Trinity and Creation

This analysis will first seek to investigate some key concepts in Trinitarian thought through unpacking its history on the subject of creation, and then propose some conclusions based on the contemporary work of theologians Karl Rahner and Denis Edwards with an eye toward potential conceptual challenges inherent to this line of thinking. Ultimately, the acknowledge that creation is integral to the self-definition of God as Trinity reframes subjects of Christian theology proper in a fruitful way, it should be acknowledged approched and unpacked: first, for practice as a faith community and for spiritual practice at large in its ultimate relationship to Christ, and second, for theory in that, despite the traditional challenges that may be raised to this line of thought, it opens up the possibility for more compelling conceptual framework that reverently dialogues with the deep mysteries of God. Historically, the method of integration (or more accurately, non-integration) of the Trinity and creation can be contextualized by cosmological, ontological and soteriological motivations.¹ In this line of thought are Western fathers like Augustine and Aquinas. Whether or not they can be said to directly followed an Aristotelian cosmology, the fixed, Ptolemaic universe may have help to frame a more mechanistic formulation for understanding the relationship of God and creation. Augustine defended the immutability of God by clearly differentiating between God's nature and his willful act of creation. In line with other Church fathers such as Athanisius and the Cappadocians "Augustine articulates the late Nicene emphasis on God's distinction from creation through a strong emphasis on divine immateriality."² For Augustine, the penetrating immanence of temporality throughout creation in an important premise. Temporality, for Augustine, implies mutability.³ Likewise, along with Origen, it is possible that Neoplatonic influences inspired a low view materiality and gave nonmateriality (i.e. immateriality) a higher value.⁴ Hence, it is vital for Augustine to delimit God's immutable, immaterial, eternality from creation's mutable, material, temporality.

Aquinas develops this further into Trinitarian light by defining the process of creation as one that is the work ad extra of an undivided, undifferentiated Trinity. Aquinas does explicate the unique involvment of each individual person which is appropriated in a given act of creation,⁵ however, despite Aquinas' particularly nuanced (and sometimes undervalued) understanding of the role of the Trinity in creation, every act is distinctively an act of the unified Trinity.⁶ Following this, in both patristic examples, the relationship between God and creation is fundamentally unifold rather than threefold. It is not "Trinitarian." In other words, creation is not integral to the self-definition of God specifically in his Trinitarianness.⁷ In Western thought following Augustine and Aquinas there exists an abstract, logical, causal relation⁸ between God as Trinity and God's uniform act of creation rather than a dynamic, tripartite, personal relation between God as Trinity and creation.⁹ Those who nowadays prefer Thomistic lines of thought such as Paul Molnar and Daniel Miller, attempt to reify traditional causal relations that push back against more contemporary work influenced by trends in liberation theology, process theology, modern physics and the like which theorize deeper forms of integration and threaten unorthodox views (i.e. for Molnar and Miller) of God's mutability and freedom of will. Clearly, these challenges faced even by Augustine and Aquinas, have perennial import for each subsequent generation of Trinitarian thought.