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7 The Son’s Mission of Obedience By bringing together the theological interpretation of obedience and mission in the previous chapter, I can now interpret von Speyr’s thought on the economic Trinity as an obediential theology of the Trinitarian missions. The Son’s mission will occupy this chapter, and the Holy Spirit’s mission will be the focus of the next. The redemption of the world happens through the passion of the Son, who was “obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). In von Speyr’s obediential theology of the Trinitarian missions, as it relates to the Son, her concern is for the interior aspects of Christ’s life and mission. Without attempting a psychology of Christ, which she thinks impossible, she is concerned with Christ’s interior state during the passion.1 Some of what von Speyr says results from her mystical experiences of “being admitted” into the interior experience of Christ during his passion, which is her special charism.2 Her experiences give the understanding of how obedient Christ is to his mission to redeem the world. We now turn to his mission, to the Obedient One who offered himself for the sake of the world. There are many ways to consider the incarnation and passion of Christ. In the third chapter, the passion was considered in founding Trinitarian mysticism; thus, it was through the passion that the gate of heaven was opened to reveal the Trinity. Now this chapter presents the incarnation and passion as the Son of God’s mission of obedience. Following Christ through his incarnation, his public ministry, and during the days of the passion, the eternal Trinitarian 1. Von Speyr’s position would agree with Romano Guardini’s. He writes, “The trouble is that a psychology of Jesus is an impossibility. A psychology of St. Francis, yes—at least to the point where something beyond mere human nature stirs: that superhuman reality through which true humanity in God’s sense is established. St. Paul touches on the elusiveness of the spiritual man when he writes that he can judge everything, ‘and he himself is judged by no man’ (1 Cor. 2:15).” Romano Guardini, The Lord, trans. Elinor Castendyk Briefs (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1982), xv. 2. Hans Urs von von Balthasar, “Vorwort,” in von Speyr, Pa, 7–8. 147 relations are stretched to the point of almost breaking. Fundamental to von Speyr is that the Son at every moment of his earthly life, especially during his passion, spoke every word to and in the Father and Holy Spirit.3 Every word is a Trinitarian word. Knowing this idea will help us understand von Speyr’s thoroughly Trinitarian Christology. The Son’s mission of obedience reveals his being generated from the Father. As discussed in Chapter Four, the Father generates the Son, and the Son lets himself be generated. The economic translation of this immanent relation is the Son’s obedience to his being sent. The Father sends the Son on a mission, and the Son lets himself be sent in pure obedience, in pure letting happen. Immanently, the Son lets himself be generated as Son of the Father; economically, the Son lets himself be sent to be the Obedient One to the Father for the sake of his Father’s creation. The Father gives him this creation to be its Lord, and “his being Lord is the expression of his obedience to the Father.”4 Creation’s salvation happens through the Lord’s obedience to the Father. The Son is sent by the Father to lead humankind to obedience by being the Obedient One. The Son is pleased to be sent by the Father’s will to become human and to take the cross of disobedience upon himself so that humans would learn to be obedient to the Father.5 His mission is to be the Obedient One so that humans will follow him to the Father in obedience. If we let the words obedience and mission guide the following theological narrative of the Son’s incarnation and passion, we will have synthesized and analyzed von Speyr’s Trinitarian Christology. Her obediential theology of the Son’s mission encapsulates her vision of the open heaven that has revealed the Trinity. I. Incarnation, Birth, and Childhood The Father sends his Son to be the Son of Man. The Son wants to be obedient to this mission “not only to be the Son of God on earth, but to be...

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