Rahner on the Unoriginate Father: A Comment

RAHNER ON THE UNORIGINATE FATHER: A COMMENT PETER c. PHAN The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. ROBERT WARNER, in his article" Rahner on the Unoriginate Father," * critically investigates Karl Rahner's interpretation of the New Testament usage of ho theos as God the Father and his proposal to identify God the Father as the unoriginate. In this brief note I would like to respond to his criticisms and propose some further issues for reflection on Rahner's trinitarian theology. I. Rahner's Thesis Rahner's position can be summarized as follows: ( 1) The New Testament uses the word ho theos not only to indicate (" stand for " or " refer to " = supponere) but also to signify or mean (significare) God the Father. In other words, "God" in the New Testament does not mean "divine nature" (divinitas or deitas) but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the concrete person who possesses unoriginately the divine nature and communicates it to the Son by eternal generation and to the Spirit by active spiration. According to Christian revelation, then, " God " is the fons trinitatis. The Son and the Spirit are " God " only insofar as they receive their " nature " from the act of self-communication of the Father. (2) God the Father, insofar as he is God not by receiving the divine nature from anyone but is himself the source of divinity, is properly called the unoriginate. *The Thomist, 55, 4, October, 1991, pp. 569-593. 131 132 PETER C. PHAN (3) This unoriginateness of the Father is known only by revelation (" concrete unoriginateness "). Philosophy can know only divine uncreatedness or aseity (God as agenetos, not as agennetos). However, since there is only one God and since this one God is the Father, what philosophers know, in Christian perpective, is this God the unoriginate, even though they do not know God as the unoriginate, that is, as the Father of Jesus Christ and Spirator of the Spirit. Philosophers know, in Rahner's terminology, "total unoriginateness." (4) There are then two central claims : (a) " God " means the Father; (b) the "Father " means the unoriginate-who-communicates -himself-to-the-Son-and-the-Spirit. It is of paramount importance to remember that when Rahner speaks of the Father as the unoriginate, he never separates him from his relationships to the Son and the Spirit. As a matter of fact it is precisely in these relationships in the history of salvation that we know the Father as the unoriginate. II. Warner's Critique Warner's criticisms of Rahner's understanding of the Father as the unoriginate are as follows : ( 1) Rahner is guilty of contradiction in maintaining that x (the first Trinitarian hypostasis) is both absolutely and relatively unoriginate. (2) There is another self-contradiction: unoriginateness means, by definition, incommunicable. How then can the Father who is identified with the unoriginate communicate himself? (3) A third contradiction: if the act of self-communication of the unoriginate is free, then the unoriginate is free to be Father or not, free to be a trinity or not; if it is necessary, then the unoriginate is rationally deducible and hence philosophically knowable . Either option is liable to the charge of heresy. (4) Rahner's notion of the Father as the unoriginate suggests that there is an abyss lying behind the Father. Rahner's identification of the Christian notion of the unoriginate in trinitarian theology with the philosophical notion of the abyss does not allow RAHNER ON THE UNORIGINATE FATHER 133 him to attach any concrete determination (such as Fatherhood) to his concept of God. III. Rejoinder I would like to examine each of Warner's objections in turn. (1) Rahner does not assert that the same x (the first trinitarian person) is both absolutely and relatively unoriginate at the same time. Rather what is affirmed is that Christians know God as the concrete unoriginate and that philosophers know the same God but not as the concrete unoriginate but as the total unoriginate . There is no contradiction in saying that the same thing is known in two different ways. For Rahner there is no other God than the Father of Jesus Christ and the Spirator of the Spirit, so that if...