Trinitarian Theology: Pannenberg And The Existence Of God

In contemporary Trinitarian theology, there are theologians (i.e. Pannenberg, Rahner, and Balthasar) who are looking more explicitly at the distinct and individual roles that each of the divine persons is appropriated within the act of creation, and they are also searching for a deeper understanding of Trinitarian activity in creation. The Lutheran theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg he has proposed an interesting theology of creation in terms of the divine freedom and relational mutuality that exists between the three divine persons of the Trinity and their action in creation. Pannenberg sees God the Father as the origin of all creatures who grants them existence, cares for them, and who sustains them and allows them to be independent beings.

The Son, however, is the primary object of the Father’s love, and the Father’s love for creation is mediated through the Son. Pannenberg sees the Son as the origin of both otherness and difference, and as such the Son’s otherness, distinctness, and independence are also given to all creatures. God the Father’s creative act, according to Pannenberg, reaches its fulfillment in the ongoing independence and distinct existence that each creature possesses. For Pannenberg, the Son’s function is to generate new creatures as well as to order their relationships with one another. As the Logos (i.e. “the Word of God, or principle of divine reason and creative order”), everything in the cosmos acquires its form and rightful place in creation from the

The three divine persons relate to one another in an intercommunal manner that is responsible for the creation of a relational universe in which their mutual relations are the reason for its ongoing creation. In this model, the divine persons give expression to who they are through the finite creatures that exist within creation. The Trinity’s self-expression, therefore, not only creates new creatures, but it also allows them to exist and to be independent. In the act of creation, the three divine persons give a portion of what is proper to themselves to the creatures that they create. This is only possible because each person of the Trinity is distinct and is properly engaged in one act of creating. For Rahner, God the Father is the unbegotten creator as well as the fountain and origin of divinity who communicates that divine essence through Jesus and the Holy