The Thomist 74 (2010): 1-32 THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD: REVIVING AN ANCIENT QUESTION* BRUCE D. MARSHALL Southern Methodist University Dallas, Texas I C HRISTIAN FAITH in the divine Trinity begins with the Church's confession of the one God. There is nothing puzzling or mysterious about this observation. For many generations of Christians it would have seemed too obvious for comment. On each Lord's day, and on other major feasts, we solemnly confess that the God whom we worship is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we begin that confession of faith in the Trinity with the words, "We believe in one God." Only then do we go on to say who that one God is: the Father almighty, the one Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, Lord and giver of life. Everything we say about these three stands securely guarded by that beginning: "we believe in one God." Well before the Creed itself came to be, and later entered into the liturgy, Christians understood this confession of the one God to be their birthright as inheritors of the faith of Israel, and to mark them off in a primordial way from the pagan world in which they lived. In this light it is perhaps curious that Trinitarian theology has been much concerned, for over a half-century, with where it ought to "start," or begin. This question has especially preoccupied Catholic theologians, and has tended to have a clear 'This article was originally given as the Presidential Address at the annual meeting of the Academy of Catholic Theology in 2009. I am grateful to the members of the Academy for the many helpful questions they raised, to which I have tried to respond in this published version. 1 2 BRUCE D. MARSHALL shape. It concerns the order of presentation, that is, the sequence in which we take up the topics we think we need to talk about when we speak of the triune God. As is well known, this worry stems from a long tradition in Catholic theology of adhering to a relatively stable order of presentation on this very basic theological topic. First we present a series of questions, or chapters of a treatise, on the divine essence, the divine perfections, or "the one God," and then we present a series of questions or chapters on divine processions, relations, and persons, or "the triune God." First De Deo uno, then De Deo trino. It is imperative, we now often assume, to reverse this traditional order of presentation, or at any rate not to preface our Trinitarian theology with a consideration of the divine essence or of the one God. On overturning the old order of presentation depends, it is claimed, a Trinitarian theology that does justice to authentic Catholic faith in the triune God-a theology, that is, which presents the Trinity as the living heart of the mystery of salvation, and not as an arcane puzzle to be revered by traditionalists or disdained by the avant-garde. 1 Exactly why the order in which we present theological topics should have such great weight is, however, less clear. In any complex intellectual undertaking the sequence of topics can, no doubt, be pedagogically useful and suggestive. If one is concerned 1 See already the Katholische Dogmatik of Michael Schmaus, who begins the whole work (after a general introduction to dogmatic theology) with a long "Erster Hauptteil" on "Gott der Dreieinige," which starts with detailed discussions of the triune God's "self-opening" (Selbsterschliepung) in creation (which reveals his existence) and in the history of salvation (which reveals his "personal self"), before proceeding to a consideration of God's essence and attributes, understood as "the fullness of life belonging to the tri-personal God" (die Lebensfulle des dreipersonlichen Gottes). I follow here the sixth edition of Schmaus's Katholische Dogmatik, vol. 1 (Munich: Max Hueber Verlag, 1960), but this opening volume was originally published (at less than half its ultimate length) in 1938. In any case Schmaus was evidently committed to "starting with the Trinity" well before Karl Rahner's 1960 essay "Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise De Trinitate" (subsequently published in Theological Investigations4, trans. Kevin Smyth [New York: Crossroad, 1982], 77-102), to which Rahner later added two sections in order to make up his contribution to Mysterium Salutis II, "Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte" (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1967), 317-401; published in English as The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel, 2d ed. (New York: Crossroads, 1997). THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 3 about a topic not getting sufficient attention, or getting the wrong kind of attention, it makes sense to put that topic up front, and to underline what one thinks especially needs to be said about it. Doing this, however, is no guarantee that the topic will get the right kind of attention, or even enough attention. Still less does the order in which the claims are presented either establish or preclude any logical relationship between them. Whether statements are consistent with one another or not, whether one implies another or not, and so forth, has nothing to do with the order in which they are mentioned or brought up. The application of these commonplaces to Trinitarian theology is not hard to discern. A Trinitarian theology which does justice to Catholic faith will have to exhibit, at minimum, the consistency of some quite basic propositions. Among these are surely the following: there is one God; there is one divine essence; the one God is the Father; Jesus Christ is God; the Holy Spirit is the Lord; the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are three persons (this perhaps an implication of the preceding three statements); these three persons are not the same as each other; these three persons are the same as the one God; these three persons are the same as the one divine essence. 2 Whether these statements are logically consistent with one another has nothing to do with the order in which they are presented and explained. It may be easier to understand an explanation of their consistency if the explanation proceeds in a certain order, but that will vary from one reader to another, and as such is a matter over which the author has very little control. Theologians reflecting on the Trinity will also, no doubt, undertake their work not only in an effort to display basic logical relations, but with a particular persuasive purpose, an eye toward what, as they see it, readers most need to be convinced of. Even so, whether the explanation succeeds, whether it actually displays the consistency of basic Trinitarian statements, floats quite free of the order in which it 2 For an account of Trinitarian reflection which explicitly understands the task in terms of the consistency of certain elemental statements, see John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, part I, ch. 5, §2: "Belief in the Holy Trinity" (ed. Ian T. Ker [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985], 83-95). 4 BRUCE D. MARSHALL proceeds. Nor need the order of presentation have any impact on the content of the explanation itself. The history of Trinitarian theology gives clear evidence on this last point. Saint Thomas, for example, offers in book I of the early Scriptum on the Sentences pretty much the same explanation of how these basic Trinitarian propositions (and others) hold together as he does in the later Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae (some interesting technical matters aside). He manages to do this even though in the Scriptum he follows the Lombard's order of presentation, offering a detailed account of the Trinity at the outset (most of distinctions 2-34) before he considers the divine perfections at the end of book I (distinctions 35-48), whereas in the Summa Theologiae he takes the step, recently much maligned, of treating the divine essence first. Surely it would be odd to say that essentially the same Trinitarian theology-the same explanation of how basic Trinitarian propositions hang together-is logically coherent in the Scriptum, and incoherent in the Summa, simply because it is presented in two different places. It seems, then, that Trinitarian theology can begin at any pertinent point. The one God, the one Lord Jesus Christ who took flesh for our salvation, the unity of the divine essence, the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, the two processions in God, the two visible missions enacted at the Annunciation and at Pentecost-all these and countless others are perfectly suitable topics for the first chapter of a book on the Trinity. We need not, then, begin where the Creed begins, with the one God. That the most ancient and basic ecumenical dogma does begin here might, of course, be a weighty recommendation that we follow its lead. But since the order of presentation has no logically necessary bearing on the success or failure of what a Trinitarian theology aims to do, the recommendation rightly remains optional. If, however, we did (mistakenly) suppose that a particular order of presentation was necessary for a successful Trinitarian theology, it becomes much more difficult to understand how we could claim that it was misleading, let alone wrong, to begin with the one THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 5 God. 3 The ecumenical Creed, after all, begins there, and if we thought we had to choose a single place to start, the Creed presumably ought to trump current theological opinion, no matter how widespread. All the more so, if we suppose that we should cleave to the rule that the law of prayer gives us the law of belief (and a fortiori, of theology), since the ecumenical Creed is also the Church's solemn liturgical profession of faith. Wherever we begin in presenting a theological understanding of the Trinity, what we say in our Trinitarian theology will have to square, in the clearest and most explicit way we can manage, with the creedal statement "we believe in one God." In the long history of Christian theology, the unity of the triune God has been regarded with remarkable consistency to be among the most basic 3 Recent Orthodox theology in particular has sometimes claimed that to begin with the one God just is to begin (rightly) with the person of the Father, since the Creed says "we believe in one God, the Father ... ". Rahner had already said something similar. "[I]f one begins with the treatise De Deo Uno and not with De Divinitate Una, one is concerned at once with the Father, the unoriginated origin of the Son and the Spirit" ("Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise De Trinitate," 102; this claim is central to the earlier essay "Theos in the New Testament," Theological Investigations 1, trans. Cornelius Ernst, O.P. [London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974], 79-148). But this cannot be quite right. The Father is the one God, of course, but since the Son is "God from God," he must be other than the Father, yet not another God than the Father is, since, if what the Creed says is true, there is only one God. The Son, in other words, must be God just as much as the Father is, and so must be the one God just as much as the Father is. The same goes, in its own way, for the Holy Spirit, assuming that the Spirit is also true God. With this suggestion also sometimes goes the idea that what unites the divine triad, making the three to be one God, is the person of the Father, rather than the one divine essence possessed in common by the three. Thus Rahner: "the immediate unicity of the divine nature ... considered as one numerically is of itself far from providing the foundation of the threefold unity of God" ("Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise De Trinitate," 102). This too seems implausible. Even among creatures, what unites three numerically distinct persons, making them to be one in this or that respect, cannot itself be one of the three, but has to be common to or shared by all three. This goes a fortiori for the divine three, since they, unlike created persons, possess the same nature in such a way as to be one God, and not simply three individuals of one kind. It is the Father, to be sure, who causes what is common to the three-his own divine essence-to be possessed by another, and with that other, by a third. The Father can, in that sense, be thought of as the principle or source of unity among the divine persons. He brings it about that the Son and the Spirit possess in an originate way the very same essence he possesses unoriginately. But it is their possession of his essence, and not he himself, as a person numerically distinct from the other two, that primarily unites them so as to be one God. 6 BRUCE D. MARSHALL questions theology has to face. Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and Augustine already see clearly that the coherence of Christian faith as a whole-or more precisely, our ability to perceive its coherence, and thus to believe with understanding-is a stake in this question. Scotus later puts the issue in his characteristically lucid way. When it comes to the triune God, "there are two things which are of the substance of [Christian] faith," of which the first is "that there are only three persons and [only] one God. " 4 As Scotus and many others before and since have observed, the elemental Christian conviction that there are three divine persons and only one God confronts faith's quest for understanding with a problem about identity. We may not call it that, and may not formulate it in a precise way, but the problem is intuitively apparent to anyone who attends to what he is saying when he professes the Creed. We believe that the one God is the Father. We believe, equally, that Jesus Christ is "true God." We believe, further, that Jesus Christ is not the Father; he is, rather, "God from God." But this seems impossible. Taken together, that is, it seems impossible for all three of these basic Christian convictions to be true. Identity or sameness is transitive: if A is identical with B, and B is identical with C, then A is identical with C. If Jesus Christ is (the one) God, and the one God is the Father, then, it would seem, Jesus Christ is the Father. 5 Since ancient times, Scotus, Lectura I, d. 2, p. 2 (no. 164): "Book I of the Sentences treats chiefly of two things which are of the substance of [Christian] faith: first, that there are only three persons and [only] one God, and second, that these persons do not exist by themselves, but one person produces another, and these two [produce] the third. Regarding these two matters there cannot be divergent opinions" ([D]uo sunt de substantia fidei de quibus principaliter tractatur in I libro Sententiarum, scilicet quad sint tantum tres personae et unus Deus, et quad hae personae non sunt a se, sed una persona producit aliam et duae tertiam. Circa hoc autem non est licitum varie opinari) (Ioannis Duns Scoti Opera Omnia, vol. 16 [Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950- (=Vat. ed.)], pp. 166.26-167.3). 5 In Scotus' formulation, "Those things which are simply identical with one and the same thing are simply identical with each other ... but those things which are in the divine nature [viz., the three persons] are simply identical with one and the same thing, namely the divine nature. Therefore they are simply identical with each other. As a result there will be no distinction [in God], given the unity of the divine nature" (Quaecumque uni et eidem sunt simpliciter eadem, inter se sunt simpliciter eadem ... sed quaecumque sunt in natura divina, sunt simpliciter eadem eidem simpliciter, quia naturae divinae; igitur inter se sunt simpliciter 4 THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 7 Trinitarian theology has thought it essential to dispel the specter of incoherence at this quite basic point, and offer a plausible explanation of the unity of the triune God. All the more remarkable, then, that Trinitarian theology for a half-century or more has paid so little attention to this question. At least two generations of Catholic and Protestant theologians alike have thought of their own time as one of great renewal and vitality in Trinitarian theology, after a greater or lesser period of inexcusable and destructive neglect. Yet a striking feature of this self-described renewal has been the neglect of a matter perennially considered indispensable to vital Trinitarian theology. This neglect goes beyond the evident demise of the treatise de Dea uno in Catholic theology, by whatever name it might be called, as well as of its Protestant parallels. The admonition to "start" with the Trinity has had the effect, it seems, not so much of relocating sustained reflection on the one God as of killing it off altogether, though we can hope the effect is temporary. The deeper problem lies within Trinitarian theology itself. Though a great deal is now written about the Trinity, surprisingly little of this writing pauses to consider in detail how it is that the three distinct persons are one God, let alone to regard it as a fundamental question of Trinitarian theology. For the most part, the unity of the triune God seems simply to be assumed, or insisted upon as a kind of afterthought. Indeed being too preoccupied with the oneness of God can, in recent discussions, be marked down as a telling sign that one has lost track of the Trinity as a mystery of salvation, and become a "mere monotheist. " 6 Recent Trinitarian theology has, however, been greatly concerned about a different problem, a unity of a different sort. Most writing on the subject, especially among Catholic eadem. Igitur nulla erit ibi distinctio, supposita unitate naturae divinae) (Lectura I, d. 2, p. 2, q. 1 [no. 136]; Vat. ed., vol. 16, p. 159.9-10, 16-19). This is, not by accident, the first objection Scotus introduces when he takes up the question, "Whether it is possible that there be a plurality of persons with unity of essence" ([U]trum possibile sit cum unitate essentiae esse pluralitatem personarum) (Vat. ed., vol. 16, p. 159.6-7). Cf. Aquinas, STh I, q. 28, a. 3, obj. 1 and ad 1. 6 See Rahner, "Der dreifaltige Gott," 319 (Trinity, 10). 8 BRUCE D. MARSHALL theologians, has regarded the unity of "the economic Trinity" and "the immanent Trinity" as the main problem facing Trinitarian theology. This, I want to suggest, is a serious mistake. II The language of "immanent" and "economic" has become so pervasive in Catholic Trinitarian theology that to question it might seem tantamount to questioning faith in the Trinity itself. But that cannot really be right, since Trinitarian doctrine and theology got along quite well for most of their history without thinking in these terms, still less in terms of two Trinities, one "immanent" and the other "economic." The Greek Fathers did sometimes speak of the history of salvation as God's oikonomia, or household management of his creation, but not, so far as I know, of an "economic Trinity" or a Trinity "according to the economy." The contrast term was theologia, what we say about the very God who freely creates and rules what he has made. To speak of a "theological" Trinity would have been redundant. As a result the contrast with an "economic" Trinity could not even anse. In the form in which Catholic theology now generally takes it for granted, the distinction between an "immanent" and an "economic" Trinity evidently arose in the nineteenth century. To my knowledge the precise origin of this formula, in particular who is responsible for first using it, has not been established. On this matter, though, the prodigious Freiburg dogmatician Franz Anton Staudenmaier (1800-1856) sheds a considerable amount of light. A student in Tiibingen of Johann Sebastian Drey and the young Johann Adam Mohler, Staudenmaier became an important figure in the remarkable renaissance of Catholic theology in Germany after 1815, and was the first Catholic theologian to attempt a critical and systematic assimilation of Hegel. 7 7 See Peter Hiinermann, Franz Anton Staudenmaier (Graz: Styria Verlag, 1975), an anthology of texts with a substantial introduction on Staudenmaier's life and work. On Staudenmaier's Trinitarian theology, see idem, Trinitarische Anthropologie bei Franz Anton Staudenmaier (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 1962). There is very little on Staudenmaier in English. For some helpful remarks see James Tunstead Burtchaell, C.S.C., "Drey, Mohler and THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 9 Staudenmaier devotes the second volume of his dogmatics, which appeared in 1844, to the doctrine of God. There he offers several pages on "the correctness of the distinction between an essential Trinity and a Trinity of revelation." 8 Yet he begins by arguing that one could only think such a distinction important on account of "a debased faith and a way of thinking which has wandered off into superficiality and emptiness. " 9 According to this unfortunate cast of mind, we must acknowledge that God exhibits himself to us as Father, Son, and Spirit, but we should deny that "to this Trinity of revelation there also corresponds an immanent essential Trinity." 10 Staudenmaier's target here is first of all those Protestant (he says "rationalist") theologians of his own time who hold that God is Trinitarian "only in his relation to the world," and deny that God is, as Staudenmaier puts it in his characteristically Hegelian way, "Trinitarian in himself and for himself." At most, God's threefold way of revealing himself to us requires us to believe that an essentially "unipersonal" God has made an "eternal decision" to present himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for our benefit. 11 the Catholic School of Tiibingen," in Ninian Smart, John Clayton, Patrick Sherry, and Steven T. Katz, eds., Nineteenth Century Religious thought in the West, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 111-39. 8 The title of §80: "Richtigkeit des Unterschiedes zwischen Dreieinigkeit des Wesens und Dreieinigkeit der Offenbarung" (Franz Anton Staudenmaier, Die christliche Dogmatik, vol. 2 [Freiburg: Herder, 1844], 475). 9 "[E]in Resultat eben sowohl des gesunkenen Glaubens als des in Oberflachlichkeit und Leerheit hineingerathenen Denkens" (ibid.). 10 "Ob der Offenbarungsdreieinigkeit auch eine immanente Wesensdreieinigkeit entspreche" (ibid.). 11 Thus Staudenmaier's summary of the position to which he objects: "There was an eternal decision and intention of a uni-personal God eventually to reveal himself to the world in the modes of Father, Son, and Spirit. But only to reveal himself, not really to be Father, Son, and Spirit as distinct persons. For God is trinitarian only in his relation to the world, not in himself and for himself" ([E]s ewiger EntschluP und Vorsatz des Einpersonlichen Gottes gewesen sei, sich dereinst in den Modis van Vater, Sohn und Geist der Welt zu offenbaren. Aber nur zu offenbaren, nicht wirklich Vater, Sohn und Geist nach dem Personenunterschied zu sein, denn nicht an sich und fur sich, sondern nur in seinem VerhiiltniP zur Welt sei Gott trinitarisch) (Staudenmaier, Die christliche Dogmatik, 2:476). Here Staudenmaier cites Schleiermacher's student and editor Friedrich Lucke (cf. ibid., n. 1. On the debate over the "immanent" and "economic" Trinity in Protestant theology after Schleiermacher, see Christine Axt-Piscalar, Der Grund des Glaubens: Eine theologiegeschichtliche Untersuchung zum Verhiiltnis van 10 BRUCE D. MARSHALL Talk of an "immanent" and "economic" Trinity in Catholic theology thus appears to have its roots in an early reaction against nineteenth-century Protestant theologians influenced by Schleiermacher, who invented the notion of an "immanent Trinity" precisely in order to deny that there was any such thing. As often happens in theology, an idea introduced by the debased was assimilated by their opponents in the very process of attempting to refute them. So Staudenmaier, having criticized "rationalist" theologians for coming up with the contrast between an "immanent" and an "economic" Trinity, proceeds to argue against them on their own terms. "It will nonetheless be necessary to indicate the reasons why the revealed Trinity as such could not be thought without the essential Trinity. " 12 Staudenmaier's basic motive is much the same as that of later theologians who, down to our own time, have sought to articulate and defend the Church's creedal faith in terms of an immanent and an economic Trinity. What we see of God in this world, in the history of revelation and salvation, is not mere appearance, but must be real in God. This goes especially for the personal relationships among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that we perceive in time. By way of this economic Trinity (or "Trinity of revelation," in Staudenmaier's terms), we must be able to know God "as he is in himself," a knowledge, moreover, we can obtain in no other way. The Trinity we know in the economy must, as it were, go all the way down in God, to that divine arche beyond which it is not possible to go. Otherwise revelation becomes an act of deception on God's part, and God in himself simply "an Other" from what appears to us in revelation, a nameless and unknowable monad. 13 Glaube und Trinitiit in der Theologie Isaak August Darners (Tiibingen: J. C . B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1990). 12 "Es wird nunmehr aber nothwendig sein, die Griinde anzugeben, warum die Offenbarungstrinitiit fiir sich nicht gedacht werden konne, ohne die Wesenstrinitiit" (Staudenmaier, Die christliche Dogmatik, 2:476). 13 Without an immanent Trinity corresponding to the economic, "the God whom we know and want to know through revelation will be, in himself, an Other from the one whom he reveals himself to be" (ibid.). In that case, "for real and true Godhead we have no name in the teaching of revelation itself; this Monad is the absolutely Unknown" (ibid., 2:477). (Gott, THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 11 In this light the unity of the "economic" with the "immanent" Trinity becomes a basic problem for Trinitarian theology, perhaps the most basic. This problem must be resolved at the outset before the whole enterprise can proceed. Staudenmaier does not here deal with the issue, as Karl Rahner later would, by saying that the two are simply identical, that the economic Trinity just is the immanent Trinity, and conversely. 14 But he comes close. "Everything which is posited in the revealed Trinity could not be posited in this way were it not posited in the same way in the essential Trinity" (emphasis added). 15 Not just some things, but all things we find to be true of Father, Son, and Spirit in time-certainly everything essential to our salvation-must go all the way down in God. What happens among the three persons in the history of salvation, it seems, is not simply what they have eternally known and decided to do, but in some way belongs to them as such, to "an absolute and eternal inner relationship of the divine nature." Of this primordial Trinitarian situation the economic Trinity is, as Staudenmaier puts it, "only the selfmanifestation, the stepping-forth. " 16 To be sure, a lot of Catholic Trinitarian theology in the century or so after Staudenmaier made no use, conceptually or den wir durch Offenbarung kennen und kennen wollen, an sich selber ein Anderer sein soil, den der, als welchen er sich offenbart ... haben wir fur die eigentliche und wahre Gottheit in der Offenbarungslehre selbst keinen Namen; die Monas ist das schlechthin Unbekannte.) 14 Cf. Rahner, "Der dreifaltige Gott," 328 (Trinity, 22). 15 Staudenmaier's original formulation is yet more circuitous: "Denn Alles, was in der Offenbarungstrinitiit gesetzt ist, ist so gesetzt, daG es nicht so gesetzt sein konnte, ware es nicht so in der Wesenstrinitiit gesetzt" (Die christliche Dogmatik, 2:478). 16 "[D]ie Offenbarungstrinitiit nicht ist, wenn die immanente Wesenstrinitiit nicht zuvor schon ist. Jene ist nur das Hervortreten und Sich-manifestiren eines absoluten und ewigen innern Verhiiltnisses der gottlichen Natur" (ibid., 2:477-8). Precisely how Staudenmaier himself understands these claims, so often reiterated in later Trinitarian theology, and just how his views are connected to those of others who think in the same terms, are important questions, but I will not try to answer them here. It cannot, at any rate, be said that Staudenmaier is among those theologians of the economic and immanent Trinity who ignore the unity of God. This he understands in terms of God's "absolute life," and sees the divine unity as at least in some way consequent upon the Trinity of persons: "Tri-personality makes the one essence of God a living unity" (Durch die Dreipersonlichkeit ist das Eine Wesen Gottes eine lebendige Einheit) (ibid., 2, §79 [sic-the text erroneously repeats this § number], p. 4 70; cf. §§76-78). Thus Schmaus (cf. above, n. 1) is not really original on this score. 12 BRUCE D. MARSHALL even verbally, of a distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity, and pursued the chief questions of Trinitarian theology in other terms. Many, though not all, took the wellestablished distinction between "procession" and "mission" to be basic for a coherent understanding of the triune God and his acts of creation and redemption, and ignored the language of "immanent" and "economic." 17 In any case Staudenmaier has no ownership of these terms. No one is compelled to give the words the same conceptual content he does, even if the patterns of thought he articulates have become pervasive, and tend to generate assumptions about what the words mean. Why, though, should it be a problem to think about the Trinity in this way in the first place? In particular, why should it interfere with a rigorous account of the unity of the triune God? III A number of questions might be raised about whether various efforts solve what recent Trinitarian theology seems to regard as its most basic problem are coherent on their own terms. There is reason to think the standard strategies for showing the "immanent" and the "economic" Trinity to be identical are by turns self-contradictory, much ado about the obvious, or purchased at fearsome theological cost. 18 Our present concern, however, is only whether this modern manner of thinking about the Trinity helps us, or even allows us, to offer a plausible account of the unity of the three divine persons, that is, of faith in the one God. Theologians who rely on these categories in order to understand the Church's faith in the triune God typically underline the clear distinction of persons with which the scriptural economy of salvation confronts us. The Father, the Son 17 These two distinctions are not the same, nor do they map directly onto one another. I will return to this point. 18 On this see my essay "The Trinity," in The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology, ed. Gareth Jones (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 183-203, especially 193-97. THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 13 Jesus, and the Holy Spirit act in various ways with respect to one another, and thus cannot be confused with one another. So, for example, at Jesus' baptism he hears the voice of another address him: "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22; cf. Matt 3:17). Jesus does not speak to himself ("I am my beloved Son ... "). Similarly the Holy Spirit descends and remains upon Jesus in the form of a dove; Jesus does not descend and remain upon himself Gohn 1:32-33). Given the unity of the economic with the immanent Trinity (however explained and defended), this unmistakable economic distinction of persons must also belong to God immanently; it must be present at that arche behind which it is not possible to go. So far so good, but how shall we understand these three persons, who appear in the economy as irreducibly distinct individuals, to be one God? Simply showing that the immanent three are just the same persons as the economic three, while obviously correct, is no help with the question of how the three are one God. Adding that the three persons are one God immanently, so they must also be one God economically, is no explanation, but precisely the state of affairs that needs to be explained. The unity of the economic and immanent Trinity, it seems, contributes nothing to an understanding of the unity of the triune God. They are two quite distinct problems. The reason for this is not hard to see. The distinction of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father and from each other does not arise within the economy of salvation. The actual economy of salvation, and the decision that there be an economy in the first place, both presuppose the distinction of the three persons from one another. The Son and the Spirit enter the actual economy of salvation, and before that the decision to have an economy at all, with their distinction from the Father and each other already securely in place. Otherwise the Trinitarian economy of salvation is mere appearance, and the source of the appearances remains unknown-the sort of "rationalist" or "Sabellian" position against which Staudenmaier and others after him rightly protest. If we are going to think about the Trinity in terms of the economic and the 14 BRUCE D. MARSHALL immanent, we have to hold that there is an "immanent" or "essential" Trinity, and not only a Trinity of the revealed economy. Theologians who think in these terms have, however, tended not to notice two important consequences of this affirmation. A) Personal Identity in God Does Not Depend on the Economy To affirm an "immanent" Trinity is to say that Father, Son, and Spirit are already distinct from one another-as distinct as they can possibly be-apart from, or prior to, the economy of salvation. Distinction, however, depends upon identity. That is: you are a person distinct from me just because you are a person, and you have at least one property that I lack. You are a person distinct from every other actual and possible individual (person or not) because you have at least one property unique to you, and thus possessed by no other actual or possible entity. This property is constitutive of your personal identity or uniqueness; it makes you the particular individual you are (there may be many such properties, and it may be that not all are equally important to your identity). This applies to the divine persons as well. Since they must be distinct from one another apart from any possible economy of salvation, each divine person must have whatever is constitutive of his identity-whatever makes him to be the unique person he is-apart from any economy. For our purposes we need not decide exactly what the identity-constituting properties of the persons of the Trinity are. But if, to take a standard position, one divine person alone has the relational property of paternity, another alone that of filiation, and a third alone that of (passive) procession, then these three properties belong to the unique identity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit respectively, and distinguish each from the others, even if there are no creatures. In the counterfactual terms often favored by the Scholastics, the answer to the following question must be yes: "If there had been no economy, would Father, Son, and Holy Spirit still be THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 15 divine persons distinct from one another?" The theological purpose of reflection on counterfactuals is not to engage in idle speculation, but to help isolate the real reason why a doctrinally significant state of affairs obtains. Take, by way of comparison, the question widely debated in medieval and early modern theology, "If Adam had not sinned, would God still have become incarnate?" In both cases the consequent of the conditional isolates a basic Christian doctrine (the real distinction of the persons of the Trinity; the incarnation of God), and the conditional asks whether what this doctrine teaches would still obtain if the counterfactual situation specified in the antecedent had come to pass (no economy of salvation; no sin). If yes, then the factual situation which has actually come to pass (the present economy of salvation; the sin of Adam) cannot be the reason why what the doctrine teaches obtains (the distinction of divine persons; the incarnation). If no, then the situation which has actually come to pass is the reason (or at least a reason) why what the doctrine teaches obtains. In the case before us, then, to answer "yes" is to say that an economy of creation and salvation is not the reason why the persons of the Trinity are distinct from one another; that reason must be sought apart from any possible economy. 19 As a result, whatever distinctions the persons of the Trinity exhibit among themselves in the actual economy would obtain in just the same way were there no economy at all, and no decision to have one. What Father, Son, and Spirit indicate in the economy to be constitutive of their personal identities would constitute the identity of each in just the same way were there no creation and no redemption. And so whatever is true of the three in virtue of their enactment of an economy must be an addition, a 19 There was, of course, vigorous disagreement among the Scholastics about whether this incarnational conditional (in Aquinas's formulation, "[U]trum, si non fuisset peccatum, Deus incarnatus fuisset" [STh III, q. 1, prooem.]) ought to be given an affirmative answer. By contrast no Scholastic theologian, so far as I am aware, posed a question such as "Whether, if there had been no economy of redemption, the persons of the Trinity would still be distinct from one another"-because, presumably, the answer was too obvious to make counterfactual reasoning worth the trouble. 16 BRUCE D. MARSHALL supplement, to whatever needs to be true of the three in order for them to be just these persons really distinct from one another. The economic attributes of the divine persons cannot contribute at all to making them the unique persons they are, or to making them actually distinct from one another. At most these economic attributes can exhibit distinctions which already obtain. And this means that the "economic Trinity" cannot be the same as, identical with, or otherwise confused with the "immanent Trinity." Of course the persons who make us present to themselves in the economy of salvation are just the same persons, and distinguished in just the same way, as they would be apart from this or any other economy. But this means that no feature of the economy as such-nothing belonging only to the economy-is identical with any feature or attribute needed to distinguish the divine persons from one another. The persons of the Trinity do not, as it were, become more distinct from one another in the economy than they would be without it, nor do they acquire their personal identities in virtue of anything that happens in the economy. If the persons present in the economy are just the same as the persons who are the "immanent" Trinity, then they cannot add or acquire any identity-constituting property in this, or any possible, economy. On the contrary: whatever is proper to the economy, or more comprehensively, what would not be were there no order of creation and redemption, is not identical with, or the same as, any divine person. Nor is anything belonging to the economy alone the same as any property (proprium) by which each of the divine persons is distinguished from the others, and in which he has his unique personal identity. Just because the distinctions among the persons of the Trinity are not themselves mere economic appearance, the "immanent Trinity," far from being identical with the economic appearances, is, one could say, what remains after everything belonging only to the economic appearances has been factored out. In Rahner's terms, the "immanent Trinity" is the triune God as he is "setting THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 17 aside his free self communication." 20 The immanent Trinity is what we arrive at, in other words, by "setting aside" everything belonging only to the economy. If, as Rahner rightly insists, we must hold firmly to the Trinity apart from the economy in just this sense, then his own axiom regarding the identity of the immanent and the economic Trinity must be false. 21 The economy of salvation-indeed the whole order of creation and redemption-is what the triune God does, not who the triune God is. 22 B) Personal Identity in God Must Be Understood apart from the Economy The identity of each divine person and the resulting distinctions among the three must be thought of by us, therefore, without reference to the economy of salvation. Consequently, our understanding of how the three persons are one God must not be infiltrated or "contaminated," as it were, by terms and concepts that refer only to the economy. The economy of salvation as such contributes nothing to understanding either the distinction or the unity of the divine persons. This may seem like an obvious, and serious, mistake-a stronger claim than is either needed or warranted. Surely we rely on the economy of salvation in order to know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in their personal uniqueness and distinction from one another, and so to know that the one God is these three persons. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church insists, "[T]he whole divine economy makes known both what is proper to the 20 "[U]nter Absetzung von seiner freien Selbstmitteilung" (Rahner, "Der dreifaltige Gott," 383 [Trinity, 101]). 21 For more on this last point see Bruce D. Marshall, Trinity and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 263-65. 22 I develop this thought in "The Dereliction of Christ and the Impassibility of God," in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009), 246-98. 18 BRUCE D. MARSHALL divine persons, and their one divine nature. " 23 To claim that the economy contributes nothing to our understanding of the distinction and unity of the persons of the Trinity is, it seems, clearly incorrect. This objection takes "understand" in the sense of "come to know." Taken with that meaning, no doubt we do "understand" the divine persons by way of the economy of salvation. The economy teaches us that they are distinct, what the identity of each is, and that they are the one God. 24 But to say that we have to conceive of personal identity in God without reference to the economy is not to claim that we come to know the identity, distinction, and unity of the divine persons apart from the economy. It is to claim, rather, that we have to account for their identity, distinction, and unity apart from the economy. Where "understand" has the sense of "account for" or "explain," the economy contributes nothing to our understanding of these Trinitarian mysteries-once again, the economy as such, whatever belongs only to the triune God's free action in creation and redemption, rather than to the acts of generation and spiration in which Father, Son, and Spirit have their identities, their distinction, and their unity. When we want to "understand" in this sense, the economy as a whole cannot possibly help us. The identity, distinction, and unity we want to account for are precisely those which obtain when everything belonging only to the economy has been factored out. We seek to grasp an identity, distinction, and unity that must be presupposed to this, and to any possible, economy. Nothing economic as such, nothing contingent, makes Father, Son, and 23 CCC, §259 (cf. §236): "God's works reveal who he is in himself; the mystery of his inmost being enlightens our understanding of all his works. So it is, analogously, among actions, and the better we know a person, human persons. A person discloses himself in the better we understand his actions." 24 Exactly how the economy teaches us these Trinitarian mysteries, and in particular the role of propositional knowledge in this teaching, as opposed to that of the sheer economic events themselves, is another matter, but not our present concern. On this see Bruce D. Marshall, "Ex Occidente Lux? Aquinas and Eastern Orthodox Theology," Modern Theology 20 (2004): 23-50, especially 38-41; and "The Trinity," 196-97. THE UNI1Y OF THE TRIUNE GOD 19 Spirit to be the unique persons they are, or to be the one God they are. So in the nature of the case nothing economic can account for-get to the root of-either their unity or their personal identity. Precisely as the action of three whose personal identity and distinction does not depend at all on that action, the economy itself shows us that neither their distinction nor, a fortiori, their unity as the one God can be explained at all in its own terms. We need, then, conceptual means for apprehending the distinctions among the divine persons, and their unity as God, other than the means we use to apprehend the totality of their activity in creation and redemption. We need, in other words, a way of thinking about the Trinity that permits us to grasp the identity, distinction, and unity of the persons as we come to know it in the economy of salvation, without implying that whatever happens in the economy is in any way necessary for, or constitutive of, their identity, distinction, and unity. The traditional disjunction between the eternal processions of the divine persons and their temporal missions serves just this conceptual and logical purpose. The distinctions among the persons of the Trinity are fully secured by the two divine processions, that is, by the noncontingent coming forth of the Son from the Father, and of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. 25 A temporal mission adds something created to an eternal procession, and so to the distinct divine person who is the term of that procession. The mission of each person sent (the Son and the Holy Spirit) includes both his eternal procession and himself as the person who proceeds. Mission, however, supplements that procession and the resulting personal identity with a specific relationship to the creature. In St. Thomas's formulation, often repeated and amplified: "Mission not only involves procession from a source, it specifies a temporal term for the procession. as to how the processions establish the personal distinctions, e.g., whether the relations of origin arising from the processions do the work of securing personal distinction, or whether the two distinct modes of origination themselves (secundum intellectum and secundum voluntatem) do this work. We need not pursue this question here, but an adequate account of the unity of the triune God would have to address it. 25 There is controversy 20 BRUCE D. MARSHALL Mission, therefore, is exclusively temporal ... [it] includes an eternal procession, and adds something to it, namely a temporal effect. " 26 By this means the triune God makes one of his number present and available in a saving way to intelligent creatures. Thus the Son's mission adds to his procession from the Father the flesh he assumes in Mary's womb, and the Spirit's mission adds to his procession from the Father and the Son the sanctifying grace by which he unites us to the Son and to himself. A mission is obviously not identical with a procession. It would not have occurred to a theologian thinking about the triune God primarily in terms of eternal procession and temporal mission, rather than of economic and immanent Trinity, to say that the missions just are the processions, and conversely. That is, in fact, the beauty of the idea. Working in terms of procession and mission gives us conceptual tools for explaining quite clearly how the distinctions among the divine persons do not arise from the economy of salvation, but are presupposed to it. The created reality mission "adds" to procession (as Aquinas puts it) is precisely what has to be subtracted, factored out, in order to arrive at the processions themselves, and thereby at the identity, distinction, and unity of the persons who proceed and the one from whom both proceed. Mission includes procession, but procession does not include mission; procession is necessary for mission, but mission is not necessary for procession; the divine processions and the persons who are their subjects and terms are constitutive of, but not constituted by, the saving missions they freely undertake. So understood, the dependence of mission on procession gives us a way of knowing the eternal processions and persons from the economic missions, without implying that mission is at all constitutive of procession or personal identity in God. The basic principle that links knowledge of mission to knowledge of procession is this: a divine person can be sent in time only by 26 STh I, q. 43, a. 2, ad 3: "[M]issio non solum importat processionem a principio, sed determinat processionis terminum temporalem. Uncle missio sol um est temporalis. Ve!, missio includit processionem aeternam, et aliquid addit, scilicet temporalem effectum." THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 21 another person from whom he proceeds eternally. Thus, because the economy presents the Son as sent by the Father, he must proceed eternally from the Father, and because the economy presents the Holy Spirit as sent by both the Father and the Son, he must proceed eternally from both the Father and the Son. Since the economy presents the Father neither as sent by the Son nor as sent by the Spirit, but rather as sender of both the Son and the Spirit, the Father must proceed eternally from no other person, and be the one from whom both the Son and the Spirit eternally proceed. 27 What warrant, though, do we have for accepting this epistemic link of mission to procession in the first place? Having a mission places the person being sent in a middle position between two terms: the one who sends, and the one to whom he is sent. Mission thus involves a motion, a coming forth or "procession," of the person sent. The person on a mission comes forth from the sender, and to the term, of the mission (the term being the person or object upon whom the mission has an effect). In human affairs one person can be sent forth by another in various ways, usually implying some kind of disparity or inequality of authority between sender and sent. One person orders another to do a job for him, or one person goes to do a job for himself after having consulted with another about how to go about it, so that the consultant sends his client forth to do the job. Among the divine persons, though, there is no disparity in authority, or indeed any inequality. If one divine person is to be sent by another (as the Son and the Spirit both are, according to the scripturally depicted economy of salvation), he must come forth from the one who sends him in a fashion which involves no inequality between the person sent and the one sending. The only way of "coming forth" which meets this requirement is simply the eternal procession of one divine person from another, the noncontingent act of 27 For a more detailed account of the pattern of missions and its epistemic significance, and in particular of the relationship between the mission of the Son and the mission of the Spirit (where there is, as Aquinas acknowledges, a sense in which the Spirit sends the Son in time, yet the Spirit proceeds eternally from the Son; cf. STh I, q. 43, a. 8, sc), see Marshall, "Ex Occidente Lux?" 30-42. 22 BRUCE D. MARSHALL generation or spiration which terminates in the very person of the Son or the Holy Spirit. The only sort of "coming forth" there can be in God is origin-eternal, person-constituting procession. So, if there is going to be a divine mission, the coming forth of a divine person which has a creature as its term (or more precisely, which terminates in a change wrought in the creature by a new relation to that person), it has to include the eternal procession by which that divine person is already constituted and in which he already has his unique personal identity. In fact, if a divine person is to have a mission at all, the temporal coming forth of sent from sender in which the mission consists must be the very same coming forth as the eternal procession by which that person originates from the Father (and, as the case may be, from the Son). The temporal procession or coming forth must, in other words, be numerically identical with the eternal procession. The Son, for example, does not come forth twice from the Father, once by eternal generation and then, by a separate act of origination, in time. Rather his mission adds to the already constituted term of eternal generation in God-the Son himself in his unique personal identity-a relationship to a created reality, in the Son's case that of humanly inhabiting the fruitful womb of the Virgin Mary. One and the same procession, we could say, becomes a mission when to the eternal coming forth of one divine person from another is added, by the free action of the Trinity, a temporal term, a specific and abiding relation to created reality. 28 28 So, by way of summary, St. Thomas: "The concept of mission involves two elements. One is the relation of the person sent to the one by whom he is sent, the other is the relation of the person sent to the endpoint to which he is sent. Now, that someone is sent displays, in some way, a coming forth of the person sent from the one who sends him .... Therefore mission can belong to a divine person insofar as it implies, on the one hand, a coming forth that consists in origination from the one who sends, and on the other hand a new way of existing in something else. Thus the Son is said to be 'sent' by the Father into the world, insofar as he begins to be in the world in a visible way by means of the flesh he assumes" ([I]n ratione missionis duo importantur, quorum unum est habitudo missi ad eum a quo mittitur; aliud est habitudo missi ad terminum ad quem mittitur. Per hoc autem quad aliquis mittitur, ostenditur processio quaedam missi a mittente . ... Missio igitur divinae personae convenire potest, secundum quad importat ex una parte processionem originis a mittente, et secundum quad importat ex alia parte novum modum existendi in aliquo. Sicut Filius dicitur esse missus THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 23 In just this way, while temporal mission is not the same as eternal procession (since it makes a real addition to the procession), knowing the mission of a divine person requires knowing the eternal procession included in it. Knowing a mission just is grasping, by way of a particular created reality, the eternal procession and person to which the creature is joined to constitute the mission. Distinguishing and relating procession and mission gives us what we were looking for: a way of saying how we come to know the divine persons in their identity and distinction from the economy of salvation, without saying that the identity and distinction of the persons is in any way constituted by the temporal economy. More briefly: mission necessarily includes procession, but procession does not at all include mission. As a result we can come to know procession from mission, but we cannot account for procession and personal identity in God except by factoring out everything which pertains to mission alone. Of course none of this explains, or even begins to explain, how the three divine persons can be the one God. But it at least helps us see what a genuine explanation might consist in. We will need to offer an account of how there can be processions in God. In Scotus's helpfully precise formulation, we need to understand how the one divine essence can be possessed by a person who proceeds, or is produced. 29 The events of the saving economy-more precisely, the temporal missions of the Son and the Spirit-introduce us to the processions. In so doing, they also introduce us to the question of how there can be processions in God. But they offer no resources for answering that question-for giving an account of how there can be processions in God-since the completed processions are wholly presupposed to what the missions add economically. a Patre in mundum, secundum quad incoepit esse in mundo visibiliter per carnem assumptam) (STh I, q. 43, a. 1). 29 Cf. Scotus, Lectura I, d. 2, p. 2, q. 3 (no. 148): "[U]trum cum ratione essentiae divinae in aliquod stet ipsum posse produci" (Vat. ed, vol. 16, p. 162.14-15). 24 BRUCE D. MARSHALL Theologians at least as far back as the Cappadocians and Augustine have seen this clearly, and so have understood Trinitarian theology as a three-part problem, which cannot be further reduced. The parts of the problem are the one God, the two processions, and the two missions. Trinitarian theology therefore has both the task of showing how the personal distinctions arising from the two processions fit together with the temporal missions, and that of showing how these personal distinctions fit together with the one eternal God. Taking Trinitarian theology to be merely a two-part problem, theologies preoccupied with showing how the internal three fit with the external three are, at best, no help in understanding the unity of the triune God. IV Theologies of the immanent and economic Trinity are, in fact, often rather less than useless on this score. They encourage us to think of the fundamental question about God's unity-the question whether there can be processions in the one God-as a meaningless speculative matter, unrelated to the economy of salvation and our experience within the economy, and thus wisely ignored. Especially in Catholic theology Rahner has perhaps fueled this disinclination to offer a rigorous account, apart from the economy, of either the distinction of persons or their unity as the one God. In particular he dismisses the long-running debate over "whether a person in God is constituted by 'relation' or 'procession"' -the heart of medieval and (much of) modern reflection on what makes for identity, distinction, and unity in God-as a quarrel over mere "verbalisms," distinctions without a difference concocted by "naively clever minds" to numb themselves against "the pain of having to venerate the mystery [of the Trinity] without penetrating it." With that he invites the truly "critical reader" to follow him in avoiding "the conceptual subtlety of 'classical' Trinitarian theology (from Thomas to, for THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 25 example, Ruiz de Montoya)." 30 This advice, one has to say, has often been heeded. In fact theologies of the immanent and economic Trinity not only decline, for the most part, to attempt an informative account of the triune God's unity; sometimes they seem to rule out the one God altogether. Naturally this is not their intention. But the urge to suppose that everything which belongs to the persons of the Trinity in the economy goes all the way down in their immanent divine life, which just seems to go with thinking about the Trinity in these terms, regularly threatens to make the unity of God unintelligible. The urge just mentioned often takes the form of seeking to "ground" the economic Trinity thoroughly in the immanent, and to see the economy as the more or less natural "manifestation" or 30 Trinitarian theology must avoid wanting to hide the "paradoxical" character of the Trinity from itself "durch eine gewaltsame Subtilitiit von Begriffen und Begriffsunterscheidungen, die das Geheimnis nur scheinbar weiter erhellen, in Wahrheit aber nur Verbalismen bieten, die fiir naiv scharfsinnige Geister wie Analgetika wirken zur Betiiubung des Schmerzes, das Geheimnis undurchschaut verehren zu miissen. Wenn man sich z.B. traditionell dariiber streitet, ob eine Person in Gott durch die «Relation» oder die «Prozession» konstituiert wird, so ist ein solcher Disput ein Streit um Verbalismen, die sachlich nicht mehr wirklich unterschieden werden kiinnen. Wenn also die folgende Darstellung fiir den Leser dem Anschein nach die begriffliche Subtilitiit der «klassischen» Trinitiitstheologie (von Thomas an bis z.B. Ruiz de Montoya) nicht einzuholen scheint, dann ist der kritische Leser gebeten, wenigstens als mit einer Miiglichkeit damit zu rechnen, daB eine solche griiBere Armut und «Ungenauigkeit» vielleicht doch absichtlich angenommen worden ist" ("Der dreifaltige Gott," 346 [emphasis in original]; Trinity, 47-48). Rahner is not alone, of course, in sometimes wanting to convince his readers by appeal to their vanity. The massive Commentaria ac Disputationes in primam partem S. Thomae de Trinitate of Diego Ruiz de Montoya, S.J. (1562-1632) appeared in 1625. Matthias Joseph Scheeben (a theologian Rahner elsewhere seems to appreciate) rates it "the most outstanding major work" on the Trinity, "with regard to both positive and scholastic theology [das positiv und scholastisch vorziiglichste Hauptwerk]" (Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, book 2, §680 (Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, ed. Michael Schmaus [Freiburg: Herder, 1948], 291). As John Slotemaker points out, Rahner himself does in fact opt for relation rather than procession as person- and identity-constituting in God, though without seeming to appreciate (perhaps unsurprisingly, given the remark just cited) the implications of that decision, especially regarding his stated preference for the "Greek" Trinitarian tradition over the "Latin" Uohn T. Slotemaker, "John Duns Scotus and Henry Harclay on the Non-Necessity of Opposed Relations: The Impact of Opposed Relations on the Filioque" ([unpublished manuscript]). 26 BRUCE D. MARSHALL expression of these immanent grounds. If one state of affairs grounds another simply by being necessary for the other, or included in it-as the divine processions are necessary for and included in the divine temporal missions-then the notion that the Trinitarian processions and persons "ground" the economy is innocuous. But nowadays theologians regularly reach for a lot more. "Kenosis" is one aspect of the saving economy that some theologians seem especially concerned to extend all the way back into the Trinitarian arche. Hans Urs von Balthasar is a case in point, although he in turn picks up ideas from Karl Barth and Sergei Bulgakov, among others, and develops them in his own way. 31 Catholic theologians looking for kenosis incipient at the heart of the Trinity can follow an already well-marked path. The incarnate Son's kenosis, his act of perfect self-giving to the Father on the cross for our salvation, he undertakes as a human being (secundum quad homo-in virtue of the human nature he has assumed-as Scholastic theology often put it). So far, no doubt, all are agreed. For Balthasar, though, it seems as though the human obedience unto death of the incarnate Son is not enough. In order to be adequately "grounded" in God, or to have sufficient saving depth, the economic event of the Son's human obedience, his kenosis as a human being, must manifest a preexisting kenosis which belongs to the Son as God (secundum quod Deus, in Scholastic terms). It is not yet enough, moreover, to see this kenotic event in God as only the free decision of Father, Son, and Spirit that the Son will assume human flesh and death for our salvation. 32 The only adequate ground of the Son's human 31 For Balthasar's reliance on both of these theologians in his understanding of kenosis, see, e.g., Mysterium Paschale, trans. Aidan Nichols, O.P. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990), 35 (Bulgakov), 79-82 (Barth). See below, n. 34. 32 Here, we might note in passing, Scheeben is surely right to point out that the Son's existence in our flesh, let alone the decision to accept this temporal mission, cannot itself be regarded as kenotic. The Son still, and forever, has our flesh, but Philippians 2 clearly insists that he does not now exist in a state of kenosis, but of exaltation. It must, therefore, be the acceptance of liability to suffering and death, of flesh in its fallen state and not of flesh as such, in which the kenosis of Philippians 2 properly consists. "One cannot apply the saying of the Apostle, 'he emptied himself,' to the incarnation as such. Otherwise the Son of God would THE UNITY OF THE TRIUNE GOD 27 obedience is a kenosis which just goes with being the eternal Son, a kenosis interior to the very procession by which he exists as a person distinct from the Father. This "immanent" kenosis consists, Balthasar suggests, in the Son's willingness to let himself be produced, to be God from God, while "letting" the Father be the God from whom he is. "'The Son is already a co-worker in his own generation, in that he allows himself to be generated, and holds himself ready to be generated' .... Consequently we can already see within the Trinity the source from which will issue the obedience of the incarnate Son to the Fa th er. " 33 On this view, the Son's eternal filial kenosis in allowing himself to proceed from the Father is fully matched by a paternal kenosis of the Father in bringing the Son forth. The Father begets the Son by fully emptying himself, "dispossessing" himself even of his divinity in order to hand everything that he is over to the Son. "With Bulgakov, one can designate the self-utterance of the Father in the generation of the Son as a first, inner-divine 'kenosis' which supports everything, because in [this generation] the Father divests himself without remainder of his divinity, in order to give it over to the Son as his own. " 34 have to exist in a state of self-renunciation and self-emptying even now, in heaven. This it has never occurred to anyone to think" (Auf die Inkarnation als solche kann man die Worte des Apostels 'exinanivit semetipsum' nicht anwenden; sonst mu(?te der Sohn Gottes auch noch jetzt im Himmel in einem Zustand der Selbstentiiu{?erung, Selbstentleerung sich befinden, was niemanden je in den Sinn gekommen ist) (Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Die Mysterien des Christentums, §64 [Gesammelte Schriften II, ed. Josef Hofer, 2d ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1958), 35 0 (my translation)]; cf. Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. [St. Louis: B. Herder, 1946], 423-24). 33 Theodramatik, vol. 4, Das Endspiel (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1983): "«Schon die Zeugung wird vom Sohn mitbewirkt, indem er sich zeugen laBt, sich bereithalt, gezeugt zu werden» ... Damit wird innertrinitarisch schon sichtbar, woraus der gehorsam des menschwerdenden Sohnes an den Yater sich ergeben wird" (76); cf. Theo-Drama, vol. 5, The Last Act, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 87 In the quoted phrase Balthasar appropriates, as often in this volume, the words of Adrienne von Speyr. 34 Theodramatik, vol. 3, Die Handlung (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1980): "Man kann, mit Bulgakow, die Selbstaussprache des Vaters in der Zeugung des Sohnes als eine erste, alles unterfassende innergottliche «Kenose» bezeichnen, da der Yater sich darin restlos seiner Gottheit enteignet und sie dem Sohn iibereignet" (300 [my translation]); cf. Theo-Drama, vol. 4, The Action, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 323. In The Lamb of God, first published in Russian in 1933, Bulgakov directly anticipates much of what Balthasar has to say about an eternal, mutual kenosis of the Father and the Son 28 BRUCE D. MARSHALL The twofold kenosis by which the Father begets and the Son is begotten gives rise, Balthasar maintains, to an infinite "distance" (Abstand) and "separation" (Trennung) between the two, a distance which simply goes with being the Father and being the Son. Rooted in the Son's eternal procession from the Father, this infinite distance grounds, and, it seems, alone can ground, both the Son's gift of himself to the Father on the cross and among the dead, and the Father's gift of the Son to us there (in the sense of Rom 8:3). "The divine act which brings forth the Son ... is the positing of an absolute, infinite distance, within which every other distance which can appear in the finite world is included and embraced, up to and including sin." 35 It may seem as though Balthasar here exaggerates, and that it is not necessary to take the needed identity of the immanent with the economic Trinity so far. 36 We can, one might argue, decline to follow him to the point of seeing the eternal generation of the Son as a protokenosis, while still holding that the decisive events of the saving economy require some kind of parallel in the as the "ground" of the temporal kenosis which takes place in the incarnation. "Unfathomable for the creaturely spirit is this begetting of the Son by the Father, of the Person by the Person. This begetting power is the ecstasy of a going out of oneself, of a kind of self-emptying, which at the same time is self-actualization through this begetting .... Spiritual sonhood consists precisely in the Son's depleting Himself in the name of the Father. Sonhood is already eternal kenosis . ... The sacrifice of the Father's love consists in self-renunciation and in self-emptying in the begetting of the Son. The sacrifice of the Son's love consists in self-depletion in the begottenness from the Father, in the acceptance of birth as begottenness .... The sacrifice of love, in its reality, is pre-eternal suffering" (Sergius Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, trans. Boris Jakim [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008], 98-99; cf. 177). 35 "Dieser gottliche Akt, der den Sohn hervorbringt, als die zweite Moglichkeit, an der identischen Gottheit teilzuhaben und sie zu sein, ist die Setzung eines absoluten, unendlichen Abstands, innerhalb