Word & World Volume XVIII, Number 3 Summer 1998
Trinitarian Prayers for Christian Worship EBERHARD JÜNGEL
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Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen Tübingen, Germany
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N EVERY PROPER CHRISTIAN WORSHIP SERVICE, THE BELIEVING CONGREGATION
confesses its faith in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, the mystery of the triune God, though faithfully believed and solemnly confessed in worship, seems to be existentially irrelevant to the Christian life beyond the service of worship. “This secret seems to be transmitted only for its own sake. Even after it 2 is communicated, as a reality it remains fully hidden.” This lament by Karl Rahner over the existential irrelevance of the confession of the triune God expresses an experiential deficiency that has been widely documented. In Germany, even the former Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who understands himself to be a 1Translated by Frederick J. Gaiser.
2Karl Rahner, Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte, in Mysterium Salutis: Grundriß heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, ed. J. Feiner and M. Löhrer, vol. 2 (Zürich and Köln: Benziger, 1967) 322.
EBERHARD JÜNGEL is professor of systematic theology and philosophy of religion. He also directs the university s Institut für Hermeneutik. His major work on the Trinity, Gottes Sein ist im Werden (1965), appeared in English in 1976, The Doctrine of the Trinity: God s Being Is in Becoming.
The doctrine of the Trinity has often been perceived as practically irrelevant.
Prayers with trinitarian structure can begin to overcome this perception. The God who is confessed and proclaimed by Christians does not exist in splendid isolation, but is One who exists from eternity as a Being in community. Trinitarian prayers call Christians to experience the life of the triune God.
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