If the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity are to be distinguished, the name of God we call to must not be univocal in nature. That is to say, when we name God in the economic Trinity, we may use the language of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier; however, the immanent Trinity does not allow us to name the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, because these names only belong to the inner-Trinitarian relationship. The Father is the father of the Son, not of us; the Son is the son of the Father, not of us; the Spirit is the spirit of the Son and God, not of us; thus, we cannot call Him the Father, the Son, and the (Holy) Spirit. However, the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity are not different or separate, but the same, as discussed previously. We are allowed to call God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit because the three divine Persons draw us altogether into their divine
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Two aspects must be ensured for the above statement: 1) the creation, the redemption and the sanctification or deification of human beings are co-works of the Trinity. They do not belong to each Person separately; 2) the becoming of beings cannot be characterised chronologically. If we do so, that means we admit the priority of the immanent Trinity in terms of ontology. However, we have already disproved such a priority. Thus, the order or the sequence of God’s being and becoming should be maintained in the mystery.
relationship. When we call Jesus the Son, it does not mean He is our Son, but that He is the Son of the Father. Therefore, we name the Son in the relationship between the Father and the Son, and our relationship with the Father as well. Moltmann should be cited in this matter, stating that “in respect of the Son we have to call him ‘Father’” (1993:172). At this point, the immanent Trinity as well as the economic Trinity is not transcendent or speculative, but the way God enters into relationship with us.
The patristic tradition and Gregory Palamas teach that for one who once believed but lost their faith, God is not “Father” but just becomes “Creator” (Mantzarides 1984:118-119). In other words, the names of the immanent Trinity are rather objective whereas the names of the economic Trinity are relational.52 True relationship with God is then only possible for those who have faith in God through the Holy Spirit in Jesus. Without this true knowledge of God, nobody is allowed to call God the Father; Jesus the Son; nor the Holy Spirit the Sanctifier. Johnson (2002:76) indicates that he prefers not to use the name of Creator-Redeemer-Sanctifier for two reasons; creation, redemption and sanctification are co-works of the Trinity, and those names are not the language of relationship. The expression “not the language of relationship” can mean two things: firstly, as Johnson states, in the inner-relationship of the three names, for instance, creator is able to stand by itself without the other two and, secondly, in the outer-relationship, anyone can use the name redeemer based solely on the fact of one’s redemption. Thus, relationship is one of the most important dimensions in understanding the Trinity, as well as human beings (Johnson 2002:37).53
This relationship saves us and makes us perfect. According to Kärkkäinen, the Eastern Fathers never regarded the creation of human beings as being perfect before the Fall: “Humans were created imperfect and they had to be tested as free rational beings in order to become perfect through the stages of growth and maturity” (2004:21). The statement that Adam and Eve were not perfect is not
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Gregory of Nazianzus says the Father is, “not a name either of an essence or an action”, the name of a relation (Orat. 29.16, in NPNF 2nd vol.7 307).
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Johnson states: “‘At the center of the universe is a relationship.’ That is the most fundamental truth I know. At the center of the universe is a community. It is out of that relationship that you and I were created and redeemed. And it is for that relationship that you and I were created and redeemed! And it turns out that there is a three- fold-ness to that relationship. It turns out that the community is a Trinity. The center of reality is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (2002:37).
incompatible with God’s perfect creation, because God’s creation is to be understood as perfect in His everlasting council from the eschatological perspective. They had no idea of how God exists, viz., they did not know the Triune God. They knew God the Creator made them out of dust, but lacked the divine knowledge concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit and the relationship of the Three. If they knew the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they might have thought that there were two other Gods besides their Creator; if they knew the three to be one God indeed, they might not have understood why God should appear in various shapes.54 Before being saved by God’s grace through the Son in the Holy Spirit, we are not even able to approach to the mystery of the Trinity. How can we know God is three and one at the same time but through the redemptive history in which the Trinity has been revealed and through being saved by the work of the Trinity? Thus, the Trinity is God’s way of being: God for us – for our salvation and for relationship with us (Johnson 2002:38). In this regard, LaCugna urges that Trinitarian theology is never separated from the doctrine of soteriology (Kim 2008:75). Rahner (2001:21) also states: “[t]he isolation of the treatise of the Trinity has to be wrong. There must be a connection between Trinity and man. The Trinity is a mystery of salvation, otherwise it would never have been revealed”. Therefore, Adam and Eve were imperfect in the knowledge of God the Trinity. Although they were created flawless by the Triune God, after being saved by the Triune God they were able to participate in the Trinitarian relationship, then started to become perfect.
The doctrine and the life of the Trinity always remain a mystery to us. That does not mean that the doctrine is vague and “mysterious”, but means that we are not able to comprehend the mystery of the Trinity fully with our understanding. There, in a sense, are three responses to this mystery: searching for the meaning with intelligence, ignoring it with indifference, or worshipping it with doxology. We are to follow the last.
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This imaginable misunderstanding of God from Adam and Eve actually arose in history with the name of tritheism and modalism. We deal with these heresies in the following discourse.