirit, and fromthe Father.

Humanity’s salvation is participation in the relations of the Triune God. Without the Son becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ, and our union with Christ by the Spirit, we could not be saved. The reason other conceptions of God and salvation do not and cannot reveal God as He is in Himself is because all of them conceptualize God as unknown, far off, and disconnected from people. Michael Reeves explains, “That is, the Father sent his Son to make himself known – meaning not that he wanted simply to download some information about himself, but that the love the Father eternally had for the Son might be in those who believe in him, and that we might enjoy the Son as the Father always has.”[14] In other words, the Triune God’s deepest desire for people is that they might participate in the life which He enjoys eternally within Himself. John 3:16 then makes more sense as divorced from a conception of salvation where God does some “thing” apart from removing all relational barriers to human union with Him by faith: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16, ESV; emphasis added). Those who get “in the Son,” “by the Spirit” are brought into the eternal life of God.

Conclusion

The ontological Trinity is the economic Trinity and the economic Trinity is the ontological Trinity. Rahner’s rule safeguards theological speaking about God against language which wants to differentiate who God is ad intra and adextra. For Christians, if God is different ad intra than who He is ad extra, then no true knowledge of God exists in Jesus Christ. In other words, if God is not who He is as He reveals Himself to us in Jesus Christ, who is the economic manifestation of the eternal Son, than we have no relational union with God, and we cannot claim to be participants in His inner life since He does not reveal God’s Being to humanity. The relations of God include Origination, Generation, Procession, and Communion. Through faith in the Son, by the Spirit, human beings are brought into the eternal Sonship and receive the eternal Fatherhood of God. St. Basil reminds us of the absolute necessity of the Trinity for a correct conceptualization of salvation: “For he who does not believe the Spirit does not believe the Son, and he who does not believe the Son, does not believe the Father… Such a person is bereft of true worship, for he cannot worship the Son except in the Holy Spirit, and he cannot call upon the Father, except in the Spirit of adopted worship.”[15]

Works Cited

Placher, William C. Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Vol. 1: From Its Beginnings to the Eve of the Reformation. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988.

Rahner, Karl. The Trinity. Trans. by Joseph Donceel. New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997.

Reeves, Michael. Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012.

St. Basil the Great. On the Holy Spirit. Trans. by Stephen Hildebrand. Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2011.

St. Gregory of Nazianzus. On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius. Trans. Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham. Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2002.

Torrance, T.F. The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church, 2nd ed. New York, NY: T&T Clark, 1997.

[1] Karl Rahner, The Trinity, Trans. by Joseph Donceel (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997), 22-24. [2] T.F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church 2nd ed. (New York, NY: T&T Clark, 1997), 118. [3] Karl Rahner, The Trinity, Trans. by Joseph Donceel (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997), 37-38. [4] Ibid., 36. [5] William C. Placher, Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Vol. 1: From Its Beginnings to the Eve of the Reformation, From “Letter 236: To Amphilocius” by Athanasius (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), 57. [6] St. Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius. Trans. Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2002), 109. [7] William C. Placher, Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Vol. 1: From Its Beginnings to the Eve of the Reformation, From “The Orthodox Faith” by John of Damascus (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), 86. [8] T.F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church 2nd ed. (New York, NY: T&T Clark, 1997), 237. [9] St. Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius. Trans. Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2002), 122. [10] William C. Placher, Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Vol. 1: From Its Beginnings to the Eve of the Reformation, From “The Orthodox Faith” by John of Damascus (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), 87. [11] T.F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church 2nd ed. (New York, NY: T&T Clark, 1997), 244. [12] T.F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church 2nd ed. (New York, NY: T&T Clark, 1997), 244. [13] St. Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius. Trans. Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2002), 140. [14] Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 69. [15] St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit. Trans. by Stephen Hildebrand (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2011), 58.