Trinity and Creation

Following this brief consideration Augustine and Aquinas, there lies a parallel vein within Western thought that suggests a more integrated relationship between God as Trinity and creation. This originates most cogently in the mystical strains of Late Medieval theology such as Bonaventure, and then again in 19th-20th century theology with thinkers like Karl Rahner and Denis Edwards.

Bonaventure begins his Trinitarian theology with premises that appear already simpathetic to a tacit belief in the deep inter-relationality of Trinity and creation. He appropriates and reframes the doctrine of divine simplicity as a nature which in its simplicity is inherently communicable.¹⁰ Self-communication is therefore an intrinsic quality of the divine essence. Bonaventure likewise pulls from the early Medieval, Eastern theologian Pseudo-Dionysius to postulate about the relation of goodness and love to the nature of God. Bonum diffusivum sui —because goodness is self-diffusive by nature it is freely distributed to others in relationship and therefore, is intrinsically creative in form.¹¹ Likewise, supreme love exists in mutuality between the Father and Son which is manifested via self-communication in the form of the Spirit.¹² For Bonaventure, these premises—first—undergird the metaphysical basis for the emanation of the Son and Spirit from the Father in his primacy and inascibility.¹³ And second—following Franscican tradition—it ties the foundations for the creation of the universe intimately with the manifestation of the Logos and the Spirit. As Hunt writes, "the self-expressiveness of God ad extra reflects the self-expressiveness of God ad intra."¹⁴ Bonaventure's fundamentally Trinitarian theology represents the beginnings of a truly Trinitarian theology of creation by positing a compelling metaphysical bases for the existance of God in his unified threefoldness that neatly correlates to the reasons for and existance of creation.

Rahner's seminal work on the Trinity has introduced an axiom to trinitarian theology that is, at least, a penetrating heuristic and, at most, profoundly paradigm shifting: "the 'economic' Trinity is the 'immanent' Trinity and the 'immanent' Trinity is the 'economic' Trinity."¹⁵ The question concerning the depth and verity of such an axiom has been asked fittingly already: is this analogy or correlation of mysteries?¹⁶ For the purposes of this analysis, the question could be recast: does Rahner's axiom, taken literally, have implications for the constructive integration of the Trinity and creation? Denis Edwards is one contemporary scholar who does not shy away from developing Rahner's axiom as a thoughtful approach toward correlating the mystery of God as Trinity and the origins and operations of creation. Building on Bonaventure's mystical approach, Edwards develops a Trinitarian theology that frames Christology and pneumatology in terms of their relation to both God as Trinity and creation. In so doing, he deeply integrates the reality of creation to the distinct realities of the Persons of the Trinity. There is no "buffer" between the God and creation. Rather, creatures share through the Word in the Spirit with immediacy before God—there is no intermediary despite the Creator's radical otherness.¹⁷ Edwards calls the Holy Spirit the "immanent energy of Love."¹⁸ Like Bonaventure, the perichoretic dynamism of the Trinity ad intra (circumincession for Bonaventure) is innately linked to the dynamic Trinitarian inter-relationality with and within creation and each creature: "The Spirit is the ecstatic gift of divine communion with creatures, whereby each creature exists, and whereby each creature is caught up with the dynamism of the trinitarian perichoresis."¹⁹ Conversely, the risen Christ as the self-communicated Word of God (the Logos) is divine attractor in evolutionary emergence.²⁰ Edwards and Rahner both appeal to advances in evolutionary and natural science by linking the redemptive work of Christ to intrinsic processes of developmental progress in creation. For Edwards, this is Christ as "strange attractor" in the unfolding of evolutionary emergence which correlates with Rahner's process of "active self-transcendence."²¹ This relationship is integral to the ongoing creative relationship between the Trinity ad intra and the Trinity ad extra:

The Holy Spirit can be understood as the dynamic life-giving presence of God to the whole process of the emergence of a universe, uniting it, and every part of it, to the Word in the relationship of continuous creation. It is this relationship that enables the existence of entities and their becoming. Without this relationship there is no existence and no emergence. The relationship with the Spirit enables both.²²

Following Bonaventure, Rahner and Edwards do the theological spadework for a nuanced and compelling Trinitarian theology, Christology and ecology that interconnect and posit the possibility for a God who is constituted by His temporal relations with the world and a creation that is integral to the self-definition of God as Trinity.