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Originally posted by TGB

I don’t wanna get into the Trinity debate right now ‘cause I have some books on order that I wanna get into first: Catherine LaCugna’s book on the Trinity, God For Us and Karl Rahner’s The Trinity (and Zizioulas’s Being As Communion as well). I have all three on order. But LaCugna and Rahner both toss out the distinction between the immanent (God ad intra) and economic (God ad extra) Trinity. For too long the immanent Trinity was believed to be the “real Trinity” in contrast to God’s Trinitarian relations with the world. I think all ontological distinction between immanent Trinity and economic Trinity ought to be abolished.

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• THE IMMANENT AND THE ECONOMIC TRINITY
  www.thomist.org/visitors/1993/934aWein.htm



• The Trinity and the Freedom of GodPaul D. Molnar -- St. John’s University
  216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:S0VvejZsxEEJ:home.apu.edu/~CTRF/articles/2003_articles/1_multipart_xF8FF_5_JTRFMolnar.pdf+%2B%22immanent+trinity%22+%2B%22economic+trinity%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8



• Experiencing Trinity ********
  http://www.future-shape-of-church.org/Stories/trinity.htm
  


Experiencing Trinity

We have already touched upon the economic and immanent aspects of the Trinity, however breaking down the distinctions between them is not without danger. Zizioulas recognises the source of our Trinitarian doctrine must be that God exists “before and regardless of the world” (1991,23), and he believes Rahner and Moltmann are guilty of neglecting this.



• The Trinity, by Authors: Karl Rahner , Joseph Donceel , Catherine Mowry Lacugna , Joseph Doncell -- Released: May, 1997 ISBN: 0824516273 Paperback
  www.earth-religions.com/The_Trinity_0824516273.html
  
  Karl Rahner was one of the major theologians of the twentieth century, who ironically often described himself as a theological amateur. Rahners career as a teacher took place largely in secular universities (oddly enough, his attempt for a doctorate in philosophy under the auspices of the Jesuits failed; one has to wonder by what standards he was being judged), but he never lost his church-focussed orientation for theology, which had both a magisterial academic tone and a practical liturgical side.
  Rahners work is systematic and vast, so it is somewhat ironic that most of his work concerning the subject of the Trinity (a fairly central concern for most Christians, particularly catholic/orthodox ones) is contained within this small text of barely more than 100 pages. Rahners concern about then-prevailing ideas of the Trinity was that they had become too disconnected from reality, that they bordered upon (if not outright journeyed into) fanciful speculation with no real basis experientially or scripturally. The Trinity is a derivative concept, not explicitly formulated in the scriptures (hence the need for continuing refinement of creeds over the centuries).
  
  Rahners idea to correct this is deceptively simple -- he states that the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vice versa. What this means is that the God we experience as the Trinity and who impacts our salvation (the economic Trinity) is not a distinct or different entity from the metaphysical being of God (the immanent Trinity). Rahner states that being an incarnationalist, believing that God became human in the form of Jesus, does not in and of itself imply anything about ones trinitarian concept. God is triune in Godself, and what appears to us in three forms or persons of God are in fact not three separate entities or three different manifestations of one God, but extensions of an internal reality of God.
  
  Rahner places great emphasis on the self-communication of God and the self-possession of God. Self-communication is not merely a verbal expression, nor is it always understandable. Ultimately, the Trinity remains an Absolute Mystery, and much of Gods self-communication in Father, Son and Holy Spirit remains incomprehensible to us intellectually.
  
  One of the issues of concern for some readers would the be dependence Rahner seems to create on the importance, or indeed necessity, of creation for the Trinity to really exist -- without a creation to whom to communicate, there is some question about Rahners ontology. However, as Gods self-communication can be within the Trinity also, this need not be a concern. This does raise the question of once again separating out the economic and immanent Trinities from each other, and requires more work that was not completed in this text.
  
  Rahner and Barth share a concern for the identification of Gods real, ontological being and that God we experience in salvific action and history, although they approach things from different starting points. Ultimately, Rahner sees no real separation between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrines of grace and Christology. Rahner discusses the difficulties of language -- many options for language have been used over time to try to discuss the different persons of the Trinity, such as manners or modes or hypostasic union, and Rahner calls to task the idea that these are easily understood concepts. Of particular difficulty is the idea of persons, given modern psychological theories that put so much more meaning onto the term.
  
  This is not simple reading. Rahner, who studied under Heidegger and other philosophy professors, was well schooled and well attuned to the kind of academic philosophical language of that discipline, only rarely departs from what one might call a high-German scholastic language. Even in translation, the text remains weighty. It is worth reading and re-reading, however, to show the intricate manner of Rahners thought.

• NICENE CHRISTOLOGY AND AN INTRODUCTION TO THE TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY OF THE ANTE-NICENE FATHERS
  www.tektonics.org/PS_NC.html



Before moving on, I wish to offer a few comments from Eastern Orthodox and Catholic theologians in regards to the person of the Father.


Among the Greek Fathers the unity of God, the one God, and the ontological 'principle' or 'cause' of the being and life of God does not consist in the one substance of God but in the hypostasis, that is, the person of the Father. The one God is not the one substance but the Father, who is the 'cause' both of the generation of the Son and of the procession of the Spirit. Consequently, the ontological 'principle' of God is traced back, once again, to the person. Thus when we say that God 'is,' we do not bind the personal freedom of God-the being of God is not an ontological 'necessity' or a simple 'reality' for God-but we ascribe the being of God to His personal freedom. In a more analytic way this means that God, as Father and not as substance, perpetually confirms through 'being' His free will to exist. And it is precisely His Trinitarian existence that constitutes this confirmation: the Father out of love-that is, freely-begets the Son and brings forth the Spirit. If God exists, He exists because the Father exists, that is, He who out of love freely begets the Son and brings forth the Spirit. Thus God as person-as the hypostasis of the Father-makes the one divine substance that which it is: the one God. John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pgs. 40-41

Scripture and the Church avoid the appearance of tritheism, by tracing back, (if we may so say,) the infinite perfections of the Son and Spirit to Him whose Son and Spirit They are. They are, so to express it, but the new manifestation and repetition of the Father; there being no room for numeration or comparison between Them, nor any resting place for the contemplating mind, till They are referred to Him in whom They center. On the other hand, in naming the Father, we imply the Son and Spirit, whether they be named or not. Without this key, the language of Scripture is perplexed in the extreme. Hence it is, that the Father is called 'the only God,' at a time when our Lord's name is also mentioned, John 17:3, 1 Tim. 1:16, 17 as if the Son was but the reiteration of His Person who is the Self-Existent, and therefore not to be contrasted with Him in the way of number. … Accordingly it is impossible to worship One of the Divine Persons, without worshipping the Others also. In praying to the Father, we only arrive at His mysterious presence through His Son and Spirit; and in praying to the Son and Spirit, we are necessarily carried on beyond them to the source of Godhead from which They are derived. John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century , 3:3

The Greek Fathers always maintained that the principle of unity in the Trinity is the person of the Father. As Principle of the other two persons, the Father is at the same times the Source of the relations whence the hypostases receive their distinctive characteristics. In causing the persons to proceed, he lays down their relations of origin-generations and procession-in regard to the unique principle of Godhead. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, pg. 58.

Finally, there is God the Father-but when we invoke him by this tender and close name, we add 'who art in heaven'-who has sent us his Son, his Word, his Image, and his Holy Spirit, who is the Gift above all. 'No one has ever seen God' (Jn 1:18; 6:46)-a source is not seen; all that is seen is the river that flows from it. 'God' the unbegotten fountain of divinity is invisible. He made himself visible in his Son who became man, the Unigenitus who became Primogenitus in multis fratribus. He comes to dwell in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. These are the 'divine missions' which are, in the creature, the outcome of the intra-divine 'processions', a communication of the very mystery of God. The one who exists before everything-everything that has a beginning-entered time. The Absolute entered what is relative and exposed to risk.

Why did this happen? Because the Absolute is Love. … His Son is therefore called his beloved Son-agapetos. This love is obviously the essential love that is hypostatized in the Father, the first Person, the Principle without a principle and the source of all divinity. Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, Vol. 3, pgs. 139-140

The Church confesses one almighty God who appears to her as the active Lord of salvation history and as creator of all finite reality, and confesses him as the 'Father'. 'I believe in one God, the Father almighty.' We may, of course also start with the confession of the Trinity. However this should not mean that somehow there lies 'behind' the three persons a 'godhead' which is properly intended by the confession and subsequently gives rise to the threefold personality. The confession and the religious act intend the concreteness of the salvific reality. But the Trinity as such a 'three-ness' and thus conceived as unity, is a later notion, since it puts the 'three' together into a unity with respect precisely to that (namely, 'person') through which they are properly distinct. All this explains why it is quite legitimate, even in a systematization of the doctrine of the Church, to begin as in the ancient creeds with the confession of the Father. … Through the encounter in faith with Jesus Christ, the 'Son' as such and with the Holy Spirit as the innermost principle of our sonship and of our absolute proximity to God, this unoriginate God is experienced as the Father of the Son, as 'generating principle,' as source, origin, and principle of the whole godhead. Karl Rahner, The Trinity, pgs. 58-61


And now, with the role of God the Father which is required by Nicene orthodoxy being clear, we can thus relegate all modern Arian criticism of ante-Nicene Christology to irrelevance and advance to Clement of Rome (96 a.d.) and Ignatius of Antioch (110 a.d.).

• Use and abuse of the fathers and the Bible in trinitarian theology, By Robert Doyle
  A review of Kevin Giles, "The Trinity and Subordinationism", IVP, D
  
  www.matthiasmedia.com.au/briefing/webextra/apr04_giles.html