The Trinity and the Incarnation: Hegel and Classical Approaches

Author(s): Anselm K. Min

Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Apr., 1986), pp. 173-193
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1202586
Accessed: 01-08-2015 14:05 UTC
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1202586?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of
Religion.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation:

Hegel and Classical Approaches*
AnselmK. Min I BelmontAbbey College

The dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation are central to Christian
faith, yet few today, with the possible exception of Thomists, seem
happy with the classical orthodox formulations. I am not about to offer
a reformulation. Instead, I propose to review one old reformulation,
Hegel's interpretation of the Trinity, to which many contemporary
reformulations consciously hark back, for example, those of Barth,
Rahner, Juingel, Pannenberg, and Moltmann. I do this in the context
of the issues raised but not resolved by the classic formulations. In the
first section I examine the concepts of creation and Incarnation against
the Hegelian background and ask what they imply about the nature of
God. My basic assumption is that the economic Trinity is the only
access to the immanent Trinity and that creation and Incarnation must
be considered in their inner relation and unity, as Protestant theology
has long insisted and recent Catholic theology is beginning to recognize. In the second section I go on to discuss the inadequacies of the
classical formulations in meeting the philosophical requirements of
creation and Incarnation, chiefly the notions of "person,""nature,"
"simplicity,"and "relation."In the third and last section I present
Hegel's alternative based on the philosophy of "spirit"that consciously
sublates (Aufheben)the traditional philosophies of "substance."The
basic question I want to press throughout is, What do creation and
Incarnation presuppose about the nature of God as the a priori condition of their possibility? What must God be like in himself if he can and
does reveal himself for us as Creator and Redeemer?

* I would like to thank Peter

Hodgson and Eugene TeSelle of Vanderbilt Divinity School for
the many helpful conversations on the subject of this article.
? 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/86/6602-0004$01.00

173

This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Journal

of Religion

THE IDEA OF CREATION AND INCARNATION

Before we go on to answer this question, let us first be clear about what

is meant by creation and Incarnation. Consider first the idea of creation. Thomism provides a good starting point. Creation does not add
more being (esse) to the being of God; it only allows more and different
beings (entia) to be. Non plus entis sed plura entia. There are two
things to note. One is that God is the only source of being (esse) there is,
even after creation, and the other is that created entities are nevertheless distinct from their Creator. To deny the first would be to deny
God's infinity and posit radical pluralism, and to deny the second
would be to fall into pantheism. Creation means multiplication of
beings in their otherness both among themselves and to God without
diminishing or increasing God's own esse, the only source of the being of
the finite in all their multiplicity.
First, God is the only source of the being of all beings. There are not
many gods or many different sources of being, as there is no matter
existing prior to or outside God out of which God creates. God alone
creates, and he does so out of his own being. The source of the multiplicity of the finite is God himself. God creates out of his own being,
but this does not mean creatures ever exist outside God. Nothing can
exist or continue to exist apart from or outside God. Finite beings
depend on God for the totality of their esse, which belongs to God and
which is theirs only by a grant from him. The relation between the
unity of being and the multiplicity of beings, between the infinite
source of being and the finite derivatives from that source is not external
but internal. Creation cannot be conceived on the model of a transitive
activity, where the maker is and remains external to both the material
out of which he makes and the product that he makes and that, once
made, continues to exist independently of the maker. The Creator
creates finite beings out of his own being and remains present to them
in a way that is more intimate than their presence to themselves and
more radical than the presence of one finite being to another. The relation between Creator and creature is a transcendental, not an empirical, relation and remains the "ontological" basis for all finite "ontic"
(Heidegger) relations in the world.
If God is the only source of the being of all beings in both their unity
and diversity, if this diversity is not something added from outside
God, then creation is correctly understood, as Hegel insisted, only as
the internal multiplication and diversification of God's own being or his
self-differentiation and self-pluralization. God separates himself from
himself and posits an Other as Other, but this Other does not fall outside
God but is maintained as Other because God does not -and cannot 174

This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation

remain simply separated from himself as Other but preserves his identity with himself in this Other.' In creating, God does not need any
external, preexisting material, but this does not mean that creatures
come out of nothing. Rather, God creates them out of his own being"the nothingness [das Nichts] of the world itself, out of which the world
has been created, is the Absolute itself'22-whlch, ot course, should not
be conceived in crude material fashion. That is, God creates by positing a distinction within himself. As an Other posited by God from
within himself as his self-expression, the finite bears not only an ontological bond but also similarity with the Creator.
All discussion of creation must preserve this ontological unity of
being between Creator and creature, a unity from which all diversity is
derived from within and to which, therefore, it is ontologically secondary and relative. Hegel sees a violation of this ontological unity in
deism and the conventional conceptions of God as the infinitely
removed "beyond" of the finite. Whether motivated by the desire to preserve the infinity of God or to maintain the distinction and autonomy of
the finite from the infinite, these conceptions stress the difference
between infinite and finite, that the infinite is not finite and vice versa.
They place the finite on one side and the infinite on the other, each
against the other as two independent things. For Hegel, the underlying
assumption is false; it results from reifying both the finite and the
infinite as static, ready-made things by separating them from the very
process that makes each what it is. The being of the finite lies precisely
in the process of coming to be in ontological dependence on and selftranscendence toward the infinite, its Other. It is finite, not by itself but
through the relation of dependence on God, a relation that constitutes
the finite as finite. The finite is finite only as a unity of itself and its
infinite Other. To posit the finite apart from this sustaining, constitutive relation to the infinite would be to fail to recognize the finite as
finite and implicity to infinitize it by granting aseity to what is by
admission finite.
It is likewise false to separate the infinite from the finite, for opposite
reasons. To separate the infinite from the finite, even for the sake of
preserving the transcendence of the infinite, is in fact implicitly to
infinitize the finite and also in the same process to reduce the infinite
itself to a finite being by placing the infinite simply alongside (neben)the
finite in a mutually external relationship and implicitly regarding the
I See G. W. F. Hegel, BegriffderReligion,ed. Georg Lasson (Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
1966),
p. 147. Hereafter abbreviated as BR.
2
Hegel, Die ReligionendergeistigenIndividualitat,ed. Georg Lasson (Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
1966), p. 85.

175
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Journal of Religion

infinite and the finite as two powers over against each other at the same
infinite because it is
ontological level. Such an infinite is a bad (schlechte)
limited by the finite. If God is truly infinite, unlimited, unconditioned,
it is not enough that he be notfinite, in-finite; true infinity also requires
that there be nothing that somehow remains external to the creative
causality of God, limiting and conditioning him from outside. The true
infinite is not only not finite but also has the power to posit the finite in
its totality by granting it an internal relation to the infinite, that is, by
positing it as Other within himself. The true infinite is a unity of itself,
the infinite, and its Other, the finite.3
Second, it is within this internal ontological unity of finite and
infinite that the distinction between them must and can emerge. This
distinction can only be relative; any absolute distinction or autonomy
would mean infinitizingthe finite and spell ontologicaldualism. Hegel's
Absolute has often been accused of "devouring"the finite, but this accusation, I think, is a misunderstanding. It is important in this regard to
recall the transcendental character of the relation between finite and
infinite. The internal unity of finite and infinite is transcendental, not
empirical as in the case of the unity of one finite being and another. In
the latter case one being is never totally dependent on another; no finite
being is the source of being of another in its totality. By the same token
no finite being is totally free and autonomous vis-a-vis another; finite
freedom is always more or less externally limited by the brute facticity
of other persons, events, and situations beyond one's control, as it is
also dependent for its actualization as "concrete"freedom on the cooperation of others external to oneself. In fact, it is the very definition of
finitude, for Hegel, that a finite being is limited by contingency,
externality, and brute necessity that it cannot wholly sublate.4 A finite
being cannot be totally internally related to or immanent in an Other
without either destroying the Other as Other or being itself destroyed
by the Other.
In contrast, it is the prerogative of the infinite to be able to posit the
finite as Other, be present to it in its totality, and still preserve it as
Other than itself. As Rahner put it, the radical dependence of the finite
on God and their autonomy from him are directly proportionate to
each other, whereas in finite, empirical relations the proportion is

3 On the
concept of the "true"infinite and the relation between finite and infinite in general,
see my article, "Hegel's Absolute: Transcendent or Immanent?"Journal of Religion, 56, no. 1
(1976): 68-76.
4 See
derLogik,ed. Georg Lasson, 2 vols. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1969,
Hegel, Wissenschaft
1971), 1:75, 2:409-10.

176
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation

inverse.5 For Hegel, God is infinitely free because, as the positing
source of all reality, God is not subject to any unsublated otherness.
And it is because God is free that he can also grant autonomy and freedom to his creatures: "It is only the Absolute Idea which determines
itself and which, in determining itself, is secure in itself as absolutely
free in itself. Thus, in determining itself it releases what is determined
in such a way that the latter exists as something independent, an independent object. What is free is present only for the free. It is the
absolute freedom of the Idea that in its determination, in its judgment
[Urteil], it releases the Other as something free and independent. This
Other, released as something independent, is the worldin general."6
Next, what is meant by the Incarnation of the Logos in Jesus of
Nazareth? For the orthodox view, God becomes a human being in such
a way that Christ is truly divine (vereDeus)and truly human (verehomo).
God not only becomes a human being but also subjects himself to passion and death on the cross. Whatever he does as a human being he
does as God. The history of this man is also the history of God himself.
Yet, when God becomes a human being and dies on the cross, he does
not cease to be God. God becomes something other than himself yet
does not cease to be himself, God. If a God who becomes a human
being is difficult enough to grasp, a God who simply ceases to be God
in becoming human would be an absurdity. Moreover, God not only
dies and rises from the dead but also remains present in the spirit of
humanity, guiding human history and reconciling humanity with himself. He is truly immanent in history yet without losing his divine
transcendence. He is immanent in his Other, but this immanence in
this Other does not destroy his enduring identity with himself.
The dogma of the Incarnation, like that of the Trinity, is subtle to
the extreme, and a correct understanding of it requires distinguishing it
from many apparently similar notions with which it has been confused,
as witness the history of early heresies. It affirmstrue divinity ("consubstantial with the Father")and true humanity ("consubstantialwith us")
in the unity of the one divine person, the Logos. As such, the Incarnation is, in Dorner's phrase, "the most eloquent expression" of the
relation between God and the world.7 The presence of God in Jesus is
not identical with either God's presence in the world generally, as in
5 See Karl Rahner, A RahnerReader,ed. G. A. McCool
(New York: Seabury Press, 1975),
p. 157.
6
Hegel, Die absoluteReligion,ed. Georg Lasson (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1966), p. 94 (my
translation). Hereafter abbreviated as AR.
7 See Claude Welch, ed. and trans., God and Incarnationin Mid-Nineteenth
CenturyGerman
Theology:G. Thomasius,I. A. Dorner,A. E. Biederman
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1965),
p. 208.

177
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Journal of Religion

creation, or the universal presence of the Holy Spirit in the believers.
Nor is it to be confused, as David Strauss would have it, with a universal incarnation of God in every human being in which God is
simply, without distinction, identified with the human in pantheistic
fashion, in which the Logos becomes Homo generalis, a Platonic universal, turning the individuality of humans into a mere appearance.
The humanity assumed by the Logos did not exist prior to the union
with the divine, and it was real humanity, not a mere external
garment, that the Logos put on, which would turn the Incarnation into
a mere theophany in human form. If the Logos did not cease to be
divine through the Incarnation, neither did he merely appear to be
human. The divine did not replace the human, as the human did not
replace the divine. The union of the human and the divine in the one
divine person of the Logos is a union that preserves the distinction of
the two natures, which must be acknowledged "without confusion or
change," "without division or separation" (Chalcedon). The Incarnation, to put it in Hegelian language, is the paradigm case of unity in
difference.
A CRITIQUE

OF THE CLASSICAL

TRADITION

The question to ask now is, What do creation and the Incarnation, thus
understood, presuppose about the nature of God and his relation to the
world as conditions of their possibility? Are the concepts and categories
of the post-Nicene Fathers (Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen,
Gregory
of Nyssa, Basil) and those of classical theism (Aquinas) adequate to this
task? Is the God of classical theism capable of creating the world and
becoming incarnate in one of his creatures?
As is well known, the classical orthodox formulation of the trinitarian dogma grew out of the christological problem, the ontological status
of the Logos through whom the world was created and who became
incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. The basic underlying logic was
something like this. The divine nature is immutable, impassible, and
eternal, but creation and Incarnation imply a relation to the finite,
mutable, and temporal. The divine nature in its unoriginate, eternal
being, therefore, cannot be the source of such a relation without
impairing its immutability. Nor, however, could a merely finite being
be such a source. The source could only be something that is divine
yet
not simply identical with the divine nature as such. The solution: the
divine nature subsists in three Persons, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit,
and it is the Son, the Logos, through whom the world was made and
who became flesh, not the Father, the unoriginate origin of both the
Son and the Holy Spirit.
178
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation

This solution, however, was not without serious difficulties. In order
to preserve the unity and simplicity of the Godhead ("one"God), it had
to place the Persons, the subsistent "relations"of origination and otherness, outside the divine nature, while in order to preserve the full
divinity of the Persons, it had to identify the Person of the Father and
through him the other Persons with the Godhead because, after all, it is
the originating activity of the Fatherpreciselyin his divinenaturethat constitutes the Son as Son and the Spirit as Spirit. To the extent that the
unity of the divine nature was stressed along with the diversity of Persons while also conceiving the relation between the unity and the
diversity as mutually "external"or "outside,"the classical formulation
already contained an unresolved tension between the much-dreaded
pagan polytheism on the one hand and a monotheism of the divine
nature of which the Persons would be Sabellian "modes."8
The same ambiguity in the conceptualization of the relation between
unity and multiplicity, between self-identity and relation to an Other,
was carried over into the christological affirmation of the unity of the
divine Person in two natures. It affirmed both the true humanity and
the true divinity of the Logos yet also exempted the divinity from any
real participation in the humanity for fear of endangering divine
immutability. The Logos truly became flesh, but he did not suffer and
die on the cross; only his humanity did. The human and the divine
were united yet also remained mutually external. All the changes and
sufferings took place on the human side of the gulf separating the
human and the divine. For all its denials, classical christology could not
overcome the Docetist implication that the humanity was no more than
an "externalgarment"put on by the Logos without really affectinghim.9
The same basic dilemma between unity of nature and diversity of
relations, between identity and otherness, is also found in the medieval
Thomistic synthesis, which, despite its restatement of the doctrine of
the immanent Trinity, contained the same ambiguity, especially in
conceptualizing the relation between God and the world, between the
immutable divine substance and its relation to the Other, the world of
change and multiplicity. Creatures are "really"related to God, but God
is not likewise really related to the world. Recently, under the prodding
of process thought, some Thomists have tried to bring God and creatures together more closely by exploiting the distinction between
"nature"and "person"or between "real"and "intentional"being in God.
According to William J. Hill,
8 In these criticisms of
classical trinitarianism, see Leslie Dewart, The Futureof Belief(New
York: Herder & Herder, 1966), pp. 144-48; Paul Tillich, Historyof ChristianThought(New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1967), pp. 77-79.
9 See Rahner,
p. 149.

179
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Journal

of Religion

if God really relates to a world of creatures, and if those creatures creatively

introduce genuine novelty into the world (as they do), and if they truly suffer
(as they do), then this cannot remain alien to God's experience. Thus in some
sense, without jettisoning the divine immutability (which would dedivinize
God), God responds knowingly and lovingly to such suffering. One suggestion
may be made here as an alternative to the dipolar nature introduced into God
by process thought. The suggestion is to acknowledge as irreducible the distinction between nature and person (or, in a trinitarian context, Persons) in
God. It might then be possible to maintain that in His natureGod is eternally
the infinite act of being and as such is incapable of any enrichment or
impoverishment of His being; here the divine being is considered in its
absoluteness and remains immutable. In His personhood,however, we are
dealing with God's being in its freely-chosen self-relating to others, in that
intersubjective disposing of the self that is self-enactment and self-positing.
Here we are concerned not with whatGod is in His being as transcendent to
world, but with who He chooses to be vis-a-vis a world which He creates and
redeems in love. 10
The basic distinction between "nature" and "person," between the
absolute, immutable being in itself and the multiple relations to
Others, by which the early Fathers tried to safeguard both the unity of
God and the threeness of Persons in the immanent Trinity, is here
applied to God's economic relations to the world as well.
Using the same conceptual categories, W. Norris Clarke likewise
argues that God remains unrelated to the world in his "absolute" being
in himself (ens naturale)but that he is really related to, that is, affected
by, the world in his "relational" being for us (ens intentionale),a position
that he considers an advance over Saint Thomas, for whom God was
not really related to the world even in his intentional being. Thus, for
Clarke, "in some real and genuine way God is affected positively by
what we do," and "his consciousness is contingently and qualitatively
differentbecause of what we do." He immediately goes on, however, to
add that "all this difference remains... on the level of God's relational
consciousnessand therefore does not involve increase or decrease in the
Infinite Plenitude of God's intrinsic inner being and perfection.""
How is this so? The mystery lies in the peculiar character of "relation" itself. "Relation is unique among all the categories in that the
addition of relations to a being does not necessarily add to or subtract
anything from its absolutereal being and perfection. It relatesthe subject
to its term but does not necessarily change or modify it
internally in

10 William

J. Hill, "The Historicity of God,"

Studies45

332-33.

Theological
(1984):
11 W. Norris
Clarke, The PhilosophicalApproachto God. A Neo-ThomistPerspective
(Winston-

Salem, N.C.: Wake Forest University Press, 1979), p. 92.

180
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation

any non-relative way."12Justas, for the Greek fathers, the act of generation and the relation of origination posited by it does not involve any
change in the human nature of either the Father or the Son -both are
human, or divine in the case of the divine Persons, apart from such
relations-so, for Clarke, "when the Father gives His entire identical
nature (what He is) to the Son in love, and both together to the Holy
Spirit, the two are relationally distinguished as Giver and Receiver,
but what they possess as their intrinsic perfection of being is the
identical simple and infinite plenitude of absoluteperfection that is the
divine nature."13The relations among the Persons of the Trinity are
real, subsistent relations, whereas God's relation to the world is real
regarding his intentional being but only "rational,"not "real,"regarding
his intrinsic being; but in either case relation remains external to the
divine nature and does not affect its simplicity and immutability.
The basic question, of course, is whether relation is merely "external"
to nature, whether it is possible to posit an "irreducible"(Hill) distinction between "nature"and "person."Does relation really "add nothing
to and subtract nothing from"nature (Clarke)? According to this view,
nature is fully and completely constituted as nature apart from all
relations. To use a favorite classical analogy, a father remains a human
being apart from his activity of generating a son and the relation of
fatherhood posited by that act, just as the son retains his human
essence apart from his sonship and relation of dependence on the
father. To be a father and to be a human being are different, because, if
not, only a father would be human. This is so because, as Gregory of
Nyssa argued, "cause"and "nature"cannot be "defined"in the same
way. 14 This, I think, gives a clue to the abstractcharacterof nature and
its external relation to relation in the classical approach. From a
"definitional"point of view, the concept of "father"is indeed different
from that of "human being." Does it follow from this, however, either
that the son can exist as a human being apart from his relation of
dependence on the father, or that "father"and "humanbeing"can exist
separately? Furthermore, could a merely conceptual father ever give
birth to a son? In what sense does a merely conceptual son originate
from a merely conceptual father? Plainly, we must go beyond the
merely conceptual level; after all, we are not talking about a merely
conceptual but a real Trinity or about a merely conceptual but a real
Creator of the world.
12

Ibid., p. 101.
13 Ibid.

14 Gregory of
Nyssa, SelectWritingsandLettersof Gregory,
Bishopof Nyssa, trans. William Moore
and Henry Austin Wilson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1983), p. 336 ("On Not
Three Gods").

181
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Journal of Religion

From the viewpoint of concrete existence, "cause" and "nature,"
"father"and "humanbeing," and "relation"and "nature"in general are
not so easily separable or separately intelligible. The activity of causation and the causal relation to an Other posited by that act can only
come from nature as the intrinsic principle of activity and only express
something of that nature itself. An act is not its own source; it is always
the act of a subject with a determinate nature and reflects the determinacy of its source. The Father generates a divine Son, not a human
son, only because his activity comes from and expresses the infinite
power of his divine nature. Conceptually distinct, the Father and his
divine nature are not separately intelligible. Activity and relation are
intelligible only in their inner relation to nature from which they
originate and that they concretely actualize.
Nor is nature intelligible apart from relations. I may indeed exist as
a human being apart from somerelations, for example, particular citizenship, profession, location, friendship, and so on, but what follows
from this is simply that somerelations are peripheral to my existence as
a human being, not that relations as such or all relations are merely
external and accidental to my concrete human existence. Apart from
all relations, and thus taken as an "abstraction,"nature simply does not
and cannot exist, not even as potentiality, because real potentiality
already implies actualization of that potentiality and thus relations in

which it is actualized. From the concrete point of view, my being a

"son" is not extrinsic but intrinsic to my "nature" as a human being
because my relation of dependence on my "father"is both an expression
and an actualization of my human nature as a finite, dependent being.
Apart from relations that actualize and manifest it, nature becomes an
unintelligible abstraction. In short, activity and relation are intelligible
only as the self-activation and self-pluralization of nature, as nature is
itself intelligible only as a process of manifesting and actualizing itself
through activity and relation. The relation between the two is mutually
internal and constitutive.
The consequence of separating nature and relation is no less serious
in the case of God's creative and Incarnate relation to the world than in
the case of the immanent Trinity. If, as Hill says, God's relation to the
world is a matter of "God's being in its freely chosen self-relating to
others," and yet this "self-relating" is "irreducibly" different from his
nature as infinite, immutable, absolute being, then, at least two
unsavory conclusions follow. One is that in that case either we end up
with two Gods, or the difference cannot be "irreducible." By definition,
creation is God relating himself to an Other, but if this self-relating
God is irreducibly different from God in his absolute nature, have we
not posited a radical dualism between God for us and God in himself?

182
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation

On the supposition of an irreducible difference, do we not also have to
posit such a difference between the economic and the immanent
Trinity with all its consequences for salvation as understood by Christian faith?
If, on the other hand, the difference could not be irreducible, if there
is an inner unity between God relating himself to the world and God in
his absolute being, how are we to conceive this inner unity except as
God, preciselyin his nature, relating himself to the world? After all, it is
only because God is a God of certain "nature," that is, the infinite act of
being, that he can create at all and even become incarnate. But this is
precisely what constitutes a scandal to Thomism; such a view seems to
introduce a contradiction into God's own being between his simplicity
and immutability on the one hand and an inner relation to composite
and mutable creatures on the other. And this leads to the second conclusion: either creation and Incarnation are impossible because the
unity of God in himself and God for us seems to pose such a contradiction, or the relation between nature and relation-and along with it
be reconceptualized so as to make
simplicity and immutability-must
room for creation and Incarnation, to which I now turn.
HEGEL ON THE TRINITY AND THE INCARNATION

Creation and Incarnation, for Hegel, are relations to the finite posited
by God's own activity of internal self-differentiation. As such, activity,
relation, and otherness are the very process in which God manifests
and actualizes his very essence. If God is to create and become incarnate without ceasing to be himself, then, there must be in God's essence
itself an aspect whereby he is the unoriginate origin of all being, an
aspect whereby he can posit out of his own being something other than
himself, and an aspect whereby he can sublate this otherness and
maintain his identity with himself, in short, an originating, a pluralizing, and a reintegrating principle. Without the first, there would be no
God. Without the second, there would be no possibility of creation and
Incarnation; the Father would have to change himself into a creature
and perish as God. Without the third, the Logos in the otherness of the
finite would remain separated from the Godhead, and God would be
literally divided from himself. It is as the divine principle of self-othering that the Logos alone can be both the creative and the Incarnate
Logos, a point on which Dorner and Rahner agree with Hegel.15

15 See Hegel, AR (see n. 6

above), p. 94; on Dorner, see Welch, p. 216, and Karl Rahner, The
Trinity(New York: Seabury Press, 1974), p. 86.

183
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Journal of Religion

The possibility of creation and Incarnation presupposes in God
himself this plurality, not simplicity, of principles consonant with his
more primordial unity and expressive of that unity. It also presupposes
an immutability compatible with entering into a world of change and
still preserving identity in that world, a living, active, dynamic identity
capable of positing and conquering otherness, something more than
the metaphysical immutability of the classical conception. What is
required is a shift from a philosophy of "substance,"which stresses
simple self-identity, self-sufficiency, and essential immutability of
being and allows activity, relation, and otherness only as something
external to itself, to a philosophy of "spirit,"which regards active
mediation by otherness as internal to the constitution of self-identity in
its concrete unity.16

For Hegel, God is truly God only as Spirit, and as such essentially
trinitarian. In an act of primordialjudgment of separation (Ur-teil)the
Father distinguishes himself from himself and posits an Other, the Son.
Posited by the Father as his Other, the Son is distinct from the Father,
but as his Other or his self-expressionthe Son shares the totality of the
divine being. The Son "unites the two qualities of being the totality in
itself and of being posited as other."7 The infinity of the Father lies
precisely in this power not only to remain Father as a self-identical substance but also to posit an Other of himself without ceasing to be himself. The Father is both himself, that is, Father in his distinct selfidentity and related and present to the Son in his distinct Otherness to
the Father, where this relation is not external to the divine essence of
the Father but is itself something posited by the Father in his divine
nature. In this sense the identity of the Father is not the simple identity
of a substance with itself but an identity mediated to itself by Otherness
or a unity of identity and disidentity. The same is true of the Son,
whose identity is likewise internally mediated by his relation to the
Father. In and through the Son the Father returns to himself as a concrete, dynamic, mediated identity, which is the Holy Spirit. The
Father does not merely posit an Other but also has the power to sublate
the Otherness of the Son, that is, to preserve that Other as Other and at
the same time transcend that Other as something posited by himself,
whereby he mediates himself to himself. The Other is not a brute
datum separating the Father from himself but a medium thoroughly
open and transparent to the self-mediating action of the Father. This,

16 For
Hegel's critique of "substance,"see BR (n. 1 above), pp. 188-97, and Phdinomenologie
des
Geistes,ed. Johannes Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1952), p. 19 ff. ("Vorrede").
17

Hegel, AR, p. 91.

184
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation

of course, is an eternal process in the Godhead, and it is the totality of
this process of movement that constitutes the spirituality of God.18
How, then, does this compare with classical trinitarianism? Both
Hegel and the classical view agree that the Father is the unoriginate
source or ground of the Godhead and that the Persons are essentially
relational, but whereas the classical doctrine places such relations outside the divine essence, generating the tension between the monotheism of divine nature and tritheism of Persons, Hegel identifies the
Father with the Godhead as such and regards the Persons or subsistent
relations as internal to the Godhead of the Father, who therefore contains the immanent Trinity within himself. The distinction of Persons
is at least as real in Hegel as in the classical view, but Hegel would disagree that each Person is fully God as much as the other, not because
he denies the divinity of the Persons but because such a statement
would imply the possibility of separate existence of the Persons and of
tritheism.
What is at stake here is the question of ontological priority within the
eternal process itself: which is ontologically prior, the unity of the
divine nature or the distinction of Persons? One could not absolutize
the distinction without falling into tritheism, nor could one absolutize
the unity of the divine nature in its immediateself-identity without making impossible the origination of the Son and the Holy Spirit as well as
creation and Incarnation. Nor yet could one deny the ontological
primacy of unity over plurality without positing radical pluralism;
unity and plurality are not ontologically equal. Hegel's way, therefore,
is to give ontological priority to the Father, not simply as one of three
Persons but precisely as the unoriginate ground of the divine nature in
its unity while also positing the power of self-pluralization within the
one Godhead of the Father as the origin of both the Son and the Spirit.
It is therefore not so much each of the Persons as the totality of the
divine process that manifests the "fullness" of divinity. Each Person,
without ceasing to be distinct, is itself a "moment" or aspect of the selfpluralizing and self-unifying process, in which no Person, not even the
Father, could be taken in isolation, where, therefore, it would be misplaced to ask whether each Person is fully God as much as the other.
The Father alone, for Hegel, would be an abstraction; he exists concretely only as Father of the Son and origin of the Spirit. The Father is
concretely divine precisely as part of the whole process that he originates and in which he becomes actual and concrete, as the Son exists
concretely as Son only as the Other of the Father, and as the Spirit
exists concretely only as the process in which the Father sublates the
18 See ibid., pp. 70, 72, 139.

185
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Journal

of Religion

Otherness of the Son and returns to himself. The divine process is an

eternal circle where the beginning enters into the middle and end
points as their internalpresupposition and becomes concrete only as a
"result" of such mediation, just as the result could not be separated and
reified from the beginning and the process of which it is a result and
into which it enters as their internal presupposition.
The three Persons are thus mutually internal in the unity and totality
of the divine process, of which the Father is the originating principle,
the Son the pluralizing, and the Spirit the reintegrating and unifying
principle, and from which none could be separately considered. The
distinction of Persons is thoroughly relative to the self-unifying totality
of this divine process of which they are moments. This, however, must
not be understood in modalistic fashion, in which the three Persons are
merely manifestations of and thus subordinate to a more primordial
divine nature or divine ground. The divine "nature" is not something
that exists apart from the divine Persons and that somehow exercises
control over them. It is an internal principle of the Persons in their concrete existence and as such not to be reified into an autonomous entity
in its own right. The divine nature is precisely the nature of the Father
and identical with him, by which he, not the nature, differentiates himself from himself, returns to himself from that differentiation, and thus
exists concretely as one God.
It is this vitality of the immanent Trinity with its inner multiplicity
and finality that makes possible God's economic self-revelation in terms
of creation and the Incarnation. In this regard it is important to try to
see the inner unity of these two key events of salvation. For Hegel, creation and the Incarnation are not simply two successive events occurring one after the other in time, connected at best by the subsequent
necessity of making up for the "fall"of man at the beginning, as religious consciousness tends to "represent" (Vorstellen)the relationship, as
though the Incarnation were merely an "afterthought" for God. On the
contrary, if the Incarnation means the union of the human and the
divine, and if it is to be more than a brute, inexplicable mystery, then,
human nature must be understood as something that was created from
the first with the capacity and inner need to enter into union with the
divine. Were created human nature simply other, alien, and opposed
to the divine, the Incarnation would not mean genuine unity but mere
juxtaposition of two heterogeneous elements. Unless human nature
were created with an inner teleological relation to the divine, the Incarnation would mean only an external imposition of the divine on the
human, which on its part would not need the divine and for which,
therefore, the Incarnation would have no redemptive, reconciling significance. The Incarnation as a redemptive event
presupposes an
186
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation

inner, teleological relation between the human and the divine, between
creation and redemption: the creation of finite spirits with an inner
need for the divine makes the Incarnation humanly meaningful, just as
redemption is the teleological fulfillment of creation.
This human need for the divine, for Hegel, is not a passing accident
in human life; it is an "existential"(Heidegger, Rahner) built into the
relational structure of man as the self-conscious but finite unity of finite
and infinite (with God as the infinite unity of finite and infinite). As
Hegel defines the essence of God in relational terms, so he locates the
essence of man in the dialectic of his relation to the infinite. Man's
transcendence to God is the very basis of all his relations to the finite
and as such constitutive of his essence or Wesen,not an external or
contingent addition to it. It is this capacity and drive for transcendence
that makes possible human freedom, human dignity, ethical and religious life, as well as self-conscious subjectivity and rational thought.
This orientation to the infinite, however, only defines "man'sessence"
or "concept,"which as such is not a present reality but a task and a goal
yet to be achieved. In his finite "existence"and "reality"man seeks the
infinite not in the truly infinite but in what is "natural"and finite.
Infinite in "form"but finite in "content,"the human spirit seeks its
infinity, its certainty of itself, in absolutizing and universalizing its

"natural" desires in all their particularity and contingency.19

As a finite unity of finite and infinite, then, the human spirit necessarily experiences a contradiction, an estrangement between its essence
and existence, its concept and reality, an estrangement that is also
qualified as "guilt." Insofar as the human spirit has not yet transcended
its condition of naturality with its immanent determinisms while at the
same time becoming conscious of its own (formal) infinity as a self,
there is a necessary tension between its natural particularity and its
spiritual universality, a tendency to absolutize that particularity into
particularism and assert such particularism over against the universal,
hence, a propensity to evil. At the same time it still remains an act of its
will and freedom to actualize this tendency into particular acts of guilt.
As far as the human condition is concerned, then, it is
necessarily evil
or infected with "original sin" even while particular human acts
may
remain free. This evil, guilty, or sinful condition-or "existential" of
finite existence in its estrangement from the true infinite-reaches
its
self-conscious climax in the "infinite sorrow" of the Jewish experience of
alienation from God and the "infinite misery" of the Roman experience
of alienation from the world, which drives the human spirit into its own
depth with its experience of "total"and "universal" estrangement. Along
19 See ibid.,
pp. 97, 105.

187
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Journal of Religion

with this experience, however, is also posited the need and demand to
overcome that estrangement.20
Could humans, then, overcome this estrangement and achieve
reconciliation with the infinite on their own resources? Hegel's answer
is that they could not. The finite spirit, of course, tries to do so, but as
long as it remains its own activity alone, it remains merely subjective
and formal, with no guarantee that it is also objectively efficacious.
Subjective possibility, if it is to be a "real"possibility, presupposes
objective possibility. Just as my particular act of knowing presupposes
its intrinsic, objective possibility based on the general intelligibility of
being, and just as my eating an apple presupposes the objective homogeneity of myself and the apple that I propose to make part of myself by
eating,21 so my Setzungof the reconciliation of finite and infinite
that "precisely what is posited is also
depends on the Vorraussetzung
something implicit" ("eben das Gesetzte auch an sich ist").22 Only if the

antithesis of finite and infinite is not absolute but sublatable "in itself,"
can the subject also try to sublate it explicitly "foritself."That is, only
on condition that, despite the real antithesis of finite and infinite, a
basic unity between them, more primordial than their antithesis, does
persist and triumph over than antithesis, is it possible for the finite
spirit to do its part in the reconciliation.
Should someone object why, if reconciliation is already actual "in
and for itself," the finite subject still needs to make it explicit, two
things may be pointed out. One is that the objective "already"of divine
reconciliation, which must be understood as a "process,"not as an
accomplished fact of the past, does not make the subjective "notyet"of
human reconciliation an illusion or the need for subjective human
appropriationof divine reconciliation unnecessary, any more than the
general, real intelligibility of being renders the reality of subjective
ignorance a fiction or subjective appropriationof that intelligibility useless. This, of course, raises the issue--which is the second point-of
how God's activity of reconciling himself with the finite depends on
yet
also "overreaches"the self-reconciliation of the finite with the divine.
This is the general issue of the relation between human freedom and
divine initiative, nature and grace, which as such is not peculiar to
Hegel but common to all theism that accepts God's ontological sovereignty as the source of all being. I cannot pursue this question here.
If the finite spirit cannot bring about the reconciliation of itself and
its infinite Other on its own, then this infinite Other must
bring about
this reconciliation and show that it is reconciling itself with the finite
20
21

22

See ibid., pp. 104-21.

See ibid., pp. 159-60.
Ibid., p. 136.

188
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation

spirit precisely in the way that the finite in its actual existential condition can know itself as being reconciled with the infinite. The intrinsic
identity of human and divine, the ontological basis of reconciliation,
must show itself as actual through God's own activity of reconciliation
and this to humans wheretheyare. That is, the redemption of the human
requires the Incarnation of the divine.
For Hegel, this Incarnation is possible only as the Incarnation in an
historical individual for two reasons: the nature of God as Spirit and
the nature of humans as spirits in history. What is at stake here is the
concrete demonstration of the identity of God himself and humanity.
In all preceding, that is, pre-Christian religions, God makes himself
known to humanity in a number of ways, but all these ways stop short
of revealing God himself, God as Spirit. Natural objects (natural
religion), human artifacts (Greek religion), the transcendent God
(Judaism), and God as "fate" (Roman religion): these reveal God only
as an abstraction or only as a will remote and external to the human
spirit. They reveal God only through finite intermediaries and fail to
reveal God himself, God as a self, subject, or spirit with his own universal infinity. What is required is that God identify himself with the
human not abstractly but concretely, not through intermediaries but
through himself; that is, God must identify himself precisely as a selfconscious subject with humanity.
Humanity, on the other hand, is spirit in the world, not a pure spirit,
but a natural, embodied spirit with a natural, sensible consciousness.
(If Hegel also insists that this sensible consciousness must be sublated,
we must also remember that this sublation preserves the reality of
sensible consciousness and does not eliminate it, which would result in
the disembodiment of the human into purely angelic existence, obviously not what Hegel could mean, for whom the Spirit does not shun
sensibility "in monkish fashion.") The reconciling identification of God
and humanity must occurfor humans precisely in their natural consciousness, the "normal" and enduring form of human consciousness in
its concrete historical existence. God as a self-conscious subject must
appear to man's natural consciousness; that is, God must incarnate
himself as an empirical historical individual.
The logic of reconciliation requires God's self-manifestation in a
form that combines sensibility and self-consciousness, which can be
found only in a particular, sensible individual. Individuality, for
Hegel, is "the principle of actuality." The ultimate subject of existence,
still more of self-conscious spiritual existence, is the individual, and in
this ontological sense even God, the Absolute Spirit, is an individual,
although a "concretely universal" individual. Ultimately, for all its relation to an Other, being means unity, identity with itself, inner undi189
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Journal of Religion

videdness, and thus distinction from the Other. Human individuals are
not only individual in this ontological sense but also sensible individuals constituted by materiality that is essentially external and exclusive. God's self-manifestation in a form that is both sensible and selfconscious, therefore, can only be in oneindividual. The idea that God
could have become incarnate in many individuals or in the human
species as a whole either reduces the divine to an abstraction without
subjectivity or turns the human into an accidental mask of the divine in
the manner of Indian myths and Docetism.23
It is important to note here -against Barthian objections-that for
Hegel, this human need for God's redemptive Incarnation is not a
necessity external to and imposed on God. As mentioned earlier, creation is a function of God's self-differentiationad extraby virtue of his
self-differentiationad intra.The separation of the finite Other from the
infinite is itself posited by God's separation of himself from himself. By
the same token the human need for reconciliation with God is simply
the finite side of God's need for reconciliation with himself through the
mediation of the finite, a mediation not imposed on God from without
but posited by God himself. The need for the Incarnation is first and
foremost a necessity inherent in the immanent Trinity and only
secondarily a human need. Hegel's doctrine of creation and the Incarnation, in this sense, is thoroughly trinitarian.
Although Hegel rules out the possibility of a purely historical proof
-in the positivistic sense--that Jesus of Nazareth was precisely that
historical individual in whom the divine was united with the human, it
is also true that for him Jesus was that individual. As "God in human
form"24or "the concrete God,"25Jesus is not "the mere organ of revela-

tion but is himself the content of revelation,"26the ontological congeniality of human and divine. The history of Jesus is the history of God
himself, and he alone is "utterlyadequate to the Idea"("schlechthinder

Idee geniss").27 In his death on the cross, "God himself is dead,"28 and
in subjecting himself to death, "the uttermost pinnacle of finitude,"29
God experiences the sting of otherness at its most radical and proves his
own humanity and his love for humanity.
But just as, in the immanent Trinity, the Father does not remain
separated from the Son but overcomes or sublates the separation,
23

On the necessity of Incarnation in one individual, see ibid., pp. 133-34, 137-42.
Ibid., p. 163.
25
Ibid., p. 148.
26
Hegel, Philosophy of Mind, trans. William Wallace and A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1971), sec. 383 (addition).
27
Hegel, AR, p. 185.
28
Ibid., p. 165.
29
Ibid., p. 161.
24

190

This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation

reconciling himself with the Son in the Spirit, so God does not remain
dead in Jesus but has the power to sublate the otherness of death, that
is, God has the power of Resurrection. No longer limited to the physical boundaries of a particularhistorical individual, God himself rises as
the Holy Spirit from the particularityof finitude in a negation of negation and becomes a universal spiritual presence in the depth of human
history, where he reconciles humanity with himself. For Hegel, otherness, negation, finitude- which is a moment of divine nature itself-is
not the final word; reconciliation is. It is precisely the infinite power of
God to subject himself to finitude and to overcome and triumph over
that finitude and achieve reconciliation between himself and his
Other. 30 In this sense Hegel's theology of the death and resurrectionof
Jesus, which he calls "the whole of history,"31is essentially a "theology
of Resurrection."32Insofar as such resurrection and reconciliation is
rooted in the inner trinitarian nature of God himself, it is also, one
could say, a "theologyof hope," a hope that God himself guarantees in
the ultimate triumph over death and negation. The infinity of God in
Hegel is not that of a God untouched by evil and finitude but that of a
God who suffers yet overcomes them.
One question still remains to be discussed. How does Hegel distinguish between God's presence in Jesus of Nazareth in whom he is
incarnate and his presence in the creatures in general in which he is
not? Hegel does not, as far as I know, provide an explicit answer to this
particular question that has preoccupied so much theology from Chalcedon to contemporary theologians such as Rahner, Cobb, Hick, and
others. What is clear is his rejection of the "substantialist"approach so
characteristicof classical christology. It is possible, however, to attempt
a Hegelian, if not Hegel's, answer to the question on the basis of the
preceding discussion.
It is helpful here, I think, to distinguish three, not two, modes of
God's presence in the creature. The first is God's presence in nature or
the totality of nonhuman creatures. Here God is present as the source
of their being, but not as Spirit. For Hegel, the Spirit can exist as Spirit
only for another spirit. It is only in and for the human spirit that God
can be present as Spirit, which is the second mode of God's presence,
that is, the presence of the Holy Spirit in the interiority of the human
spirit. There are two characteristicsto this mode. One is that it is essentially a spiritual, not physical, presence, and the other is that it is still
30

See ibid., pp. 140, 163, 166.

Ibid., p. 163.
32 Michael
Theunissen, HegelsLehrevomabsolutenGeistals theologisch-politischer
Traktat(Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1970), p. 282.
31

191
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Journal

of Religion

infected by the more or less estranged otherness of the human and the
divine; that is, while the divine Spirit is reconciling itself with the
human, the response of the human remains to varying degrees that of
the guilty, alienated creature.
The third mode of God's presence is that in Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus
remains thoroughly human, not in Docetic appearance-the
finite
Other of God -as is every other creature, yet God so unites and identifies himself with Jesus as his own Other that God is himself involved in
this Other. The intimacy of this self-identification of God with Jesus is
characterized, first of all, by the fact that God is present to him not only
in the interiority of his spirit as in the second mode but in the totality of
his concrete historical existence. His pain, his death is God's pain,
God's death. Second, it is a union of the human and the divine in which
otherness does remain but without the estrangement so characteristic of
the relation between God and other human beings. Jesus is the divinely
posited exemplar of the reconciliation of the human and the divine
"utterly adequate to the Idea." In this sense one might say that the relation between God and Jesus is the finite analogue - and repetition - of
the unestranged, sublated otherness between the Father and the Son in
the immanent Trinity. Third, Jesus is not an external
"organ" of revelation like prophets and other finite intermediaries and
signs but "the
content" of revelation, that is, God himself reconciled with his human
Other. By virtue of his "true" infinity, God does not remain
merely
infinite but, without losing his infinity, finitizes himself in the human
otherness of Jesus so that the history of Jesus is God's own
history, so
that in the death of Jesus "God himself is dead."
*

Speculation on the Trinity and the Incarnation is inherently risky.

No "labor of the concept" seems more strenuous and more
confusing
than speculation on these metaphysical ultimates. One often does not
know what one is talking about, and there are so
many ways one can go
wrong. I have attempted only to throw some light on the issues involved
by reviewing Hegel in the context of the classical formulations, in the
belief that a more adequate understanding of these central Christian
dogmas lies in the Hegelian rather than in the classical metaphysical
approaches. Many issues still require elaboration or further elaboration, such as the "contingency" versus "necessity" of creation and
Incarnation and the transcendence of the immanent over the economic
Trinity, on which Hegel himself seems either obscure or at least

192
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The Trinity and the Incarnation

difficult to comprehend.33 If anything is indicated, however, by the
many contemporary attempts to reformulate the two dogmas, such as
those of Barth, Rahner, Moltmann, and Pannenberg, in whom Hegel's
Denkform is still quite wirklich, it is that his potential to illuminate
deserves further exploration.
33 I dealt with some of these issues in an article
(n. 3 above) and in "Hegel's Retention

Mystery as a Theological

of

Category," Clio 12, no. 4 (1983): 333-53.

193
This content downloaded from 131.217.95.185 on Sat, 01 Aug 2015 14:05:49 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions