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THE TRINITY
This page intentionally left blank
THE TRINITY
KARL RAHNER

Translated by Joseph Donceel

Burns and Gates

a Continuum imprint
Continuum
London and New York
 First published in Great Britain 1970
Second impression 1975
Third impression ig86

Original edition published by Benziger Verlag,

Einsiedeln, 1967; © by Benziger Verlag, 1967.
This translation © Herder & Herder 1970.

Burns & Oates

a Continuum imprint
Continuum
The Tower Building, York Road, London, SEl 7NX
370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6550

Reprinted 2001

ISBN o 86012 015 5

Printed in Great Britain by

Creative Print and Design, Ebbw Vale, Wales
 CONTENTS

Note 7

I. The Method and Structure of the Treatise On the Triune

God 9
A. The Isolation of Trinitarian Doctrine in Piety and
Textbook Theology 10
B. The Problem of the Relation Between the Treatises
On the One God and On the Triune God 15
C. The Axiomatic Unity of the "Economic" and
"Immanent" Trinity 21
D. The Incarnation as an "Instance" of a More Compre-
hensive Reality 24
E. God's Threefold Relation to Us in the Order of
Grace 34
F. The Methodological Importance of Our Basic Thesis 38
G. A New Relationship Between the Treatises On the One
God and On the Triune God 45
H. The Reality and the Doctrine of the Trinity as
Mysteries 46

II. The Main Lines of Official Trinitarian Doctrine 49

A. The Trinity as Absolute Mystery jo
B. The Meaning and Limits of the Employed Concepts 51
C. A Systematic Summary of Official Trinitarian
Doctrine 58
D. Some Consequences for a Deeper Understanding 76
 CONTENTS

III. A Systematic Outline of Trinitarian Theology 80

A. The Meaning and Purpose of the Submitted Essay 80
B. Developing the Starting Point 8*
C. Transition from "Economic" to "Immanent" Trinity 99
D. How the "Economic" Trinity Is Grounded in the
"Immanent" Trinity 101
E. The Problem of the Concept of "Person" 103
F. A Comparison with the Classic "Psychological"
Doctrine 115
G. On Features Peculiar to the Present Treatise 120
 NOTE

The following systematic presentation presupposes several pre-

vious studies which have explained how the revelation of the
Trinity was prepared and took place, and how knowledge of the
mystery developed in the doctrine and practice of the Church.1 As
a consequence, our exposition will proceed through the following
steps:
(i) the method and structure of the treatise On the Triune
God 2;
(2) the main lines of the official trinitarian doctrine of the
Church;
(3) a systematic outline of a theology of the Trinity.
In the third chapter we shall systematically summarize the
conclusions of the two previous chapters and those of previous
studies on the Trinity in the Bible and in the history of dogma.
At the same time, we shall also attempt to connect the trini-
tarian mystery with Christian faith and life. This way of pro-
ceeding entails some repetition, since the same problem must
necessarily appear against a variety of horizons.

1. See Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss Heilsgeschichtiicher DogmatH(,

volume II, edited by Johannes Feiner and Magnus Lohrer, Einsiedeln, 1967,
pp. 49ff., 85ff., i32ff., 146^.
2. In this chapter we shall present a revised and in many ways enlarged
version of our previous article, "Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise 'De
Trinitate,'" in Theological Investigations, volume IV, Baltimore and
Dublin, 1966, pp. 77-102.

7
This page intentionally left blank
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF
THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE GOD"

It is surprising that, though a considerable amount of work has

been devoted to the study of the history of trinitarian theology—
Petavius and de Regnon to Lebreton and Schmaus are representa-
tive of only the more illustrious names—there has been, at least
until now, little momentum towards future development within
this dogma. This is not to deny that religious literature has occa-
sionally tried to situate Christian piety in more explicit and vital
connection with trinitarian doctrine,' or that a few theologians*

3. We could mention, for example: V. Bernadot, Durch die Eueharistie

zur Dreifaltig^eit, Munich, 1927; E. Vandeur, "O mein Gott, Dreifaltiger,
den ich anbete," in Gebet der Schurester Elisabeth v. d. HI. Dreifaltig^eit,
Regensburg, 1931; F. Kronseder, 1m Banne der Dreieinig^eit, Regensburg,
1933; C. Marrnion, De H. Drieenheid in ons geestelift leven, Bruges, 1952;
Gabriel a S, Maria Maddalena, Geheimnis der Gottcsjreunaschajt, 3
volumes, Freiburg, 1957-1958.
4. Cp. P. Laborde, Devotion a la Sainte Triniti, Paris, 1922; M. Retail-
leau, La Sainte Triniti dans let justet, Paris, 1923; R. Garrigou-Lagrange,
"L'habitation de la Sainte Triniti et 1'expirience mystique," in Revue
thomiste 33 (1928), pp. 449-474; M. Philipon, "La Sainte Triniti et la vie
surnaturelle," in ibtd. 44 (1938), pp. 675-698; F. Taymans d'Eypernon,
Le mystere primordial; La Triniti dans sa vivante image, Brussels, 1946;
A. Mmon, "M. Blonde! et la mystere dc la Sainte Triniti," in Ephemeridet
Theologicae Lovanientes ^Bruges) 23 (1947), pp. 472-498; J. Havet,
"Mysterc de la Sainte Triniti et vie chrctienne," in Revue Dice. Nam.
(1947), pp. 161-176; F. Guimet, "Caritas ordinata et amor discretus dans
la Theologie trinitaire de Richard de Saint Victor," in Revue M. A. Lat.
4 (1948), pp. 225-236; P. Aperribay, "Influjo causal de las divinas personas
en la experiencia mistica," m Verdad y vita 7 (1949), pp. 53-74; G. Philips,
La Sainte Triniti dans la vie du chretien, Liege, 1949; H. Rondet, "La
Divinisation du chritien," in Nouvette Revue Thiologiqve 71 (1949)1
pp. 449-476.

9
 THE TUNlTt

have become more explicitly and actively aware of their obligation

to understand and present the doctrine of the Trinity in such a
way that it may become a reality in the concrete life of the faith-
ful. The textbooks of Schmaus and Philips are exemplary of this
latter effort. In the history of piety, too,' we can see that, despite
the mystical worship of the primordial, one, amodal, anonymous
God, this mystery is not everywhere merely one of abstract theo-
logy, and that there is even evidence of an authentic trinitarian
mysticism: thus Bonaventure, Ruysbroek, Ignatius Loyola, John
of the Cross, Marie de 1'Incarnation, perhaps BeVulle and a few
moderns—Elizabeth of the Holy Trinity, Anton Jans.
In the theology of the Second Vatican Council the Trinity is
mentioned within the context of salvation history—this being due,
however, simply to the (in itself praiseworthy) "biblicism" of the
conciliar statement. Such a biblicism, however, cannot by itself
alone bring about a real theological revision of the average text-
book theology of the Trinity; otherwise Scripture itself, even
without being quoted in the Council, would have served as cor-
rective.

A.. The Isolation of Trinitarian Doctrine

in Piety and Textbook Theology
All of these considerations should not lead us to overlook the
fact that, despite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Chris-
tians are, in their practical life, almost mere "monotheists." We
must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity

5. Thus in Bonaventure, because of his cxemplarism. Bonaventure attri-

buted a great metaphysical importance to the exemplary cause, putting it
on the same level as the efficient and final causes. Thus, in his own way,
he overcame to a great extent the opinion that there could be no trinitarian
vestiges in the world because of its creation through efficient causality by
the one God.
10
 1. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE fiOD"

have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature

could well remain virtually unchanged. Nor does it help to re-
mark that the doctrine of the incarnation is theologically and
religiously so central for the Christian that, through it, the Trinity
is always and everywhere inseparably "present" in his religious
life. Nowadays when we speak of God's incarnation, the theo-
logical and religious emphasis lies only on the fact that "God"
became man, that "one" of the divine persons (of the Trinity)
took on the flesh, and not on the fact that this person is precisely
the person of the Logos. One has the feeling that, for the cate-
chism of head and heart (as contrasted with the printed cate-
chism), the Christian's idea of the incarnation would not have to
change at all if there were no Trinity. For God would still, as
(the one) person, have become man, which is in fact about all the
average Christian explicitly grasps when he confesses the incarna-
tion. There must surely be more than one voluminous modern
scientific Christology which never makes it very clear exactly
which divine hypostasis has assumed human nature. Today's
average textbook doctrine of the incarnation uses practically only
the abstract concept of a divine hypostasis, despite this concept's
merely analogical and precarious unity. It makes no use of the
precise concept of the second divine hypostasis as such. It wishes
to find out what we mean when we say that God became man,
not, more specifically, what it means for the Logos, precisely as
Logos, as distinct from the other divine persons, to have become
man. No wonder, since starting from Augustine, and as opposed
to the older tradition, it has been among theologians a more or
less foregone conclusion that each of the divine persons (if God
freely so decided) could have become man, so that the incarnation
of precisely this person can tell us nothing about the peculiar
features of this person within the divinity.1
6. There is something strange here. Every doctrine of the Trinity must
emphasize that the "hypostasis" is precisely that in God through which
II
 THE TMNITT

It is not surprising, then, that Christian piety practically re-

members from the doctrine of the incarnation only that "God"
has become man, without deriving from this truth any clear
message about the Trinity. Thus solid faith in the incarnation
does not imply that the Trinity means something in normal
Christian piety. We might mention other examples which show
how the present climate of piety affects dogmatic theology, despite
the faint opposition deriving from the frozen hieratic formulas of
ancient liturgy. Thus theology considers it almost a matter of
course that the "Our Father" is addressed in the same way, with
equal appositeness, indifferently to the Holy Trinity, to the three
divine persons; that the sacrifice of die Mass is offered in the same
manner to the three divine persons. The current doctrine of satis-
faction, hence also of redemption, with its theory of a double
moral subject in Christ, regards the redemptive activity as offered
indifferently to the three divine persons. Such a doctrine does not
give sufficient attention to the fact that satisfaction comes from
the incarnate Word, not simply from the God-man. It supposes
that another person could, as man, have offered to the triune God
a satisfactio condigna (adequate satisfaction). It is willing to admit
that such a satisfaction would be perfectly conceivable without
the presupposition of the Trinity as a condition of its possibility.'

Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct from one another; that, wherever there
exists between the three of them a real, univocal correspondence, there is
absolute numerical identity. Hence the concept of hypostasis, applied to
God, cannot be a universal univocal concept, applying to each of the
three persons in the same way. Yet, in Christology, this concept is used as
if it were evident that a "hypostatic function" with respect to a human
nature might as well have been exercised by another hypostasis in God.
Should we not at least inquire whether this well-determined relative sub-
sistence, in which the Father and the Spirit subsist in pure distinction
from—not in equality with—the Son, should not make it impossible for
them (unlike in the case of the Son) to exercise such a hypostatic function
with respect to a human nature. We shall take up this matter more fully
on pp. 73ff., io3fl.
7. Once we presuppose the theory of a double moral person in the

12
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OV THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE GOD"

Accordingly, the doctrine of grace, even if it is entitled "On the

Grace of Christ," is in fact monotheistic, not trinitarian: a par-
ticipation in the divine nature leading to a blessed vision of the
divine essence* We are told that this grace has been "merited"
by Christ. But this grace of Christ is, at best, presented as the
grace of the "God"-man, not as the grace of the incarnate Word
as Logos. It is conceived as the recovery of a grace which, in its
supralapsarian essence, is usually considered merely the grace of
God, not the grace of the Word, much less of the "Word who is
to become man." Thus the treatise of grace too is not much of a
theological or religious introduction into the mystery of the triune
God.
With notable exceptions (from Petavius to Thomassin to Schee-
ben and Schauf, for example) which only confirm the rule, this
same anti-trinitarian timidity has induced theologians to conceive
the relation brought about by grace between man and die three
divine persons as one based upon "created grace," a product of
God's efficient causality, merely "appropriated" differently to the
single persons. The same remark applies, of course, to the treatises
on the sacraments and on eschatology. Unlike the great theology
of the past, as we find it in Bonaventure,' today's theology hardly
ever sees any connection between the Trinity and the doctrine
of creation. This isolation is considered legitimate, since die "out-
ward" divine operations are "common" to die three divine per-

substantial unity of a person, we must admit that an absolutely one-

personal God might enter into a hypostadc union with a human nature
and provide satisfaction to himself.
8. In the famous constitution of Benedict XII on the beatific vision (DS
loooff.) there is no mention of the Trinity at all. We hear only of the
"divine essence," and to this essence there is attributed the most intimate
prsonal function of showing itself. Can this be explained totally by the
immediate context alone?
9. Cp. A. Gerken, 1. c., 538. Also L. Scheffczyk, "Lehramtliche Formu-
lierungen und Dogmengeschichte der Trinitat," in Mysterium Satutis,
volume II, pp. 2i2f.

*3
 THE TRINITY

sons, so that the world as creation cannot tell us anything about

the inner life of the Trinity. The venerable classical doctrine of
the "vestiges" and the "image of the Trinity" in the world is
thought to be—although one would never explicitly say so—a
collection of pious speculations, unobjectionable once the doctrine
has been established, but telling us nothing, either about the
Trinity itself or about created reality, which we did not already
know from other sources.
Thus the treatise on the Trinity occupies a rather isolated
position in the total dogmatic system. To put it crassly, and not
without exaggeration, when the treatise is concluded, its subject
is never brought up again. Its function in the whole dogmatic
construction is not clearly perceived. It is as though this mystery
has been revealed for its own sake, and that even after it has
been made known to us, it remains, as a reality, locked up within
itself. We make statements about it, but as a reality it has nothing
to do with us at all. Average theology cannot reject all these
assertions as exaggerations. In Christology it acknowledges only
a hypostatic function of "one" divine person, which might as
well have been exercised by any other divine person; practically
it'considers as important for us in Christ only that he is "one"
divine person. Which divine person does not matter. It sees in
divine grace only the appropriated relations of the divine persons
to man, the effect of an efficient causality of the one God. In
final analysis, all these statements say explicitly in cold print that
we ourselves have nothing to do with the mystery of the Holy
Trinity except to know something "about it" through revelation.10

10. Our objection prescinds from the fact (one that is not mentioned
either in the position we attack) that real "knowledge" in its deepest meta-
physical sense implies the most real conceivable relation to what is known,
and the other way around. This very axiom, if thoroughly applied in our
present case, would show clearly that the reveladon of the mystery of the
Trinity implies and presupposes ultimately a real-ontological communica-
tion to man of the revealed reality as such. Hence it cannot be interpreted

*4
 1. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE COD"

Someone might reply that our future happiness will consist pre-
cisely in face-to-face vision of this triune God, a vision which
"introduces" us into the inner life of the divinity and constitutes
our most authentic perfection, and that this is the reason why
we are already told about this mystery during this life. But then
we must inquire how this could be true, if between man and each
one of the three divine persons there is no real ontological rela-
tion, something more than mere appropriation. How can the
contemplation of any reality, even of the loftiest reality, beatify
us if intrinsically it is absolutely unrelated to us in any way?"
He who appeals to the beatific vision is therefore invited to draw
the conclusions implied in his position. Or is our awareness of
this mystery merely the knowledge of something purely extrinsic,
which, as such, remains as isolated from all existential knowledge
about ourselves as in our present theology the treatise on the
Trinity is isolated from other dogmatic treatises telling us some-
thing about ourselves conducive to our real salvation ?

B. The Problem of the Relation Between

the Treatises "On the One God"
and "On the Triune God"
The above remarks shed light on other facts as well, especially
on the separation immemorially taken for granted between the

in the way which the opposed position adopts, namely, as a merely verbal
communication, since this interpretation does not modify the real relation
between him who communicates (as three-personal) and the hearer.
ii. This way of formulating our position does not intend to touch the
problem whether God has "real" relations ad extra (outwards). We may
abstract from this problem here. In our context, "real-ontological," as
proper to each single divine person with respect to man, should be under-
stood only in the analogical sense (insofar as the "reality," not the specifi-
city of the relation is concerned). Thus the Logos as such has a real rela-
tion to his human nature.

15
 THE TUJNITT

two treatises On the One God and On the Triune God, and on
the sequence in which they are taught. Not a few authors have
explicitly defended both as being quite essential, and theologians
such as Schmaus and Stolz constitute the remarkable exception.
Yet it is impossible to use tradition as a cogent argument in
behalf of the usual separation and sequence of these two treatises.
For they became customary only after the Sentences of Peter
Lombard were superseded by the Summa of St. Thomas. If,
with Scripture and the Greeks, we mean by 6 Sf6s in the first
place the Father (not letting the word simply "suppose" for the
Father), then the Trinitarian structure of the Apostles' Creed, in
line with Greek theology of the Trinity, would lead us to treat
first of the Father and to consider also, in this first chapter of
the doctrine of God, the "essence" of God, die Father's godhead.
Thus the Master of the Sentences subsumed the general doctrine
of God under a doctrine of the Trinity (a fact which Grabman
considered one of Lombard's "main weaknesses"). Likewise in
the Summa Alexandri there is yet no clear separation between the
two treatises. As we said above, this separation took place for
the first time in St. Thomas, for reasons which have not yet been
fully explained. Here the first topic under study is not God the
Father as the unoriginate origin of divinity and reality, but as
the essence common to all three persons.11 Such is the method

12. We are aware of the provisional nature of this statement in all its
abstractness. We do not intend to anticipate the results of detailed historical
investigations. Our short outline seems to be justified by the demonstrated
usefulness of the transcendental-Thomistic starting point, which traditional
Thomistic textbook theology has not sufficiently examined in all its pos-
sibilities and has failed to adopt. For the bearing on salvation history, see
note 46. In this connection we refer the reader (for example) to the im-
portant studies of C Strater, S.J., who defends the following diesis con-
cerning the starting point of the transcendental-Thomistic doctrine of the
Trinity: the treatise does not start with a statement about the essence
which, although common to all three persons, abstracts from the notions
and die personal properties. Rather for die mature Thomas "divine
essence" means the whole of the mystery of the Trinity as such. Hence

16
 1. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE GOD"

which has prevailed ever since. Thus the treatise of die Trinity
locks itself in even more splendid isolation, with the ensuing
danger that the religious mind finds it devoid of interest. It looks
as if everything which matters for us in God has already been
said in the treatise On the One God. This separation of the two
treatises and the sequence in which they are explained probably
derives from the Augustinian-Western conception of the Trinity,
as contrasted with the Greek conception, even though the Augus-
tinian conception had not, in the High Middle Ages, developed
the kind of monopoly it would later enjoy. It begins with the one
God, the one divine essence as a whole, and only afterwards
does it see God as three in persons. Of course, great care is then
taken and must be taken, not to set up this divine "essence**
itself as a "fourth" reality pre-existing in the three persons. The
Bible and the Greeks would have us start from the one unorigin-
ate God, who is already Father even when nothing is known as
yet about generation and spiration. He is known as the one un-
originate hypostasis which is not positively conceived as "abso-
lute" even before it is explicitly known as relative.
But the medieval-Latin starting point happens to be different.
And thus one may believe that Christian theology too may and
should put a treatise on the one God before the treatise on the
triune God. But since this approach is justified by the unicity of
the divine essence, the only treatise which one writes, or can
write, is "on the one divinity." As a result the treatise becomes
quite philosophical and abstract and refers hardly at all to salva-
Thomas went through a conceptual development in his understanding of
the divine essence, so that ultimately the difference between him and the
Greek Fathers was no longer unbridgeable. This thesis stands in need of
more discussion. Cp. C. Strater, "Le point de depart du traitc" thomiste de
la Trinite*," Sciences Eedcsiastiquet 14 (1962), pp. 71-^7. See also, regard-
ing this problem, K. Rahner, "Bemerkungen zur Gotteslehre in der katho-
lischcn Dogmatik," in Catholica 20 (1960), pp. 1-18, esp. 4-8. Regarding
the relation of the treatises On the One God and On the Triune God,
cp. also the literature mentioned in note 46.

T-B '7
 THE TRINITY

don history. It speaks of the necessary metaphysical properties

of God, and not very explicitly of God as experienced in salvation
history in his free relations to his creatures. For should one make
use of salvation history, it would soon become apparent that one
speaks always of him whom Scripture and Jesus himself calls the
Father, Jesus' Father, who sends the Son and who gives himself
to us in the Spirit, in his Spirit. On the other hand, if one starts
from the basic Augustinian-Western conception, an a-trinitarian
treatise "on the one God" comes as a matter of course before the
treatise on the Trinity. In this event, however, the theology of the
Trinity must produce the impression that it can make only purely
formal statements about the three divine persons, with the help
of concepts about the two processions and about the relations.
Even these statements, however, refer only to a Trinity which is
absolutely locked within itself—one which is not, in its reality,
open to anything distinct from it; one, further, from which we
are excluded, of which we happen to know something only
through a strange paradox. It is true that, in an Augustinian,
"psychological" theology of the Trinity efforts are made to give
real content to such formal concepts1' as procession, communica-

13. We must admit, however, that Greek theology, at its peak (with the
Cappadocians), despite the fact that its doctrine or the Trinity starts in
salvation history and is turned towards the world, impresses us as being
even more formal 1stic than the theology of the Trinity in Augustine. We
might perhaps explain this as follows. The Greeks thought quite naturally
that the Trinity was connected with salvation history. They felt, and
rightly so, that their whole theology was a doctrine of the Trinity. As a
result, "their" doctrine of the Trinity did not investigate everything about
the triune God, but constituted only its formal, abstract part. This part
did not inquire about each one of the divine persons.
It considered only the (for them subsequent) problem of the unity of
the three persons, whom they encountered as distinct both in their theo-
logy and in salvation history. Should we not say, then, that the West has
taken over from the Greeks the formal part of the theology of the Trinity
as if it were the (whole of) theology of the Trinity, whereas its own
doctrine of salvation has kept only the dogmatically indispensable mini-
mum of theology of the Trinity? As a result, unlike the Greeks, it is forced
18
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE ON THE TRIUNE COU

don of the divine essence, relation, and relative subsistence. But

honesty forces us to admit that this does not lead very far. We
do not mean that a psychological doctrine of the Trinity is a pure
or even unsuccessful theological speculation. The hints given in
Scripture show that the two divine processions, whose reality is
assured by revelation, have certainly something to do with the
two basic spiritual activities of knowing and loving. Thus the
starting point of an Augustinian theology of the Trinity is un-
deniable. Yet if, unlike scholastic theology, we wish to avoid an
artificial "eisegesis" into scriptural theology, we shall have to
remember that this inner conception is indicated in Scripture
only insofar as, in the economy of salvation, this intra-divine
knowledge is seen as self-revealing, and this intra-divine love as
self-communicating. When the theologian mentions this con-
nection, as pointed out in the Scriptures, his Augustinian-
psychological speculations on the Trinity result in that well-
known quandary which makes all of his marvelous profundity
look so utterly vacuous: for he begins from a human philosophical
concept of knowledge and love, and from this concept develops
a concept of the word and "inclination" of love; and now, after
having speculatively applied these concepts to the Trinity, he
must admit that this application fails, because he has clung to
the "essential" concept of knowledge and love, because a "per-
sonal," "notional" concept of the word and "inclination" of love
cannot be derived from human experience. For should he try so
to derive it, the knowing Word and the loving Spirit themselves
must in their turn have a word and a love as persons proceeding
from them.14

to fill out and render more concrete such an almost mathematically formal-
ized theology of the Trinity by means of what Augustine had developed as
a "psychological" theology of the Trinity. For more details on this point,
see pp. 115ft.
14. For the psychological doctrine of the Trinity and its limitations, see
below, pp. 46ff., 115(1.

19
 THE TRINITY

Things do not necessarily have to be this way every time the

two treatises On the One God and On the Triune God are separ-
ated and studied in the usual sequence. Although it is certainly
incorrect to claim that this separation and sequence follow the
course of revelation, which would also have progressed from a
revelation of the divine essence to a revelation of the three per-
sons,15 this separation and sequence may be considered more a
didactic than a fundamental problem. The important question
is: what is said in both treatises and how well are they related to
each other, when thus separated in the usual way? What we wish
to emphasize here is that, in the customary separation and
sequence, the unity and the connection of the two treatises are
too easily overlooked, as evidenced by the very fact that this
separation and sequence are considered quite naturally as neces-
sary and obvious.
Something else follows also from this encapsulation and isola-
tion of the doctrine of the Trinity: the timid rejection of all
attempts to discover, outside of Christendom or in the Old
Testament, analogies, hints, or preparations pointing towards
such a doctrine.1* We would hardly exaggerate and oversimplify
if we stated that ancient apologetics against the pagans and the
Jews was mainly interested in trying to discover at least some
traces of the Trinity even before the New Testament, and outside
of Christendom, in a few privileged minds. The patriarchs of the
Old Testament were supposed to know something about the
Trinity through their faith, and the liberality with which Augus-
tine credited the great philosophers with the knowledge of this

15. We might say at least with equal right that the history of revelation
first reveals God as unoriginate person in his relation to the world, and
next proceeds to the revelation of this person as the origin of intra-divine,
personalizing vital processes.
16. Regarding the preparation of the revelation of the Trinity, see
R. Schulte, "Die Vorbercitung der Trinitatsoffcnbarung," in Myrterium
Salutis, volume II, pp. 49-^2.
ao
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OP THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE COD"

mystery would scandalize us nowadays. More recent Catholic

apologetics is strongly opposed to all such attempts, and no won-
der, since this kind of trinitarian theology has no integral place
in the world and in salvation history. When the question arises
whether such vestiges can really be discovered (we should not,
of course, assert a priori that they can), the answer is already
more or less tacitly presupposed: there are no such vestiges, be-
cause there can not be any. At any rate, there is little desire in
such attempts to attribute any positive value to trinitarian allu-
sions or analogies in the history of religions or in the Old Testa-
ment. The only point which is almost always emphasized is the
incommensurability of these doctrines within and outside of
Christianity.

C. The Axiomatic Unify of the ''Economic" and

"Immanent" Trinity
The 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. We should show why it is such a mystery. We must
point out in every dogmatic treatise that what it says about
salvation does not make sense without referring to this primor-
dial mystery of Christianity. Wherever this permanent pericho-
resis between the treatises is overlooked, we have a clear indication
that either the treatise on the Trinity or the other treatises have
not clearly explained connections which show how the mystery
of the Trinity is for us a mystery of salvation, and why we meet
it wherever our salvation is considered, even in the other dog-
matic treatises.
The basic thesis which establishes this connection between the
treatises and presents the Trinity as a mystery of salvation (in
21
 THE TRINITY

its reality and not merely as a doctrine) might be formulated as

follows: The "economic" Trinity is the "immanent" Trinity and
the "immanent" Trinity is the "economic" Trinity.
Of course, the correctness of this statement can, strictly speak-
ing, be established only by what will have to be said in the third
section. If we succeed at that point, with the help of this axiom,
to develop systematically a doctrine of the Trinity which
first takes into account the really binding data of the doctrine
of the Trinity as presented by the magisterium;
next can more naturally do justice to the biblical statements
concerning the economy of salvation and its threefold structure,
and to the explicit biblical statements concerning the Father, the
Son, and the Spirit, so that we are no longer embarrassed by the
simple fact that in reality the Scriptures do not explicitly present
a doctrine of the "immanent" Trinity (even St. John's prologue
is no such doctrine);
finally helps us to understand that in the Christian's act of faith,
as salutary faith, and in the Christian's life the Trinity is present
and has to be present;
then we shall have justified our axiom. Of course, this justifica-
tion presupposes not only parts of Christology, but also some
truths which must be more explicitly explained and demonstrated
in the doctrine of grace—for instance, that the true and authentic
concept of grace interprets grace17 (hence also salvation history)
as a ^//-communication of God (not primarily as "created grace")
in Christ and in his Spirit. Grace should not be reduced to a
"relation" (a purely mental relation at that) of the one God to

17. On this point see K. Rahner, "Some Implications of the Scholastic

Concept of Uncreated Grace," in Theological Investigations, volume I,
Baltimore and Dublin, 1961, pp. 319-346. Idem, "Gnade" in Lexicon fiir
Theologie und Kirche, volume IV, Freiburg, 1960, pp. 991-1000; "Sclbst-
mitteilung Gottcs," in ibid. (1959), p. 627; L. Willig, "Geschaffene und
ungeschanene Gnadc," in Miinsterische Beitrage zur Theologie 27
(Munster, 1964).

22
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE GOD*'

the elected creature, nor to a relation which is merely "appro-

priated" to the other divine persons. In the recipient himself
grace is not some created sanctifying "quality" produced in a
merely causal way by the one God. All this is presupposed. Yet
in order to justify the basic axiom of our doctrine of the Trinity,
we must at once propose a few remarks about it.
The "economic" Trinity is the immanent Trinity, according
to the statement which interests us. In one way this statement is a
defined doctrine of the faith." Jesus is not simply God in general,
but the Son. The second divine person, God's Logos, is man, and
only he is man. Hence there is at least one "mission," one pre-
sence in the world, one reality of salvation history which is not
merely appropriated to some divine person, but which is proper
to him. Here we are not merely speaking "about" this person in the
world. Here something occurs "outside" the intra-divine life in the
world itself, something which is not a mere effect of the efficient
causality of the triune God acting as one in the world, but
something which belongs to the Logos alone, which is the history
of one divine person, in contrast to the other divine persons.
This remains true even if we admit that this hypostatic union
which belongs exclusively to the Logos is causally effected by
the whole Trinity. There has occurred in salvation history some-
thing which can be predicated only of one divine person. At any
rate, this one case shows up as false the statement that there is
nothing in salvation history, in the economy of salvation, which
cannot equally be said of the triune God as a whole and of each
person in particular. On the other hand, the following statement
too is false: that a doctrine of the Trinity treating of the divine
persons in general and of each person in particular can speak only
of that which occurs within the divinity itself. And we are sure
18. To be sure, first only for one point, in one instance. This does not
suffice by itself to justify our thesis as a whole, as plainly a doctrine of
faith.
2
3
 THB TRINITY

that the following statement is true: that no adequate distinction

can be made between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine
of the economy of salvation.1'

D. Tie Incarnation as an "Instance"

of a More Comprehensive Reality
The bearing of the above considerations upon our problem is
often weakened or obscured in theology by three lines of thought.
We must, therefore, first examine them before we can expose the
importance of the dogmatically certain starting point of our
wider thesis.

I. THE SPECIAL NATURE OF THE "HYPOSTATIc" UNION

The first difficulty, which is also the best known, the most com-
prehensive, and the most radical, is the following: When one
appeals to the hypostatic union, he builds his case upon a dog-
matically certain reality. Yet he is wrong, because this is not
and cannot be an instance or an example of a general situation
or principle. We should not even envisage the possibility of
taking the statement about the hypostatic union as a paradigm for
19. There is no getting away from this statement by the crafty textbook
objection that the hypostatic union does not bring about a "real relation"
in the Logos himself, hence that nothing referring to salvation history must
be stated of the Logos as such which concerns him. We shall not discuss
here the axiom of scholastic metaphysics which claims that God has no
"real relations" to the world. One thing is certain and should serve as
guiding norm for this axiom (and not the other way around!): the Logos
himself is truly man, he himself, only he, and not the Father and not the
Spirit. Hence it remains true forever that, if in a doctrine of the divine
persons we have to say of the Logos himself all that which is and remains
real in him, this doctrine implies itself an "economic" statement. For more
details about this objection, see K. Rahner, "On the Theology of the
Incarnation," in Theological Investigations, volume IV, pp. 105-120, esp.
pp. naff.

*4
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE COD"

similar statements which would likewise open the Trinity to-

wards the world, and thus lead to the thesis of an identity be-
tween the economic and the immanent Trinity. The reason we
cannot consider the incarnation as an "instance" of a wider state
of affairs is simple and peremptory. In God everything is identi-
cally one whenever we are not speaking of the opposition of the
relations of origin which gives rise to the three persons." Conse-
quently it is only through a hypostatic union as such that a single
divine person, as distinct from the other divine persons, can have
his own proper relation to the world. For only in such a union is
there actualized what is proper to the person, the personality, the
"outward" hypostatic function. Now there is only one hypostatic
union, that of the Logos; moreover, every proper relation of each
person can be only hypostatic. It follows that from the truth of
the incarnation no general principle can be derived except that it
is possible for other divine persons also to enter into a hypostatic
union.
It is not our task or purpose to enter into this basic difficulty,
as presented during the last decades mainly by Paul Galtier"
against all claims that grace gives rise to not-appropriated rela-
tions of divine persons to man. This theme has been so thoroughly
treated that, within the framework of these short introductory
remarks, we can say nothing better or more about it. Hence it is
enough to note that the refutation of the objection, as presented,
for instance, by H. Schauf,8 seems to be conclusive. The least we

20. Cp. for the history, the meaning, and the limits of this principle the
rich study of H. Miihlen, "Person und Appropriation: Zum Verstandnis
des Axioms: In Deo omnia sunt unum, ubi non obviat relationis oppositio,"
in Munchencr thfohgischf Studicn 16 (1965), pp. 37-57.
21. P. Galtier, L'habitation en nous des trots personnes, Rome, 1952.
22. H. Schauf, Die Einwohnung des Heiligen Geistes, Freiburg, 1941;
cp. also P. J. Donnelly, "The Inhabitation of the Holy Spirit: A Solution
According to de la Taille," in Theological Studies 8 (1947), pp. 445-470;
J. Trutsch, SS. Trinitatis inhabitatio apud theologos reccnttores, Trent,
1949; S. J. Dockx, Fils de Dieu par grdce, Paris, 1948; C. Stratcr, "Het

25
 THE TRINITY

can say is that Galtier and other theologians who share his opinion
have not clearly established that a hypostatically special relation
and a hypostatic unitive relation are necessarily and strictly the
same thing. Later we shall meet positive arguments against this
identification.13
Yet we may add a few remarks of our own against Galtier.
First, he and his followers take it too much for granted that we
know clearly and distinctly what is meant by "person" and
"hypostasis" when these concepts are applied to God's "three-
foldness" and to Christ, and that "person" as used in Christology

begrip 'appropriate* bij S. Thomas," in Bijdragen 9 (1948), pp. 1-41, 144-

186; J. H. Nicolas, "Presence trinitaire et presence dc la Trinite/' in
Revue Thomiste 50 (1950), pp. 183-191; Th. J. Fitzgerald, De inhabitatione
Spiritus Sancti in doctrina S. Thomae Aquinatis, Mundelein, 1950; P. DC
Letter, "Sanctifying Grace and Our Union with the Holy Trinity," in
Theological Studies 13 (1952), pp. 33^58; P. Donnelly, "Sanctifying Grace
and Our Union with the Holy Trinity: A Reply," in ibid. 13 (1952),
pp. 190-204; F. Bourassa, "Adoptive Sonship: Our Union with the Divine
Persons," in ibid., pp. 309-335; P. De Letter, "Current Theology: Sanctify-
ing Grace and the Divine Indwelling," in ibid. 14 (1953), pp. 242-272;
E. Bourassa, "Presence de Dieu et Union aux divines personnes," in
Sciences Ecclesiastiques 6 (1954), pp. 3-23; idem, "Divine Indwelling and
Sanctifying Grace," Bijdragen 19 (1958), pp. 22-31; E. Haible, "Die Ein-
wohnung der drei gottlichen Personen im Christen nach den Ergebnissen
dcr neuercn Theologie," in Theologische Quartalschrijt 139 (1959), pp. i-
27; H. Miihlen, Der Heilige Geist alt Person, Munster, 1963; I. Willig,
Geschaffene und ungeschaffene Gnade, pp. a6off., 283ff. (Lit.); M. Flick
and Z. Alszeghy, II Vangelo delta Grazia, Firenze 1964, pp. 454-498
(abundant literature).
23. Attention is drawn upon the method we use. First the argument is
purely negative: we say that the reasons given by Galtier, for example, are
not peremptory. Hence we do not say positively that from the sole fact of
the incarnation as such we may infer that there might sdll be other in-
stances of such a real involvement of the immanent Trinity in the world.
Otherwise we would contradict ourselves. For we shall have to say very
soon that we may not conclude from the incarnation of the Logos to the
possibility of the incarnation of another divine person. It is only by
mentioning theological reasons for the opinion that there are other
instances of such a correspondence of economic and immanent Trinity that
we can show how the incarnation may be considered an "instance" of such
an identity.

26
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE ON THE TRIUNE GOD

means simply the same thing as in the Trinity.8* More attention

should be paid to the different origin of these two concepts of
person (person as that which distinguishes—person as a prin-
ciple of unity, each with respect to one or two natures), especially
since "hypostasis" and "hypostatic function" can only be verbally
distinguished in the incarnation. With this in mind we may at
least inquire: might it not derive from the peculiar nature of
the second person (and respectively from that of the third person)
that, when the one God communicates himself to the world,
the peculiarity of this self-communication, insofar as it is deter-
mined by the peculiarity of the second person, consists in becom-
ing a "hypostatic union," whereas such would not be the case
if this self-communication were determined by the peculiarity
of the third person? Yet the third person too might be capable
of self-communication, and assume a not-appropriated relation
to the creature. In brief, if it is not certain that "hypostatic" in
the union of the Logos with created reality is to be understood
only from the concept of "one" hypostasis of the Trinity, if it
rather derived its content from the proper nature precisely of
the Logos as such, then the presupposition tacitly made by
Galtier and others in their demonstration no longer looks so
certain.
Hence we assert that, in principle, the incarnation may be
considered as a dogmatically certain "instance" for a (theoreti-
cally at least not impossible) economic relation, proper to each
person, of the divine persons to the world. Such a relation entails
the possibility of a real communication, in salvation history, of
the whole Trinity as such to the world, therefore the identity
of the economic and the immanent Trinity. This is especially true
since such a conception does not imply that these three not-
appropriated relations of the three persons to the world stand

24. We shall take up this problem in more detail in our third chapter.
27
 THB TRINITY

independently near each other. It may very well mean that the
threefold God as threefold possesses in his divine self-communi-
cation "one" relationship to creation, but precisely a relationship
which refers him as threefold, each person in his own way, to
the world.

2. THE INCARNATION OF THE LOGOS AND THE IMMANENT

TRINITY

The second, in a way opposite, difficulty has already been hinted

at. If we admit that every divine person might assume a hypo-
static union with a created reality, then the fact of the incarnation
of the Logos "reveals" properly nothing about the Logos himself,
that is, about his own relative specific features within the divinity.
For in this event the incarnation means for us practically only
the experience that God in general is a person, something which
we already knew. It does not mean that in the Trinity there is a
very special differentiation of persons. Although we know (hav-
ing been told so in statements) that precisely the second divine
person exercises a hypostatic function with respect to the human
reality visible in Jesus, there would be no difference in our experi-
ence if some other divine person constituted the subsistence of this
human reality. Since Jesus speaks of the Father and of himself
as "Son," the reality which we perceive in salvation history yields
us an outlook into the Trinity through words, not through itself.
Since that which happens in salvation history might have hap-
pened through each other person, since it is but the neutral
vehicle of a merely verbal revelation, not the revelation of some
intra-trinitarian occurrence, it tells us nothing about intra-
trinitarian life.
We have indicated above how this taken-for-granted presup-
position influences the development of Christology. Is this pre-
supposition true, is it true that every divine person might become
38
 I. THE UETHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE GOD*'

man? We answer that it is not demonstrated and that it is

false.
// is not demonstrated. The most ancient tradition, before
Augustine, has never considered such a possibility and has at
bottom always presupposed the opposite in its theological con-
siderations. For the Father is by definition the Unoriginate, the
one who is in principle "invisible," who reveals himself and
appears precisely by sending his Word into the world. The Word
is, by definition, immanent in the divinity and active in the
world, and as such the Father's revelation. A revelation of the
Father without the Logos and his incarnation would be like
speaking without words.
The presupposition is false. From the mere fact that one divine
person has become man, the same "possibility" cannot be deduced
for another person. Such a deduction would presuppose two
things:
(a) that "hypostasis" is in God a univocal concept with respect
to the three divine persons;
(b) that the different ways in which each person is a person
would not prevent a person, precisely through that which makes
him a unique person, from entering into a hypostatic relation
with a created reality, like the second divine person. (We should
keep in mind that the ways in which each person is a person are
so different that they allow of only a very loosely analogical con-
cept of person, as equally applicable to the three persons.) Now
of these two presuppositions the former is false and the latter is
by no ways demonstrated.*
25. He who denies that the Father or the Spirit too might have become
man would deny them a "perfection" only if it had first been established
that such a possibility is a real possibility, hence a "perfection" for the
Father or for the Spirit. But precisely this is not sure. Thus it is, for
instance, a perfection for the Son as Son to descend from the Father. But
it would be pure nonsense to conclude thence that the Father as such
should also possess this perfection. Since the hypostatic function "out-
wards" is the corresponding divine hypostasis, we are not allowed to
deduce anything for another hypostasis from the function of this hypostasis,

29
 THE TRINITY

The rejected thesis is false. Should it be true, and not merely

mentioned at the fringe of theological thinking, but really pre-
sented in earnest,81 it would create havoc with theology. There
would no longer be any connection between "mission" and the
intra-trinitarian life. Our sonship in grace would in fact have
absolutely nothing to do with the Son's sonship, since it might
equally well be brought about without any modification by
another incarnate person. That which God is for us would tell us
absolutely nothing about that which he is in himself, as triune.
These and many similar conclusions, which would follow from
this thesis, go against the whole sense of holy Scripture. This will
be denied only by him who does not put his theology under the
norm of Scripture, but allows the latter to tell him only that
which he knows already from his textbook theology, cleverly and
ruthlessly distinguishing all the rest away. This should and
could be shown in detail. Here, however, we can only establish
the opposite thesis. Since the thesis which we reject can claim no
dogmatic or theological authority for itself, we may within the
context of these brief preparatory remarks simply state that we
reject it. In this way we stay more faithfully than the rejected
opinion within the framework of that which has truly been
revealed. We develop a theology which neither explicitly nor
(more dangerously) implicitly considers a pretended possibility
never mentioned in revelation; we cling to the truth that the
Logos is really as he appears in revelation, that he is the one who
reveals to us (not merely one of those who might have revealed
to us) the triune God, on account of the personal being which
belongs exclusively to him, the Father's Logos.
even when our abstract universal concept of subsistence shows no contra-
diction with the hypothesis that the Father should cause a human nature
to subsist.
26. We have already shown at the beginning of this chapter how this
thesis, although almost tacitly taken for granted, has considerable influence
and is therefore anonymously quite powerful.

30
 1. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE COD"

3. THE IDENTITY OF THE ECONOMIC

AND "IMMANENT" LOGOS
The third difficulty against our basic axiom," one which alone
brings out the full strength of the second objection, is the follow-
ing: Suppose we interpret the human nature of the Logos only
as something which rests in itself, in its separate essence, as
something created after a plan or an "idea" which in itself has
nothing to do with the Logos, or at any rate not more than other
possible natures or essences. Then this nature subsists in the
Logos, and we may predicate this natural reality and its activities
of the Logos as his own. We may in a formal, but only in a very
formal sense, say that through this human reality the Logos is
"present" and "active" in the world and its history. But this
whole reality "conveys" to us nothing about the Logos as such.
Here the Logos shows us only the universal, that which is
"human" also outside of him. At most he shows us, through this
reality, marvelous and superhuman features: the preternatural
gifts, which belong to no other human nature, but which we
observe in him. But the human as such would not show us
y. As a rule this difficulty occurs in theology only anonymously. It is
difficult even to formulate it clearly, although it probably lies in the back-
ground of all christological differences persisting even today in Catholic
Christology—for instance, between a pure Chalcedonism and a neo-
Chakedonism. The question is this: is the humanity of the Logos merely
something foreign which has been assumed, or is it precisely that which
comes into being when the Logos ex-presses himself into the non-divine?
Should we start from human nature as from something we already know,
as something not more clearly revealed by the incarnation, when we try
to explain this incarnation in its real content (with respect to that which
the Logos becomes)? Or should human nature ultimately be explained
through the self-emptying self-utterance of the Logos himself? On this
problem and the following questions see K. Rahner, "Current Problems
in Christology," in Theological Investigations, volume I, pp. 149-200; "On
the Theology of the Incarnation," in Theological Investigations, volume
IV, pp. 105-120; B. Welte, Zur Christologie von Chal^edon: Auf der
Spur ats Ewigen, Freiburg, 1965, pp. 429-458.

3*
 THETMN1TT

the Logos as such. Here too he would show himself only in his
formal subjectivity. And we would have to admit that an intra-
divine trinitarian reality has proceeded outwards into true salva-
tion history only in a purely formal way. That which is already
known to us, that which is not trinitarian, is created; as such, as
already presupposed (logically, ontologically, not temporally pre-
supposed), it is assumed. But in this hypothesis we cannot say that
the Logos has stepped outside his intra-divine inaccessibility and
shown himself through his humanity and in his humanity. In
this same hypothesis we could not really say: He who sees me,
sees me. For, when we glimpse the humanity of Christ as such,
we would in reality have seen nothing of the subject of the Logos
himself, except at most his abstract formal subjectivity.
Hence the question is; Shall we interpret the Chalcedonian
etovyximosin such a way that the unblended human nature of the
Logos has to the Logos as Logos no other relation than that of
any creature whatsoever to its creator, except for a formal sub-
sisting within him? Thus this nature would be "said" of its
subject, but this subject would not "express" itself in it. Perhaps
we have not even succeeded in lifting the difficulty itself into the
light of reflex awareness. Yet it lies dimly at the basis of every
Christology, and its very dimness renders it even more active and
more disturbing.
It is even less possible really to establish the answer which we
consider the correct one to this question. Suffice it to say: No, we
do not accept the way in which the difficulty mentioned above
sees the basic relationship between the Logos and the assumed
human nature in Christ. The relation which exists between the
two is more essential and more intimate. Human nature in
general is a possible object of the creative knowledge and power
of God, because and insofar as the Logos is by nature the one who
is "utterable" (even into that which is not God); because he is the
Father's Word, in which the Father can express himself, and,

3*
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE GOD"

freely, empty himself into the non-divine; because, when this

happens, that precisely is born which we call human nature. In
other words, human nature is not a mask (the irpoatairov)
assumed from without, from behind which the Logos hides to
act things out in the world. From the start it is the constitutive,
real symbol of the Logos himself.38 So that we may and should
say, when we think our ontology through to the end: man is
possible because the exteriorization of the Logos is possible. We
cannot expose this thesis here in more detail, even less can we
demonstrate it. Rather we refer the reader to recent publications"
which treat of this problem explicitly or by indirection. And if
our question should be answered in the indicated way, we may
say without weakening our assertion, or secretly taking back part
of it that: what Jesus is and does as man reveals the Logos him-
self; it is the reality of the Logos as our salvation amidst us.
Then we can assert, in the full meaning of the words: here the
Logos with God and the Logos with us, the immanent and the
economic Logos, are stricdy the same.80

28. On this concept cp. my paper "The Theology of the Symbol," in

Theological Investigations, volume IV, pp. 221-252.
29. Cp. the literature mentioned in notes 27 and 28. Also F. Malmbcrg,
Der Gottmensch, Freiburg, 1959.
30. Since our problem concerns not the formal subject of the Logos in
the abstract, but the concrete incarnate Logos, this sameness is the one
about which Ephesus and Chalcedon both say that it is unconfused,
unseparated, hence not the sameness of a lifeless identity in which there
is nothing to distinguish because from the start everything is identically
the same, but the sameness in which one and the same Logos is himself
in the human reality not because something foreign (human nature) has
been joined to him in a merely additive way, but because the Logos
posits this other reality as his way of positing and expressing himself. In
the case of mere addition this "joining" could no longer be thought as a
real one. We would simply have a case where two realities are thought of
as juxtaposed. In fact, the difference should be conceived as an inner
modality of the unity. Thus within the Trinity and "outside" it an
immediate sameness not mediated by something really different should be
considered not as the highest form, but rather as a negation* of authentic
sameness.

« 33
 THE TRINITY

E. God's Threefold Relation to Us

in the Order of Grace
The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity—such is the state-
ment which we have to explain. We have shown above that there
is at least one instance of this axiom which is dogmatically above
doubt. That this instance is really an instance becomes clear only
when we reflect on the doctrine of grace. The instance in ques-
tion is that of the not-appropriated relations of the divine persons
to the justified. Since we have already indicated the problem and
the differences of opinion among theologians concerning it, we
shall not have to mention them again. At any rate, the least we
may say is that this thesis of the proper, not-appropriated rela-
tions is a free and unobjectionable opinion in theology. We pre-
suppose it here.11 Our only task will be to develop this well-known,
current, albeit not unquestioned doctrine in the light of our
problem. When correctly understood and taken seriously, the
thesis which we presuppose here as true38 states not some scholastic
subtlety, but simply this: each one of the three divine persons
communicates himself to man in gratuitous grace in his own
31. We draw attention to one point. If we apply the classical ontology
and theology of the beatific vision to the undeniable intuition of the
divine persons as such, we cannot logically reject this thesis for the vision
nor for justifying grace as the ontological substratum and formal beginning
of the immediate intuition of God. An immediate intuition of the divine
persons, not mediated by a created "impressed species" but only by the
ontological reality of the intuited object in itself (which gives itself in a
real quasi-formal causality to the intuiting subject as the ontological con-
dition of the possibility of the formal knowledge) means necessarily an
ontological relation of the intuiting subject to each one of the intuited
persons as such in their real particularity. Medieval theology may not have
given enough thought to this consideration, although it Res altogether in
the line of its theological approach to the vision.
32. This will be further corroborated, although only by means of a few
hints, pp. 761., when we shall briefly examine the factual history of the
revelation of the Trinity.

34
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "oN THE TRIUNE COD"

personal particularity and diversity. This trinitarian communica-

tion is the ontological ground of man's life of grace and even-
tually of the direct vision of the divine persons in eternity. It is
God's "indwelling," "uncreated grace," understood not only as a
communication of the divine nature, but also and primarily, since
it implies a free personal act, since it occurs from person to per-
son, as a communication of "persons." Of course, this self-com-
munication of the persons occurs according to their personal
peculiarity, that is, also according to and in virtue of their mutual
relations. Should a divine person communicate himself otherwise
than in and through his relations to the other persons, so as to
have his own relation to the justified (and the other way around),
this would presuppose that each single divine person, even as
such, as mentally distinct from the one and same essence, would
be something absolute and not merely relative. We would no
longer be speaking of the Trinity. In other words: these three self-
communications are the self-communication of the one God in the
three relative ways in which God subsists. The Father gives him-
self to us too as Father, that is, precisely because and insofar as
he himself, being essentially with himself, utters himself and in
this way communicates the Son as his own, personal self-mani-
festation;33 and because and insofar as the Father and the Son
(receiving from the Father), welcoming each other in love, drawn
and returning to each other, communicate themselves in this way,
as received in mutual love, that is, as Holy Spirit. God relates to
us in a threefold manner, and this threefold, free, and gratuitous
relation to us is not merely a copy or an analogy of the inner
Trinity, but this Trinity itself, albeit as freely and gratuitously
communicated. That which is communicated is precisely the

33. We cannot yet explain in more detail that and how the self-com-
munication of the Father in the uttering of the Word in the world means
for the believer both incarnation and the promise in grace of this Word.
They imply each other.

35
 THE TUNITT

triune personal God, and likewise the communication bestowed

upon the creature in gratuitous grace can, if occurring in free-
dom, occur only in the intra-divine manner of the two com-
munications of the divine essence by the Father to the Son and
the Spirit. Any other kind of communication would be unable to
communicate that which is here communicated, the divine per-
sons, since these persons do not differ from their own way of
communicating themselves.
Anticipating somewhat our later exposition (because there is no
other way of explaining the "method" we are using), we may
now consider from the other direction the connection between
immanent and economic Trinity. The one God communicates
himself in absolute self-utterance and as absolute donation of love.
Here is the absolute mystery revealed to us only by Christ: God's
self-communication is truly a ^//-communication. He does not
merely indirectly give his creature some share of himself by
creating and giving us created and finite realities through his
omnipotent efficient causality. In a quasi-formal causality he
really and in the strictest sense of the word bestows himself*
Now the testimony of revelation in Scripture tells us that this
self-communication of God has a threefold aspect.15 It is the self-
34. It follows as a formal axiom that if the distinction present in some-
thing communicated by God exists only on the creature's side, then there
is no ^//-communication of God in the strict sense. If, on the other hand,
there is a real ^//-communication with a real distinction in that which is
communicated as such, hence with a real distinction "for us," then God
must "in himself" carry this distinction. His unity is not affected, and we
characterize it as the unity of the absolute "essence." The distinction is
also characterized as a relative manner of being related to himself. Hence
we may say that if revelation (a) testifies to a real ^//-communication, and
(b) explains this self-communication as containing distinctions "for us,"
that is considers it as mediated, of a mediation that is not merely created
(which would dp away with the character of a real self-communication),
then it affirms if so facto distinction and mediation in God as he is in
himself.
35. What follows will be explained in greater detail in our third chapter.
The purpose of our present remarks is only to clarify the basic axiom as
such.

36
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OP THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE COD"

communication36 in which that which is given remains sovereign,

incomprehensible, continuing, even as received, to dwell in its
uncontrollable incomprehensible originality. It is a self-communi-
cation in which the God who manifests himself "is there"37 as
self-uttered truth and as freely, historically disposing sovereignty.
It is a self-communication, in which the God who communicates
himself causes in the one who receives him the act of loving wel-
come, and causes it in such a way that his welcoming does not
bring the communication down to the purely created level.
We must avoid two misunderstandings. On the one hand, this
threefold aspect of the self-communication should not, in the
dimension of communication, be interpreted as a merely verbal
unfolding of a communication which in itself contains no distinc-
tions. In the dimension of salvation history, this distinction is
truly "real." The origin of God's self-communication, its
"existence" as it radically expresses and utters itself, the self-
communication's welcoming acceptance brought about by him-
self, are not indistinctly "the same thing" signified by different
words. That is: as understood by the experience of faith, based
on the witness of Scripture, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit
(however deficient all these words may and must be) point to a
true distinction, to a double mediation within this self-com-
munication. On the other hand, the history of this self-communi-
cation, as it reveals itself, has shown ever more closely and more
undeniably that this double mediation by Word and Spirit is not
a created kind of mediation, in which God would not really be
communicated as he is in himself. The testimony of faith tells
36. Concerning this concept cp. the literature mentioned in note 17.
37. We must bear in mind that the concept of "Word" should be inter-
preted with all the fullness of the meaning in the Old Testament, hence
as the powerful creative Word of God that acts and decides, in which
the Father ex-presses himself, in which he is present and active. We have
never to do with a mere theoretical self-reflection. Such a concept makes
it much easier for us to understand the unity of the "Word" of God as
incarnate and as powerfully directing and disposing in the heart of man.

37
 THE TRINITY

that the economic self-communication of God is truly and really

threefold." Economic Sabellianism is false. The mediations of
God among us are no created intermediaries or world powers.
Such a conception of God's communication would basically be
Arian, it would do away with a true ^//-communication of God,
it would bring down the eschatological salvific work of Christ to
the level of forever provisory and open mediations, after the man-
ner of prophetic-servants, of angelic powers, or of gnostic-neo-
Platonic descending emanations. It follows that this real mediation
of a divine kind in the dimension of salvation history must also be
a real mediation in God's inner life. The "threcfoldness" of God's
relation to us in Christ's order of grace is already the reality of
God as it is in itself: a three-personal one. This statement would
constitute Sabellianism or modalism only if the following condi-
tions were fulfilled: if it totally ignored the fact that this modality
is one of radical ^//-manifestation in uncreated grace and in the
hypostatic union; if it claimed that God himself is so little affected
by this relation that this "diversity" would, as in creation and in
God's natural relation to the world, bring about no difference in
God, only a difference in his creatures.

F. The Methodological Importance

of Our Basic Thesis
How is the method of our systematic explanation of the doctrine
of the Trinity afTected when the thesis that the economic Trinity
is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the econo-
mic Trinity is presupposed (or eventually confirmed)?

38. Cp. what F. J. Schierse writes about the revelation of the Trinity in
the New Testament, in Myrterium Salutit, volume II, pp. 87!!., yjfi., n^S-,
125*1.

38
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE ON THE TRIUNE GOD

I. THE TRINITY AS A SALVIFIC EXPERIENCE

AND AN EXPERIENCE OF GRACE

First, we may in this treatise confidently look for an access into

the doctrine of the Trinity in Jesus and in his Spirit, as we experi-
ence them through faith in salvation history. For in these two
persons the immanent Trinity itself is already given. The Trinity
is not for us a reality which can only be expressed as a doctrine.
The Trinity itself is with us, it is not merely given to us because
revelation offers us statements about it. Rather these statements
are made to us because the reality of which they speak is bestowed
upon us. They are not made in order to test our faith in some-
thing to which we have no real relation. They are made because
the grace we have received and the glory we expect cannot wholly
become manifest if we are not told about this mystery. Thus the
two mysteries, that of our grace and that of God in himself,
constitutes one and the same abysmal mystery. The treatise on the
Trinity should always keep this in mind. It is thence, from this
most existential concern for our salvation, that it lives, that it
receives its impulsion, that it becomes really comprehensible. For
him who rejects our basic thesis the Trinity can only be some-
thing which, as long as we do not contemplate it immediately in
its absolute "in itself,"" can be told about in purely conceptual
statements, through a merely verbal revelation, as opposed to
God's salvific activity in us. Then, however, the treatise takes on
the abstract impractical character which is so frequent in such
systems. Then the proof from Scripture will unavoidably begin
to look like a method which, by the use of subtle dialectical
tricks, tries to draw conclusions from a few scattered statements,
putting them together in a system about which we cannot help
39. Provided that an intuition understood in this sense implies or seems
to imply no inner contradiction.

39
 THE TUNITY

wondering whether God has really revealed to us such abstruse

things in a manner which is so obscure and needs so many com-
plicated explanations. But if it is true that we can really grasp th
content of the doctrine of the Trinity only by going back to the
history of salvation and of grace, to our experience of Jesus and
of the Spirit of God, who operates in us, because in them we
really already possess the Trinity itself as such, then there never
should be a treatise on the Trinity in which the doctrine of the
"missions" is at best only appended as a relatively unimportant
and additional scholion. Every such treatise should from its very
start be animated by this doctrine, even when, for didactic
reasons, it is treated explicitly only at the end of the treatise of the
Trinity, or even in other sections of dogmatic theology.40 We
might even say that the less a doctrine of the Trinity fears treat-
ing its topic from the point of view of salvation history, the more
chance there is that it will say all that which matters about the
immanent Trinity, and that it will say it in such a way that a
theoretical and existential understanding of the faith may really
grasp it.

2. ON INTERPRETING THE HISTORY

OF TRINITARIAN REVELATION

If we follow the method recommended above, the treatise may

(whether explicitly or implicitly is a purely didactic and secondary
problem) follow the same order as the history of the revelation
of this mystery. Our modern theology is wont to reject too
simply, apodictically, and unreservedly the opinion of the ancients
that, even before Christ, there was already in some vague way a
40. P. Bourassa shows in his article "Sur le traM dc la Trinitl," in
Grtgorianum 47 (1966), pp. 254-285, esp. xjjft. (on the "missions"), how
difficult it is to combine the salvation history approach and the speculative
approach, if one adheres to the traditional starting point.

*>
 1. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE COD"

Lelief in the Trinity. Our point of view might help the treatise
on the Trinity introduce a few more nuances in the evaluation of
this position. It would allow us to understand better the opinion
of the ancients and the history of the revelation of this mystery,41
Throughout the Old Testament there runs the basic theme that
God is the absolute mystery, whom nobody can see without
dying, and that it is nevertheless this God himself who conversed
with the Fathers through his actions in history. This revealing
self-manifestation is, in the Old Testament, mediated mostly (not
to mention Yahweh's Angel, etc.) by the "Word," which, while
causing God to be present in power, also represents him; and by
the "Spirit," who helps men to understand and to announce
the Word.*1 When these two are not active, Yahweh has retreated
from his people. When he bestows upon the "holy remnant" his
renewed and forever victorious mercy, he sends the prophet with
his Word in the fullness of the Spirit. (The Torah and Wisdom
doctrine of sapiential literature is only a more individualistic
version of the same basic conception. It pays less attention to
historical development.) God is present in the unity of Word and
Spirit.
In a certain sense, theoretically no great distance separates
these three realities. His presence through the Word in the Spirit
must be different from him, the lasting primordial mystery, yet
it cannot stand before him and hide him as if it were something
quite different. Hence when we reach the point of absolute
proximity of the "coming" of God, the covenant, in which God
really communicates himself radically and bindingly to his
partner, then the whole development of this history allows of only
two possibilities. Either God's Word and his Spirit disappear as
41. Especially for the real history of the concepts which, in an historical
development, have slowly and legitimately acquired their trinitarian mean-
ing.
42. Cp. the chapter by R. Schulte in Mysterium Salutis, volume II,
pp.63ff.

4*
 THE TRINITY

(mere) created mediations, as the many prophets with their man;

words disappeared before the supreme and overpowering personal
presence of God, which appears now as the secret goal of God's
partnership at all times. Or these two "mediations" persist,
revealing themselves as truly divine, hence as God himself, in
unity with, yet distinct from the God of revelation, in a unity
and a distinction which belong therefore to God himself. In this
sense we must admit an authentic secret prehistory of the revela-
tion of the Trinity in the Old Testament. This prehistory, which,
after all, nobody can wholly deny, removes the impression that
certain concepts, with their long history, have been applied to an
utterance of the New Testament (and even more of the later
doctrine of the Church), with which, considered in themselves,
they had absolutely nothing in common.

3. ON HIDDEN MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND PROBLEMS

OF TERMINOLOGY

Such an insistence upon the unity of the immanent and economic

doctrine of the Trinity might also remove a danger which, how-
ever one may feel about it, has remained the real danger in the
doctrine of the Trinity, not so much in the abstract theology of
the textbooks, but in the average conception of the normal
Christian. This is the danger of a popular, unverbalized, but at
bottom quite massive tritheism.*3 Whenever efforts are made to
43. We must continually avoid the following dilemma: either we find in
religious consciousness, as mentioned above, an absence of the Trinity, and
nothing but a rigid, unmediated sheer monotheism; or, when efforts are
made to realize the truth of the Trinity, there arises in religious con-
sciousness a tritheism which is overcome only verbally by the (never
denied) confession of God's unity. What is lacking is the awareness of a
mediating principle which would allow us to conceive of the inner unity
and unicity and trinity in God, not only in formal static abstractness, or
for "God in himself," but also concretely and for us, that is, in some reality
which may always be concretely realized in ourselves, in the mystery,

4*
 I. THE METHOD AND STRUCTURE OF THE TREATISE "ON THE TRIUNE GOD"

think of the Trinity, this danger looms much larger than that
of Sabellian modalism. There can be no doubt about it: speaking
of three persons in God entails almost inevitably the danger (as
a rule we try much too late to overcome it through explicit cor-
rections) of believing that there exist in God three distinct con-
sciousnesses, spiritual vitalities, centers of activity, and so on. This
danger is increased by the fact that, even in the usual presentation
of the scholarly treatises on the Trinity, there is first developed a
concept of "person" derived from experience and philosophy, in-
dependently of the doctrine of the Trinity as found in revelation
and of the history of this doctrine. Next this concept is applied
to God, and thus it is demonstrated that there are three such
persons in God. Further in the usual treatise, when the relation
between unicity and triple personality in God is being considered,
the necessary explanations are given as to how we should cor-
rectly interpret these three "persons" in God. Thus it is rather
implicitly and belatedly that the required modifications and dis-
tinctions are made in the concept of person with which we set
out on our spiritual odyssey upon the sea of God's mystery. But
honesty finally forces us to inquire, not without misgivings, why
we still call "persons" that which remains ultimately of God's
threefold "personality," since we have to remove from these
persons precisely that which at first we thought of as constituting
a person. Later on, when the more subtle remarks of the theo-
logians have been forgotten, we see that once more we glide
probably into a false and basically tritheistic conception, as we
think of the three persons as of three different personalities with
different centers of activity. We wonder why we did not from
the start operate with a concept or word ("person" or some other
word) which might more easily be adapted to that which is meant

which gives itself to us through the Word in the Spirit, and' as Word and
Spirit.

43
 THE TRINITY

and express it with less danger of misunderstanding. We do not

agree with Karl Earth that the word "person" is ill adapted to
express the intended reality and that it should be replaced in
ecclesiastical terminology by another word which produces fewer
misunderstandings. Yet we must grant that the later development
of the word "person" outside of the doctrine of the Trinity after
the formulation of the dogma in the fourth century has further
increased its ambiguity.44 From the original almost Sabellian
meaning it has evolved to the existential and Hermesian mean-
ing of an "Ego" opposed to every other person in autonomous
and distinct freedom. Yet the word "person" happens to be there,
it has been consecrated by the use of more than 1500 years, and
there is no really better word, which can be understood by all and
would give rise to fewer misunderstandings. So we shall have
to keep it, although we must keep its history in mind and realize
that, absolutely speaking, it is not in every respect well adapted
to express what is meant and that it does not lack certain dis-
advantages. But if we use the economic approach to the mystery
of the Trinity clearly and systematically, we are not obliged, any
more than the history of revelation itself, to begin this treatise
with the concept of "person."4* We may start from the self-
revelation of God (the Father) as given in salvation history, as
mediated by the Word in the Spirit. We may show that these
distinctions of "God for us" arc also those of "God in himself."
Next we simply explain that this reality which is threefold in

44. In the third chapter we shall speak in more detail about this basic
difficulty.
45. The fact that the concept of person has been approved by Church
law in this connection should not necessarily and always mean that it
must be the starting point of every theological study. It may also be the
end point which we reach by following in our theological thinking the
same order that was followed in the development of revelation and of
Church doctrine. In this way our theological study cannot be said to have
at any time emancipated itself from the Church's doctrine and magis-
terium.

«
Other documents randomly have
different content
for October, 1887, and July, 1888, of The Edinburgh
Review, the work of Mr. John G. Alger, the Paris
correspondent of The Times. They have since been
published in a volume. (Englishmen in the French
Revolution: Low & Co., 1889.)
 CONTENTS OF THE POETRY OF THE
ANTI-JACOBIN,
WITH THE NAMES OF THE AUTHORS.

The following notices of the writers of the Poetry of

the Anti-Jacobin are derived from the copies
mentioned below, and each name is authenticated by
the initials of the authority upon which each piece is
ascribed to particular persons:—

C. Canning’s own copy of the Poetry.

B. Lord Burghersh’s copy.
W. Wright the publisher’s copy.
U. Information of W. Upcott, amanuensis.

[Although many of the pieces in the following list

are attributed to wrong authors, it has been thought
more convenient to reprint them as they stood in the
previous edition, in order to insert any corrections, as
far as Frere is concerned. These are derived from the
information of Frere himself given to his nephews,
who afterwards edited his works in 1872. They are
therefore placed beneath the Title of the piece—
between brackets.
The pieces, printed in Italics—between brackets—
appear for the first time in an edition of The Poetry.
—Ed.]
 PAGE. AUTHORS.

Prospectus of the Anti-Jacobin 1 Canning.

Introduction 12 Canning.

Inscription for the Apartment in

Chepstow Castle, where Henry
16 Southey.
Marten, the Regicide, was
imprisoned thirty years

Inscription for the Door of the Cell in

Newgate, where Mrs. Brownrigg, Canning, C.
16
the Prentice-cide, was confined Frere, C.
previous to her execution

The Friend of Humanity and the Knife Frere, C.

23
Grinder Canning, C.

Hely Addington,
The Invasion; or, the British War Song 25
W.

Canning, C.
La Sainte Guillotine: a New Song,
29 Frere, C.
attempted from the French
Hammond, B.

[By Canning and Frere only.]

Claimed by
[Meeting of the Friends of Freedom] 32
Frere.
 Canning, C.
The Soldier’s Friend 38 Frere, C.
Ellis, B.

[By Canning and Frere only.]

Sonnet to Liberty. 39 Lord Carlisle, B.

Quintessence of all the Dactylics that Canning, B.

41
ever were, or ever will be, written Gifford, W.

Latin Verses, written immediately

Marq. Wellesley,
after the Revolution of the Fourth of 43
U.
September

Translation of the above 45 Frere, B.

[Pearce, in his Memoirs of the Marquis Wellesley, gives the credit of this
translation to the sixth Earl of Carlisle.]

The Choice; imitated from The Battle

of Sabla, in Carlyle’s Specimens of 48 G. Ellis, B.
Arabian Poetry

Bar. Macdonald,
The Duke and the Taxing Man 52
C., B.

Epigram on the Paris Loan, called the

54 Frere, B.
Loan upon England

[Not claimed by Frere.]

Ode to Anarchy 55 Lord Morpeth, B.

Song, recommended to be sung at all

convivial meetings convened for the
58 Frere, B.
purpose of opposing the Assessed
Tax Bill

[By Canning, Ellis, and Frere.]

Lines written at the close of the year

61
1797

Translation of the New Song of The

63
Army of England

Epistle to the Editors of The Anti-

68
Jacobin

[This Epistle is now known to have been written by the Hon. Wm. Lamb,
(afterwards second Viscount Melbourne, and Prime Minister). He was then only
in his nineteenth year.]

To the Author of the Epistle to the Canning, C.

71
Editors of the Anti-Jacobin Hammond, B.

Ode to Lord Moira 78 G. Ellis, C., B.

G. Ellis, C.
A Bit of an Ode to Mr. Fox 83
Frere, B.
Acme and Septimius; or, the Happy
88 G. Ellis, C.
Union.

[Mr. Fox’s Birth-Day] 90

Mr. Bragge,
To the Author of the Anti-Jacobin 95 afterwards
Bathurst.

Lines written under the Bust of

Charles Fox at the Crown and 99 Frere, B.
Anchor

Lines written by a Traveller at Czarco-

zelo under the Bust of a certain
99 G. Ellis, B.
Orator, once placed between those
of Demosthenes and Cicero

[Jas. Boswell, jun., asserts, on the authority of the nephew of the great
statesman, that the above lines were written by Pitt. This is not improbable:
see Note on page 101.]

Canning, C.
The Progress of Man. Didactic Poem 102 Gifford, W.
Frere, B.

[Cantos 1 and 2 by Canning only; and Canto 23 by Canning and Frere only.]

Canning, C.
The Progress of Man, continued 107
Hammond, B.
Imitation of Bion. Written at St. G. Ellis, B.
111
Anne’s Hill Gifford, W.

The New Coalition: Imitation of

114
Horace, Lib. 3, Carm. 9

[The Honey-Moon of Fox and Tooke,

another version of the same by the
116
Rev. C. E. Stewart; published in the
Anti-Jacobin Review, vol. i.]

Imitation of Horace, Lib. 3, Carm. 25 119 Canning, C.

Bar. Macdonald,
Chevy Chase 125
C., B.

Ode to Jacobinism 129

Canning, C.
The Progress of Man, continued 133 Frere, C.
G. Ellis, B.

The Jacobin 141 Nares, W.

The Loves of the Triangles. A

Frere, C.
Mathematical and Philosophical 150
Canning, B.
Poem

[All but the last three lines Frere’s.]

G. Ellis, C., W.
The Loves of the Triangles, continued 158
Canning, B.
 [Down to “Twine round his struggling heart,” by Ellis. From “Thus, happy
France,” to “And folds the parent-monarch,” by Canning, Ellis, and Frere. The
next twelve lines, which were not in the first edition, 1798, were added by
Canning.]

Brissot’s Ghost 165 Frere, B.

[Not claimed by Frere.]

Canning B., W.,

C.
The Loves of the Triangles, continued 170
Gifford C.
Frere C.

[By Canning, Ellis, and Frere.]

A Consolatory Address to his Gun-

182 Lord Morpeth, B.
Boats. By Citizen Muskein

Canning, B., C.
Elegy on the Death of Jean Bon St.
185 Gifford, C.
André
Frere, C.

[By Canning, Ellis, and Frere.]

Frere, C.
Ode to my Country, MDCCXCVIII 193 B. B., C.
Hammond, B.

[This is not claimed by Frere.]

Ode to the Director Merlin 199 Lord Morpeth, B.

Frere, C.
The Rovers; or, the Double Gifford, C.
205
Arrangement G. Ellis, C.
Canning B., C.

[Act 1, Sc. 1 and 2, by Frere—Song by Canning and Ellis; Act 2, Sc. 1 and 3,
and Act 3, by Canning; Act 2, Sc. 2, and Act 4, by Frere. The preliminary prose
by Frere and Canning.]

Frere B., C.
The Rovers; or, the Double Gifford C.
224
Arrangement, continued Ellis, C.
Canning, C.

An Affectionate Effusion of Citizen

236 Lord Morpeth, B.
Muskein to Havre-de-Grace

Gifford, C., B.
Translation of a Letter from Bawba-
Ellis, C., B.
dara-adul-phoola, to Neek-awl- 242
Canning, C., B.
aretchid-kooez
Frere, C., B.

[By Canning, Ellis, and Frere.]

[Buonaparte’s Letter to the

248
Commandant at Zante]

Ode to a Jacobin 251

Ballynahinch; A New Song 255 Canning, C.

De Navali Laude Britanniæ 257 Canning, B.

The late A. F.
[Translation of the above 260
Westmacott.]

[Valedictory Address] 263

Canning, B. C.
Frere, C.
New Morality 271
Gifford, C.
G. Ellis, C.
LINE.

1 From Mental Mists Frere, W.

15 Yet venial Vices, &c. Canning, W.

Bethink thee, Gifford, &c. These lines

were written by Canning some years
29
before he had any personal
acquaintance with Gifford.

71 Awake! for shame! Canning, W.

158 Fond Hope! Frere, W.

168 Such is the liberal Justice Canning, W.

Frere, W.
249 O! Nurse of Crimes! Canning, W.
G. Ellis, W.

261 See Louvet Canning, W.

Frere, W.
287 But hold, severer Virtue
Canning, W.

Frere, W.
302 To thee proud Barras bows Canning, W.
Ellis, W.
 Gifford, W.
318 Ere long, perhaps
Ellis, W.

Frere, W.
328 Couriers and Stars
Canning, W.

356 Britain, beware Canning, W.

attributed to
372 So thine own Oak
W. Pitt.

“Wright, the publisher of the Anti-Jacobin, lived at

169, Piccadilly, and his shop was the general morning
resort of the friends of the ministry, as Debrett’s was
of the oppositionists. About the time when the Anti-
Jacobin was contemplated, Owen, who had been the
publisher of Burke’s pamphlets, failed. The editors of
the Anti-Jacobin took his house, paying the rent,
taxes, &c., and gave it up to Wright, reserving to
themselves the first floor, to which a communication
was opened through Wright’s house. Being thus
enabled to pass to their own rooms through Wright’s
shop, where their frequent visits did not excite any
remarks, they contrived to escape particular
observation.”
“Their meetings were most regular on Sundays,
but they not unfrequently met on other days of the
week, and in their rooms were chiefly written the
poetical portions of the work. What was written was
generally left open upon the table, and as others of
the party dropped in, hints or suggestions were
made; sometimes whole passages were contributed
by some of the parties present, and afterwards
altered by others, so that it is almost impossible to
ascertain the names of the authors. Where, in the
above notes, a piece is ascribed to different authors,
the conflicting statements may arise from incorrect
information, but sometimes they arise from the
whole authorship being assigned to one person,
when, in fact, both may have contributed. If we look
at the references, 167, 185, we shall see Canning
naming several authors, whereas Lord Burghersh
assigns all to one author. Canning’s authority is here
more to be relied upon. New Morality Canning assigns
generally to the four contributors. Wright has given
some interesting particulars by appropriating to each
his peculiar portion.”
“Gifford was the working editor, and wrote most of
the refutations and corrections of the Lies, Mistakes,
and Misrepresentations.”
“The papers on finance were chiefly by Pitt: the
first column was frequently kept for what he might
send; but his contributions were uncertain, and
generally very late, so that the space reserved for
him was sometimes filled up by other matter. He only
once met the editors at Wright’s.”
 “W. Upcott, who was at the time assistant in
Wright’s shop, was employed as amanuensis, to copy
out for the printer the various contributions, that the
author’s handwriting might not be detected.”—E.
Hawkins.
 “THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE
CANNING AS A MAN OF LETTERS.”

[The following is part of a review, under the above

title, of the present editor’s previous edition of The
Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, and appeared in The
Edinburgh Review of July, 1858. It is reprinted in the
Biographical and Critical Essays of A. Hayward, Esq.,
Q.C., 2 vols., 8vo., 1873. It is introduced here as
throwing some additional light on the Writers of the
various pieces.]

“... We can hardly say of Canning’s satire what was

said of Sheridan’s, that—
“‘His wit in the combat, as gentle as bright,
Never carried a heart-stain away on its blade’.

But its severity was redeemed by its buoyancy and

geniality, whilst the subjects against which it was
principally aimed gave it a healthy tone and a sound
foundation. Its happiest effusions will be found in
The Anti-Jacobin, set on foot to refute or ridicule the
democratic rulers of revolutionary France and their
admirers or apologists in England, who, it must be
owned, were occasionally hurried into a culpable
degree of extravagance and laxity by their
enthusiasm....”
“We learn from Mr. Edmonds that almost all his
authorities practically resolve themselves into one,
the late Mr. W. Upcott, and that he never saw either
of the alleged copies on which his informant relied.
As regards the principal one, Canning’s own, after the
fullest inquiries amongst his surviving relatives and
friends, we cannot discover a trace of its existence at
any period. Lord Burghersh (the late Earl of
Westmoreland) was under fourteen years of age
during the publication of The Anti-Jacobin; and we
very much doubt whether either the publisher or the
amanuensis (be he who he may) was admitted to the
complete confidence of the contributors, or whether
either the prose or poetry was composed as stated.
In a letter to the late Madame de Girardin, à propos of
her play, L’École des Journalistes, Jules Janin happily
exposes the assumption that good leading articles
ever were, or ever could be, produced over punch
and broiled bones, amidst intoxication and revelry.
Equally untenable is the belief that poetical pieces,
like the best of The Anti-Jacobin, were written in the
common rooms of the confraternity, open to constant
intrusion, and left upon the table to be corrected or
completed by the first comer. The unity of design
discernible in each, the glowing harmony of the
thoughts and images, and the exquisite finish of the
versification, tell of silent and solitary hours spent in
brooding over, maturing, and polishing a cherished
conception; and young authors, still unknown to
fame, are least of all likely to sink their individuality
in this fashion. We suspect that their main object in
going to Wright’s was to correct their proofs and see
one another’s articles in the more finished state.
Their meetings, if for these purposes, would be most
regular on Sundays, because the paper appeared
every Monday morning. The extent to which they
aided one another may be collected from a well-
authenticated anecdote. When Frere had completed
the first part of The Loves of the Triangles, he
exultingly read over the following lines to Canning,
and defied him to improve upon them:—
 “‘Lo, where the chimney’s sooty tube ascends,
The fair Trochais from the corner bends!
Her coal-black eyes upturned, incessant mark
The eddying smoke, quick flame, and volant spark;
Mark with quick ken, where flashing in between,
Her much-loved Smoke-Jack glimmers through the scene;
Mark, how his various parts together tend,
Point to one purpose,—in one object end;
The spiral grooves in smooth meanders flow,
Drags the long chain, the polished axles glow,
While slowly circumvolves the piece of beef below:’

“Canning took the pen and added—

“‘The conscious fire with bickering radiance burns,
Eyes the rich joint, and roasts it as it turns’.

“These two lines are now blended with the original

text, and constitute, we are informed on the best
authority, the only flaw in Frere’s title to the sole
authorship of the First Part. The Second and Third
Parts were by Canning.
“By the kindness of [the late] Lord Hatherton, we
have now before us a bound volume containing all
the numbers of The Anti-Jacobin as they originally
appeared, eight pages quarto, with double columns,
price sixpence. On the fly-leaf is inscribed: ‘This copy
belonged to the Marquess Wellesley, and was
purchased at the sale of his library after his death,
January, 1842. H.’ On the cover is pasted an
engraved label of the arms and name of a former
proprietor, Charles William Flint, with the pencilled
addition of ‘Confidential Amanuensis’. In this copy
Canning’s name is subscribed to (amongst others) the
following pieces, which are also assigned to him
(along with a large share in the most popular of the
rest) by the most trustworthy rumours and
traditions:—Inscription for the Door of the Cell in
Newgate where Mrs. Brownrigg, the Prenticide, was
confined previous to her execution; The Friend of
Humanity and the Knife-Grinder; the lines addressed
To the Author of the Epistle to the Editors of The
Anti-Jacobin; The Progress of Man (all three parts);
and New Morality.
[1]

“With the single exception of The Friend of

Humanity and the Knife-Grinder, no piece in the
collection is more freshly remembered than the
Inscription for the Cell of Mrs. Brownrigg, who
“‘Whipp’d two female ’prentices to death,
And hid them in the coal-hole’.

“The Answer to The Author of the Epistle to the

Editors of The Anti-Jacobin is less known, and it
derives a fresh interest from the fact, recently [c.
1854] made public, that The Epistle (which appeared
in The Morning Chronicle of January 17, 1798) was
the composition of William Lord Melbourne. The
beginning shows that the veil of incognito had been
already penetrated.
“‘Whoe’er ye are, all hail!—whether the skill
Of youthful Canning guides the ranc’rous quill;
With powers mechanic far above his age,
Adapts the paragraph and fills the page;
Measures the column, mends whate’er’s amiss,
Rejects THAT letter, and accepts of THIS;
Or Hammond, leaving his official toil,
O’er this great work consume the midnight oil—
Bills, passports, letters, for the Muses quit,
And change dull business for amusing wit.’

“After referring to ‘the poetic sage, who sung of

Gallia in a headlong rage,’ The Epistle proceeds:—
“‘I swear by all the youths that Malmesbury chose,[2]
By Ellis’ sapient prominence of nose—
By Morpeth’s gait, important, proud and big—
By Leveson Gower’s crop-imitating wig,
That, could the pow’rs which in those numbers shine,
Could that warm spirit animate my line,
Your glorious deeds which humbly I rehearse—
Your deeds should live immortal as my verse;
And, while they wonder’d whence I caught my flame,
Your sons should blush to read their fathers’ shame’.

“Happily the eminent and accomplished sons of

these fathers will smile, rather than blush, at this
allusion to their sires, and smile the more when they
remember from which side the attack proceeded. It
is clear from the Answer, that, whilst the band were
not a little ruffled, they had not the remotest
suspicion that their assailant was a youth in his
nineteenth year. Amongst other prefatory remarks
they say:—
“‘We assure the author of the epistle, that the
answer which we have here the honour to address to
him, contains our genuine and undisguised
sentiments upon the merits of the poem.
“‘Our conjectures respecting the authors and
abettors of this performance may possibly be as
vague and unfounded as theirs are with regard to
the Editors of The Anti-Jacobin. We are sorry that we
cannot satisfy their curiosity upon this subject—but
we have little anxiety for the gratification of our own.
“‘It is only necessary to add, what is most
conscientiously the truth, that this production, such
as it is, is by far the best of all the attacks that the
combined wits of the cause have been able to
muster against The Anti-Jacobin.’
“The Answer opens thus:—
“‘Bard of the borrow’d lyre! to whom belong
The shreds and remnants of each hackney’d song;
Whose verse thy friends in vain for wit explore,
And count but one good line, in eighty-four!
Whoe’er thou art, all hail! Thy bitter smile
Gilds our dull page, and cheers our humble toil!’
 “The ‘one good line’ was ‘By Leveson Gower’s
crop-imitating wig,’ but the Epistle contains many
equally good and some better. The speculations as to
its authorship afforded no slight amusement to the
writer and his friends....
“New Morality is commonly regarded as the
master-piece of The Anti-Jacobin; and, with the
exception of a few lines, the whole of it is by Canning.
It appeared in the last number, and he is said to
have concentrated all his energies for a parting blow.
The reader who comes fresh from Dryden or Pope, or
even Churchill, will be disappointed on finding far
less variety of images, sparkling antithesis, or
condensed brilliancy of expression. The author
exhibits abundant humour and eloquence, but
comparatively little wit; i.e., if there be any truth in
Sydney Smith’s doctrine ‘that the feeling of wit is
occasioned by those relations of ideas which excite
surprise, and surprise alone’. We are commonly
prepared for what is coming, and our admiration is
excited rather by the justness of the observations,
the elevation of the thoughts, and the vigour of the
style, than by a startling succession of flashes of
fancy. If, as we believe, the same might be said of
Juvenal, and the best of his English imitators, Johnson,
we leave ample scope for praise; and New Morality
contains passages which have been preserved to our
time and bid fair to reach posterity. How often are
the lines on Candour quoted in entire ignorance or
forgetfulness of their author....
“The drama of The Rovers, or Double
Arrangement, was written to ridicule the German
Drama, then hardly known in this country, except
through the medium of bad translations of some of
the least meritorious of Schiller’s, Goethe’s, and
Kotzebue’s productions. The parody is now principally
remembered by Rogero’s song, of which, Mr.
Edmonds states, the first five stanzas were by
Canning. “Having been accidentally seen, previously
to its publication, by Pitt, he was so amused with it
that he took a pen and composed the last stanza on
the spot....”
“Canning’s reputed share in The Rovers excited the
unreasoning indignation, and provoked the
exaggerated censure, of a man who has obtained a
world-wide reputation by his historical researches,
most especially by his skill in separating the true
from the fabulous, and in filling up chasms in
national annals by a process near akin to that by
which Cuvier inferred the entire form and structure of
an extinct species from a bone. The following
passage is taken from Niebuhr’s History of the Period
of the Revolution (published from his Lectures, in
two volumes, in 1845):—
 “‘Canning was at that time (1807) at the head of
foreign affairs in England. History will not form the
same judgment of him as that formed by
contemporaries. He had great talents, but was not a
great Statesman; he was one of those persons who
distinguish themselves as the squires of political
heroes. He was highly accomplished in the two
classical languages, but without being a learned
scholar. He was especially conversant with Greek
writers. He had likewise poetical talent, but only for
Satire. At first he had joined the leaders of
opposition against Pitt’s ministry: Lord Grey, who
perceived his ambition, advised him, half in joke, to
join the ministers, as he would make his fortune. He
did so, and was employed to write articles for the
newspapers and satirical verses, which were often
directed against his former benefactors.
“‘Through the influence of the ministers he came
into Parliament. So long as the great eloquence of
former times lasted, and the great men were alive,
his talent was admired; but older persons had no
great pleasure in his petulant, epigrammatic
eloquence and his jokes, which were often in bad
taste. He joined the Society of the Anti-Jacobins,
which defended everything connected with existing
institutions. This society published a journal, in which
the most honoured names of foreign countries were
attacked in the most scandalous manner. German
literature was at that time little known in England,
and it was associated there with the ideas of
Jacobinism and revolution. Canning then published in
The Anti-Jacobin the most shameful pasquinade
which was ever written against Germany, under the
title of Matilda Pottingen. Göttingen is described in it
as the sink of all infamy; professors and students as
a gang of miscreants; licentiousness, incest, and
atheism as the character of the German people. Such
was Canning’s beginning: he was at all events useful,
a sort of political Cossack’ (Geschichte des Zeitalters
der Revolution, vol. ii., p. 242).
“‘Here am I,’ exclaimed Raleigh, after vainly trying
to get at the rights of a squabble in the courtyard of
the Tower, ‘employed in writing a true history of the
world, when I cannot ascertain the truth of what
happens under my own window.’ Here is the great
restorer of Roman history—who, by the way, prided
himself on his knowledge of England—hurried into
the strangest misconception of contemporary events
and personages, and giving vent to a series of
depreciatory misstatements, without pausing to
verify the assumed groundwork of his patriotic wrath.
His description of ‘the most shameful pasquinade,’
and his ignorance of the very title, prove that he had
never seen it. If he had, he would also have known
that the scene is laid at Weimar, not at Göttingen,
and that the satire is almost exclusively directed
against a portion of the dramatic literature of his
country, which all rational admirers must admit to be
indefensible. The scene in The Rovers, in which the
rival heroines, meeting for the first time at an inn,
swear eternal friendship and embrace, is positively a
feeble reflection of a scene in Goethe’s Stella; and no
anachronism can exceed that in Schiller’s Cabal und
Liebe, when Lady Milford, after declaring herself the
daughter of the Duke of Norfolk who rebelled against
Queen Elizabeth, is horrified on finding that the
jewels sent her by the Grand Duke have been
purchased by the sale of 7000 of his subjects to be
[3]
employed in the American war.
“Amongst the prose contributions to The Anti-
Jacobin, there is one in which, independently of
direct evidence, the peculiar humour of Canning is
discernible,—the pretended report of the meeting of
the Friends of Freedom at the Crown and Anchor
[4]
Tavern. The plan was evidently suggested by
Tickell’s Anticipation, in which the debate on the
Address at the opening of the Session was reported
beforehand with such surprising foresight, that some
of the speakers, who were thus forestalled, declined
to deliver their meditated orations.
 “At the meeting of the Friends of Freedom, Erskine,
whose habitual egotism could hardly be caricatured,
is made to perorate as follows, &c.... A long speech
is given to Mackintosh, who, under the name of
Macfungus, after a fervid sketch of the Temple of
Freedom which he proposes to construct on the ruins
of ancient establishments, proceeds with kindling
[5]
animation, &c....
“The wit and fun of these imitations are
undeniable, and their injustice is equally so. Erskine,
with all his egotism, was, and remains, the greatest
of English advocates. He stemmed and turned the
tide which threatened to sweep away the most
valued of our free institutions in 1794; and (we say
with Lord Brougham) ‘Before such a precious service
as this, well may the lustre of statesmen and orators
grow pale’. Mackintosh was pre-eminently
distinguished by the comprehensiveness and
moderation of his views; nor could any man be less
disposed by temper, habits, or pursuits towards
revolutionary courses. His lectures on The Law of
Nature and Nations were especially directed against
the new morality in general, and Godwin’s Political
Justice in particular.
“At a long subsequent period (1807) Canning, when
attacked in Parliament for his share in The Anti-
Jacobin, declared that ‘he felt no shame for its
character or principles, nor any other sorrow for the
share he had had in it than that which the
imperfection of his pieces was calculated to inspire’.
Still, it is one of the inevitable inconveniences of a
connection with the Press that the best known
writers should be made answerable for the errors of
their associates; and the license of The Anti-Jacobin
gave serious and well-founded offence to many who
shared its opinions and wished well to its professed
object. In Wilberforce’s Diary for May 18, 1799, we
find ‘Pitt, Canning, and Pepper Arden came in late to
dinner. I attacked Canning on indecency of Anti-
Jacobin.’ Coleridge, in his Biographia Literaria,
complains bitterly of the calumnious accounts given
by The Anti-Jacobin of his early life, and asks with
reason, ‘Is it surprising that many good men
remained longer than perhaps they otherwise would
have done adverse to a party which encouraged and
openly rewarded the authors of such atrocious
calumnies?’
“Mr. Edmonds says that Pitt got frightened, and
that the publication was discontinued at the
suggestion of the Prime Minister. It is not unlikely
that Canning, now a member of the House of
Commons and Under-Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, found his connection with it embarrassing, as
his hopes rose and his political prospects expanded.
Indeed, it may be questioned whether a
Parliamentary career can ever be united with that of
the daily or weekly journalist without compromising
one or both. At all events, the original Anti-Jacobin
closed with the number containing New Morality, and
Canning had nothing to do with the monthly review
started under the same name.”
 THE ANTI-JACOBIN AS AN AID TO
GOVERNMENT.

[Considering The Anti-Jacobin from a national as well as a literary

point of view, we cannot do better than use a portion of an Essay on
English Political Satires by the late Jas. Hannay, in the Quarterly
Review, April, 1857.]

“... In the case of The Anti-Jacobin, what are we to

say? A hundred opinions may be adopted respecting
the French Revolution. Some hate it with unmitigated
hatred. Some regret it, but accept its consequences
as beneficial to mankind on the whole. Some cherish
its memory as a new political revelation of which
they hope to see still further results. But a candid
man of any of these persuasions must remember
that the aim of The Anti-Jacobin was to keep Britain
from revolution during 1797–8. It was therefore
necessary to fight as our soldiers afterwards did in
Spain—to wage such a literary war as suited the
agitated spirit of Europe. While we blame Canning,
therefore, for speaking as he did of Madame Roland,
we must not forget the indecorum of her Memoirs, or
that it was from persons of her party that vile
aspersions were cast upon the character of Marie
Antoinette. There were men quite ready to begin the
same work over here that had been done in France,
and that in a spirit of vulgar imitation, and under
quite different circumstances. They had to be shot
down like mad dogs; for a cur, though contemptible
in ordinary cases, becomes tragic when he has
hydrophobia.
“For The Anti-Jacobin must be claimed an honour
which can be claimed for scarce one of the works we
have passed under review. Let us waive the question
how much we may have owed it for helping to
inspire that unity and stout insular self-confidence
which carried us through the great war,—whole
within and impervious without. Let us consider it only
in a literary point of view, and we shall find it
enjoying the rare distinction that its best Satires live
in real popular remembrance. The Knife-Grinder, with
his
“‘Story! God bless you, I have none to tell, sir,’

is almost as widely known as our nursery rhymes.

“But if The Anti-Jacobin excels all similar works in
popularity, and in the eminence of its contributors, it
also excels them in another important particular. It
contains on the whole a greater number of really
good things than any one of them. The Loves of the
Triangles, in which,
“‘Th’ obedient Pulley strong Mechanics ply,
And wanton Optics roll the melting eye!’

is an irresistible parody, and likely to keep the

original of Darwin [Loves of the Plants] in
remembrance. Gray’s Odes have survived the
burlesques of Colman; and the Country and City
Mouse of Prior and Montague is neglected by nine-
tenths of those who read with admiration the Hind
and the Panther. But Darwin’s case is peculiar. Other
poems live in spite of ridicule; and his Loves of the
Plants in consequence of it. The Attic salt of his
enemies has preserved his reputation.
“There is always a purpose in The Anti-Jacobin’s
view something more important than the mere
persiflage that teases individuals. Like the blade of
Damascus, which has a verse of the Koran engraved
on it, its fine wit glitters terribly in the cause of
sacred tradition.”
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