Rahner on the Unoriginate Father

RAHNER ON THE UNORIGINATE FATHER ROBERT WARNER St. Joseph's University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania I. Introduction Y ANY MEASURE, Karl Rahner was one of the principal architects of the renascence of trinitarian theology that has marked the last half of this century. Rahner found that in their pract:icail lives Christians were "a1most mere' monotheists'" 1 while :in speculative endeavors the treatise on the Trinity stood " isofoted in the structriwe of dogmatic theology as a whoile," 2 and so he devoted himself toov ;ereoming both the priadicaJ irre~evance and the theoretical isolation of the doctrine. He p:mposeid as a methodologicaJ Grunda:dom the dictum that " the ' 1econom~c' Trinity is the 'immanent ' Trinity and the 'immanent ' Trinity is the 'economic ' Trinity," 3 in 011der to preclude any sharp disjunction between how God is in se and how God is ad extra, between theofogy and the ,economy. He al:so developed a techn~cal concept of self-communication, inscribed it within the heart of his trinitarian theology, amd materiaily recast the traditional account of the Trinity to wccm~d with that notion. H1s account of the 1dentity and roil.e of God the Father is a striking, although littiie noted, feature of Rahner's thought. His trinitarian theofogy trumpets the primacy of God the Father: this is evident in his oft-stated resolve to begin the 1Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), p. 10. Hereafter cited as Trinity. 2" Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise 'De Trinitate '," in Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations IV, trans. Kevin Smyth (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), p. 78. Hereafter cited as "Remarks." a Trinity, p. 22. 569 570 ROBERT WARNER ;theological entel'prise, in consort with Scripture and the Greeks, with God Father, rather than the one divine es- ,senoe shared by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.4 And that primacy, in tum, is secured by an extra.ordinary emphasis on the urnoriginatedness trruditionaUy ,ascribed to the Father. 'What unoriginatedness involves and how unoriginatedness and fatherhood bear on the identity of the Father become cmci.ail questions within Rahner's trinitarian theology. This is no bit of trinitarian arteana, no subtlety of interest only to a scholastic mindset, but an issue whose consequenee1 s reverberate throughout Rahner's Two e:mmples will suffice. Insofar as Rahner on the notion of self-communicatfon , he riegufar~y identifies the F1ather as the origin of the self-communication. Divinity is communicated rbo the Son 1:the HoJy Spi:cit. Issues regacvding the id.entity of the Father impinge, therefore, on questions the seH-communication p11eioise[y because upon the identity of the self that is communicated. In 1addition, Rahner works out the identification of being of God and the triune being of God in the person of Father. Thel'eby the question arbout ifhe :identity the Father becomes important in sett1ing the ontological status of immanent the sense in which God is 1anteoedently trinity se. This essay examine Rahner's rich and compfox a1C1count of the identity of Father. It be necessary, firis:t of all, to situate that teaching, to clarify Rahner means by un- .origina.tedness, and to determine how he understands unorigifatherhood to be interr1 elat1ed constituting the identity of the the essay will argue that Rahner's account not, fo fact, succeed and ,this his theology. Rahne'l.''s position can thus: be seen a,s an attempt to identify a philosophically colJJceiv;ed ,abyss the Father trinitarian doctrine by reworking the unoriginatedness tr:aditionaHy ascribed to the Father. 4 Trinity, p. Hl. RAHNER ON THE UNORIGINATE FATHER 571 II. 'O 8e6c; and the Father In an essay that appears early on in the Theological Investigations , "Theos in the New Testament", Rahner outlines the content of the New Testament conception of God under seveml heaidings.5 He notes, first of 1all, the New Testament's imperious claim that its God is the one true God, o 8e6c;. Rahner describes this as the New Testament"s doctrine of God',s uniqueness. Under a second rubric, God as person, Rmmer ranges several topics. Aocording to Rahner, as personal , God is (1) an agent who .wets (2) freely in (3...