This is prompted in part by a student paper from my mass of grading I’m slowly coming out from under…since I think my grades are due today…
If people complain that the Trinity isn’t in the Bible, they ought to complain even more about the Economic Trinity: “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.” The more I think about it, the more uncomfortable I am with it, especially in its current liturgical use. This formulation is—as far as I know—a construct of liberal protestant theology without particularly deep roots in Christian practice, especially in the ways it’s coming more and more into use. My reading of medieval sources in particular is often at odds with it in several key respects and highlights the dissonances within it for me.
Increasingly, the Economic Trinity is gaining favor as a liturgical substitute for the classical Trinitarian of “Father, Son, Holy Spirit”; functionally, people seem to map the terms with the various parts of the Godhead: Father=Creator, Redeemer=Son, Sanctifier=Holy Spirit. I don’t know if this was the original intent of the folks who constructed it or not but it’s certainly the way it’s playing out in our faith communities. And as strict equivalencies—they don’t work. Medieval catechetical documents lift up Christ as creator in ways at odds with this construction. And, when the dissonance is probed, the New Testament evidence—John, the Pauline group, the Petrines—comes down much more on the medieval side than the modern side. The same is true of disassociating the Father for the Redeemer; who is it that leads out his people “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm”?
Professional theologians have the learning and leisure to sit around and discuss how Christ is functioning in the Exodus narrative or in Creation and how the economic terms neither precisely limit nor delineate the persons of the Godhead—but most other folks don’t. I suggest we think real hard about the theological problems of replacing one with the other before making it an unreflective liturgical change. It’s the unreflective changes that seem like a good idea at the time that can lead not only us but our fellow believers into trouble…