Trinity Catena 1

The story of redemption is the perfect and absolute love of the persons for each other being separated (for our creaturely sake) like light through a prism on the wall of history. The Godhead does as it is.

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This paragraph transports us to a shadowy room in 1666. Across the space is a man, Sir Isaac Newton, standing beside the only window. The sun shines eagerly through the panes. And in its light, Newton holds a prism of glass. He stares at the opposing wall. There, the reflected light is divided into a band of glowing colors. The sunlight outside is colorless of itself, but when Newton splits it with a prism, we see it is full of colors.

Here, Newton’s light experiment sets the table for a short exploration of what the church means when it says God is Triune. The life-giving and illuminating light from the sun stands for how God is in himself, where the unity of God is so prominent. When they talk about the theology of the Trinity, theologians call this side of Newton’s experiment the immanent Trinity. The immanent Trinity refers to God as he is in himself, independent of creation. Now, there is also the other wall of Newton’s experiment, where light has passed through the prism and is divided for all to see into many colors, from red to violet. This is called the economic Trinity, and that is the Trinity as we look at it in time.

When Christians look at God in time, they are looking at the story of redemption. A long time ago, people called this the “economy of salvation,” where economy refers to something as an ordered list of tasks–the house-law (eco-nοmοs). The economy of salvation is how salvation gets accomplished over the events of history. The economic Trinity is the doctrine of the Trinity considered from our time-and-space bounded point of view. From our point of history stretched over the moments of time and space, the unity of God is, as it were, separated (though not really – it is a metaphor) so that we can see what was always there but is now easier to see: that God is a godhead, a unity and a trinity. We can see the persons as God the Father, the creator, God the Son, our Redeemer who does the will of God, and God the Spirit, who through the action of the Son brings about the Father’s purpose. The colors are always there in the light, the colors do not cease to be the light, nor is the light something without the colors. The prism has allowed us to see and understand. So, the story of redemption, the story the Bible tells, helps us see and understand. God does not have to tell us anything about himself. But he loves us, and so he is glad to bring us closer so that we can confess him as three persons in one unity.

The final point of our guiding paragraph is “The Godhead does as it is.” Karl Rahner, a Roman Catholic theologian who taught in the mid-twentieth century said it like this, “The immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity and the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity.” What he means is that the persons as we see them acting in redemption–the economic Trinity–tell us how God really is–the immanent Trinity. What the triune God tells us about himself and how he acts to save us is an extension of who the triune God is. He acts because that is who he is. “You will know them by their fruits” (Matt 7.16).