'The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.' Karl Rahner (1904 -1984)
Introduction
Karl Rahner explicitly declares that Immanent Trinity is the Economic Trinity and visa versa. “The way God is revealed and experienced in history is the way God is.” For Rahner God’s self-revelation or self-communication is the root of the Doctrine of the Trinity God’s self-communication occurs by way of four “double-aspects:
• Past - Future
• History - Transcendence
• Offer - Acceptance
• Knowledge - Love
Rahner reduces these four “double aspects” to two fundamental modalities of God’s self-communication:
• “knowledge” (encompassing past, history, offer)
• “love” (encompassing future, transcendence, acceptance)
In Rahner's model of the Trinity:
• The Father is “God as Such”
• The Son / Word / Logos, and the Spirit, are distinct “modes / manners of subsisting,” or “modes of God’s givenness:”
o Son/Word/Logos = God’s self-communication as “knowledge”
o Spirit = God’s self-communication as “love”
God’s self-communication presupposes a personal recipient. Rahner emphasizes that God made human beings capable of receiving God’s self-communication. In particular, the four “double aspects” of God’s self-communication are also present in human beings ("traces of the Trinity"):
• elements of our personality that move us to step beyond ourselves (past, history, offer, knowledge)
• elements of our personality reflecting our openness and receptivity (future, transcendence, acceptance, love)
The presence of these “double aspects” of God’s self-communication in ourselves "allow a duality:
• of word and response"
• of going out and return"
Between ourselves and God
Grace in Karl Rahner’s Model:
• "uncreated grace" – the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us
• "created grace" – the result of God’s indwelling within us
1. Self-Communication of the Absolute Mystery
Rahner’s transcendental theology is centered on the belief that human openness to transcendence is founded in the pre-apprehension of the infinite reality or the transcendent God. Thus, it is important for Rahner to caution his reader not to confuse human transcendence with God’s transcendence.
Rahner’s basic position regarding God is that God is the “absolute” or “holy” mystery. As absolute mystery, God is “incomprehensible and impenetrable”. However, human beings can know and relate to God insofar as God, who has produced and created non-divine beings through “externalizing and giving” Godself, allows us to know and relate to God. God gives Godself through God’s self-communication. Moreover, in this self-bestowal and self-communication God “becomes both giver and gift, and even more the actual source of the human being’s own capacity to receive God as gift”.
By allowing distance from the creature, God makes space for human beings to return to the transcendent self and to reach out to God’s transcendence. It is called the “transcendental experience,” another key term in Rahner’s system. This experience is called “transcendental” because it creates the possibility of experience, and because it transcends something (i.e., human categorical experiences and historicity).
2. Grace within the Depth of Existence
We begin now with the first dimension of God’s self-communication, that is, grace within the depth of existence. For Rahner “the depth of existence” or the analysis of human beings is the point of departure in his theological system.
a. Sin
Rahner correlates “the depth of existence” to the notion of grace because there is a circle of guilt and forgiveness that is experienced internally within human existence. It is circular because every time human beings say “no” to God in their freedom, it is also the time when they realize that God is not judgmental but is offering loving forgiveness. They are, thus, invited to say “yes” to God. For Rahner, the threat of sin is “really a permanent existential which we can never eradicate in our single, temporal history”. At the same time, the “yes” is contained within each “no” in the sense that the “yes” as the basis for the possibility of any self-assertion is always there, even in the “no” In this context he reinterprets the notion of original sin. It is called “original sin” because human beings have established guilt throughout history. He rejects the traditional understanding of original sin as biologically transmitted through Adam and Eve. Rather, original sin refers to the fact that guilt is universal and ineradicable. This fact is evident since every one is “co-determined” by others’ guilt as well as by the whole history of wrongdoing. In this context, Rahner’s statement about grace as God’s self-communication within the depth of human existence obtains its significance. Original sin, therefore, expresses nothing else but the historical origin of the present, universal and ineradicable situation of our freedom as co-determined by guilt, and this insofar as this situation has a history in which, because of the universal determination of this history by guilt, God’s self-communication in grace come to man not from “Adam,” not from the beginning of the human race, but from the goal of this history, from the God-Man Jesus Christ.
b. Grace and Supernatural Existential
Rahner’s view of divine grace is made possible because we have congeniality for receiving it. This is what he calls the “supernatural existential.” Rahner argues that human beings as God’s partner have to be able to receive God’s loving grace. Here he relies on the Thomistic notion of obediential potency, which becomes the condition—or better, a remainder concept in the human existential constitution that has been present before God offers grace, “even prior to sin”. This condition he calls the “supernatural existential.” In Rahner’s most-quoted words, “God’s self-communication as offer is also the necessary condition which makes its acceptance possible”. The end and goal of God’s grace, finally, is that human beings receive the final vision of God (beatific vision), which implies an ontological relationship between God and creatures. Yet, it is not merely an ideal reality in the future. Rather, according to Rahner, it is an historical experience. In grace, that is, in the self-communication of God’s Holy Spirit, the event of nearness to God as man’s fulfillment is prepared for in such a way that we must say of man here and now that he participates in God’s being; that he has been given the divine Spirit who understands the depths of God; that he is already God’s son here and now, and what he already is must only become manifest.
3. Jesus as God’s Self-Communication in History
The second dimension of God’s self-communication is through history that culminates in Jesus Christ. But before examining Rahner’s Christological views, let us examine his profound account of the meaning of the history of salvation.
a. Salvation History, World History and Revelation
Rahner’s basic thesis is that human history is the event of transcendence. This is to say that through the supernatural existential—it “takes place” within or “is mediated” by everyday history—human beings experience their transcendentality. Only within this condition of human transcendence are human beings enabled to experience and receive God’s self-communication through historical mediation, which is called “salvation history.”
This basic argument leads Rahner to offer his second thesis, i.e., that the history of salvation and the whole world history are co-existent. They are not to be equated, since there is also the history of guilt within the world history. Yet, they are also not to be separated, as if the history of salvation is another extramundane reality unrelated to human concrete history.
With regard to the notion of revelation, Rahner maintains that the universal history of salvation is also the history of revelation. He distinguishes two kinds of revelation: universal-transcendental revelation and special-categorical revelation. While the first refers to the experience of God that could happen anywhere and for everyone, the latter is an expression of the former within special and categorical ways, which culminates in the revelation of Jesus Christ.
b. Anonymous Christians
Rahner’s views of the supernatural existential and of revelation become the basis of his famous theory of “anonymous Christians.” On the one hand, God’s salvific will is universal. This leads Rahner to say that there should be a possibility for all persons to be saved. Yet, on the other hand, the Catholic tradition holds a belief that salvation is possible only through faith in Jesus Christ and the membership into the Church. For Rahner, this conflict is solvable through the notions of the “supernatural existential,” as the condition for all persons in their transcendentality to receive God’s grace and “universal-transcendental revelation,” which becomes God’s self-communication to all people as transcendent beings. Consequently, Rahner urges, those who do not confess Jesus Christ explicitly and do not become members of the Catholic Church, “must have the possibility of a genuine saving relation with God” and therefore they are called “anonymous Christians.”
Rahner introduces two theses which should be proven as historically credible in order to establish the grounds of Christian faith: 1) Jesus saw himself "as the eschatological prophet, as the absolute and definitive saviour" and 2) the resurrection of Jesus is the absolute self-communication of God. According to Rahner, there are several elements in historical knowledge of Jesus concerning his identity as a Jew and "radical reformer", his radical behavior in solidarity with social and religious outcasts based on his belief in God, his radical preaching "as a call to conversion", his gathering disciples, his hope for conversions of others, his acceptance of death on the cross "as the inevitable consequence of fidelity to his mission". These historical elements signifies Jesus' self-understanding as the eschatological prophet in terms of his claim of "imminent expectation", his preaching on the Kingdom of God "as the definitive proclamation of salvation", "the connection between the message and the person of Jesus", his free acceptance of death on the cross, and his miracle as a call to conversion.
With regard to the death and resurrection of Jesus, Rahner asserts that the death and the resurrection of Jesus are nothing but two aspects of a single event which can not be separated. But the resurrection is not a historical event in time and place like the death of Jesus. There is only a resurrection faith of the disciples as "a unique fact". What the scriptural witness offers are powerful encounters in which the disciples come to experience the spirit of the risen Lord Jesus in their midst. The resurrection, in this sense, is not a return to life in the temporal sphere but signifies the seal of God the Father upon all that Jesus stood for and preached in his pre-Easter life. "By the resurrection . . . Jesus is vindicated as the absolute saviour" by God. It means that "this death as entered into in free obedience and as surrendering life completely to God reaches fulfillment and becomes historically tangible for us only in the resurrection". In the resurrection, the life and death of Jesus are understood as "the cause of God's salvific will". He also opens the door to our salvation: "we are saved because this man who is one of us has been saved by God, and God has thereby made his salvific will present in the world historically, really and irrevocably". In this sense, Jesus of Nazareth becomes a God-Man, the absolute saviour.
Rahner's transcendental Christology opens another horizon which includes non-Christian religions. God's universal saving will in Christ extends to non-Christians. Because Christ is the savior of all people, salvation for non-Christians comes only through Christ (anonymous Christians). On the other hand, it is possible to say that Christians can learn from other religions or atheistic humanism because God's' grace is and can be operative in them. How is the presence of Christ in other religions? Christ is present and operative in and through his Spirit. How and where do non-Christians respond to the grace of God? Here, Rahner suggest "the un-reflexive and 'searching Christology'" (searching "memory" of the absolute saviour) present in the hearts of all persons. Three attitudes or actions are involved: 1) an absolute love towards neighbors; 2) an attitude of readiness for death; and 3) an attitude of hope for the future. If a person is actually practicing them, it is only because that person is acting from and responding to the grace of God that was fully manifest in the life of Jesus.
4. Immanent Trinity and Economic Trinity
'The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.' This statement is correct because God himself takes place in Jesus' God-forsakenness and death (Mark 15, 34-37). What the passion story narrates is the actual conceptualization of the doctrine of the Trinity.
The phrase “economic Trinity” refers to the three “faces” or manifestations of God’s activity in the world … In particular, economic Trinity denotes the missions, the being sent by God, of Son, and Spirit in the work of redemption and deification … The phrase “immanent Trinity” … points to the life and work of God in the economy, but from an “immanent” point of view.
In his book, The Trinity, Rahner takes the Incarnation as the point of departure whereas in Foundations of Christian Faith he places the discussion of the Trinity within the chapter on God’s self-communication. In both books, however, he expresses his dissatisfaction with both official formulation of the Trinity and any psychological theory of the Trinity. While the former is accused as having led to many confusion and misunderstandings, the latter “neglects the experience of the Trinity in the economy of salvation in favor of a seemingly almost Gnostic speculation about what goes on in the inner life of God [i.e., the immanent Trinity]”.
Rahner’s basic trinitarian axiom is famous: “The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity”. As in his Christological position, Rahner’s Trinitarian theology also starts “from below”. Thus, there is a conceptual transition from economic to immanent Trinity. The logic behind this transition is supported by his view that “in God’s self communication to his creation through grace [within the depth of existence] and Incarnation [within history] God really gives himself, and really appears as he is in himself”.
Conclusion
Karl Rahner is undoubtedly the most important Roman Catholic theologian in the twentieth century. His seminal position among his contemporaries results to some extent from his ability to put theology and philosophy into dialogue. His anthropological point of departure is also a convincing starting point for theology today, especially in the context of the modern-postmodern conflict over the nature of the self. Rahner is also adept at engaging the Catholic tradition, especially the Thomist tradition, although he would not have wanted to be labeled a traditionalist. As he said, “I consider myself a sincere and profound friend of St. Thomas. I do not, however, agree with those Thomists who are so locked into traditionalism that they can’t imagine that any progress can be made independently of traditional Thomism”.
Bibliography
RAHNER, KARL., Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity. Tr. by William V. Dych. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1978)
VORGRIMLER, HERBERT., Understanding Karl Rahner: An Introduction to His Life and Thought. (New York: Crossroad, 1986)
LOUIS ROBERTS., The Achievement of Karl Rahner. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967)
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