Is the Holy Spirit «before» or «after» Christ? This question, suggesting a trinitarian christological inversion, founds Balthasar's kenotic presentation of the Trinity. The present article intends to get round the difficulty raised by Balthasar in referring to the consubstantiality of the divine action ad extra and to friendship as constituting the Spirit. The Father begets the Son in the effusion of the Spirit, not in the sense that the Spirit would be the principle of the Son, but in the sense that the Son, with the Father, is source of the Spirit.
