Christians know from the words of Jesus in Mark 12:29 and other passages that the God they believe in is one single God. Christians know they are not polytheists, which would mean they worship more than one being. Christians also know of the trinitarian nature of God through passages such as Matthew 3:16-17, where Jesus is baptized, the Spirit of God descends on Jesus, and where the voice of the Father comes from heaven to declare Jesus is his Son in whom he is well pleased. When Christians consider this seeming contradiction, they commit themselves to trust God – and they should – and to believe he is not contradicting himself – and they should. Yet, the Trinity remains an utter mystery, and Christians do not commit themselves to understand what God has revealed about his triune nature in Scripture. Yes, indeed, God does not allow his children anything more than a glimpse into who he is and his nature, but simply because Christians will only ever understand the most minuscule fraction of the Trinity does not mean there is not a lifetime of study to do on the subject and an infinite amount of joy to be found in knowing more of the nature of God. Therefore, Christians need to commit themselves to asking the question: How does the Trinity carry out God’s plan of salvation?
The most faithful answer to this question is that God carries out his plan of salvation through divine appropriation, as each person of the Trinity takes on a focal role in creation while also having all their operations entirely inseparable, as any work of God is equally of the three persons of the Trinity. Discovering this answer must be done through an extensive and careful reading of Scripture and applying biblical theology and then systematic theology to that reading. The doctrines of simplicity and aseity must be deeply considered when seeking the answer to this question. Finally, it must be recognized that as created beings, Christians who seek answers about the nature of the Trinity will not find themselves necessarily satisfied with the answers and incomplete answers they discover on such a topic. Still, they should also expect to find themselves increasingly satisfied with the God they serve.
Three Viewpoints on the Trinity The classical view of the Trinity is surprisingly described quite plainly. Matthew Barrett, a Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professor, writes, “As the orthodox creeds have confessed, God is one in essence, three in person. These three are to be identified in eternity by certain eternal relations of origin or personal modes of subsisting: paternity, filiation, and spiration. The Son is eternally generated from the Father (filiation), and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son (spiration).” Even as this description is plain, it is likely a disappointing description to the average Christian who wants to understand more than that. The classical viewpoint argues that finite, created minds are unable to comprehend the whole nature of God and his triune existence.
Moreover, finite minds cannot comprehend or describe even the tiniest fraction of the nature of the Trinity. Barrett writes, “These three relations of origin have allowed the church to distinguish between the three without aborting the unity of the three as one in essence.” Christians run the risk of describing God in the wrong or heretical ways when they veer from what the Bible teaches about the workings of the Trinity. Since the Bible only reveals glimpses of how the Trinity functions, the classical view relies on those glimpses as it seeks to identify the members of the Trinity.
The classical view of the Trinity then understands how the members of the Trinity work in relation to their roles. The term used to describe this is the economic Trinity. “The economic Trinity is the Trinity in its relation to creation, including the specific roles played by the Trinitarian persons through the history of creation, providence, and redemption. These are roles that the persons of the Trinity have freely entered into; they are not necessary to their being.” writes John Frame in his systematic theology. One of the keys to understanding the classical viewpoint is that the various roles the Trinity takes are not necessary to their being.
This has significant implications for how God carries out his plan of salvation. When Jesus, the second member of the Trinity, became incarnate as part of God’s great rescue of humanity, he was humbled, which is to say he was not humbled in all of eternity, nor will be into eternity, after his incarnation. Yet even as Jesus is a member of the trinity that becomes incarnate, he does not act independently of the rest of the Trinity. Barrett explains this well, writing, “For example, it is the Son of God who becomes incarnate and dies on the cross; nevertheless, his mission is from the Father (John 3:31–36; 5:19–23), and he goes to the cross by the eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:14). In every redemptive activity the three persons work indivisibly.” In God’s plan of salvation the Trinity takes on focal roles or divine appropriation, yet their action is indivisible.
Another one of the more common views on the Trinity is the eternal relations of authority and submission (ERAS) view. “They argue that there is a hierarchy of role within the Trinity and that that hierarchy does not compromise their equality of nature, glory, and honor.” writes Frame. So far, this idea is mainly within the church's historic teaching. What does not flow from early church history to the present is that ERAS believes the hierarchy of roles to be forever lasting and not just related to the individual roles of each member of the trinity within creation. Wayne Grudem, one of the leading advocates for this position, defending this in his systematic theology, saying, “[I]f the Son is not eternally subordinate to the Father in role, then the Father is not eternally ‘Father’ and the Son is not eternally ‘Son.’ This would mean that the Trinity has not eternally existed.”
This idea of eternal subordination adds another means to identify each member of the trinity beyond the description of the Son being eternally generated from the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.
Proponents of ERAS argue their understanding of the Trinity and eternal subordination is important to God’s plan of salvation. They do largely hold to the classical view, but they do not want an oversimplification of the Trinity to occur and so they point to passages that imply an eternal hierarchy has existed. For example, Grudem will point to Ephesians 1:3-4 and note that the act of election is attributed to the Father and the Father chooses us in the Son before creation, implying eternal subordination. Therefore, the process of salvation has been functionally done in eternity past through the subordination of the Son to the Father.
In the past fifty years, there has been a surge in thinking typically called social Trinitarianism which places the emphasis on the transactions between the divine persons and thus emphasizes the individuality of each member of the trinity. The emphasis of the social trinitarian is not just to ensure the three members of the trinity are not compressed into one but to demonstrate their exclusivity. A professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Royce Gruenler, espouses this viewpoint. He writes in the opening lines of his book of the Trinity in the book of John, “The social nature of God is a theme that has often been neglected, though it is central to the redemptive story of the Bible.” Later he continues, “[T]he Father and the Son are seen to be conversing within the divine Household, Father Son, and Holy Spirit interweaving their distinctive patters of personhood within an essential unity.” The language Gruenler takes cues from historic Christianity, yet what he suggests is something substantially different from the historical view. For example, even when Gruenler uses the verb interweaving, he suggests more distinct persons exist or even entirely distinct persons exist, as there must be multiple, individual threads for the act of weaving something together into one to take place.
To Gruenler, this social nature of the Trinity extends and is equivocated with the life of the Christian community. He describes the Trinity as having faithful interrelatedness in oneness. He says that this is to be true of the believers in the church who are to live lives in love being at one another’s disposal. He points to Jesus as an example of this relational value of the Trinity at work, and he draws attention to Jesus in the garden and his desire to be disposable to the Father by going to the cross. This implies that without Jesus’ willingness to relate to the Father by being disposed to him, there would be no one to call the new community of Christians out of the world. Gruenler believes that his theology of the social Trinity is not just a means of describing God. Still, his theology is directly related to how God functionally carries out his plan of salvation.
Another proponent of the social Trinitarian view is the German theologian Jürgen Moltmann. For Moltmann, in his book, The Trinity and the Kingdom, this existence in the relationship between the Trinity members is equivalent to the relationship between God and man. Moltmann writes: His love, which liberates, delivers and redeems through suffering, wants to reach its fulfillment in the low that is bliss. But love only finds bliss when it finds its beloved, liberates them, and has them eternally at his side. For that reason and in this sense the deliverance or redemption of the world is bound up with the self-deliverance of God from his sufferings. He summarizes and draws his conclusion together, saying, “In this sense, not only does God suffer with and for the world; liberated men and women suffer with God and for him.” Therefore, according to Moltmann, God’s plan of salvation is carried out by the largely distinct or individual members of the Trinity in communion with themselves, creating oneness. The lost can have access to this same oneness, or salvation, in other words, through God’s suffering with and for the world.
A Defense of the Classical View of the Trinity
The most faithful answer to how the Trinity carries out God’s plan of salvation is that God carries out his plan of salvation through divine appropriation, and he does so with inseparable operations. This is to say, the classical view of the Trinity is correct. This understanding of the trinity has its roots in the attributes of simplicity that God is not made up of parts; and aseity, that God’s life is complete without humanity, or that he is life, in and of himself.
The question of the working of God’s plan begins in eternity but is consummated at creation. It is too wonderful to fully understand why God chose to create the world and humanity, but it must be recognized that God did not need to create humanity. God choose to create the world not to satisfy an existing need but to show and share himself with humanity. For example, in Romans 5:7-8, Paul says, “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In this verse, God tells his people he chooses to show his love for them and the implication of that being a choice is that God did have an option. Since God had an option to create man and die for the man or not create man at all, then it must be that he would have been perfectly adequate existing forever without humanity.
When theological thinking produces a distorted idea that God needs us in any form, the resulting theology makes a god who is insufficient within himself and is also a God who necessarily needs to change, which is to say he is no longer immutable. He must change because he lacks, and something must be added to him. Faithful Christians thinking carefully about such a possibility will be terrified of such a proposition. Instead, in Malachi 3:6-7, God says, “For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed” (ESV). What a comfort that is to Christians. If the God of the Bible needed broken, destitute humanity to be complete, what hope would there be? If God were able to or needed to change his plans, his followers would indeed be at risk of being consumed at any moment. Since social trinitarianism requires a God to be affected by change, this understanding of immutability rules out social Trinitarianism as a possible explanation and this reasoning clarifies that social trinitarianism is dangerous theology. Instead, a self-sufficient God and an unchanging God is a God who can be trusted and who exists.
If he is to be unchanging, he also must operate in perfect unity, never surprised by what another member of the Trinity does but instead working in divine tandem with the whole of the trinity. This perfect unity of action is called inseparable operations. The first sign of the Trinity working with inseparable operations shows up in Genesis 1, where God speaks in the plural about himself. Genesis 1:26a reads, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” This plurality appears with astounding clarity in the baptism of Jesus. Matthew 3:16-17 describes Jesus being baptized, the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and the voice of God booming from heaven. So, there is no creation without the unified operation of the trinity, and there is no baptism of Jesus where a member of the Trinity is not working. Charles Hodge, a reformed Presbyterian theologian, describes this reality, writing, “As the essence of the Godhead is common to the several persons, they have a common intelligence, will, and power. There are not in God three intelligences, three wills, three efficiencies. The Three are one God, and therefore have one mind and will.” Believing that the Trinity operates with multiple intelligences, wills, or efficiencies denies the monotheistic nature of the Christian faith. Such a belief fails to recognize the inseparable operations of the Trinity, which are demonstrated throughout Scripture. When God acts in his creation and redemptive plan for his children, he works with one accord and with one purpose.
The idea of inseparable operations unites immediately with the doctrine of simplicity. Divine simplicity teaches that God is not made up of divisible parts. Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” He cannot be spliced into various categories or distinctions. He is not like a man who has body and soul, arms and legs, or anger and love. “[D]ivine simplicity demands the singularity of divine will, divine energy, divine action, and every other aspect of the divine life save only the eternal relations of origin. There is one volitional inclination in the divine life, one intention, one activity, and so on.” writes Stephen Holmes, a Baptist preacher, and professor at the University of St. Andrews. The human inclination is to attempt to make God like a human and to assume there is a way to break down God into individual parts. To try to splice God apart is to deny who God is.
Divine simplicity does not stand in opposition to the numerous biblical accounts of the members of the Trinity working in various, distinct ways. At this point, the divine appropriations of the Trinity need to be understood. It would be inconsistent with agreeing to the doctrine of simplicity and then immediately contradicting it by saying each part of the trinity operates independently or discretely from the other members of the trinity. Barrett describes divine appropriations as, “One particular person of the Trinity may take on a special or focal role (e.g., the Son becomes incarnate; the Spirit descends at Pentecost). That is called the doctrine of divine “appropriations,” because a specific work or action is appropriated to a particular person of the Trinity.” The persons of the Trinity remain simple. God cannot be divided from any other member of the Trinity, even as the Father takes the appropriation as the trinity member who sends forth the Son and the Spirit.
Barrett’s term of ‘focal role’ is beneficial in understanding this, for if someone were to misunderstand the definition of divine appropriations, they could believe in modalism. Modalism reduces the trinitarian nature down to one being. It suggests that when Scripture presents Jesus and the Father in one account, Jesus and the Father are the same entity in all ways, except they are wearing different masks as they relate to creation. Understanding divine appropriations as a focal role helps Christians to see that even as Jesus goes to the cross, he remains indivisible from the Trinity; instead, it is his commitment to the cross that is in focus during that moment of redemptive history. A beautiful example of how the inseparable operation comes together with divine appropriations can be found in Galatians 4:5-7, which reads: But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. The inseparable actions of the Trinity work in God’s plan of redemption for the united purpose that God’s people would no longer be enslaved people but sons and heirs through God. Nonetheless, the whole of the Trinity is at work in God’s plan of salvation in specific ways. The Father sends the Son to the cross, the Son goes to the cross, and God sends the Spirit into his people to transform them from death to life. This is the Trinity at work in creation to solve the problem of sin to the glory of God.
For many, the classical view of the Trinity leaves a question concerning how Scripture seems to talk about the relationship between the members of the Trinity and the relationship between the Father and the Son. Jesus speaks as recorded in John 14:28, saying, “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” Reading Scripture plainly and literally is indeed a healthy interpretation method to use. Yet, Christians need also to avoid isolating passages away from the surrounding passages and the rest of the Bible. Using such a hermeneutic that isolates a verse like John 14:28 would likely bring many readers to conclude that there is a quantitative difference in value between the parts of the Trinity. Christians should not read John 14:28 without also reading and considering a passage such as John 10:29-30, which says, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
This passage again points out the greatness of the Father, but Jesus also claims to be one with the Father. As the doctrine of simplicity purports, the Trinity cannot be made of parts, where one piece has a different value than another part. Faithful readers will keep searching the Scripture to understand what this means, and they will eventually come across Philippians 2:6- 11. Paul writes in Philippians 2:6-8, “...though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” As Christ takes the form of a servant, he assumes the divine appropriation as the member of the Trinity that will be incarnate and go to the cross. Charles Spurgeon writes, “A great marvel is that Incarnation, that the eternal God should take into union with Himself our human nature, and should be born at Bethlehem, and live at Nazareth, and die at Calvary on our behalf.” Faithfully reading these passages and the whole Bible allows Christians to understand that Jesus Christ is God, and he takes on flesh to pay for the cost of his children’s sin. Indeed, Christians would be lost if this were not true.
This question also dovetails into the question concerning if the subjection of the Son to the Father an eternal reality is or not. As previously discussed, the proponents of ERAS would argue that it necessarily must be the case that the Son is indeed eternally subordinated. As previously discussed, Wayne Grudem holds that because the Son is called the Son in eternity past, he has a subordinate role in eternity past. Why does the human relationship of a father and a son necessarily need to apply directly to the Trinity? It should not be an assumption in such a matter. This is not to detract from the Father’s relationship with his Son in Sonship, but it is to say that it might be overly reductionistic to apply human relational standards to the Trinity. More convincingly, Philippians 2:6-11, quoted above, reveals that Jesus humbled himself. Paul does not say that the Father humbled Jesus, but instead, he attributes it to the second person of the Trinity. Taking this stance means that Jesus, in his incarnation, takes the focal of the humble, incarnate God-man. Still, this is a temporary position, a temporary divine appropriation of role. Philippians 2:9-11 says, “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” More can be addressed in the ERAS debate, but Christians must be careful to read Scripture and carefully discern these matters. They must be cautious not to imply the characteristics of human relationships upon the Trinity unless Scripture explicitly directs them to do so.
Conclusion John 3:16-17 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” In this love, God redeems his people through the glorious work of the Trinity, through divine appropriation and inseparable operations, for the glory of God.
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