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CHICAGO STUDIES
is, the threefoldness of God-for-us-the economic Trinity who work our salvation-may be predicated of God as he is in himself, apa1t from his unnecessary relation to our world, because "as who I am I shall be with you." Christian revelation discloses God-for-us as Father, Word-Son, and Spirit. The underived source of being, life, and salvation is "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He is the reference of the New Testament Theos. The New Testament declares that the CreatorLord is the Sender of Jesus, the origin of his mission to inaugurate the Kingdom and the power which raised him to Lordship. Jesus is the revealing word of the Father, the enfleshed self. gift of God. Rahner makes much of the fact ¡that it is the Word who takes on flesh. Precisely the second person of the Trinity, spoken out into a finite other, bears God into our midst and accepts his will for men. Thus, the generation of the Word and the Incarnation are inevitably joined in our theological probing. One can hypothesize that the Incarnation gives creation its basic architecture--that God makes a world through his Word and with Jesus in mind. Fmther, a theological a priori makes man precisely that which occurs when God speaks himself out into a finite other. This is the top-side way of coming to the "hearer of the word" or "capacity. of God" defini-¡ tion of man which Rahner's anthropology attains from experience. So the Incarnation should be viewed as the perfect achievement of God's will to give himself to man. What God works in Jesus of Nazareth consummately, he works in all the just more incipiently. This may be expressed by saying that divinization equals sonship--that we share the Trinitarian >"elations "in Christ" (receiving the Father's speaking, bearing the referential stance of his Word, breathing a Spirit of love towards other men) . The Holy Spirit appears in Scripture as God given and accepted-as the fruits of salvation now immanently present to us. He is the Spirit of love, who gives life to the Church, so that God's people are always holy with his self-giving agape. The Spirit also presides over our prayer, ruling the ineffable