God’s freedom

Dumitru Staniloae has this to say about the asymmetry between the economic and ontological relation of Son and Spirit in Orthodoxy: “from the order in which the divine persons are manifested in the world Catholic theology infers an order of their relations within the Godhead, and admits no freedom for that divine order by which the persons are active in the world, for – according to this view – divine acts in the world must strictly reproduce the order in which the persons are found within the divine life. This theology denies that the Son can be sent by the Holy Spirit, as the Lord says he is (Luke 4.18), because in the eternal sphere it is the Spirit who proceeds from the Son. We see here no understanding of the mystery of divine freedom, and an interpretation of God’s work in the world that follows an order devoid of freedom . . . . Hence too the rationalism of Catholic theology.”

Two comments: First, to the extent that passages like Luke 4:18 haven’t had a role in Trinitarian theology, Staniloae has a point (cf. Thomas Weinandy’s The Father’s Spirit of Sonship ). Yet, second, the notion that preserving God’s freedom requires that we leave open the possibility for a disjunction between economy and ontology is a big problem. It seems that God is free to show Himself other than He is, or perhaps to be other than He is.