Karl Rahner’s The Trinity, published in German in 1967 and in English translation by Joseph Donceel in 1970, marked a watershed in trinitarian studies. Rahner’s thesis, in Donceel’s translation, is “The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity,” that is, the Trinity of the economy of salvation or salvation history is God’s eternal trinitarian being and vice versa. What God communicates to us in salvation history is precisely God’s own inner trinitarian life. This thesis has come to be called “Rahner’s Rule” or Grundaxiom. Rahner formulates his rule against the “Augustinian-Western” theology of the Trinity, as epitomized in the neoscholastic textbooks of his day. Those textbooks prefaced the treatment of the Trinity (De Deo Trino) with a lengthy, abstract treatment of the “one divine essence” (De Deo Uno), paying little attention to salvation history and leaving the impression that the Trinity is something revealed about God rather than God as God is revealed. For instance, they held that any of the trinitarian persons might have become incarnate. Christian spirituality had thus in practice become merely monotheistic: “Should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.” A renewed trinitarian theology must begin with God in salvation history as revealed in Scripture.
Martin Robinson’s new book, which originated as a dissertation at Moore Theological College in Australia, undertakes a twofold task. First, he defends Augustine’s trinitarian theology against Rahner’s strictures, showing that they may apply to the later tradition but not to Augustine. Second, he defends Rahner against his recent critics, using Augustine’s exegesis to show how their biblically based criticisms can be rebutted. Although De Trinitate is central to his argument, Robinson draws widely on the range of Augustine’s writings, especially his sermons.
The second and third chapters comprise Robinson’s defense of Augustine. Chapter 2 argues that Augustine’s theology of the Trinity is well-grounded in Scripture, much better than Rahner’s (this is somewhat unfair to Rahner, whose book on the Trinity is a program for trinitarian theology, not meant to be a full theology, as is De Trinitate). He shows that Augustine’s insistence on the “inseparable operation” of the trinitarian persons does not separate De Deo Uno from De Deo Trino and that, for Augustine, if any trinitarian person is to be incarnate, it must be the Logos. Finally, he shows that Augustine does not separate trinitarian theology from spirituality, but rather his route to better understanding of the Trinity is through combining inquiry with prayer and holy living (De Trinitate 15.27.49). Chapter 3 responds to Rahner’s charges that the Western-Augustinian tradition neglects the Old Testament theophanies and that it disconnects trinitarian theology from soteriology and shows that Augustine is guilty of neither. In response to charges that the tradition separates the missions (“sendings” into salvation history) of the trinitarian persons from their “processions” internal to divine life (the Son begotten from the Father, the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son), Robinson shows that, for Augustine, the missions are clearly distinct from but reveal and are grounded in the processions.
Chapters 4 and 5 defend Rahner against charges, notably by Scott Harrower, Fred Sanders, and Dennis W. Jowers, that biblical passages about the economic Trinity, if read back into the immanent Trinity according to Rahner’s Rule, lead to heresy or contradiction. Would the submission of Jesus to the Father imply a heretical subordination of the Word to the Father? Would the presence of the Spirit at Jesus’s conception imply that the Word is begotten of the Father and the Spirit? Only about one-third of New Testament passages mentioning the trinitarian persons follow the Father-Son-Spirit order—do the other passages lead to heretical or conflicting statements about the immanent Trinity? Robinson painstakingly works through all the problematic passages on which Augustine comments to argue that his exegesis answers the objections to Rahner’s Rule.
Robinson’s book is for specialists, not for the classroom. The argument is textually dense, but frequent programmatic statements and summaries assist readers in following the thread. It would have been helpful to English-speaking readers if Robinson, in addition to citing and translating the German text of Rahner, had included page references to standard English translations such as Donceel’s. In all, this book significantly contributes to the study of Augustine’s and Rahner’s trinitarian theologies and may help to stimulate a renewed attention to Rahner, whose theology has undergone something of an eclipse in recent decades.
