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  • Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity
  • Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer
Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity. By Paul D. Molnar. T&T Clark, 2002. 357 pages. $39.95.

This book is an interesting and important contribution to the current debate on Trinitarian theology. The aim of the author appears clearly in the Preface of the book: "to recognize, uphold and respect God's freedom" (ix). The reason stated is that without theoretical and practical awareness of this freedom all theological statements about the significance of human existence become ambiguous, constituting merely human attempts to give meaning to creation, using theological categories (ix).

After reading the book's, it seems that the author's intention has been respected, faithfully pursued, and successfully reached. Discussing with many important contemporary Trinitarian theologians—Catherine LaCugna, Elizabeth Johnson, Sallie Mac Fague, Karl Rahner, and Jürgen Moltmann among others—Dr. Molnar builds his arguments in favor of his conviction that it is not anything within our experience or inherent in the categories with which we think and speak about that prescribes who God is in se and ad extra.

The author affirms that much of the controversy that presently exists regarding the doctrine of the Trinity concerns just this issue. And that is the reason for him to do his vast and vigorous research and to write this book. At the beginning of his book, Dr. Molnar solemnly advises the reader that "since we know the triune God by grace and through faith, we cannot, as it were, read back our concepts and experiences into God" (ix).

The problem to which the book points, then, is the danger of re-editing today the first centuries' Christian heresies, such as Arianism. The author, like Athanasius, wishes to prove that God is who He is, independent of creation, and that He can only be known with certainty through His own revelation and self disclosure. (Molnar quotes Athanasius, Contra Ar. I. 34, p x, n. 1: "It is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call him Father than to name him from his works and call him Unoriginate.") For that purpose, the author's reflection and effort will be to articulate a contemporary doctrine of the immanent Trinity, once Trinitarian doctrine, according to him, cannot displace God as the foundation of true knowledge since God's action in revelation is not a dogma, view, or principle, but the actual Word of God working ad extra as creator, reconciler, and redeemer (x).

We are facing, then, in this book, and attempt to understanding theology from updown. It is a descending theology that attempts to demonstrate that the recent efforts of thinking of the revealed God, mainly after the Vatican II, departing from human's experience of this same God and moving towards His Immanent being, does not respect God's freedom as a doctrine of the immanent Trinity. Then the author declares himself ready to face Barth and mainly Rahner with his axiom that "the immanent Trinity is strictly identical with the economic Trinity and vice versa," who influenced so greatly the contemporary Trinitarian thinking, approaching God from the world and declaring the mystery of God not a logical mystery but one of salvation. [End Page 159]

In spite of the resistances such a theory can provoke in readers who adopt Rahner's anthropocentric point of departure and feel comfortable with it, the questions raised by Dr. Molnar at the beginning of this book seem quite pertinent: the trend of making God dependent in some sense on history; the lack of precision in Christology, which overemphasizes the historical Jesus as savior; the failure to distinguish the Holy Spirit from the human spirit; and last but not least a trend to begin theology with experiences of self-transcendence, thus allowing experience rather than the object of faith to determine the truth of theology (xii).

All the discussions the author establishes throughout his book on the problem are extremely interesting and accurate, exhibiting a deep knowledge of Trinitarian thinking in the Church, not only among ancient patristic sources, but also among the most contemporary theologies, including revolutionary...

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