Bavinck on the Eastern Understanding of the Trinity

“For the Eastern church the unity of the divine essence and the Trinity of persons does not arise from the divine nature as such but from the person of the Father. He is the sole originating principle (αἰτια). The three persons, according to the Orthodox, are not three relations within the one being, not the self-unfolding of the Godhead; rather it is the Father who communicates himself to the Son and the Spirit. From this it follows, however, that now the Son and the Spirit are coordinated: they both have their originating principle (αἰτια) in the Father. The Father reveals himself in both: the Son imparts the knowledge of God, the Spirit the enjoyment of God. The Son does not reveal the Father in and through the Spirit; the Spirit does not lead [believers] to the Father through the Son. The two are more or less independent of each other: they both open their own way to the Father. Thus orthodoxy and mysticism, the intellect and the will, exist dualistically side by side. And this unique relation between orthodoxy and mysticism is the hallmark of Greek piety.”

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2: God and Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 317.

Bavinck on the Generation of the Son

Notes from Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2: God and Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).

“God’s fecundity is a beautiful theme, one that frequently recurs in the church fathers. God is no abstract, fixed, monadic, solitary substance, but a plenitude of life. It is his nature (οὐσια) to be generative (γεννητικη) and fruitful (καρπογονος). It is capable of expansion, unfolding, and communication. Those who deny this fecund productivity fail to take seriously the fact that God is an infinite fullness of blessed life. All such people have left is an abstract concept of God, or to compensate for this sterility, in pantheistic fashion they include the life of the world in the divine being.” (308-309)

The generation of the Son is (1) spiritual, not physical. 

“The most striking analogy of divine generation is thought and speech...Just as the human mind objectivizes itself in speech, so God expresses his entire being in the Logos [Christ]. But here, too, we must note the difference. Humans need many words to express their ideas. These words are sounds and therefore material, sense-related. They have no existence by themselves. But when God speaks, he totally expresses himself in the one person of the Logos, whom he also “granted to have life in himself” (John 5:26 NIV).” (109)

The generation of the Son is (2) out of the being of the Father, not out of nothing by the will of the Father.

“This is not to say, of course, that the generation is an unconscious and unwilled emanation, occurring apart from the will and power of the Father. It is not an act of antecedent decreeing will, like creation, but one that is so divinely natural to the Father that his concomitant will takes perfect delight in it.” (110)

The generation of the Son is (3) eternal. 

“For if the Son is not eternal, then of course God is not the eternal Father either. In that case he was God before he was Father...rejection of the eternal generation of the Son involves not only a failure to do justice to the deity of the Son, but also to that of the Father.. It makes him changeable, robs him of his divine nature, deprives him of the eternity of his fatherhood and leaves unexplained how God can truly and properly be called “Father” in time if the basis for calling him “Father” is not eternally present in his nature...It is not something that was completed and finished at some point in eternity, but an eternal, unchanging act of God, at once always complete and eternally ongoing. Just as it is natural for the sun to shine and for a spring to pour out water, so it is natural for the Father to generate the Son. The Father is not and never was ungenerative; he begets everlastingly...For God to beget is to speak, and his speaking is eternal.” (110)

Why was it the Son who became incarnate?

“Because the Mediator must be God, redemption requires that one of the three persons becomes the Mediator (and thus the God-man, with two wills)” (Mark Jones). Why was it the Son who became incarnate and not the Father or the Holy Spirit?

David Kirk notes that ‘while the creation is a work of the whole Trinity…it also stands in a peculiar relation to the Son’ (citing Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:423).

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made… (John 1:1-3 ESV)

The Logos becomes flesh because he is the one through whom and for whom all things were made (Colossians 1:16). The world, made through the Son, is to be saved through the Son:

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. (John 3:16-17 ESV)

Mark Jones offers the following reasons (my headings and combining the last two reasons):

(1) The title "Son" for one person of the Trinity only

The Son of God is, by virtue of his title, more appropriately the Son of Man and the Son of a woman. In other words, it was not “fit” that in the Trinity there should be two persons who both bear the title of “Son,” which would have been the case had the Father become incarnate.

Turretin argued that the Holy Spirit, for example, could not be sent to be Mediator because “there would have been two sons, the second person by eternal generation and the third by an incarnation in time.”

(2) The Son is the middle person within the Trinity

the Son, as the “middle person” bears the best resemblance of the work as Mediator. He comes between us and God.

Turretin argues that “he who is between the Father and the Holy Spirit should be Mediator between God and men.”

 (3) Adoption as sons of God is the aim of salvation

The Son is peculiarly fitted to be Mediator since, according to Thomas Goodwin, “the main end of his being Mediator,” that is, the adoption of his people into the family of God, is “made one of the greatest benefits of all others” (Eph. 1:5).

The Son is the most suitable person to convey this soteric blessing insofar that as a Son Christ conveys sonship upon his people by virtue of his union with them (Gal. 4:4-5).

Again, in similar fashion, Turretin argues that it was fitting that “he who was a Son by nature should make us adoptive sons by grace.” Besides Trinitarian reasons, soteric factors – i.e. the doctrine of adoption – explain why the Son should be Mediator.

(4) The offices of priest, prophet, and king are most apt for the Son

Regarding the office of priest, it is the birth-right of the eldest Son in the family to be the priest. Therefore, to prove he was a Priest (Heb. 5), the author cites Psalm 2: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.” As an intercessory priest the Son is uniquely able to approach the Father, which is a function grounded both in ontology (i.e. their natural subsistence) and economy (Christ’s work of mediation).

As a prophet, the Son is especially fit to be Mediator because he is the Word and Wisdom of the Father (Heb. 1:1; Jn. 1:18).

As a King, there is none so fit as the heir, “none so fit to have all Judgment and the Kingdom committed to him as God’s Son” (Goodwin).

[The last paragraph is an assertion rather than an argument. The argument may be in the first paragraph, given that the citation of Psalm 2 is more apt for kingship than priesthood. Priesthood and kingship are of course combined in Melchizedek, cf. Psalm 110.] 

Hermann Witsius Florilegium

Mark Jones draws attention to The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man by Hermann Witsius (1636-1708), from which I make a note of the following:

The Scriptures represent the Father, in the economy of our salvation, as demanding the obedience of the Son even unto death, and, upon condition of that obedience, promising him in his turn that name which is above every name, even that he should be the head of the elect in glory; but the Son, as presenting himself to do the will of the Father, acquiescing in that promise, and in fine, requiring by virtue of the compact, the kingdom and glory promised to him. When we have clearly demonstrated all these particulars from Scripture, it cannot, on any pretence, be denied, that there is a compact between the Father and the Son, which is the foundation of our salvation. (2.2.2)

I consider three periods, as it were, of this covenant. Its commencement was in the eternal counsel of the adorable Trinity: in which the Son of God was constituted by the Father, with the approbation of the Holy Spirit, the Saviour of mankind; on this condition, that, in the fulness of time, he should be made of a woman, and made under the law; which the Son undertook to perform. (2.3.2)

The second period of this covenant I place in that intercession of Christ, by which, immediately upon the fall of man, he offered himself to God, now offended, in order actually to perform those things to which he had engaged himself from eternity; saying, thou hast given them to me, and I will make satisfaction for them: and so he made way for the word of grace to be declared to, and the covenant of grace to be made with them. (2.3.3)

The third period of this covenant is that, when, on his assuming human nature, he suffered his ears to be bored; compare Ps. 40:7, with Heb. 10:5; that is, engaged himself as a voluntary servant to God, from love to his Lord the Father, and to his spouse the church, and his spiritual children (for the ears of such voluntary servants were bored, Ex. 21:5, 6), was "made under the law," Gal. 4:4, by subjecting himself to the law: which he solemnly testified by his circumcision on the eighth day after his birth, whereby he made himself "a debtor to do the whole law," Gal. 5:3. (2.3.4)

The Son, as God, neither was, nor could be subject to any law, to any superior; that being contrary to the nature of Godhead, which we now suppose the Son to have in common with the Father. "He thought it no robbery to be equal with God." No subjection, nothing but the highest super-eminence, can be conceived of the Deity. In this respect he is "King of kings, and Lord of lords." 1 Tim. 6:15. The emperors Gratian, Valentine, and Theodosius said, long ago, that "he is a true Christian, who believes that the Deity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is one in equal power; that, under the same majesty, there is one Deity; and he who teaches the contrary is a heretic;" (2.3.6)

Nor is it any objection against this, that the Son, from eternity, undertook for men, and thereby came under a certain peculiar relation to those that were to be saved. For, as that engagement was nothing but the most glorious act of the divine will of the Son, doing what none but God could do, it implies therefore no manner of subjection: it only imports that there should be a time when that divine person, on assuming flesh, would appear in the form of a servant. And by undertaking to perform this obedience, in the human nature, in its proper time, the Son, as God, did no more subject himself to the Father, than the Father with respect to the Son, to the owing that reward of debt, which he promised him a right to claim. All these things are to be conceived of in a manner becoming God. (2.3.7)

But since in Christ, as Mediator, there is an union of the divine and human natures, this difficulty remains to be discussed, whether both natures were in some measure subject to the law. We may easily affirm this of the human, as we have already so often shown; but it seems, from what we have confirmed [2.3.6], it must be denied with respect to the divine. However, as the human nature does not, without the divine, complete the person of the Mediator, it does not appear that the Mediator, as such, did not engage to be subject to the law, without bringing his divine nature likewise to share in that subjection. (2.3.16)


In order to remove this difficulty, we are accurately to distinguish between both natures, considered separately, and the same natures united in the person of God-man. It was proper, that both natures should act suitably to themselves and their distinct properties. Since the divine nature, as subsisting in the Son, could not truly and really be subject; therefore, by virtue of the covenant, it did not exert or display all its majesty, in the assumed form of a servant; nor hinder that nature, to which it was united by the hypostatical union, from being truly subject to the law, both as to the condition of the reward, and as to the penal sanction; which, indeed, was neither a real renunciation nor degradation of the divine superiority, but only a certain economical veiling of it for a time. (2.3.17)

We commonly ascribe to the person, God-man, the relation of an inferior to a superior, by a constitution or appointment; that, both by doing and suffering, those things might be accomplished, according to the condition of each nature, which were requisite to our salvation: so that the very obedience and sufferings themselves, are not only to be appropriated to the human nature, but to be considered as truly performed and suffered by the God-man. If this were not the case, they would not be of infinite value and dignity, nor sufficient for our redemption. Hence he, who is "in the form of God," is said to have "made himself of no reputation, and became obedient unto death," Phil. 2:6, 7, 8; and to be the Lord of glory, who was crucified, 1 Cor. 2:8. (2.3.19)

It is here usual to inquire, whether Christ, as Mediator, is inferior to the Father and subordinate to him. But this controversy, it seems, may be easily settled among the orthodox: if the Mediator be considered in the state of humiliation and the form of a servant, he is certainly inferior to the Father, and subordinate to him. It was not of his human nature only, but of himself in that state, that he himself said, John 14:28. "The Father is greater than I." Nay, we may look upon the very mediatorial office in itself, as importing a certain economical inferiority or subordination; as being to be laid down, when all things shall be perfectly finished, and "God himself shall be all in all," 1 Cor. 15:28. Nevertheless this undertaking and mediation, and the bringing of fallen man to God, to grace, and glory, is not so much beneath the excellency of the Deity, but we may, without the least hesitation, affirm, that this glory of mediation is incommunicable to any creature. It is the glory of Jehovah to be the righteousness of Israel. This glory he gives to none who is not God: to be Mediator does not merely denote a servant of God, but the great God and Saviour; who, as the first and principal cause of saving grace, equal to the Father, works by his own power, our reconciliation with God, by means of the subjection and obedience of his human nature, without which the co-equal Son could neither perform his service, nor obey the Father. (2.3.20)

John Owen on the Tri-une Will of God

Two scholars who have spent a good deal of time with John Owen, Mark Jones and Matthew Barrett, have drawn attention to a passage in John Owen's Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews which seems worth reflecting on:

“But this sacred truth must be cleared from an objection whereunto it seems obnoxious, before we do proceed. ‘The will is a natural property, and therefore in the divine essence it is but one. The Father, Son, and Spirit, have not distinct wills. They are one God, and God’s will is one, as being an essential property of his nature; and therefore are there two wills in the one person of Christ, whereas there is but one will in the three persons of the Trinity. How, then, can it be said that the will of the Father and the will of the Son did concur distinctly in the making of this covenant?’

This difficulty may be solved from what hath been already declared; for such is the distinction of the persons in the unity of the divine essence, as that they act in natural and essential acts reciprocally one towards another,—namely, in understanding, love, and the like; they know and mutually love each other. And as they subsist distinctly, so they also act distinctly in those works which are of external operation. And whereas all these acts and operations, whether reciprocal or external, are either with a will or from a freedom of will and choice, the will of God in each person, as to the peculiar acts ascribed unto him, is his will therein peculiarly and eminently, though not exclusively to the other persons, by reason of their mutual in-being. The will of God as to the peculiar actings of the Father in this matter is the will of the Father, and the will of God with regard unto the peculiar actings of the Son is the will of the Son; not by a distinction of sundry wills, but by the distinct application of the same will unto its distinct acts in the persons of the Father and the Son. And in this respect the covenant whereof we treat differeth from a pure decree; for from these distinct actings of the will of God in the Father and the Son there doth arise a new habitude or relation, which is not natural or necessary unto them, but freely taken on them. And by virtue hereof were all believers saved from the foundation of the world, upon the account of the interposition of the Son of God antecedently unto his exhibition in the flesh; for hence he was esteemed to have done and suffered what he had undertaken so to do, and which, through faith, was imputed unto them that did believe.”

The citation is from Exercitation XXVIII on Federal Transactions between the Father and the Son which is found in volume 2 (pages 87-88).

Augustine's Chalcedonian Exegesis

Provided then that we know this rule for understanding the scriptures about God’s Son and can thus distinguish the two resonances in them, one tuned to the form of God in which he is, and is equal to the Father, the other tuned to the form of a servant which he took and [in which] he is less than the Father, we will not be upset statements in the holy books that appear to be in flat contradiction with each other. In the form of God the Son is equal to the Father, and so is the Holy Spirit, since neither of them is a creature, as we have already shown. In the form of a servant, however, he is less than the Father, because he himself said, The Father is greater than I (Jn 14:28); he is also less than himself, because it is said of him, he emptied himself (Phil 2:7); and he is less than the Holy Spirit, because he himself said, Whoever utters a blasphemy against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever utters one against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him (Mt 12:32). He also worked his deeds of power through him, as he said himself: If I in the Spirit of God cast out demons, the kingdom of God has come upon you for certain (Lk 11:20). And he says in Isaiah, in a lesson which he read in the synagogue, and declared without the slightest hesitation to be fulfilled in himself, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; wherefore he anointed me, to preach the gospel to the poor he has sent me, to proclaim release to the captives, etc. (Is 61:1; Lk 4:18). It was precisely because the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, he says, that he was sent to do these things.

In the form of God, all things were made by him (Jn 1:3); in the form of a servant, he himself was made of a woman, made under the law (Gal 4:4). In the form of God, he and the Father are one (Jn 10:30); in the form of a servant, he did not come to do His own will, but the will of him who sent him (Jn 6:38). In the form of God, as the Father has life in himself, so he gave the Son also to have life in himself (Jn 5:26); in the form of a servant, his soul is sorrowful to the point of death, and, Father, he said, if it can be, let this cup pass by (Mt 26:28). In the form of God, he is true God and life eternal (1 Jn 5:20); in the form of a servant, he became obedient to the point of death, the death even of the cross (Phil 2:8). In the form of God, everything that the Father has is his (Jn 16:15), and all yours is mine, he says, and mine yours (Jn 17:10); in the form of a servant, his doctrine is not his own, but his who sent him (Jn 7:16).

Augustine, De Trinitate, I, 22.

Augustine on How God Send His Son

“What we are saying may perhaps be easier to sort out, if we put the question this way, crude though it is: In what manner did God send his Son? Did he tell him to come, giving him an order he complied with by coming, or did he ask him to, or did he merely suggest it? Well, whichever way it was done, it was certainly done by word. But God’s Word is his Son. So when the Father sent him by word, what happened was that he was sent by the Father and his Word. hence it is by the Father and the Son that the Son was sent, because the Son is the Father’s Word.” (De Trinitate 2.9)

Augustine stresses that this was not a word in time but that in the Wisdom of God “there was timelessly contained the time in which that Wisdom was to appear in the flesh.”

“Since then it was a work of the Father and the Son that the Son should appear in the flesh, the one who so appeared in the flesh is appropriately said to have been sent, and the one who did not to have done the sending.” (De Trinitate 2.9)

“If however the reason why the Son is said to have been sent by the Father is simply that the one is the Father, and the other the Son, then there is nothing at all to stop us believing that the Son is equal, and consubstantial, and co-eternal, and yet that the Son is sent by the Father. Not because one is greater and the other less, but because one is the Father, the other the Son; one is the begetter, the other begotten; the first is the one from whom the sent one is; the other is the one who is from the sender. For the Son is from the Father, not the Father from the Son. In the light of this we can now perceive that the Son is not just said to have been sent because the Word became flesh, but that he was sent in order for the Word to become flesh, and by his bodily presence to do all that was written. That is, we should understand that it was not just the man who the Word became that was sent, but that the Word was sent to become man. For he was not sent in virtue of some disparity of power or substance, or anything in him was not equal to the Father; but in virtue of the Son being from the Father, not the Father from the Son.”

“The Son of course is the Father’s Word which is also called his Wisdom. Is there anything strange, then, in his being sent, not because he is unequal to the Father, but because he is a ‘certain pure outflow of the glory of almighty God’ [Wis 7:25]? But in this case what flows out and what it flows out from are of one and the same substance. It is not like water flowing out from a hole in the ground or the rock, but like light flowing from light…” (De Trinitate 4.27)

Defending the covenant of redemption

Notes from a couple of blog posts by Scott Swain which in turn were adapted from Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, ed., Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic (Baker Academic, 2016).

Herman Bavinck: "To conceive of the work of Christ as the exercise of an office is to relate that work to the eternal counsel. He bears the name Messiah, Christ, the Anointed, because he has been ordained of the Father from eternity and has in time been anointed by him with the Holy Spirit." 

This is well and good. But by what warrants may we say that the Son's eternal messianic appointment occurs per modum foederis, "by way of covenant"?

Wilhelmus à Brakel: "It will be easier to comprehend this matter if we primarily consider the execution of this covenant rather than the decree from which it proceeds... [T]he manner in which the Lord executes it in this time state is consistent with the manner in which he eternally decreed it."

In other words, though the scriptures are relatively reticent to speak of the Son's eternal appointment by the Father in covenantal terms, the scriptures speak quite liberally about the Son's historical execution of that appointment in covenantal terms and this language, when coupled with other biblical teaching about the eternal nature of the Son's messianic appointment, constitutes sufficient biblical warrant for the doctrine of the covenant of redemption.

Swain claims that "the New Testament speaks on a number of occasions of Jesus as one who is both recipient and mediator of the Father's covenant promises," notably in Luke 22.29, Acts 2.33, Galatians 3.16-29, 2 Cor 1.20-22.

Second, by means of "prosopological exegesis," the New Testament repeatedly employs Old Testament covenant language to portray the mutual dialogue between the Father and the Son regarding the latter's messianic mission and reward. 

"Hebrews 1 uses the covenantal language of 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 1, and Psalm 110 to describe the covenantal honor bestowed by the Father upon the Son," namely Heb 1.5 citing Ps 2.7 and 2 Sam 7.14 and Heb 1.13 citing Ps 110.1. Cf.Christ's appointment through an oath (Heb 7.21).

[I must read Richard A. Muller's extended essay at some point in the hope that it presents a better case.]

Does the concept of a covenant within the Trinity compromise the unity and simplicity of God. John Owen does not think so:

[S]uch is the distinction of the persons in the unity of the divine essence, as that they act in natural and essential acts reciprocally one towards another,--namely, in understanding, love, and the like; they know and mutually love each other. And as they subsist distinctly, so they also act distinctly in those works which are of external operation... The will of God as to the peculiar actings of the Father in this matter is the will of the Father, and the will of God with regard unto the peculiar actings of the Son is the will of the Son; not by a distinction of sundry wills, but by the distinct application of the same will unto its distinct acts in the persons of the Father and the Son.

Similarly Wilhelmus à Brakel: 

Since the Father and the Son are one in essence and thus have one will and one objective, how can there possibly be a covenant transaction between the two, as such a transaction requires the mutual involvement of two wills? Are we then not separating the persons of the Godhead too much? To this I reply that as far as personhood is concerned the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father. From this consideration the one divine will can be viewed from a twofold perspective. It is the Father's will to redeem by the agency of the second person as surety, and it is the will of the Son to redeem by his own agency as surety.

Final word from Scott Swain

Because the Son is consubstantial with the Father, God's redemptive will cannot be limited to the Father; the Son too must the agent of God's redemptive will. Moreover, because the Son eternally proceeds from the Father in his personal manner of subsisting, so too does his personal manner of willing proceed from the Father. The Son's willing submission to the Father in the pactum salutis is thus a faithful expression of his divine filial identity as the consubstantial, eternally begotten Son of God.

Wesley Hill on Paul's Trinitarian Thought

 A pastiche from different reviews of Wesley Hill’s Paul and the Trinity: Persons, Relations, and the Pauline Letters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015).

“The historically trained New Testament scholar will today proceed with the task of interpretation without wasting a minute on the suspicion that the Trinitarian confessions of later centuries might be rooted in the New Testament itself, and that the Trinitarian creeds might continue to function as valuable hermeneutical signposts for a modern understanding.” (Ulrich Mauser, cited here)

“Wesley, in contrast, thinks that Trinitarian categories can be hugely illuminating when it comes to Paul’s thought about God. In particular, the concept of relations between the divine persons needs to be brought into the discussion.” (Andrew Wilson) He “argues that by consciously avoiding trinitarian categories in an effort to be “historical” in their interpretation of Paul in his Jewish context, scholars have been working with one hand tied behind their backs.” (Derek Rishmawy)

“Instead of beginning with the question of how divine is Jesus,” the question that has preoccupied Pauline scholarship, employing the two (separate) categories of monotheism and Christology, “Hill wants to start with asking questions concerning relations. His thesis is that Paul cannot talk about one of the persons of the Godhead without mentioning, or identifying them by, their relationship to one or more of the other persons.” (Jonathan J. Routley)

Andrew Wilson again: “After a lengthy introduction...in chapter 2, Wesley shows how a number of texts (Rom 4:24; 8:11; Gal 1:1) do much more than defining who Jesus is in relation to God; they define who God is in relation to Jesus...

The next two chapters tackle three crucial texts (Phil 2:6-11; 1 Cor 8:4-6; 15:24-28) of which it is frequently argued that, as well as sharing divine identity, Jesus is somehow subordinated to God, such that the unique status of God is not compromised. In response, Wesley argues (a) that this way of putting things assumes that the identity of God is something Paul conceived of independently of Jesus, which is not the case; (b) that the exalted language used of Jesus indicates that he is not just God-like, but “shown to belong within what makes YHWH unique”; (c) that differentiation and even subordination also appear in some texts; (d) that, taken together, Paul thinks in terms of an “asymmetrical mutuality” between the divine persons; and that (e) only the Trinitarian strategy of redoublement can make sense of this:

As we have seen, classic (both “Eastern” and “Western”) Trinitarian formulations regularly emphasised the need to speak of God “twice over”, describing the three “persons” or hypostases as irreducibly distinct and at the same time describing the three as one in essence or will or power ... such a “redoubled” discourse makes possibly an understanding of what might be called asymmetrical mutuality between God and Jesus, whereby God is not who God is as “father” without Jesus and Jesus is not who he is as the raised and exalted one without God.

As Derrick Peterson explains, “In addition to the idea of mutual reciprocity and identity, a second Trinitarian element Hill is wont to use throughout his argument, is the idea of “redoublement.” This is a term coined in the late 1960’s by Ghislain Lafont, and used more recently and in an extensive way by Thomistic scholar Gilles Emery and his student, Matthew Levering—but the concept described by the term is present in the tradition from very early on. The basic sense of redoublement is: there must be a twofold description of God to describe both the three irreducible persons, and also their essential unity. As Lewis Ayres puts it: “we must describe the same ground twice over.” [Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 260.] To collapse these descriptions into a single frame of reference is to endanger the biblical character of either aspect.”

“With the fathers like Athanasius, medievals such as Aquinas, and even recent relational theologies, Hill argues we need to understand that the identities of Father, Son, and Spirit are mutually-defining in the texts in such a way that both unity and differentiation is accounted for.” (Derek Rishmawy) 

“In a move that parallels, complements, and possibly clarifies our retrieval of redoublement, [Francis] Watson draws on the affirmation that Christ has two natures, both a human and divine one. The Son has eternally always been the Son of the Father, equal in power, glory, beauty, and divine authority. And yet, at a particular point in time he assumed–added to himself–a human nature that has not always sat on the throne of heaven, but has walked in humility and weakness as a peasant in the 1st Century. This union, the person of the Godman, the Mediator, according to Watson, is the subject of these texts speaking of the exaltation of Christ. [Rom. 1:3-4; Phil. 2:9]” (Derek Rishmawy)

“Finally he turns to the Spirit, looking at 1 Corinthians 12:3, Galatians 4:4-7 and 2 Corinthians 3:17.” (Andrew Wilson) “Hill seeks to show that the Holy Spirit is also identified by His relations both to God and to Jesus. He argues that the Spirit’s identity is most often traced back to God and Jesus rather than the other way around, but then offers Rom. 1:3-4 and 8:11 as two prominent passages demonstrating the reverse.” (Jonathan J. Routley)

The Cruelty of Denying the Trinity

The exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity in The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy (New York: Morehouse Publishing, 1994) begins with this observation: “The Christian teaching regarding the doctrine of the Trinity should not be as daunting and intimidating as many have made it appear…Christians can learn more about the Trinity without comprehending its mystery.” C. FitzSimon Allison observes that it is important to note to which problem or question the doctrine of the Trinity is the answer.

The problem is called “the one and the many.” It is not unique to Christianity. Everyone, everywhere and always, has had to struggle with this problem…simple solutions to the one and the many sacrifice the diversity and individuality of the many for an imposed and tyrannical unity of the one, or sacrifice the unity (family, nation, business, club, or church) for the sake of the pluralism and diversity of the many.

The author does recognise later on that the Trinity is not merely an answer to a philosophical question but also, maybe we should say first of all, to the way God has revealed himself.

The crucial question is not “Is there a God?” but “What kind of God do we have?” The faithful Christian answer is: the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whom we know by the Holy Spirit.
        Thus, the Trinity is essentially God’s name: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, one God…As it is clear that the New Testament teaches nothing of three gods, it is equally clear that there are significant distinctions between Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. They are distinct, they are related, and they are one. How can this be so?

In other words, God’s witness about himself demands that we think of God as tri-une and this leads to a doctrine which presents us also with an answer to the problem of “the one and the many” – an answer that claims that neither disunity nor uniformity has the (first or) last word. “The teaching concerning the Trinity does not proceed from philosophical concerns but from the saving experiences of God’s action as recorded in scripture.” 

The different ways in which this teaching has been denied or betrayed amount to stressing the unity at the expense of the distinctiveness. Most commonly the three-in-one paradox was resolved by merging the “three” as mere temporary modes into the “one.”

“Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God” is simply explained by them as the Father temporarily manifesting himself as the Son and at other times as the Holy Spirit. It is like one person being a spouse, mother, and insurance executive. One objection was noticed immediately….If it were the Father who was manifest as Jesus, then…it was in fact the Father who was crucified.

Because a person can take any number of roles, not merely three, an analogy which may better illustrate this heresy is the appearance of H2O as ice, water, and steam (although children who have not yet been cured of their curiosity by education may wonder where snow fits in here).

A second, and to my mind even more serious because inescapable, objection is that such teaching pretty much excludes serious reflection on the interrelationships of the three. If this teaching had won the day, we could think of Jesus Christ only as a temporary manifestation of God, a role he played for a while, rather than the eternal image of God.

If this were so, you or I may be so unlucky as to reach that judgment seat on a day that God has a headache and is playing a very different role from the one we’ve seen in Christ….
        To believe in a god whose action in Christ is not his everlasting divine nature is to be bereft of any final confidence that God is the same as God’s self-revelation in Christ.

“If God is known only in modes or roles…then we cannot know God or be known by God, on the deepest levels” but we would know that he is not Love because prior to the creation of the universe there would have been no love between persons.