以下是三篇短文,先贴出来,作为后续讨论的铺垫.
http://www.ligonier.org/blog/whats-difference-between-ontological-and-economic-trinity/
What’s the Difference between the Ontological and the Economic Trinity?
FROM R.C. Sproul Aug 15, 2014 Category: Articles
Do you know the meaning of the word Trinity? In all likelihood, most of those
reading this are familiar with this word and its meaning in theology. But
what if I were to ask you to distinguish between the “ontological Trinity”
and the “economic Trinity”? If I said, “Please describe for me the
difference between the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity,” could
you do it? The distinction is very important.
Ontology is the study of being. When we talk about the ontological Trinity,
we are referring to the fact that God is three in one. There are three
persons in the Godhead—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—who
together are one being. The ontological structure of the Trinity is a unity.
When we speak of the economic Trinity, we are dealing with roles. We
distinguish among the three persons of the Godhead in terms of what we call
the economy of God. It is the Father who sends the Son into the world for our
redemption. It is the Son who acquires our redemption for us. It is the
Spirit who applies that redemption to us. We do not have three gods. We have
one God in three persons, and the three persons are distinguished in terms of
what They do.
In orthodox Christianity, we say that the Son is equal to the Father in
power, in glory, and in being. This discussion rests heavily on John 1:1,
where we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.” This verse indicates that the Father and the Word
(the Son) are different and are one. In one sense, the Son and the Father are
identical. In another sense, They are distinguished. From all eternity the
Father sends the Son, and the Son is subordinate to the Father. The Son doesn
’t send the Father; the Father sends the Son. So even though the Father and
the Son are equal in power, glory, and being, nevertheless there is an
economic subordination of the Son to the Father.
That is what Jesus said in John 5:19-93. He declared: “I don’t do anything
on My own. I do what the Father tells Me to do. I do what the Father sent Me
to do. I watch the Father, and I do what the Father does. The Father is
preeminent. The Father is the One to whom I am obedient and subordinate.” He
even affirmed that He could not do anything of Himself, only what He saw the
Father do. Out of His love for the Son, the Father showed Him all the things
that He Himself did. Then Jesus stated that the Father would show Him even
greater things, so they should expect His works to become greater. In this
context, Jesus specifically mentioned the raising of the dead.
以下是BBC对于这两个词汇的解释.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/beliefs/trinity_1.shtml#h5
Essential and Economic Trinity
Some of the problems of the Trinity arise from confusion between the internal
life and nature of the Trinity itself and the external life or
"self-revelation" of God. The only thing humankind can directly know of God
is his external life.
There are two ways of looking at God in Trinitarian terms:
The Essential (also called Immanent or Ontological) Trinity looks at the
essence or substance of God; at what God is actually like in himself as he
stands outside the created universe. It's how God appears to God.
Warning: This is an unusual use of the word immanent, which Christians often
use to refer to God's actions in the world.
The Economic Trinity is concerned with humanity's experience of God; in human
lives, in creation, in salvation; and derives the nature of God from that
experience. This is how God appears to humanity.
Some theologians point out that only the Son and the Spirit are directly met
in the Economic Trinity.
The Economic and Essential Trinities are not two separate entities - just two
ways of looking at God.
Are these two the same? Victor Shepherd (Professor of Systematic Theology at
Tyndale University College, Toronto) put the question like this:
Is God's revelation merely the "face" God wears as he turns to us, or is it
who God is in himself?
Is his face something he merely displays, or does his face unambiguously
disclose his heart?
Victor Shepherd
The Western Churches believe that they are pretty much the same and that
human beings meet God fully and completely as he is through his actions.
The 'economic' Trinity is the 'immanent' Trinity and the 'immanent' Trinity
is the 'economic' Trinity.
Karl Rahner, The Trinity, 1970
To put it another way: God's actions reveal who God is. And since God acts as
a threefold God, God himself must be threefold.
Some Western writers hint at the idea that there is no more to God than his
actions in the world.
The Eastern Churches disagree, and teach there is much more to God than human
experience can reveal.
以下是维基百科的资料.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity#Economic_and_immanent_Trinity
Economic and immanent Trinity[edit]
The economic Trinity refers to the acts of the triune God with respect to the
creation, history, salvation, the formation of the Church, the daily lives of
believers, etc. and describes how the Trinity operates within history in
terms of the roles or functions performed by each person of the Trinity—
God's relationship with creation. The ontological (or essential or immanent)
Trinity speaks of the interior life of the Trinity[John 1:1–2]—the
reciprocal relationships of Father, Son, and Spirit to each other without
reference to God's relationship with creation.
The ancient Nicene theologians argued that everything the Trinity does is
done by Father, Son, and Spirit working in unity with one will. The three
persons of the Trinity always work inseparably, for their work is always the
work of the one God. The Son's will cannot be different from the Father's
because it is the Father's. They have but one will as they have but one
being. Otherwise they would not be one God. According to Phillip Cary, if
there were relations of command and obedience between the Father and the Son,
there would be no Trinity at all but rather three gods.[62] On this point St.
Basil observes "When then He says, 'I have not spoken of myself', and again,
'As the Father said unto me, so I speak', and 'The word which ye hear is not
mine, but [the Father's] which sent me', and in another place, 'As the Father
gave me commandment, even so I do', it is not because He lacks deliberate
purpose or power of initiation, nor yet because He has to wait for the
preconcerted key-note, that he employs language of this kind. His object is
to make it plain that His own will is connected in indissoluble union with
the Father. Do not then let us understand by what is called a 'commandment' a
peremptory mandate delivered by organs of speech, and giving orders to the
Son, as to a subordinate, concerning what He ought to do. Let us rather, in a
sense befitting the Godhead, perceive a transmission of will, like the
reflexion of an object in a mirror, passing without note of time from Father
to Son."[63]
A Greek fresco of Athanasius of Alexandria, the chief architect of the Nicene
Creed, formulated at Nicaea.
In explaining why the Bible speaks of the Son as being subordinate to the
Father, the great theologian Athanasius argued that scripture gives a "double
account" of the son of God—one of his temporal and voluntary subordination
in the incarnation, and the other of his eternal divine status.[64] For
Athanasius, the Son is eternally one in being with the Father, temporally and
voluntarily subordinate in his incarnate ministry. Such human traits, he
argued, were not to be read back into the eternal Trinity.
Like Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers also insisted there was no economic
inequality present within the Trinity. As Basil wrote: "We perceive the
operation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be one and the same, in no
respect showing differences or variation; from this identity of operation we
necessarily infer the unity of nature."[65]
Augustine also rejected an economic hierarchy within the Trinity. He claimed
that the three persons of the Trinity "share the inseparable equality one
substance present in divine unity".[66] Because the three persons are one in
their inner life, this means that for Augustine their works in the world are
one. For this reason, it is an impossibility for Augustine to speak of the
Father commanding and the Son obeying as if there could be a conflict of
wills within the eternal Trinity.
John Calvin also spoke at length about the doctrine of the Trinity. Like
Athanasius and Augustine before him, he concluded that Philippians 2:4–11
prescribed how scripture was to be read correctly. For him the Son's
obedience is limited to the incarnation and is indicative of his true
humanity assumed for human salvation.[67]
Much of this work is summed up in the Athanasian Creed. This creed stresses
the unity of the Trinity and the equality of the persons. It ascribes equal
divinity, majesty, and authority to all three persons. All three are said to
be "almighty" and "Lord" (no subordination in authority; "none is before or
after another" (no hierarchical ordering); and "none is greater, or less than
another" (no subordination in being or nature)).
Catholic theologian Karl Rahner went so far as to say:
The "economic" Trinity is the "immanent" Trinity and the "immanent" Trinity
is the "economic" Trinity.[68]