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RS 25.2 (2006) 161-190 do:10.1558/rsth.2006.25.2.

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Religious Studies and 1 heology (print) ISSN 0892-2922 Religious Studies and Theology (online) ISSN 1747-5414

God as Person: Karl Barth and Karl Rahner on Divine and Human Personhood
MARK S. M. SCOTT Harvard University Abstract

This article explores the concept of divine personhood in modern theology, particularly in the theology of Karl Barth (1886-1968) and Karl Rahner (1904-1984). It systematically explicates what it means to call God a 'Person. After contextualizing the contemporary debate on divine personhood by reference to the work of John Zizioulas, it interfaces Karl Barth and Karl Rahner s conception of divine subjectivity and its anthropological implications. It argues that the dynamics of divine personhood entaiL relationality, both internal (the Trinity) and external (creation). Moreover, it argues that divine subjectivity provides the modelfor human subjectivity. Christian theology posits the subjectivity of divinity: it conceives of God as a Ihou not an it, as a person not a metaphysical force or abstract principle.1 Christian praxis also presupposes the personhood of God. When believers cry out to heaven in moments of despair or joy they believe that someone, not something, hears their prayer.2 But what exactly does 'personhood' and 'subjectivity' signify when applied to God? Despite its theological centrality, the precise meaning of divine subjectivity has been largely neglected in theological scholarship. It is often bypassed as a self-evident presupposition that needs no systematic explication. In this article I remedy this oversight by exploring the dynamics of divine personhood, focusing particularly on the theology of Karl Barth (1886-1968) and Karl Rahner (1904-1984). Following the insights of these two seminal theologians, I argue that divine personhood entails relationality, both internal (the Trinity) and external (creation).3 Moreover, in a corollary move, I argue that divine

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personhood functions as the precondition and model for human subjectivity. At the outset I contextualize my study within the contemporary debate on divine personhood, which has been dominated by the work of John Zizioulas. Following this I analyze Karl Barths conception of divine and human personhood in light of the theme of relationality. Next, I critically engage Karl Rahner s discussion of divine and human personhood. In the penultimate section I interface their ideas of divine and human personhood, underscore the salient similarities and differences, and assess their coherence. Lastly, I forward a theological anthropology based on the concept of the imago Dei that defines human personhood as being in relation, not as relation. Divine Personhood: The Contemporary Debate Before we proceed to our analysis of Barth and Rahner, it will be instructive to briefly consider the contemporary theological debate on divine personhood. Greek Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas (Metropolitan of Pergamon) has treated the concept of personhood extensively in his writings, especially in his highly influential Being as Communion (Zizoulas 1985, 27-65). He famously argues that relationality, not substance, constitutes divine ontology: "The being of God is a relational being: without the concept of communion it would not be possible to speak of the being of God" (1985, 17). The divine substance cannot be prioritized over or abstracted from the relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus, the intra-Trinitarian relations ground the divine life and entail divine relationality: The Holy Trinity is primordial omo\o%icd\ concept and not a notion which is added to the divine substance or rather which follows it, as is the case in the dogmatic manuals of the West and, alas, in those of the East in modern times. The substance of God, "God," has no ontological content, no true being, apart from communion. (Zizoulas 1985, 17). The concept of personhood originates from the Greek church fathers, according to Zizioulas: "The person both as a concept and as a living reality is purely the product of patristic thought" (1985, 27). The no Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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tion that the West begins with the unity of God and then proceeds to the plurality while the East begins with the plurality and proceeds to the unity has been problematized in recent scholarship. In Re-thinking Gregory ofNyssa Sarah Coakley and other scholars refer to this model as the "de Rgnon paradigm" and trace its uncritical infiltration into modern dogmengeschichte, including Zizioulass work (Coakley 2003, 1-6; Barnes 1995, 51-79).4 While it is not our task to adjudicate this debate, it is important to note that the perceived disjunction between the West's emphasis on divine unity and substance and the East's emphasis on divine plurality and personhood is misconceived. Lucian Turcescu argues that Zizioulass ontology of personhood derives from a misreading of the Cappadocians, especially Gregory ofNyssa (Turcescu 2003, 2005). While I would not want to elide the substantive differences between Eastern and Western theology, I would challenge the viability of the categories of'East' and 'West' as reified monolithic entities. There are many points of theological continuity that undermine this false disjunction. Nevertheless, key differences remain.5 Zizioulas explicitly grounds the personal being of God in the Father: "Thus God as personas hypostasis of the Fathermakes the one divine substance to be that which it is: the one God" (1985, 41). But since the Father causes both the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit, the Father s personal being engenders eternal divine relations. For Zizioulas, the Father, Son, and Spirit are constituted by communion: "The person cannot exist without communion; but every form of communion which denies or suppresses the person, is inadmissible" (1985, 18). No ontological necessity forces the Father to exist in communion with the Son and Holy Spirit. Rather, the Father freely embraces relationality: "For this communion is a product of freedom as a result not of the substance of God but of a person, the Father ...who is Trinity not because the divine nature is ecstatic but because the Father as a person freely wills this communion" (1985, 44). The affirmation of the irreducibility of the divine persons within their communion will inform our concluding reflections on human personhood. Zizioulas applies his divine ontology to human personhood, arguing that "being is constituted as communion" for humans as well

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(1985, 101). Human personhood, especially vis--vis the church, can only be realized through freedom and relationality: "Man is free only within communion" (1985, 122). Thus, there can be no "I" without a "Thou" (Buber 2000). In the conclusion I will develop these theological insights.

Karl Barth on Divine Personhood


In Church Dogmatics III \ Barth (1957) treats the systematically related questions of theological epistemology and theological ontology.6 It is within his treatment of the latter in 28.1 that Barth engages the issue of divine personhood.7 Who (we cannot ask "what", as we shall see), then, is God? For Barth, God reveals the divine being exclusively through Gods action in salvation history: "God is who He is in His works" (11/1, 260). Furthermore, God's being is "being in person," that is, God exists as the knowing, willing, and acting "I" (11/1, 268). God's being in person means that God encompasses all reality precisely as a person. God consists of the "unity of spirit and nature," a unity that constitutes God as an "I", not an "It" nor a "He", since these pronouns signify created things and persons (11/1, 268). At the core of divine subjectivity is the freedom to be an "I" independent of all other persons: "It is the I who knows about Himself, who Himself wills, Himself disposes and distinguishes, and in this very act of His omnipotence is wholly self-sufficient" (11/1, 268). For Barth, the affirmation of God's personhood follows as a corollary to the affirmation of God's actualism, i.e., Gods being in act and in relation.8 Moreover, since personhood consists of "being in act" and since this state of being applies exclusively to the Trinitarian being of God, it follows that personhood can only be ascribed to God "properly and strictly" (11/1, 271). God does not exist on a continuum of personhood with human beings. On the contrary, God stands alone as the only person capable of realizing his personhood in his free act, unaffected by external forces and internal impediments: But this person is the divine person, whom we must see at once to be distinguished from other persons by the fact that He is self-motivated person. No other being exists absolutely in its act. No other being is Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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absolutely its own, conscious, willed and executed decision. (11/1,271) Humans cannot constitute their own personhood by sheer determination. Our ability to actualize our subjectivity is attenuated by a myriad of internal and external constraints. God, by contrast, fully actuates his being in his act without any impairment or delimiting factors. In this sense God's personhood is unique: Now, if the being of a person is a being in act, and if, in the strict and proper sense, being in act can be ascribed only to God, then it follows that by the concept of the being of a person, in the strict and proper sense, we can understand only the being of God. Being in its own, conscious, willed and executed decision, and therefore personal being, is the being of God in the nature of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Originally and properly there is no other beside or outside Him. Everything beside and outside Him is only secondary. (11/1,271). In 28.2 Barth develops his inquiry further by reflecting on the nature of God's personhood, that is, by asking "what makes God God" (11/1, 273)? On the basis of God's action in history, Barth avers that "God is He who, without having to do so, seeks and creates fellowship between Himself and us" (11/1, 273). Barth upholds divine freedom and sovereignty over creation by affirming the possibility of God without creation, but not vice versa: "God could be alone; the world cannot" (II1/I, 7). For Barth, creation is the outpouring of the superabundance of the divine essence, which reflects God's free decision to forgo divine solitude in order to love that which God brings into being (Ill/I, 15; 11/1, 273). The overflow of God's essence engenders creation and redemption and reveals God as the one who loves: "That He is Godthe Godhead of Godconsists in the fact that He loves" (11/1, 275). God's love does not depend on humanity's worthiness or innate capacity for love, but rather on Gods being: "But God loves because He loves; because this act is His being, His essence and His nature" (11/1, 279). Hence, God's being and loving action are identical: "'God is' means 'God loves'" (11/1, 283). This assertion constitutes the systematic center of all theology, since all other assertions merely restate Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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and amplify the "basic definition" of God as the one who loves in freedom (11/1,284). God s desire for fellowship with humanity flows from his being as the fellowship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: "In Himself He does not will to exist for Himself, to exist alone.. .He does not exist in solitude but in fellowship" (11/1, 275).9 The inner life of God, then, determines the act of God in salvation history. Since God is fellowship, it follows that God will seek and create fellowship with humanity. God's desire for fellowship with humanity, then, ensues from God s being as fellowship: "Therefore what He seeks and creates between Himself and us is in fact nothing else but what He wills and completes and therefore is in Himself" (11/1, 275). It does not follow, however, that God's triune nature somehow compels him to seek and create fellowship with humanity. For Barth, God would be truly and fully God without this relationship, but God does not in fact will to be God without humanity: "He does not will to be Himself in any other way than He is in this relationship" (11/1, 274). This, for Barth, is the decisive aspect of God's personhood that shapes all other theological assertions. God's desire for mutual encounter with humanity issues in the definitive statement that God is the one who loves in freedom: "He does not will to be without us, and He does not will that we should be without Him" (11/1, 274). According to Barth, therefore, divine personhood consists of the being of God in free relation with himself (the Trinity) and with the world. Barth rejects the characterization of personal language for God in scripture as "childish or nave or anthropomorphic" (11/1, 286). Rather, he argues that it authentically expresses the personal character of the divine: "God is not something, but someone" (11/1, 286). In theology, then, the correct question is not "What is God?" but "Who is God": Properly speaking the idea of God can have only this divine Subject as its content and the divine predicate must be sought only in this Subject as such, outside of which it can have no existence and cannot therefore become the content of an idea. (11/1,300) God does not possess divine predicates, such as love; rather, God exists as the agent of these attributes. Barth posits that the divine sub Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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ject lives (God's being as act) and loves (God's being as relational) as a person. It must be emphasized, however, that God does this freely: "God's being as He who lives and loves is being in freedom...In this way, as the free person, He is distinguished from other persons" (11/1, 301). As we will see momentarily, an innumerable set of conditioning factors restrict the full and free expression of human personhood. God, by contrast, does not admit of any limitation and is free in the positive sense of being completely grounded, determined and moved by himself (II/l, 301).10 The Theological Grounding of Human Personhood Throughout 28 Barth delineates the anthropological implications of divine subjectivity. He begins by distinguishing between divine and human personhood in order to set them in right relation. In contrast to human persons, God is entirely self-motivated and self-actualized in the sense of being able to realize his being in his act without any impediments: "No other being is absolutely its own, conscious, willed and executed decision" (II/l, 271). Only God is a person, strictly speaking, because only God is being in act. Conversely, humans are persons only by analogy: "It is not God who is a person by extension but we" (II/l, 272). We do not run the risk of "personalizing" God when we affirm God s subjectivity, but rather of personalizing ourselves when we affirm our subjectivity, according to Barth: "The real person is not man but God" (II/l, 272). In the first place, then, Barth attenuates the reality of human subjectivity vis--vis God: "We are thinking and speaking only in feeble images and echoes of the person of God when we describe man as a person" (II/l, 285). Humans are indeed persons, but since we are dependent on God and conditioned by other persons and circumstances we are not able to actualize our decision and will in reality. Nevertheless, we are persons "by extension" insofar as God enables us to construct our subjectivity through our free activity: "He is the one, original and authentic person through whose creative power and will alone all other persons are and are sustained" (II/l, 301). Thus, human personhood dimly reflects divine personhood, existing only derivatively as a feeble shadow of the full reality of God's being as person. Moreover, we apprehend the meaning of our personhood from God, Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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who perfectly exists as the paradigmatic person. In ourselves we do not know what it meanswe come to recognize it only in God: "What do we know of our own selfhood," Barth asks, "before God has given us His name, and named us by our name" (II/l, 285)? Barth defines a person as "a knowing, willing, and acting I" and immediately limits the proper ascription of this predicate to God, who is "the One who loves and as such (loving in His own way) is the person" (II/l, 284). God creates the possibility for human subjectivity by loving humanity. When God seeks and creates fellowship with us he confers upon us the ability to be persons by reciprocating God's love: "Man is not a person, but he becomes one on the basis that he is loved by God and can love God in return" (II/l, 284). We discover the true nature of subjectivity in God's action in salvation history, not in ourselves: "Man finds what a person is when he finds it in the person of God and his own being as a person in the gift of fellowship afforded him by God in person" (II/l, 284). At the heart of human subjectivity, then, is fellowship with God. Our worth as persons derives from God's willingness to enter into relationship with us, which enables us to be in relation with him. Human subjectivity for Barth, then, is essentially mimetic. We become persons by mirroring God's love: "Therefore to be a person means really and fundamentally to be what God is, to be, that is, the One who loves in God's way" (II/l, 284). We can only be true "Is" as we reflect God's knowing, willing, and acting within our creaturely context: "Thus to know, to will, and to act like God as the One who loves in Himself and in His relationship to His creation means (in confirmation of His I-ness) to be a person" (II/l, 285). To know, will, and act like God means to love as God loves, i.e., without ulterior motives: "For He alone is the One who loves without any other good, without any other ground, without any other aim" (II/l, 284). God's knowing, willing, and acting grounds human personhood by revealing its true meaning and possibility. This grounding of human subjectivity lies not in an abstract or idealized notion of divine personhood but in God's actual activity in salvation history: "He is the real person and not merely the ideal" (II/l, 285). Hence, we do not anthropomorphize God by calling him a person; rather we acknowledge God as the source Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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of our derived and dependent personhood. "He is not the personified but the personifying personthe person on the basis of whose prior existence alone we can speak (hypothetically) of other persons different from Him" (II/l, 285).

Karl Rahner on Divine Personhood in the Foundations


Karl Rahner identifies subjectivity as one of the primary features of the Christian doctrine of God: "The statement that God is a person, that he is a personal God, is one of the fundamental Christian assertions about God" (1978, 73). Though fundamental, the doctrine of a personal God nevertheless engenders numerous theological difficulties.11 How does one distinguish between personhood vis--vis God's singular subjectivity versus the three persons of the Trinity, for example? Is there a correspondence between God's generic personhood and God's Trinitarian personhood? Rahner isolates these two modes of divine personhood, beginning his discussion of the "the personal being of God" by examining divine personhood generically: "When we say that God is a person, and this in a sense which as yet has nothing to do with the question about the so-called three persons in God, then the question about the personal character of God becomes a twofold question" (1978, 73). Rahner thus helpfully distinguishes between the two modes of divine personhood without explicating how they interrelate. Setting aside this problem, Rahner then asks whether personhood relates to God's transcendence or immanence: "We can ask whether God in his own self must be called a person; and we can ask whether he is person only in relation to us, and whether in his own self he is hidden from us in his absolute and transcendent distance" (1978, 73). This question turns on the distinction between God in se and God pro nobis, that is, God's internal relationship to Godself and God's external relation to salvation history. If personhood applies to both God's transcendence and immanence, then humans may encounter God relationally. Conversely, if personhood applied only to God's immanence, then authentic encounter would be precluded, since God would be subjectively absent from creation, even while remaining functionally active:

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Then we would have to say that he is a person, but that he does not by any means for this reason enter into that personal relationship to us which we presuppose in our religious activity, in prayer, and in our turning to God in faith, hope and love. (Rahner1978, 73) For Rahner, then, divine personhood also involves the problem of the relation between God's transcendence and immanence. Despite these theological complications, Rahner avers that the doctrine of God as person is "really self-evident" (1978, 73). He argues that since human personhood self-evidently exists and since God grounds all human existence, it follows that human personhood must be grounded in divine personhood. God's personhood, then, establishes human personhood: "God is a person, is the absolute person who stands in absolute freedom vis--vis everything which he establishes as different from himself" (1978, 73). This divine attribute coexists with the other attributes that follow from the human experience of transcendence: "This assertion is really self-evident, just as when we say that God is the absolute being, the absolute ground, the absolute mystery, the absolute good, the absolute and ultimate horizon within which human existence is lived out in freedom, knowledge, and action" (1978, 73). As the ground of all reality God possesses the existential attributes he creates to a superlative degree. God s personhood exists prior to human personhood "in absolute fullness and purity," that is, in an unalloyed manner (1978, 73). Rahner claims that God's personhood functions as the condition of the possibility of human personhood; God, as the archetypal person, grounds all other persons. But Rahner carefully distinguishes the way in which God and humans subsist as persons. First, he distinguishes between finite human subjectivity and God's infinite subjectivity. Second, human persons are individuals who form their personhood in relation to other persons, who are also "individual and limited" (1978, 73). But because God exists as the absolutely unique and infinite person, God cannot be an individual person, since that would imply that there are other persons on equal footing with God who determine divine personhood: "And it is self-evident that such an individual personhood Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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cannot belong to God," Rahner asserts, "who is the absolute ground of everything in radical originality" (1978, 74).12 Third, while God constitutes his own personhood with unfettered and unqualified freedom, human persons are constrained by "a thousand conditions and necessities" (1978, 74). While we are in some sense free, we must recognize that pre-existing social and personal conditions co-determine our subjectivity. Divine personhood, then, must be sharply distinguished from the finite, individual, and conditioned aspects of human personhood. Personhood, as a "transcendental concept," applies properly to God and only analogously to humans (1978, 74). It follows, according to Rahner, that humans can only apprehend the nature of personhood by allowing their comprehension to "flow into the holy, ineffable and incomprehensible mystery" (1978, 74). All language about God ultimately fails to capture the divine essence. Yet, although humans can only truly know what personhood means for them and not for God, this attribute may nevertheless be legitimately predicated of God: "If anything at all can be predicated of God, then the concept of 'personhood' has to be predicated of him" (1978, 74). For Rahner, God is a person, but divine personhood can only be partly understood and in the end recedes from human apprehension into the impenetrable horizon of mystery: "Obviously, the statement that 'God is a person' can be asserted of God and is true of God only if, in asserting and understanding this statement, we open it to the ineffable darkness of the holy mystery" (1978, 74). But the underlying mystery of the assertion does not give the philosopher or theologian license to "arbitrarily" define its meaning or, conversely, to leave it entirely undetermined. Rather, humanity's "historical experience" of God determines the content of God's personhood for us. Rahner specifically enumerates three existential areas where God personally encounters humanity: "In our individual histories, in the depths of our conscience, and in the whole history of the human race" (1978, 74). The formal concept of divine personhood receives its content in these three divine-human encounters. We therefore encounter God in the depths of our existence and through this transcendental experience we arrive at secure knowledge Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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of God's subjectivity Although divine personhood, as a "transcendental concept," resists concrete specification, its "formal emptiness and empty formality" does not preclude its theological explication, despite the ontological and epistemological difficulties involved (1978, 75). Rahner cautions against making the transcendental nature of divine personhood a "false god" by denying the possibility of personal encounter with this utterly distant Other (1978, 75). Christian theology presupposes God's personal encounter with us in prayer, our personal histories, and the history of God's revelation to humanity. When laypersons testify to God's personal presence in moments of desperation or joy they may not comprehend the theological nuances of the doctrine of God they presuppose, but they nonetheless rightly grasp the personal character of the divine-human encounter. Since theological knowledge rests on humanity's existential structure, it follows that anthropomorphic conceptions of God have some theological merit: "From this perspective [that is, the experiential basis of theological epistemology] a certain religious naivete, which understands the personhood of God almost in a categorical sense, has its justification" (1978, 75). This is not to say, however, that divine personhood should be conceived of anthropomorphically. It simply affirms the existential reality of God's personal encounter with humanity. Rahner distinguishes his doctrine of God as person from various impersonal theologies. As the ground of humanity's "spiritual personhood" God reveals himself to us as a person. An "unconscious and impersonal cosmic law" cannot ground human subjectivity. The human spirit experiences itself "as being given to itself from another," that is, another who also possesses a subjective consciousness. For this reason Rahner rejects all impersonal doctrines of God. Therefore God is not "an unconscious and impersonal structure of things, a source which empties itself out without possessing itself...a blind, primordial ground of the world which cannot look at us even if it wants to" (1978, 75). For Rahner, God is a person, not an abstract force or impersonal principle. Hence, human subjectivity finds its source in a personal God, a God who "looks at us" and whose free and absolute self-possession grounds all human subjectivity. Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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In the first volume of the Theological Investigations Rahner explores the meaning of $ (God) in the New Testament. Within this discussion he devotes a major subsection to the idea of "God as Person" (Rahner 1961, 104-17). In contrast to the philosophical style of the Foundations of the Christian Faith, Rihner here adopts a more exegetical tone. He begins by noting that from the very inception of the Christian faith God's personal being was considered to be a "living reality," as is evidenced by the numerous prayers in the New Testament (1961, 104). In "primitive Christianity" God's personhood was taken for granted as an irrefutable datum of experience. The theological epistemology of the early disciples was grounded not in the "theoretical study of the world" but in an experiential encounter with "God's living activity" (1961, 104). On the basis of this encounter they became intimately aware of God's existence as a TIJOU, not an It: "The God of the New Testament is a God whom human beings may address as Thou, in a way in which only a personal being can be addressed as Thou" (1961, 1045). This doctrine of God stands in diametrical relation to the Greek apprehension of 08OS (God) as a predicate whose subject is the whole numinous cosmos (including the gods), not the one God: "By 0EO (God) the Greeks did not mean the unity of a definite personality in the monotheistic sense, but rather the unity of the religious world, clearly felt as one in spite of its multiplicity" (1961, 90). New Testament theolog)7 does cohere, however, with the Old Testament conception of God as Yahweh, i.e., "the definite Person with a proper name who actually intervenes in the history of his people and of all men by his own free will" (1961, 92). The underlying presupposition of the earliesc Christian theology, then, is the reality of God's personhood and its impact on everyday affairs. According to Rahner, there are four primary aspects of divine personhood: "God is he who acts; he who is free; he who acts in a historical dialogue with human persons; and he who in the true sense tells us about his 'attributes'which would otherwise remain hiddenonly through his activity" (196L 105). With respect to the first aspect of divine personhood, Rahner avers that God's actions are fundamentally Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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salvific: "The New Testament is strongly conscious of a sharply defined saving activity of God within the whole of human history" (1961, 106). God s reconciling work by which he calls all to come into communion with himself becomes apprehensible not through "some metaphysical knowledge of God's necessary goodness" but from God's historical and free election of all nations through Jesus Christ (1961, 106-7). Thus, God is he who acts to save his people. God is the God who sets the captives free by liberating the oppressed and saving the sinful. God's salvific act in history is personal. In other words, God does not save through impersonal processes but through specific events and through a particular person: Christ. The second aspect of God's personhood is freedom: "This God who acts in nature and in human history is one who acts freely" (1961, 107-8). God s activity is "voluntary and free," arising not from the sum total of chaotic contingencies but from "God's spontaneous resolution" (1961, 108). Above time and matter, God is not determined by any external factors. As the divine person God, who creates all reality, is not reducible to the natural world but exists distinct from it while simultaneously grounding it. Since God creates "out of nothing (ex nihilo)" (Rm. 4:17) he exercises complete freedom and autonomy over creation and thus cannot be susceptible to any constraints (1961, 107). Hence, God is he who acts freely by creating and saving the world without any internal or external necessity. It follows, Rahner argues, that God's activity in the world cannot be reduced to its inner structure ( la process theology) or its causal interconnections: "God's activity is not just another word for the world-process, his will is not just another word for 'fate'" (1961, 108). Rather, New Testament people experienced God's activity as "free irruptions into the historical course of the world, novel and unexpected and extrinsic to the world's immanent dynamism" (1961, 108). God does not act as an invisible force animating history and creating the future through natural processes that are reducible to the inherent structure of the world. Rather, God acts in unexpected ways that do not necessarily cohere with or even conform to natural laws (e.g., miracles). The third aspect of God's personhood is relationality: "In the third Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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place God shows himself as person in that he deals with man in an historical dialogue, that he allows man, his creature, really to be a person too" (1961, 110). Rahner illustrates this third aspect by contrasting it with a "purely metaphysical" doctrine of God as the "ultimate cause" of all reality. A theological epistemology that proceeds from the empirical world to a description of God as the highest of a given reality runs the risk of making the world merely "a pure function of God," that is, a "pure expression and objectivization" of the ultimate cause of reality. Metaphysics on its own, then, fails to apprehend the dialogical character of the divine-human encounter. This dialogue does not entail a loss of transcendence, since God enables it and creation remains wholly dependent on God even while God gives humanity a "genuine independence" to respond (1961, 110). God empowers the human spirit to say "yes" or "no" to God in freedom and this relative independence constitutes the core of human personhood. Thus, we are persons insofar as we have the freedom to make authentic choices. We are not, Rahner avers, automatons or marionettes. On the contrary, we are persons able to enter into a "two-sided personal relationship" by exercising our free will by responding to God in an authentic personal encounter (1961, 110). The fourth aspect of God's personhood is the divine attributes. Before we can understand God's attributes we must know God as a person. Only then can we know not "what God is, but as whom he wishes freely to show himself with regard to the world" (1961, 112). Rahner argues that attributes apply more to things than to people. In relation to the world God does not have attributes but "freely and personally adopted attitudes" (1961, 112). These attitudes become reflected in the metaphysical structure of reality, but they are not tantamount to them. The key question is not the identity of the eternal inner being of God but the identity of God as revealed in salvation history: "The existentially personal and active character of God's behavior, in contrast to some fixed metaphysical attribute of his essence, is just as clear when he is called good, merciful, loving, and so on" (1961, 114). The New Testament does, of course, speak of the divine nature or divinity, that is, the essential or "properly metaphysical attributes of God's nature"

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(1961, 112). But the theological knowledge culled from the natural world pertains to God's essence rather than God's existence. In salvation history, however, the numerous attributes of God "acquire new harmonics," becoming personal intimations of a personal God rather than impersonal denials of imperfections and affirmations of superlative being (1961, 112). The Theological Grounding o f Human Personhood In his opening chapter entitled "The Hearer of the Message" Rahner (1978) affirms human subjectivity as foundational to the Christian faith: "With regard to the presupposition of the revealed message of Christianity, the first thing to be said about man is that he is person and subject" (1978, 26). Only a subject can enter into a relationship with God, pray, accept salvation, and enjoy God's presence. In contrast to those empirical and regional anthropologies that reduce human subjectivity to our social, historical, and physiological location, Rahner's theological anthropology accents our transcendental sense of being more than "a product of the world": "But in the midst of these origins into which he seems to dissolve...man experiences himself as person and subject" (1978, 28). Rahner argues that we experience ourselves as subjects when we know ourselves to be "the product of what is radically foreign [to us]" (1978, 29). We know the origins and causes of our identity and realize that they cannot fully explain us. We cannot be constructed from our background because we are more than the sum of these conditions. Paradoxically, in questioning the underlying causes of our subjectivity we transcend the empirical and discreet aspects of our identity. This self-reflexivity constitutes us as persons, in contrast to finite systems: "A finite system cannot confront itself in its totality...It does not ask questions about itself. It is not a subject" (1978, 30). Human personhood, then, entails self-awareness and self-possession: "Being a person, then, means the self-possession of a subject as such in a conscious and free relationship to the totality of itself" (1978, 30). Whereas a rock cannot consider itself as a self, humans can reflect on the status and meaning of their selfhood. Self-relatedness or self-possession denotes the human experience of Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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man as "having to do with himself" as the "subjectivity of the multiple objectivities" (Rahner 1978, 30). In considering ourselves as the totality of antecedent conditions we take responsibility for ourselves. Even if we wanted to deny all responsibility for ourselves, Rahner avers, we would be doing this as knowing, willing agents, i.e., as persons. When we place ourselves in question and confront the present and future possibilities of our lives we exhibit our self-possession and thus our responsibility for ourselves: To say that man is person and subject, therefore, means first of all that man is someone who cannot be derived, who cannot be produced completely from other elements at our disposal. He is that being who is responsible for himself. (Rahner 1978, 31) Our self-presence, then, reveals our status as transcendent beings. By "placing everything in question" and being open to "everything and anything" we experience ourselves as "transcendent being, as spirit" (Rahner 1978, 31-2). Transcendence in this context does not denote the metaphysical concept as an object of reflection but the existential background of all human thought and action: It is rather the a priori openness of the subject to being as such, which is present precisely when a person experiences himself as involved in the multiplicity of cares and concerns and fears and hopes of his everyday world. (Rahner 1978, 35) Rahner observes that people can and often do evade or ignore the experience of transcendence by retreating to the "familiar and the everyday" of the categorical realm, i.e., by immersing themselves in the world of the concrete (1978, 32). As we involve ourselves with daily affairs without reflecting on existence itself these questions recede into the background. The "broader horizon" of being is lost when our gaze is fixed on the tasks at hand and the material aspects of human existence. Personhood involves openness to the ineffable and a striving toward an "unlimited expanse" whereby we experience ourselves as infinite Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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(1978, 34). In this transcendental experience we are faced with our responsibility for ourselves: "Insofar as man is a transcendent being, he is confronted by himself, is responsible for himself, and hence is person and subject" (1978, 34). This transcendence, then, is the theological basis of human responsibility and freedom. Rahner distinguishes between transcendental and empirical freedom. Our determination by the world disallows real freedom in the latter sense. The freedom Rahner enunciates is the "I" who experiences him or herself as more or less free: "It is in this experience that something like real subjectivity and self-responsibility, and this not only in knowledge but also in action, is present as an a priori, transcendental experience of my freedom" (1978, 36). Even when we doubt or question the true extent of our freedom in the categorical realm we remain "Is" that are free and responsible for ourselves amid our doubts and questions. Responsibility and freedom are coordinate realities of transcendental experience along with subjectivity. Our freedom concerns our subjectivity considered "as such and as a whole," not in discreet moments: We can only say, then, that because and insofar as I experience myself as a person and as subject, I also experience myself as free, as free in a freedom which does not refer primarily to an individual, isolated psychic occurrence, but in a freedom which refers to the subject as one and as a whole in the unity of its entire actualization of existence. (Rahner 1978, 38). We cannot escape our freedom by resigning ourselves to the external and antecedent forces that determine our existence, since we are still responsible to say or do something about this determination by either accepting or cursing it, for instance (1978, 39). Freedom, for Rahner, consists not of doing particular things but of making ourselves into the kind of persons we want to be: "When freedom is really understood, it is not the power to be able to do this or that, but the power to decide about oneself and to actualize oneself" (1978, 38). Understood rightly freedom is not a neutral capacity to make decisions, it is the ability to say "yes" or "no" to God in the totality of our existence: "Freedom is rather the capacity to make oneself once and for all," Rahner affirms, "the capacity which of its nature is directed towards the freely willed Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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finality of the subject as such" (1974, 183). God enables us to say uycs" and "no" to God by being both the horizon and the "whither" of our transcendence and freedom (1974, 183).

Interfacing Barth and Rahner on the Question of Personhood


Both Barth and Rahner identify the problem of distinguishing between generic divine personhood and Trinitarian personhood. Barth aptly underscores the ambiguity of person language for God: If we accept the concept of the personality of God, we must be conscious of a certain lack of clarity arising from the fact that right up to modern times most people have spoken of divine persons' in relation to the doctrine of the divine Trinity. (11/1,296) According to Barth, modern person language fails to capture the relationship between the Father, Son, and Spirit. Barth recommends abandoning person language for Trinitarian relations since, in its current usage, 'person' implies a distinct center of consciousness, which runs the risk of tritheism.13 The word 'person, then, properly applies to God as a unity of three modes of being: "What we can describe as personality is indeed the whole divine Trinity as such, in the unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in God Himself and in His worknot in the individual aspects by themselves in which God is and which He has" (II/l, 297). For Barth, person language best expresses God's subjective unity, God's being as one person with one "face" (i.e., one subjective identity): "There are not three faces of God, but one face" (II/l, 297). In contrast to Barth, however, Rahner suggests that the ecclcsial language of person for the Trinity ought to be retained because of its long theological pedigree and its continued serviceability, so long as it is carefully nuanced and disentangled from modern individualist connotations.14 Tliere are three essential aspects of divine subjectivity that Barth and Rahner mutually affirm. The first is God's activity. Barth emphasizes that God s personhood consists of his ability to fully execute his decision. To be a person is to be the knowing, willing, and acting "I" who is his own, conscious, willed decision. God acts in the world and is Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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his acthe is as he acts in history. Rahner also affirms that God is he who acts. God does not act "always and everywhere" but "here and now", i.e., in a particular way at a particular time in a personal encounter (Rahner 1978, 1, 105). Moreover, divine activity is fundamentally salvific: God's acts are always liberating and personal. Although Rahner emphasizes the nature of God's subjective activity while Barth emphasizes the nature of God's subjective identity in his activity, they both perceive that God reveals his subjective being in salvation history. Nor could it be otherwise, since the gospel presupposes the personal work of God through the incarnation of the Son. True personhood cannot be dormant because subjectivity requires specific activity in order to have meaningful content: one must do something in order to be someone.15 One cannot simply be a person in abstraction. Activity, then, is a necessary condition for divine subjectivity. We learn what sort of person God is through salvation history, where God demonstrates his unfailing love for humanity. The second aspect of divine personhood is freedom. For Barth, God is free in both a negative and positive sense. Negatively, God is free in the sense of being unimpaired by any internal or external forces. Positively, God is free in the sense of being grounded completely in himself and thus able to be his own decision, in other words to be the kind of person he wishes to be. Rahner also affirms God's freedom. For Rahner, God's actions are never compelled and he freely intervenes in history despite the fact that he creates history to accomplish his ends. God's freedom does not preclude his ability to suspend or break the natural laws he created or to enter into history to accomplish his salvific purposes. Barth and Rahner agree that God could realize his subjectivity without creation: God could be God without us; he does not need us to actualize himself. Barth emphasizes the centrality of divine freedom more than Rahner, but both identify freedom as constitutive of divine personhood. Once again this coheres with the inner structure of subjectivity, which presupposes the ability to actualize personhood without coercion. God's subjectivity would be diminished if it were dependent upon the personhood of others. But for both Barth and Rahner God freely establishes his own personhood without any internal or external Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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pressures and freely chooses to be God with us and for us. The third aspect of divine personhood is fellowship or relationality. God does not wish to be God without us, nor does he wish for us to be without him, according to Barth. The central identity of Godi.e., the Godhead of God or what makes God Godis the fact that he loves. God's love expresses itself through the desire to seek and create fellowship with humanity. God's relationality stems not from a supposed need for companionship with humanity but from the superabundance of his Trinitarian existence. Rahner avers that God's personhood is expressed in his historical dialogue with humanity in salvation history. In Christ God speaks to humanity and allows us to respond. The dialogue is truly "bi-personal" because God speaks as a person and makes space for our personhood by enabling us to say "yes" or "no" to God. Rahner stresses the dialogical character of the divine-human encounter while Barth stresses divine agency at the expense of human agency in this encounter. Both, however, agree that God creates the possibility for a divine-human encounter and fully manifests his subjectivity through it. Lastly, Barth and Rahner both elucidate the theological grounding of human personhood. For Barth, the only real person is God.16 Humans, however, are persons by extension because they are loved by God and called into fellowship.17 He argues that human subjectivity is essentially mimetic: we become persons by imitating God. But the radical disjunction between divine and human personhood in Barth undercuts the possibility of mimesis, in my view. How can humans emulate divine personhood when they can only receive subjectivity from God? In the end Barth attenuates the reality of human personhood, calling it a feeble image and echo of the reality of God's personhood. For Barth, we cannot actualize our personhood because we are not fully free. The internal and external factors that shape our existence ultimately erode our freedom. Thus, Barth emphasizes humanity's absolute dependence on God for authentic subjectivity and downplays the reality of human freedom. Rahner, by contrast, conceives of a closer continuity between humans and God insofar as humans have the innate capacity for transcendence. According to Rahner, God grounds our subjectivity by

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being the infinite horizon of all our thoughts and actions, by encountering us in our transcendental experience of ourselves as given, and by inviting us to genuine dialogue in salvation history. Rahner makes more room for human agency in his anthropology than Barth.

Conclusion: Persons in Relation, not as Relation


We have surveyed three influential conceptions of divine and human personhood from three eminent modern theologians: John Zizioulas, Karl Barth, and Karl Rahner.18 These three represent the Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic traditions and although we would not want to elide their respective differences by forcing a facile harmonization, we can nonetheless trace salient threads of continuity in their theological reflections. All three affirm the dual relationality of divine personhood. First, they affirm that God exists as the holy, mysterious, and ineffable communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Gods eternal self-relation creates the possibilitynot the necessityfor outward relation. Second, they agree that God encounters humanity in salvation history. Without any ontological constraint God creates the world and enters into relation with it. While God relates to all creation, Gods deepest relational encounter occurs with humanity.19 What, then, are the systematic correlations between divine and human personhood?20 What does the former reveal about the latter?21 The doctrine of the imago Dei systematically links divine and human personhood. Since we are crafted in God's image, our personhood must also consist of relationality, though in a creaturely way (Genesis 1:26).22 Miroslav Volf rightly notes that our innate affinity with God enables an ethical agenda based on what he calls the "imitano TrinitUs : There is an affinity between human beings and God and, therefore, between the way Christiansand by extension all human beings ought to live and the way God is. The nature of God, therefore, fundamentally determines the character of the Christian life. (Volf 2006, 4) The intra-Trinitarian communion, therefore, provides a model for human relationality. Thus, we cannot attain perichoretic union like Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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the Trinity, but we can forgo isolation and strive for greater interconnectedness. Although we are constituted by our relations, we cannot be reduced to them (nor can the divine persons). Before we participate in relationships we exist as irreducibly unique persons.23 We are not simply absorbed into a sea of relations; rather, we fully actualize our subjectivity through our relations. Human personhood thus consists of being in relation, not as relation. We must simultaneously affirm both our irreducibility as persons and our fundamental relationality. Hence, since God is love (1 John 4:8), and since we are created in God's image, we reach the summit of our personhood when we refract God's love in our interpersonal encounters. When we equate the well-being of our neighbours with our own personal well-being (Matt. 7:12)thereby centering ourselves in otherswe reflect the divine life, though dimly. By striving for greater interconnectedness and mutuality we mirror the Trinitarian life of God, who with "one face" (Barth 1957, 297) "looks at us" (Rahner 1978, 75) and shows us what it means to be a person. The metaphysical distance between God and humanity, however, impairs our ability to mirror the divine life. Although we bear the imprint of God, we are not God and can only imitate God in a finite way (Volf 2006, 5). Moreover, while our identity as creatures created in God's image enables us to reflect the Trinitarian relations, our identity as sinners vitiates and partially undermines that ability without erasing it. Hence, we must be wary of our susceptibility to distortion when applying principles of relationality from divine to human relationships. Although the divine persons fully interpenetrate one another, human persons cannot mutually indwell one another, except poetically. In fact, our attempts at perichoresis can be destructive if we do not allow the other to remain other or if we divest ourseWes so completely in another that we lose our distinctive identity. So while we may legitimately appropriate models of relation from the Trinity, we must acknowledge our limitations. Yet even in our brokenness we can look to the life of God for paradigms to enrich our interrelations and in the process echo the heights of heaven as best as we can.

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I wish to thank Francis Schiissler Fiorenza for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. I wish also to thank my advisor Sarah Coakley for her assistance on clarifying the problems surrounding Trinitarian personhood. Lastly, I wish to thank Miroslav Volf, my advisor from Yale Divinity School, who introduced to me the idea of "interfacing" Karl Barth and Karl Rahner on various theological questions. Certain versions of process theology reduce God to a function of creation, thus undermining the doctrine of God as person. For an introduction to process theology see John B. Cobb and D.R. Griffin (1976). Interestingly, Alfred North Whitehead (the founder of process thought, along with his pupil Charles Hartshorne) beautifully describes God as "the great companion, the fellow-sufferer who understands," which seems personalizing, but need not be ([19291 1967, 532). For a recent Jewish perspective on divine personhood. see Muffs (2005). Recent scholarship has questioned whether the paradigm attributed to Thodore De Rgnon originates from his tudes de thologie positive sur L Sainte Trinit (1892-98) or whether it was wrongly ascribed to him based on a misreading of his text. I would argue that the notion of person as relation is found in both East and West. For a detailed discussion of the so-called De Rgnon paradigm and the much vexed question of the differences between 'Eastern' and 'Western' Trinitarian theology, see the forthcoming special edition of the Harvard Tljeobgical Review (100.2, April 2007), particularly Hennessys article "An Answer to the de Rgnon Accusers: Why We Should Not Speak of 'His' Paradigm". The most significant theological difference between Eastern and Western Christianity is the mode of the Spirits procession. For a concise but comprehensive treatment of the Filioque debate see Daley (2001a, 2001b). There are also key liturgical and ecclesial differences between the two. Karl Barth (11/1). I will reference Church Dogmatics and other key texts from Barth and Rahner within the text of the article. At the outset of his section on the reality of God Barth unflinchingly affirms Gods existence: a God is" (28.1, 257). This theological affirmation does not hinge on any proofs for God s existence but rather on Gods self-disclosure in revelation. The task he sets for himself in this section is to define Gods being, which is the "basis and content" of all other theological assertions (257-8). Gods actual existence is the fundamental presupposition of all church dogmatics and preaching, he avers. Hence, rather than simply acknowledging the statement "God is" as the "statement of all [theological] statements," that is, as the common underlying

2.

3. 4.

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presupposition of all theology, he argues that it merits deeper independent analysis (258-9). The very centrality of "this hardest and most comprehensive statement that God is" necessitates its careful explication as a particular truth rather than AS the ground of all theological truth (259). Its interconnection to the entire dogmatic system does not preclude its treatment under the doctrine of God. 7. Barth (1914) also discusses divine personhood. Hans urs von Balthasar (1992: 215-216) argues that Barths notion of personhood straddles the line between two modes of explication: "The concept of personhood hovers on the border between transcendental philosophy and psychology but continually eludes a full accounting in terms of either." He notes that for Barth we must "content ourselves with the ambiguous center" between two unacceptable alternative notions: "So all that remains to us is to hover between the sic et non of two unacceptable alternatives: between the forbidden frontier of pantheism, which would strip God of all personal attributes, and the forbidden boundary of deism, which would like to subsume God s personality within the finitude of the world". For a discussion of Barths actualisim, see Hunsinger (1991: 30-32 and passim). Barths Trinitarian theology is discussed in depth by Torrance (1996). See especially Chapter 4: Triune Person, where he compares Barths Trinitarian concept of divine personhood with Rahner and Zizioulas.

8. 9.

10. For a concise treatment of Barths doctrine of divine freedom, see Webster (2000, 8S-88). Foi an extensive treatmenr see Molnar (2002), Chapter 8: Persons in Communion and God as the Mystery of the World: Alan Torrance, Eberhard Jngel and The Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity for a treatment of the problem of the relationship between divine freedom and human personhood. Molnar, following Barrh, posits a "sharp distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity" in order to preserve Gods freedom vis--vis "creation, reconciliation and redemption," which do not inexorably arise from Gods relationality but from God's free decision to be God for us. This does not imply a disjunction between rhe ecomonic and immanent Trinity, since the former truly reveals that latter. Rather, it preserves Gods inexhaustibility and affirms that human personhood "must find its basis and meaning outside irseli and in God himself" (Molber 2002, 235). 11. For a helpful orientation to Rahner s theology, sec O'Donovan ed. (1989). For a more recent study, see Kilby (2004). 12. The distinction between human persons does not apply to God, who differentiates individuals: "God is not an individual person because he cannot experience himself as defined in relation to another or limited by another, because Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2006

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he does not experience any difference from himself" (Rahner 1978, 74).

13. A distinctive feature of Barths doctrine of the Trinity is his nuancing of Trinitarian language. He argues that the term "person" is obsolete and misleading (1/1, 366). Gods thrceness is more felicitously conveyed by the term "mode (or way) of being" (viz, Seins weise, 359, 363). Barth exchanges the classical Trinitarian expression of "one being, three persons" for the phrase "one God in the three modes of being" (375). This semantical shift has enormous significance for Barth. The concept of person cannot be consistently employed because it implies material distinctions in God and therefore tri theism. Conversely, the term "mode of being" safeguards the oneness of God. In the end, however, Barth concedes that God is a mystery and that the honest answer to Augustines question "quidtresV is Anslems "tres nescio quid? since Gods essence transcends humanity s noetic capacity: "We, too, are unable to say how in this case 3 can really be 1 and 1 can really be 3" (367). For Barth, one ought to affirm the actuality of Gods triunity on the basis of Gods self-revelation to humanity as attested in scripture. 14. In concurrence with Barth, Rahner (1999, 110) perceives the infelicitous tritheistic nuances of the word "person" in Trinitarian language. He remarks that in modern parlance "person" denotes a distinct "center of consciousness and activity" (57). When applied to the Trinity, this concept entails three distinct consciousnesses, which compromises the divine unity: "There are not three consciousnesses; rather, the one consciousness subsists in a threefold way" (107). Rahner contends (pace Barth) that the word "person" has been "consecrated by the use of more than 1500 years" and should not therefore be replaced in ecclesiastical terminology "by another word which produces fewer misunderstandings" (44). Following Thomas Aquinas' definition of person (viz, "that which subsists distinctly in a rational nature") Rahner submits that the expression "distinct manner of subsisting" helps elucidate the meaning of person in Trinitarian theology. He opts for this expression over Barrhs "manner of being" because it more closely approximates "the traditional language of the Church" (110). Since the phrase "distinct manner of subsisting" underscores the unity of God and guards against tritheistic insinuations, it is semantically preferable to "person" (113). Nevertheless, Rahner does not wish to introduce a new Trinitarian vocabulary to replace the Church's concept of person in the doctrine of the Trinity; rather, he seeks to circumvent the problematic implications of the modern usage of person by employing a new concept of Gods threeness that is grounded in "a Thomistic definition of the 'person'" (115). Rahner affirms the legitimacy of the ecclesiastical idea of person and seeks to render it intelligible by conveying its implicit Trinitarian meaning using a more lucid and theologically precise expression. 15. This does not entail, however, that those who arc unable to function normally Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2 0 0 6

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are not persons. Some people simply cannot "do" anything because of a debilitating illness or injury. Yet, as creatures created in the image of God, they still retain their status as persons, despite that fact that they cannot fully actualize their personhood in their impaired condition. Personhood is not exhausted in relation or activity, as I argue. 16. Barth denies that human personhood is a vestigium Dei or trinitatis (1/1, 334-5; 1V/2, 338) in any direct or complete sense, since this would involve a " second root' of the doctrine of the Trinity alongside that of revelation" and introduce the notion o analogia entis (Torrance 1996, 125). 17. Barth notes that Christian persons need communion: "Just as a man would not be a man in and for himself, in isolation from his fellow man, so a Christian would not be a Christian in and for himself, separated from the fellowship of the saints" {Church Dog?natics IV/1, 750-51). 18. For an extensive treatment of the concept of divine personhood in Barth and Zizioulas, see Collins, Chapter 5: The Concept of Personhood (2001, 107161). 19. Ware (1996) draws upon New Testament and patristic sources to construct an Orthodox view of the meaning of human personhood and the irreducible value of each person. 20. For recent expositions on the dialogical and dialectical understanding of divine and human personhood, sec the following: Macmurray (1961), McFadyen (1990), McFague (1987) and Schwbel and Gunton, eds. (1991). 21. We must avoid mapping our social ideals onto the divine life, as Kilby warns (2000, 432-45). 22. Gunton (1991 ) explores the anthropological implications of the imago Dei vis-vis the question of personhood. lo. Moltmann also discusses divine personhood and helpfully notes that we cannot reduce the concept of person to relationality: "Person and relation therefore have to be understood in a reciprocal relationship. Here there are no persons without relations; but there are no relations without persons either" (1993, 172).

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