Karl Rahner – “The Trinity” (Key Vocabulary)

Vocabulary flashcards introducing the core concepts, terms and distinctions found in Karl Rahner’s treatise on the Trinity.

Trinity (Triune God)

The one God who exists eternally as Father, Son and Holy Spirit—three distinct manners of subsisting in one divine essence.

Economic Trinity

God as revealed and experienced in salvation history through creation, Incarnation and the gift of the Spirit.

Immanent Trinity

God’s inner, eternal life as Father, Son and Spirit, apart from the created order.

Rahner’s Axiom

“The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.”

Self-communication of God

God’s free, real giving of himself to creatures, not merely effects or ideas; foundation of grace and revelation.

Incarnation

The hypostatic union in which the eternal Logos assumes human nature and becomes Jesus Christ.

Hypostatic Union

The unique personal union of the divine Logos and a human nature in the one person of Christ.

Mission (Trinitarian)

The temporal sending of a divine person—Son in the flesh, Spirit in grace—originating from an eternal procession.

Procession

An internal, eternal coming-forth in God: generation of the Son and spiration of the Spirit.

Generation

The Father’s eternal self-utterance in which the Son receives the same divine essence—‘begetting’.

Spiration

The eternal breathing-forth of the Spirit from the Father and the Son (or through the Son).

Relation of opposition

Real distinction in God based only on mutually opposed relations of origin (Fatherhood, Sonship, Procession).

Circumincession (Perichōrēsis)

The mutual indwelling of Father, Son and Spirit: each is in the others without loss of distinction.

Person (Trinitarian sense)

A distinct manner of subsisting in the one divine nature, constituted by a relation of origin.

Distinct manner of subsisting

Rahner’s explanatory phrase for ‘person’: the concrete way the one God is Father, Son or Spirit.

Appropriation

Attributing a common divine action to one Person because of a fitting likeness, without denying the action of the others.

Created Grace

The finite, habitual participation in God’s life produced in the soul—effect of uncreated grace.

Uncreated Grace

God himself (Father, Son, Spirit) indwelling the believer; identical with divine self-communication.

Beatific Vision

The immediate face-to-face knowledge of the triune God granted to the blessed in eternity.

Salvation History (Heilsgeschichte)

The unfolding of God’s saving actions culminating in Christ and the Spirit’s work in the Church.

Self-utterance (Word/Logos)

The Father’s perfect expression of himself, eternally subsisting as the Son and manifested in Jesus.

Holy Spirit as Gift/Love

The personal self-giving of Father and Son, received as love, adoption and sanctification in believers.

Unoriginate (Innascible)

Characteristic of the Father as the source without source—the principle with no principle.

Sabellianism (Modalism)

Heresy reducing Father, Son and Spirit to mere temporal modes of one divine person.

Tritheism

Erroneous view that Father, Son and Spirit are three separate gods or centers of consciousness.

Economic Sabellianism

Treating the Trinitarian distinctions as only functional in history, not real in God himself.

Vestiges of the Trinity

Analogous traces or images of triune structure in creation, history and the human mind.

Psychological Analogy

Traditional model linking Father-Son-Spirit to mind, self-knowledge and self-love within one consciousness.

Notional Act

An intra-divine action that constitutes a Person—begetting or spirating—distinct from essence.

Processio ad modum operati

A procession after the manner of a ‘product’ (e.g., the Word as uttered).

Processio ad modum operationis

A procession after the manner of an ‘operation’ or act (e.g., love as spiration).

Self-presence (Consciousness)

The single divine awareness shared identically by Father, Son and Spirit, not three separate minds.

Mystery (Absolute)

A truth hidden in God that remains incomprehensible even when revealed, exemplified supremely by the Trinity.

Transcendental Theology

Rahner’s method stressing the a priori openness of human spirit to God’s self-communication.

Truth–Love Modalities

Rahner’s pairing of the Son as Truth/History and the Spirit as Love/Transcendence within one self-communication.

Axiomatic Unity

Indispensable connection between Trinitarian doctrine and every area of theology and Christian life.