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7 Perichoresis of “Person” and “Relation” and Trinitarian Theology I. The Immanent and Economic Trinity Reconsidered One of the main characteristics of modern trinitarian theology lies in the important emphasis it places on the ontological and epistemological unity between the immanent and the economic Trinities. Both Karl Barth and Karl Rahner, as two major theological voices in the modern age, emphasize that the immanent and the economic Trinities are identical: God is his revelation, or the salvific actions of the three divine persons in history reflect the intra-trinitarian relations of the three hypostases in the eternal Godhead. In order to maintain the substantial identity of the immanent and the economic Trinities, Barth and Rahner stress that the salvific actions of the Father, Son, and Spirit and their distinctions do not point to multiple centers of origin: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not three separate divine sources, and the trinitarian actions do not define three individuals. The economic triune salvific actions are revelatory of God’s transcendent, one, and single immanent divine being. They are, in other words, three modes of subsistence of the one divine essence of God. Among the two, Karl Rahner’s understanding of the Trinity has occupied the center of the theology of God’s triune nature since the second half of the twentieth century. What is known as “Rahner’s Rule” (Grundaxiom) undergirds almost every theological proposal on the triune life of God ever since the publication of Rahner’s The Trinity.1 In this text, Rahner argues for the need 1. The German text where Rahner sets his rule “Die ‘ökonomische’ Trinität ist die ‘immanente’ Trinität und umgekehrt” is: “Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte,” in Mysterium Salutis, Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, 2, hrsg. J. Feiner u. M. Löhrer (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1974). 259 to develop the doctrine of the Trinity beyond the boundaries of contextual or biblicist interpretations, advocating instead for the construction of serious, theologically developed hermeneutics. This theological development of the church’s understanding of the Trinity is achieved for Rahner by reinterpreting every doctrine of faith, especially the incarnation and salvation, from, and as a variation on, the doctrine of the Trinity.2 Rahner is, of course, fully aware that one of the central claims of Christian faith is the divine mysteriousness and incomprehensibility. Rahner himself affirms that the mysteriousness of God is fundamental and indispensable for theological reasoning. “Even in the vision [i.e., where the divine gives himself to us],” Rahner states, “God remains forever incomprehensible.”3 Therefore, Rahner adds, “the dogma of the Trinity is an absolute mystery which we do not understand even after it has been revealed.”4 “Trinity” and “mystery” are not contradictory terms. They actually belong together in essence, and the Trinity, in fact, is the depth of the concept of mystery.5 But, if the Trinity is a mystery beyond human comprehension, and if it is absolutely so, how can we understand any other theological doctrine from it? The core of Rahner’s answer to this question lies in his notion of God’s “self-communication.” In Foundations of Christian Faith, Rahner states what he understands by God’s self-communication. When God communicates with us, Rahner says, he does not just convey to us some truths about who he is by means of one vision or another. When God addresses us, he communicates his very own self, his own most proper reality. God’s self-communication is an ontological event that makes God in Godself known, and not only things about him.6 God’s self-communication is the eternal, incomprehensible divine reality relating to humanity, as Rahner says, for the sake of making God known and 2. Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 9ff. With regard to the incarnation, for instance, Rahner suggests a trinitarian reading of the divine’s becoming human as a reflection of the grace of the eternal Logos, the second person in the Trinity, instead of the grace of “God-man” or the divine monos who became human. 3. Ibid., 46. “The Trinity,” Rahner continues, “is a mystery whose paradoxical character is preluded in the paradoxical character of [the human] existence. That is why it is meaningless to deny this mysteriousness, trying to hide it by an accumulation of subtle concepts and distinctions which only seem to shed more light upon the mystery, while in fact they feed [the human] with verbalisms which operate as...

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