ABSTRACT
Christian theologians draw a distinction between the ‘immanent’ and ‘economic’ Trinity, between God-in-himself and God as he creates the world, reconciles it to himself, and brings it to perfection. Epistemically, humanity has access only to the economic Trinity, to God as he elects to reveal himself in the drama of salvation. Any positive affirmations regarding the immanent Trinity can only take the form of retroductive inferences from the divine economy, grounded in the understanding that since God reveals himself as faithful, trustworthy and incapable of deception, his inner being and outer acts must be identical. It follows that, to all intents and purposes, the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity (Rahner 1970). The only qualifications that need to be drawn here are (1) that since God creates freely and not out of any compulsion he would have remained God without the act of creation, and (2) that if humanity had elected not to disobey God the economy of God’s dealings with humanity may possibly have taken a different course. Such speculation cannot, however, take away from the actuality of the economy of salvation within which the created order now participates: God’s creation of all that exists apart from himself, the disobedience and fall of humanity, the divine decision to prepare for the incarnation by establishing a covenant relationship with Israel, the conception, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the establishment of the Church in the power of the Holy Spirit, and the future consummation and perfection of all creation as it comes to share in the reciprocal bonds of love that unite the three persons of the Holy Trinity. Since there is no space here to explore every aspect of the divine drama of creation-reconciliation-sanctification, we will focus on three selected areas: the Christian doctrine of creation, the Christian account of the nature of humanity, and the Christian explanation of the reconciliation of Creator and creation.
