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November 28 - December 15, 2019
The disciples were, indeed, “experiential Trinitarians.” They had walked with the Son, heard the Father speak from glory, and were now indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
Precisely what the New Testament is, is the documentation of the religion of the incarnate Son and of the outpoured Spirit, that is to say, of the religion of the Trinity, and what we mean by the doctrine of the Trinity is nothing but the formulation in exact language of the conception of God presupposed in the religion of the incarnate Son and outpoured Spirit.[5]
There is in the divine Being but one indivisible essence (ousia, essentia). In this one divine Being there are three persons or individual subsistences, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The whole undivided essence of God belongs equally to each of the three persons. The subsistence and operation of the three persons in the divine Being is marked by a certain definite order. There are certain personal attributes by which the three persons are distinguished. The church confesses the Trinity to be a mystery beyond the comprehension of man.[8]
1. There is in the divine Being but one indivisible essence (ousia, essentia).
It makes a further statement: the divine Being is “indivisible.” That is, you can’t chop God up into parts. He is “simple,” in the sense that He is not made up of different “parts.” God’s being is either entire, whole, or it is not God’s being at all.
We struggle to express ourselves clearly here, for how does one describe the “being” of God? Terms have been used down through the centuries, such as essence, or in Greek, ousia, or in Latin, essentia. It’s the “stuff of God.” I like to say it is that “which makes God, God.” Because He is unique, His being is unique as well. Whatever the “being” of God is, creatures don’t have the same thing. Our biggest problem is that we think very physically.
God’s being is not limited by time and space but is eternal and without bounds, omnipresent.
In this one divine Being there are three persons or individual subsistences, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is Foundation Two.
Yet we note the fact that another term is offered to help define the word “person,” t...
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Why suggest this term? Because we are wont to read into the term “person” all sorts of physical limitations that should not be thought of at all when speaking of the Trinity. Many people, when they hear of “three persons,” visualize three men standing side by side. Yet...
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But then again, does “subsistence” mean anything to most of us? What we are talking about are personal distinctions in the divine Being. We are talking about the “I, You, He” found in such passages as Matthew 3, where the Father speaks from heaven, the Son is being baptized, and the Spirit descends as a dove.
Subsistence = personal self-distinctions not dividing the essence or being of God
we are speaking of the personal self-distinctions God has revealed to exist within the one, indivisible divine essence.[12]
Theologians speak of each of these subsistences as being marked by particular “incommunicable attributes.” What we mean is that you can tell the Father from the Son, and the Son from the Spirit, by how they are related to each other, and by...
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Father, Son, and Spirit are distinguished from one another, and yet these distinctions do not lead to a division in the one Being that is God.
The whole undivided essence of God belongs equally to each of the three persons.
Right here we stumble, for in our experience being can only be shared fully by one person. Let’s think about this. What is the difference between “being” and “person”?
betterment of “dog kind.” Biblically speaking, there are three kinds of beings who are personal: God, men, and angels. I have being: I exist. Yet I am personal. My being is limited and finite.
My being is shared by only one person: me. My being, since it is limited, cannot be distributed among two, three, or any more persons. One being, one person: that’s what it is to be a human.
What we are saying about God is that His being is not limited and finite like a creature’s. His Being is infinite and unlimited, and hence can, in a way completely beyond our comprehension, be shared fully by three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The divine Being is one; the divine persons are three. While the Father is not the Son, nor is the Son the Spirit, each is fully and completely God by full and...
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Unless we recognize the difference between the terms being and person, we will never have an accurate or workable ...
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The subsistence and operation of the three persons in the divine Being is marked by a certain definite order.
The first is ontological. Ontology is the study of being. When we speak of the “ontological Trinity,” we speak of the Trinity as it exists in and of itself. In contrast with this is the term economical. In this case, when we speak of the economical Trinity, we speak of the operations and workings of the Trinity, what the three persons do in creation and salvation.
The “order” that is observed biblically is the Father first, the Son second, and the Spirit third.
When we speak of the “order” of the Persons, we are not talking about an order of being. It is not an order in time.
The order is one of relationship.
When we speak of the relationship shared by the Father, Son, and Spirit, we use the terms begotten and procession. Again I sound the warning, “Define these terms within the context in which they are being used.” That is, don’t think of “begotten” in human terms, but divine; don’t think of “procession” in a finite, creaturely sense, but in an eternal, unlimited, timeless sense. We must do so, for we are talking about the infinite, timeless being of God.
Automatically we place this relationship within time and think of the Father originating the Son at a point in time. Most definitely not.
C. S. Lewis[17] likened it to a book that is lying on top of another. We say the top book owes its position to the bottom one. It wouldn’t be where it is without the one on the bottom. Now, if you can, imagine this relationship as always having been. There never was a time when the top book was not where it was, never a time when the bottom book was alone. This is what we mean when we speak of the Father begetting the Son.
The relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son[18] is described by the term procession.
5. There are certain personal attributes by which the three persons are distinguished.
would be “generation” for the Father, “filiation” for the Son, and “procession” for the Holy Spirit.
Only the Father generates; only the Son bears the relation of Son to the Father (filiation); and only the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
The church confesses the Trinity to be a mystery beyond the comprehension of man.
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
History is a wonderful guide but a lousy taskmaster.
