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The Function of the Immanent Trinity in the Theology of Karl Barth: Implications for Today

Many modern theologians, including Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Eberhard Jüngel have been influenced by Karl Barth; they also accept Karl Rahner's axiom that the immanent and economic trinity is identical. By accepting this axiom, however, they actually stand opposed to Barth's most basic theological insight, namely, that ‘a deliberate and sharp distinction between the Trinity of God as we may know it in the Word of God revealed, written and proclaimed, and God's immanent Trinity, i.e., between “God in Himself” and “God for us,” between the “eternal history of God and His temporal acts,”’ must be maintained in order to avoid confusing and reversing the role of Creator in relation to creature both theoretically and practically. This article will explore Barth's reasons for neither identifying, separating nor synthesizing the immanent and economic trinity; and will contrast his method with more recent theological approaches. We hope to show that the contemporary tendency to identify the immanent and economic trinity uncritically compromises God's freedom. Barth was concerned that Moltmann had subsumed ‘all theology in eschatology’: To put it pointedly, does your theology of hope really differ at all from the baptized principle of hope of Mr Bloch? What disturbs me is that for you theology becomes so much a matter of principle (an eschatological principle).… Would it not be wise to accept the doctrine of the immanent trinity of God? Barth hoped that Moltmann would ‘outgrow’ this ‘onesidedness’.