immanent and economic Trinity

Christian Alexander

What is the difference between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity?

Ken McGuire

The immanent Trinity is the relations in God between the three persons, The economic Trinity is God in the economy of "his" dealings with the world, especially in the economy of salvation.

The exact relationship and differences between the two are a topic on discussion in Trinitarian Theology. See a Theological Dictionary like https://www.logos.com/product/30238/pocket-dictionary-of-theological-terms for basics, and then just about any Theology text for some discussion about it...

Rosie Perera

Any question in the form of "What is the difference between A and B" can be answered by doing a search in the form A NEAR B (with separate pairs of quotes around A and B if they are phrases)

In this case:

"immanent Trinity" NEAR "economic Trinity"

This should find you useful material in your Library. For example, this search turned up for me a section titled THE “IMMANENT TRINITY” AND THE “ECONOMIC TRINITY” in The Trinity: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God.

There are a lot of hits, though. You can zero in even more on ones that deal with the distinctions between these two terms by adapting the search this way:

"immanent Trinity" NEAR "economic Trinity" NEAR between

This reduces the hits in my Library from 634 to 115. Much easier to skim through for useful hits.

Another thing you could try (in addition, it will help you understand the concepts better) is to look up definitions of A and B in your reference resources, read the definitions, and figure out the difference between them that way.

To look up terms in your reference resources (i.e., find places where these are headwords in dictionaries and encyclopedias, where you'll get a good definition of them), you could create a collection of all your reference books (rule: type:encyclopedia OR type:dictionary) and search Heading text within that. Or even easier, search in Factbook, and that will send you to a reference resource in your library that has a definition, if you have one. In Factbook, you'll also learn that another name for Immanent Trinity is Ontological Trinity. And then you could also search for that term in your reference books.

If you don't have any reference book that defines those terms, I recommend you buy one or more of these, since they will help you a lot in the sort of studies you're doing now and in the future:

• A Concise Dictionary of Theology, 3rd ed. (defines Economic Trinity but mentions Immanent Trinity in that definition)
• Nelson’s New Christian Dictionary (defines only Economic Trinity)
• Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (defines both Economic Trinity and Immanent Trinity)

You also might want to try running a Topic Guide on both Immanent Trinity and Economic Trinity. This will find you a lot of useful stuff: glossary entries within books in your library, articles which are highly focused on these topics, etc.

If you want to go beyond basic definitions, you're going to need to read the people who discuss these terms. Do a search for both of these terms ("Immanent Trinity" "Economic Trinity") within all your systematic theology books. If you don't have a collection of them yet, create one first. It will come in handy in the future. Here's a fairly good stab at a rule for creating such a collection: ((type:monograph AND (title:"systematic theology" OR title:"dogmatics" OR subject:"theology, doctrinal") ANDNOT (title:magazine OR subject:"Sermons--Outlines" OR subject:theologians))) 

YMMV, depending on what you've got in your Library.