The Triune God in His Revelation

Although his work is not the emanation of a necessity which controls him, it is the work of his true nature itself and thus of the necessity which is established in him and through him.

Weber, 389.

This sentence may seem as if it could be glossed over, but it's implications cannot be overlooked. This is a sentence which leans heavily on the relationship that Karl Barth forged between the doctrines of the Trinity and of election (or predestination). First, God's work is not a necessity that controls God. God chooses, or elects, just who God is and what he does. That is to say that God is totally free in himself, God did not need to create stuff (people, the universe, time, etc.) outside of himself to be God. God elected to do this and to be this God out of his free and loving decision, which is ultimately for us. Thus, it is only out of a sort of self-imposed necessity (established in him and through him) that God is and does this.

I'd like to know what Weber means when he says "the work of his true nature itself". Is this to say that God has a nature "before" he had a triune being and activity? Or is he simply stating that within himself, within the trinity, his true nature worked outward into this necessity? Does this "work of his true nature" result in a sort of 'overflowing' within and from the triune life that resulted in creation, humanity, etc.? I'm taking a class on the doctrine of election, so this stuff is just in my wheelhouse.

He sort of gets at the answer to those questions in the very next section. This is a good long quote to think on:

His work cannot be separated from his nature. He has destined himself in his essence, in his true nature, for this his work. But that means that God as the One is always himself and thus he is always turned towards a counterpart. He is he himself in that he does not exist for himself alone bur rather for himself in his distinction from himself. And that means, as Augustine very rightly saw, that God is love.

Weber, 389.

Of yeah. These are the conceptual seedlings for why God's unity is in his three-ness, and his three-ness in his unity. An important consequence of this is in God's opus as extra (outward directed work). This concept basically claims that

God's unity in triplicity is not solely an 'inward' unity, so to speak, but it is also a unity in God's work regarding the creature.

Weber, 392.

What he's saying here, for instance, is that the work of Creation, while traditionally attributed to the Father, is also the work of the Son and the Spirit. The work of reconciliation and redemption, traditionally thought of as the work of the Son, is also the work of the Father and the Spirit. And on and on. So while it is God the Son who dies on the cross, it is also an act of God the Father and God the Spirit.

This is all related to the traditional and dangerous doctrine of "appropriations". Weber seals up this deal nicely:

...the Doctrine of Appropriations is a reflection of the 'order of persons'...it cannot imply more than this, that God's work, in accordance with his being, realizes the lordship of the Father through the lordship of the Son in the lordship of the Spirit. ... the Doctrine of Appropriations refers back to the mystery which does not cease to be mystery when it has been revealed, the mystery of the unfathomable and inexhaustible unity and triplicity of God.

Weber, 396.