Trinity Book

Rahner's short work on the Trinity presents some legitimate concerns about modern misinterpretations of the Church's Trinitarian doctrine, including the tritheism arising from the redefinition of the word "person" by the likes of Leibniz and Descartes, and the "mere monotheism" of many believers who insufficiently understand the Divine Persons, their relations, and the importance of the distinctive Christian doctrine of The Trinity. Unfortunately, Rahner's solutions to these issues lead him to affirm positions that while being technically interpretable as orthodox, are dangerously close to modalism and creational/incarnational necessitarianism. His famous axiom that "the economic Trinity is the imminent Trinity (and vice versa)" is far too simplistic to solve the issues he identifies without leading him into error in other areas of Theology, namely belief that creation and the Incarnation occurred of necessity. Rahner's attempt to explain "person" in the traditional Trinitarian formula as "distinct manner of subsisting" likewise fails, avoiding tritheism only to fall into modalism. (There is certainly merit in Rahner's attempt to clarify and more deeply explain the term "person," but his effort to clarify one aspect leads to almost certain misunderstanding in another.) Nonetheless, this short treatise is worth the read to understand certain errors in Trinitarian theology, both those Rahner makes and those he critiques; of particular interest is "mere monotheism" which insufficiently appreciates the rich uniqueness of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and its relevance to man's personal salvation through the Church.