more on Hart, The Beauty of the infinite

Peter J. Leithart, June 07, 2005

Part II, I.1: Trinity
ii. Divine Fellowship.

In the previous section, Hart addressed one of the dangers of misreading Rahner�s rule, namely, the danger of dissolving the ontological Trinity into the economic. In this section, he discusses the opposite danger of forsaking �the economic for the immanent Trinity, by allowing some far too thoroughly developed speculative account of the Trinity to determine what in the story of Christ�s relation to the Father and the Spirit is or is not genuinely revelation, genuinely trinitarian�E(p. 168). Rahner�s rule means that �nothing can be assumed to be merely economic,�Eand this implies that there can be no final closure in our doctrine of God that would encompass and simplify the story of Jesus.

To develop this point, Hart appeals to the icon of the baptism of Jesus. This icon not only manifests the economic relations of the Triune persons, but also summarizes the whole drama of salvation and the immanent relations of the Trinity. Jesus�Edescent and ascent into the waters is a sign of his future death and resurrection, and the gift of the Spirit is a foretaste of Pentecost. But in summarizing the economy of redemption, this iconographic depiction also shows that within the eternal life of God, �in declaring himself, even in uttering himself eternally, God both addresses and responds�E(p. 168). Christ both speaks with the authority of the Father and also responds to him. In short, �If the economic Trinity is God in himself, graciously extending the everlasting �dance�Eof his love to embrace creation in its motion, then one dare not exclude from one�s understanding of the Trinity the idea, however mysterious, of a reciprocal Thou�E(p. 169). Rahner himself does not, on Hart�s view (and on mine, FWIW), accept this, reducing the persons to �a set of merely formal relations within the divine essence�E(p. 169). Hart distances this from �a purely social trinitarianism�Eas well as the notion that the Son�s response is somehow �alongside the Father�s expression of his essence in the simplicity of the eternal Logos�E yet, �one must still acknowledge this distance of address and response, this openness of shared regard�E(p. 169).

From this point, Hart launches into a critique of the idea, popular since the late 19th-century work of Theodore de Regnon, that Eastern and Western Trinitarian theology are opposed in their relative emphasis on the one and the many, that we �must choose between �Greek�Epersonalism and �Latin�Eessentialism�E(p. 170). Modern movements in Western theology, especially Barth�s refusal of �person,�Eseem to make the choice more stark than ever. Hart suggests that instead of rejecting �person�Ebecause of its associations of autonomy and independence, the exhaustive relationality of the Trinity should rather �be made the starting point for a theological assault on the modern notion of the person�E(p. 170). No more than God do human beings possess �identity apart from relation,�Ebut rather �even our �purest�Einteriority�Eis �reflexive, knowing and loving itself as expression and recognition, engaged with the world of others through memorial and desire, inward discourse and outward intention�E(pp. 170-171). Because �person�Eapplied to God �is governed entirely by the language of relations�E(p. 171), and divine �egoism�Eentirely �consist in his relatedness, his self-giving�E(p. 171). The personhood of the Triune Persons works in a language of �self-oblation, according to which each �I�Ein God is also �not I�Ebut rather Thou,�Ein which each Person makes place for the others (pp. 171-172). More daringly, Hart suggests that �in God, divine �substantiality�Eis the �effect�Eof this distance of address and response, this event of love that is personal by being prior to every self, this gift of self-offering that has already been made before any self can stand apart, individual, isolate; God IS the different modalities of replete love . . . whose relatedness is his substance�E(p. 172). All the alternatives to �person,�Ein short, fail to communicate �the immediacy, the livingness, and concreteness of the scriptural portrayal of God�E(p.171), and thus person, for all its problems is �an indispensable word�E(p. 171).

Of course, there is an analogical gap between the personhood of Father, Son and Spirit and human personhood. Human beings cannot manifest the complete and perfect perichoresis that binds together the divine persons. Our relationality is �multiple,�Esynthetic and bounded, and can only be described from multiple perspectives �Enow social, now psychological, now ontological. Hart nicely captures the difference between divine and human �circumincession�Eby referring to the �dynamic inseparability but incommensurability in us of essence and existence�Eas well as �the constant pendulation between inner and outer that constitutes our identities,�Ethe latter being �an ineffably distant analogy of that boundless bright diaphaneity of coinherence in which the exteriority of relations and interiority of identity in God are one�E(p. 173). That distinction of �pendulation�Eand �identity�Eis crucial. Our relations are always relations �over-against,�Egiven our finitude and the composite character of human life; but for God relations between Persons are simultaneously inward and exterior to each other: �In God, the �inwardness�Eof the other is the inwardness of each person, the �outwardness�Eof the other is each person�s outwardness and manifestation�E(p. 173). Thus, God is simple: �the divine simplicity is the result of the self-giving transparency and openness of infinite persons.�E At the same time, the �distinction of the persons within the one God is the result of the infinite simplicity of the divine essence�E(p. 173). Each person is �a �face,�Ea �capture,�Eof the divine essence�E(p. 174). Each Person is both �community and unity at once,�Ewith each �fully gathered and reflected in the mode of the other�E(p. 174). The Father�s being is paternal, but it is also already filial and Spiritual; mutatis mutandis for the others.

One of Hart�s key insights here is that when we forget analogy, we either lapse (anthropologically) into collectivism or solipsism, and (theologically) into tritheism or Unitarianism. He also wishes to stress that God is capable of relations with the world outside Himself because within His triune life He is eternally �othered�Eand �othering�E(p. 175).

iii. Divine Joy.
Hart returns to the baptism of Jesus at the Jordan (with also to aesthetics), emphasizing that God speaks His Word in the redemptive economy here, and that �the form of his utterance is a declaration of pleasure�E(p. 175). The Son is the Father�s joy, and the theophany manifests God as one �whose life of reciprocal �giving way�Eand �containing�E. . is also a kind of �dancing�E. . . , and the God who is TERPSICHOROS, delighting in the dance�E(p. 175). God�s life, His substance, is the dynamic interplay of �distance and the dance,�Ea coinherent unity but simultaneously �the interval of appraisal, address, recognition, and pleasure�E(p. 175). In the Spirit especially, love manifests itself as transparent �sheer delight, generosity, and desire for the other�E(p. 175).

The danger of the Augustinian notion of the Spirit as vinculum caritatis is a depersonalization of the Spirit and a mechanization of the life of God (as if the Spirit as the mutual gift of the Father and Son explains �how God works�E. When understood rightly, it �depicts the Spirit as not simply the love of the Father and Son, but also everlastingly the differentiation of that love, the third term, the outward, �straying,�Eprodigal second intonation of that love�E(p. 176). Because God is also Spirit, the love of Father and Son in its utterance and response is �also differently inflected, renewed, restored, as plenitude�E(p. 176). The Father�s regard for His image in the Son is not an infinite Narcissism; since God is also Spirit, there is a �perpetual �divergence�Eof that mutual love toward yet another.�E Thus, �the harmony of the Father and Son is not the absolute music of undifferentiated noise, but the open, diverse, and complete polyphony of Father, Son and Spirit�E(p. 176). To put it otherwise, the Spirit is the bond of love, but also �the one who always breaks the bonds of self-love, the person who from eternity assures that divine love has no single, stable center, no isolated �self�� (p. 176). Quoting Dumitru Staniloae, Hart notes that the Spirit is the site where Father and Son meet �again�Ein their mutual love for a third. Beyond �mere mutuality,�Ethe Spirit is the excess of God�s love, the sharing outward, and hence it is through the Spirit that God�s love �opens out to address freely (and so to constitute) the otherness of creation, and invest it with boundless difference, endless inflections of divine glory�E(pp. 176-177).

This is essential, Hart says, for grasping the distinctive Christian notion of beauty. God is not only beauty, but is beautiful, that is to say, His beauty is not mere form, ideal, �remote, cold, characterless or abstract�Enor even �merely absolute, unitary, and formless.�E Rather, it is formed beauty, the beauty of a formed infinite, the �supereminennt fullness of all form, transcendently determinate, always possessed of his Logos�E(p. 177). And God�s beauty is also �delight and the object of delight, the shared gaze of love that belongs to the Persons of the Trinity�E(p. 177). Hart develops this point in a few critical sentences: �True beauty is not the idea of the beautiful, a static archetype in the �mind�Eof God, but is an infinite �music,�Edrama, art, completed in �Ebut never �bounded�Eby �Ethe termless dynamism of the Trinity�s life; God is boundless, and so is never a boundary; his music possesses the richness of every transition, internal, measure, variation �Eall dancing and delight. And because he is beautiful, being abounds with difference: shape, variety, manifold relation. Beauty is the distinction of the different, the otherness of the other, the true form of distance�E(p. 177). The Spirit who reflects and evokes love also opens God�s joy to the �otherness of what is not divine, of creation, without estranging it from its divine �logic�E and the Spirit communicates difference as primordially the gift of beauty, because his difference within the Trinity is the happiness that perfects desire, the fulfillment of love�E(p. 177). Citing Jonathan Edwards, Hart concludes that the Spirit is �the beautifier,�Ethe Person �who bestows radiance, shape, clarity, and enticing splendor upon what God creates and embraces in the superabundance of his love�E(p. 178).