La Dramatique trinitaire de la révélation et du salut chez H.U. von Balthasar
Silouane PongaSome critics have unduly accused Balthasar of eleciting a new doctrine of the Trinity… whereas what Balthasar really aims at is theological hermeneutics, capable of making the revelation of the Trinity better understandable in the salvation history. Karl Rahner saw a strict correspondence between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity. But this receprocity, although absolute in the order of nature (consubstantiality), presents itself differently in the order of the missions ad extra. The trinitarian inversion, as proposed by Balthasar, is intended to qualify this inadequate reciprocity between the mystery of God as he is in himself and the mystery of God as revealing himself in the economy, through the unique mediation of the Son. We deal here, so to say, with an argumentum convenientiae, which clarifies, in its own way, the implication of the Trinity in the dramatics of the salvation. One might also speak of an argumentum convenientiae in the thomistic sense, that is to say: «the mystery of incarnation does not rest on the fact that God would have, in any way, changed the state in which he exists from all eternity, but on the fact that he has united himself with the creatures, or rather that he has united creature with himself, in a new way» (S. Th. IIIa 1, 1, ad 1m).