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Trinity: Economic and Immanent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Joseph A. Bracken
Joseph A. Bracken*
Affiliation:
Xavier University
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Abstract

Theologians have recently been criticizing the notion of an immanent Trinity as idle speculation and focusing their attention exclusively on the economic Trinity. The change thus proposed is at once too radical and not radical enough. It is too radical in that it seems to set aside almost two thousand years of careful theological reflection on the reality of God as derived from Scripture and Tradition. It is not radical enough in that it does not grasp the deeper issues involved here. For, what is really needed is not a move away from ontology toward phenomenology, but rather a conscious shift in ontologies, a move, in other words, from a metaphysics of being to a metaphysics of becoming as the appropriate conceptuality for an understanding both of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the God-world relationship.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 7 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1998

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References

1 Perhaps the starting point for this line of thought, at least among Roman Catholic theologians, was Karl Rahner's celebrated treatise, The Trinity, in which he set forth the basic thesis: “The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity” (Rahner, Karl, The Trinity, trans. Donceel, Joseph [New York: Herder & Herder, 1970], 22).Google Scholar But, whereas Rahner was careful to affirm the ontological independence of the immanent Trinity from the economic Trinity even while maintaining their structural similarity, subsequent authors thought in terms of a virtual identity between the two “trinities” with the consequence that the classical notion of the immanent Trinity ceased to play any role in their understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. See, e.g., Haight, Roger, “The Point of Trinitarian Theology,” Toronto Journal of Theology 4/2 (1988): 191–204;CrossRefGoogle Scholar but especially LaCugna, Catherine Mowry, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991).Google Scholar

2 See, e.g., Rahner, , The Trinity, 10Google Scholar: “despite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists.’”

3 At the beginning of the modern era in Western civilization, René Descartes inaugurated what has been called a “turn to the subject” in philosophical reflection; that is, he consciously grounded his philosophical system in personal experience: “I am thinking; therefore, I am.” While it is commonly recognized that this was perhaps the only way for him and his successors to break free of the logical constraints of the late medieval worldview the negative consequences of this implicit anthropocentrism in philosophical reflection have become increasingly evident in subsequent centuries. For thereby Descartes inadvertently sanctioned various dualisms which continue to plague the thought of Western philosophers and theologians to this day: e.g., the dualism between matter and spirit, causal determinism and spontaneity or freedom, natural science and the humanities (including theology). The supposition of this article is that it is time for a return to cosmology. As Stephen Toulmin comments in a book by the same title, the emergent worldview of contemporary, postmodern science “is one that gives us back the very unity, order, and sense of proportion—all the qualities embraced in the classical Greek term cosmos—that the philosophers of antiquity insisted on, and those of the Renaissance destroyed” (Toulmin, Stephen, The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985], 264Google Scholar). Yet, as I see it, the cosmology to which we will “return” will not be the classical substance-oriented cosmology of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, but rather a new process-oriented cosmology in terms of which the truth-claims of both religion and contemporary science can be asserted without contradiction. In this sense, the current interest in a revised understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity is, in my judgment, part of a much larger intellectual project involving the creation of a truly postmodern worldview, a new way in which human beings can once again feel “at home” in the universe (see ibid., 260, 272).

4 Lonergan, Bernard J. F., Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 3d ed. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1970), 37, 178.Google Scholar

5 Lonergan, Bernard, The Way to Nicea: The Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology, trans. O'Donovan, Conn (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976).Google Scholar This is a translation of Lonergan, Bernard J. F., De Deo Trino, vol. 1 (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964), 17–112.Google Scholar The final paragraph of this work reads, in part, as follows: “For it [the Nicene dogma] marks a transition from multiplicity to unity: from a multiplicity of symbols, titles, and predicates to the ultimate ground of all these, namely, the Son's consubstantiality with the Father. Equally, it makes a transition from things as related to us to things as they are in themselves, from the relational concepts of God as supreme agent, Creator, Omnipotent Lord of all, to an ontological conception of the divine substance itself.” Some of the authors cited above might well object that Lonergan's statement here appropriately sums up the reason for the “defeat” of classical trinitarian theology, namely, the fact that the Trinity was thus treated as a reality in itself, quite apart from its relation to the economy of salvation (see, e.g., LaCugna, , God for Us, 9Google Scholar). This, however, is to mistake Lonergan's intent, which is to set forth a logically consistent doctrine of the Trinity which is at least plausible to anyone who would review the matter with an open mind. Lonergan, in other words, is trying to align the Christian doctrine of the Trinity with well-established hypotheses in the natural sciences. In both cases, one lays claim to objectivity in one's statements; one seeks to avoid the subjectivity implicit in the claim that God exists simply “for us” in the person of Jesus.

6 Barbour, Ian G., Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 6–7, 69.Google Scholar The model, to be sure, is grounded in human experience; but it points beyond itself to what is intrinsically beyond direct human perception: in the natural sciences, the microscopic world of quantum mechanics and the macroscopic world of astrophysics; in theology, the reality of God.

7 See, e.g., Lonergan, Bernard J. F., Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), 138–44.Google Scholar

8 Barbour, Ian G., Religion in an Age of Science (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 43.Google Scholar

9 John B. Cobb, Jr. aptly sums up the latent weakness of this purely phenomenological approach to the classical doctrine of the Trinity: “When this referential character of theological language is denied, then ‘Father’ can mean whatever Jesus experienced as ‘Father’ without any judgment about its ontological status. The ‘Spirit’ is that experience of believers that they describe with that term. And Jesus is, of course, the human, historical Jesus with no thought of a divine preexistent reality being incarnate in him” (Cobb, John B. Jr., “The Relativization of the Trinity” in Bracken, Joseph A. and Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt, eds., Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology of God [New York: Continuum, 1996], 7–8Google Scholar).

10 Barbour, , Religion in an Age of Science, 99.Google Scholar

11 See above, n. 1.

12 Whitehead, Alfred North, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Free Press, 1967), 168–69.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 169: “They [the Cappadocian Fathers] made no effort to conceive the World in terms of the metaphysical categories by means of which they interpreted God, and they made no effort to conceive God in terms of the metaphysical categories which they applied to the World. For them, God was eminently real, and the World was derivatively real. God was necessary to the World, but the World was not necessary to God. There was a gulf between them.”

14 See Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York: Free Press, 1978), 59Google Scholar: “Every actual entity is what it is and is with its definite status in the universe, determined by its internal relations to other actual entities.” See also Cobb, John B. Jr., and Griffin, David Ray, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), 20–21.Google Scholar

15 Whitehead, , Adventures of Ideas, 112.Google Scholar

16 See Bracken, Joseph A., The Triune Symbol: Persons, Process, and Community (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985), 45–46.Google Scholar

17 Charles Hartshorne, perhaps Whitehead's most celebrated disciple, noted many years ago that Whitehead's comments on the unity and agency of “societies” were quite scattered and unfocused. Hence, in a ground-breaking essay, he set forth his own interpretation which has become axiomatic for most Whiteheadians ever since (see Hartshorne, Charles, “The Compound Individual” in Northrup, F. S. C., ed., Philosophical Essays for Alfred North Whitehead [New York: Russell & Russell, 1936], 193–210).Google Scholar In brief, Hartshorne argued that a distinction should be made between “compound individuals” and “composite individuals.” Compound individuals have a regnant subsociety of actual occasions, equivalently a “soul,” which communicates its unity and agency to all the subordinate subsocieties of actual occasions which in themselves have no internal unity or agency. Composite individuals, on the other hand, such as rocks and other inanimate objects, are really only aggregates of actual occasions with roughly analogous forms or structures which accordingly have no ontological unity or corporate agency. My critique of Hartshorne has been that, in virtue of his theory, most of the things of this world are simply aggregates of actual occasions which in principle could change character from moment to moment. Since this evidently does not happen with any regularity, my own hypothesis, accordingly, is that even inanimate societies of actual occasions possess an objective unity in virtue of the form or structure in which they all more or less share and that they exercise together a collective agency to sustain that same objective unity over time (see Bracken, Joseph A., Society and Spirit: A Trinitarian Cosmology [Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1991], 42–49).Google Scholar

18 See, e g, Bracken, Joseph A, “Panentheism from a Trinitarian Perspective,” Horizons 22/1 (Spring 1995) 7–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Bracken, , The Triune Symbol, 36–47Google Scholar, Bracken, , Society and Spirit, 123–39Google Scholar, Bracken, Joseph A, The Divine Matrix Creativity as Link between East and West (Maryknoll, NYOrbis, 1995), 52–69Google Scholar, and Bracken, , Trinity in Process, 95–113Google Scholar

19 See Zizioulas, John D, Being as Communion Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NYSt Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), esp 27–49Google Scholar In his insistence that the unity of the Godhead is to be found in the person of the Father, Zizioulas is, in my ȷudgment, uncritically carrying forward the subordinationism which is common in the trinitarian theology of most of the Greek Fathers and which the Cappadocian Fathers and John Damascene tried to correct with the notion of perichoresis In addition, as I indicate below (n 26), Zizioulas' theory is likewise questionable because it represents an implicit repristination of the centuries-old dualism between spirit and matter (specifically, the dualism between person and nature) which has the effect of separating God and human beings from all other entities

20 LaCugna, , God for Us, 270–71Google Scholar N B the terms “Father” and “Son” are given in quotation marks here and elsewhere in this essay to indicate their strictly metaphorical, nonsexist meaning

21 Ibid, 271-72

22 See Whitehead, , Process and Reality, 31Google Scholar, where he compares creativity with the Aristotelian notion of prime matter. In brief, for Whitehead, prime matter is passive whereas creativity is active; but, in both cases, this primordial reality is actual only in its instantiations. See also Bracken, The Divine Matrix, chaps. 1, 2, and 4.

23 Bracken, , The Divine Matrix, 29.Google Scholar

24 See Bracken, Joseph A., “Non-Duality and the Concept of Ultimate Reality,” Ultimate Reality and Meaning 19 (1996): 140–47.Google Scholar

25 Whitehead, , Process and Reality, 18.Google Scholar

26 See, however, Zizioulas, , Being as Communion, 42–49.Google Scholar

27 Within a Whiteheadian context, for example, there is no ontological dualism between spirit and matter, nature and person; nature or, more specifically, creativity in Whitehead's scheme is the source of both freedom and necessity, novelty and order. That is, Whiteheadian creativity empowers actual occasions first to exist in virtue of a self-constituting “decision” and then with other actual occasions to form “societies” governed in each case by a common element of form or principle of order and determination. Hence, the necessity of nature paradoxically arises out of an antecedent moment of spontaneity or freedom for a given set of actual occasions (see Cobb, Jr., and Griffin, , Process Theology, 24–28Google Scholar). Likewise, this interplay of freedom and necessity holds true at literally all levels of existence, from the divine to the subatomic.

28 This comment, of course, likewise applies to Whitehead's own understanding of the God-world relationship. In Process and Reality, 88, for example, he concedes that God is a “creature” of creativity, the principle of process within his metaphysical scheme, just as much as any finite actual occasion.

29 Bracken, , The Divine Matrix, 38–51.Google Scholar

30 What we are looking for here is an understanding of the God-world relationship which is neither dualistic nor monistic. That is, if classical theism may be regarded as dualistic in that God as Creator has no real relation to creation but exists separately from creation as an innertrinitarian reality, the scheme of LaCugna and others in which “the life of God and creature” are thought to be “existing together as one” (LaCugna, , God for Us, 377Google Scholar) runs the opposite danger of monism within the divine persons and all their creatures ontologically subordinate to the all-encompassing reality of a single cosmic process. As I make clear in The Divine Matrix, I conceive the God-world relationship as nondual or panentheistic. That is, creation as a complex social totality is progressively incorporated into the communitarian life of the three divine persons but in such a way as to preserve its integrity as a subordinate but still distinct reality (see Bracken, , The Divine Matrix, 59–65Google Scholar). In my view, this is the clear advantage of a societal model rather than an organismic model for the God-world relationship. If the world is conceived as the “body” of God and God as the “soul” of the world, then one unconsciously tends to absorb either the reality of the world into the reality of God or, more likely, the reality of God into the reality of the world. With the societal model, on the other hand, where societies are seen as layered hierarchically according to size and scope, the world as a complex social totality can be said to exist within God, be sustained by the divine act of being as noted above, and yet ontologically exist separately from God. One has, in other words, finally achieved a nondual or panentheistic understanding of the God-world relationship.

31 See Gunton, Colin, The One, the Three, and the Many: God, Creation, and the Culture of Modernity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993);CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also Vanhoozer, Kevin J., ed., The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age: Theological Essays on Culture and Religion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997)Google Scholar, which is dedicated to the same general theme and in which Gunton has an essay along these lines.