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features vol.23 | no.6 | november-december 2014

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Trinitarianism 101: Evangelical Confusion and Problems

By Ca rl R. T rue ma n

The Biblical Witness to the Holy Trinity

By K i m Ri ddle ba rg e r

Scripture Twister: Common Trinitarian Heresies

By Ja me s Whi te

From Jerusalem to Nicaea: The Development of the Trinity in Church History

By Mi cha e l S. Ho rto n

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Union and Communion with the Triune God

By Fre d Sa nde rs

ModernReformation.org

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J u ly 3 0 August 1 2015

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W ee k end Pasadena, CA o n t h e c a m p u s o f P r o v i d e n c e C h r i s t i a n C o ll e g e

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departments 04 05 08

Letter from the editor

By Rya n g lo msrud

Interview ›› Creeds and Confessions Q&A with Justi n Ho lco mb

Christ & Culture ››

The Weekly Prayer Meeting

by Mi cha e l Brown

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THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD ››

The Unhindered Gospel

By Z ach K e e le

45 54

Book Reviews Giles, Bayles, and LiTFin

Geek Squad ›› Too Little or Too Much:

Troubleshooting Contemporary Trinitarianism

By Fre d Sa nde rs

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BACK PAGE ›› The Trinity Chart

By Pete r D. Ande rs

Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Ryan Glomsrud Managing Editor Patricia Anders Assistant Editor Brooke Ventura Marketing Director Michele Tedrick Design Director José Reyes for Metaleap Creative, metaleapcreative.com Department Editors Ryan Glomsrud (Letter from the Editor & Reviews), Michael S. Horton Designers Tiffany Forrester, Harold Velarde, Kate Ray Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith Modern Reformation © 2014 All rights reserved. ISSN-1076-7169 Modern Reformation (Subscription Department) P.O. Box 460565 Escondido, CA 92046 (855) 492-1674 info@modernreformation.org www.modernreformation.org Subscription Information US 1 YR $32.

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l e tt e r f r o m t h e e d i t o r

Ryan Glomsrud executive editor

At the very center of the Christian faith lies the belief in our Triune God. In fact, we contend in this issue of Modern Reformation that the heart of piety or Christian experience is the worship of God who is three in persons and one in essence.

Nonetheless, there is a question that sometimes haunts contemporary Christianity: Does the Trinity really matter? Our authors take up this important question from different perspectives—biblical, theological, and historical. White Horse Inn cohost Kim Riddlebarger walks us through the testimony of Scripture to the Holy Trinity.

Editor-in- Chief Michael Horton guides us through the history of the dogma, with all the complicated names and concepts (make sure to reference the glossary in his article). Despite the clarity of the Bible and the consensus of the church, apologist James White organizes the various forms of the doctrine of the Trinity into five basic errors, one of which is “confusediterianism”—in other words, a common problem of confusion and discomfort with a

doctrine that is poorly understood today. More doctrinal troubleshooting comes in the form of an extended book review by Horton that enters into the evangelical debate over the eternal generation of the Son from the Father. In this review, and in an interview with Justin Holcombe, we come to recognize how important consensus is within the history of the church, which is precisely what the historic creeds offer as a summary of the church’s reading of Scripture.

With this comprehensive treatment of our topic, we are well positioned to take up the question of the practicality of the Trinity with fresh eyes. Two articles seek to answer that directly.

Fred Sanders of the Torrey Honors Institute explores the “Trinitarian depth to Christian salvation” that hinges on our union and communion with the Father, Son, and Spirit. Professor and pastor Carl Trueman examines the implications of this most fundamental doctrine for our life of prayer and rightly insists that speaking to God means addressing him with a clear sense of who he is. Confusion in doctrine leads to confusion in prayer. Also in this issue, Reformed minister Michael Brown encourages your church to be a praying church, while regular contributor Zach Keele concludes his masterful tour through the Bible in “The Greatest Story Ever Told.”

The doctrine of the Trinity is no miscellany to the faith, as John Calvin explained, because the Christian life—and not just theology—is focused on “the contemplation of the Father with the Son and the Spirit.

Unity in Trinity, Trinity in Unity, together working for our glorious good and his honor and majesty.

“ Unity in Trinity, Trinity in Unity, together working for our glorious good and His honor and majesty.”

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interview

C r e e d s and Confessions

Q&A with Justin Holcomb

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u s t i n H o l c o m b is an Episcopal minister and adjunct professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.

He has written and edited a number of books, including On the Grace of God and Rid of My Disgrace. His most recent works are Know the Creeds and Councils and Know the Heretics (both Zondervan, 2014).

Why is a church history on creeds and councils an important subject?

a.

The key is that it’s family history. If you call it church history, people tend to think it’s merely a bunch of dates with some councils, geography, and politics. But this is our family history as brothers

photo by Don Tremain

and sisters in Christ; these councils and catechisms are what Christians as far back as two thousand years ago used for worship, to train new converts, and to teach their children the faith. That’s family history. I started realizing this with my young daughters. They love hearing stories about when their parents were small. There’s fascination there. There’s identity wrapped up in stories about our past. Likewise, much of church history influences what is happening right now. What does it have to do with me? It has a lot to do with ModernReformation.org

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interview

me, because I’m standing on the shoulders of people who stood on the shoulders of those influenced by the apostles, who were trained

by Christ. It’s the tracing back of the wide broad stream of biblical Christianity.

How do you respond to people who think they don’t need creeds, just the Bible?

a. There are plenty of Christians who, out

of devotion and sincerity, think we need to get past all this “ritual stuff,” back to the Bible and Jesus. But that’s actually what the creeds do, what they were meant to do! They are the best summaries of the high points of Scripture; they are about the revelation of God in Christ and in Scripture. And most of the creeds, because they were responding to heresies that were about Jesus, are all about Jesus. They’re focused on who he is and what he’s done: the person and work of Christ. Most of the creeds rely on Scripture and many contain summaries of Scripture or quotes.

How do creeds, confessions, and catechism differ from one another?

a.

Creeds are the boundary markers between what is Christian thought and non-Christian thought. So if you’re beyond this boundary, then you are outside the scope of the Christian faith on dangerous ground. Confessions color within those lines of denominational distinctives using important but not necessarily first order issues.

First order issues were already defined through the Apostles’, Chalcedon, and Nicene creeds: that is, who God is, how he saves, and who Jesus is. But the confessions such as Heidelberg, Westminster, and Thirty-Nine Articles color in those boundary markers. They stay within the lines but say more. Another analogy would be that the creeds are the skeleton, and the confessions are the ligaments and muscles connecting all of those and adding to it.

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Catechism is then how we teach the truth of these creeds and confessions to the church using question and answer format. In the Book of Common Prayer we recite the Apostles’ Creed in morning and evening prayers and the Nicene Creed on Sundays; we have Thirty-Nine Articles of faith, and we have our own catechism. My children are learning the Westminster Shorter Catechism at their school, and it’s amazing to watch these three– and five–year–olds answer with Scripture questions such as “Who is God?” and “Does God have a beginning?”

It is interesting to hear parents say that they want to read the Bible with their family, but they find that their children ask questions they don’t know how to answer. Well, that’s exactly why the catechisms were written, right?

a.

The catechisms are amazing. New believers and children, and even seasoned Christians, lean on those. How can you not when the first three questions of the Heidelberg Catechism cause you to worship more! My little girls can answer that the three persons of God are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt. 20). And when my daughter asks me “Who made God?” there’s an answer for that from Scripture I can show her. As every parent knows, children will ask these questions; and unless you know where to find the answer in Scripture, those catechisms are your best friend.

What is the origin of the Apostles’ Creed?

a. The Apostles’ Creed is based on the teach-

ings of the apostles, though it was not written by them. It’s called the Apostles’ Creed because it is a summary of the apostolic faith that was passed on from those who saw Jesus firsthand, those who wrote the New Testament and were leading the early church.

“The important thing about the heretics is that they asked great questions— questions all believers were asking—but they gave bad answers.”

How about the Nicene Creed?

a.

The Nicene Creed has a special place in my heart because it’s ecumenical and touches on the most important points of who God is, what God is like, and how he rescues. Originating at the Council of Nicaea in Constantinople, it was needed because of Arius’s challenge to the person of Jesus: is Jesus eternal or the first creation?

They needed to answer how it is that we worship one God while also worshipping Jesus. The creed was written to answer heresy—a challenging of the faith—but also to explain how we should worship Jesus and call him Lord.

So even that long ago, people were already being baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But how can you be a good Jewish kid, saying you’re baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, when there’s only one name—Yahweh? The creed was formed to justify this practice.

a. Yes, the Council at Nicaea needed to give an answer in defense against what Arius was saying.

The important thing about the heretics is that

they asked great questions—questions all believers were asking—but they gave bad answers. But it wasn’t just a defensive move on the part of the church; it was also an explanation of the worship tradition that had been handed down from the time of the apostles.

It’s not just the creeds but also the way we worship that structures our belief in the Trinity. Why do you think it’s important that Jesus is understood as being of the same essence as the Father and the Holy Spirit?

a. This is a question about salvation. If God is

holy and he’s going to judge, we need a Savior who is powerful enough to deal with the sin, and we also need a rescuer who is human who can actually go before God representing us. So Jesus being the God-Man is the key to salvation. He is God, who is powerful and can deal with Satan, sin, hell, death, and the grave; but he is also human and can represent us before God as our priest and be our mediator. So all those who defend orthodoxy as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit having the same substance or essence defend how the Bible talks about salvation.

The creeds, then, can lead us to appreciate God and approach him in prayer, which is part of how we show our gratefulness.

a. As I was writing my book, I began really delv-

ing into the creeds, councils, catechisms, and confessions. In them I found a wealth of ways to explain the Christian faith. If you don’t read Scripture and think about Scripture or the creeds in your prayers, you are reduced to talking to God merely about your current whims or whatever’s on the front burner. For example, if you look at the names of God in Scripture, you have a list of hundreds of ways you can approach him, with phrases such as “the fount of all wisdom” and “the powerful right hand.” There are these brilliant pictures of Almighty God. Then the creeds give us powerful, pastoral pictures that are far from distant, cold, or boring. They’re passionate and articulated well. They are beautiful.

ModernReformation.org

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C h r i s t & C u lt u r e

the weekly Prayer Meeting

by Michael Brown

He wants to hear our voice. He desires that we, as the Westminster Larger Catechism puts it, “offer up our desires … in the name of Christ, by the help of his Spirit; with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies” (Q. 178).

The weekly prayer meeting provides us with the opportunity to do this. To be sure, we must pray daily as individuals and families and every Lord’s Day as a congregation. But if we truly believe that prayer is, as we confess in the Heidelberg Catechism, “the chief part of thankfulness which God requires of us” (HC Q. 116), then why not devote one hour a week to come together as a congregation and pray?

We Are Consta ntly i n Ne e d

T

he weekly prayer meeting provides a wonderful opportunity to gather together to sing to the Lord, hear a short exhortation from his word, and intercede for one another in prayer. But why should we bother going to a prayer meeting? Given our busy schedules, a weekly prayer meeting may seem like a major inconvenience. Is it really worth the hassle? Yes, it is worth it. Here are five reasons why.

God Wa n ts U s to P ray

Prayer is how we communicate with our Father in heaven. God speaks to us through word and sacrament, and we speak to him through prayer.

This is what God has ordained. And he tells us plainly that his will for our lives is that we “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17–18; Eph. 6:18). He has created us and redeemed us for fellowship with himself. Just as any relationship requires good communication between the parties involved, the same is true in regard to our relationship with our heavenly Father.

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As pilgrims on the way to the heavenly country, we continually feel the weight of living in this fallen age. We are persistently assaulted by our three great enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Prayer is the way we ask God for help. The finished work of Christ has provided us with this blessed privilege: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

What is it that we want God to do? What are the things that we long to see him do in our congregation, in our families, and in our personal lives? Do we want to see him bring more new converts to our church? Do we earnestly desire to progress in our sanctification? What is it that we truly want?

Are we praying fervently for these things?

John Calvin reminds us that “to know God as the master and bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of him, and still not go to him and not ask of him—this would be of as little profit as for a man to neglect a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it has been pointed out to him” (Institutes III.20.1). It is foolish not

to go to the Lord in prayer for our needs. He is the Giver. And he invites us to go to him as our Father and persistently ask, seek, and knock (Luke 11:1–13).

The weekly prayer meeting is a way for us to persevere in prayer and ask God for help in time of need.

that he cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7). We are then able to rise from our knees, knowing that he has heard us and will accomplish his will. The prayer meeting affords us a weekly opportunity to enjoy the subjective peace that God promises to us.

God Br i ng s Pe ac e to O u r Cons c i e nc e s t h ro ug h P ray e r

The Weekly Prayer Meeting Is Part of the Reformed Tradition

While prayer is not a means of grace in the same way as the preached word or the sacraments, we must be careful not to downplay the fact that God supplies our consciences with peace through prayer.

That is why Paul says in Philippians, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6–7). The subjective peace that the Lord is so often pleased to give the anxious saint is closely connected with prayer. Again, Calvin imparts wisdom to us:

The early Reformers recognized the value of a weekly prayer meeting. In Geneva, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the churches held a prayer meeting every Wednesday evening. We find similar practices among the English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians. By holding a midweek prayer meeting, we are not doing anything new or strange. In fact, we are continuing a time-tested custom that has been in the Reformed tradition since the days of Calvin.

Words fail to explain how necessary prayer is, and in how many ways the exercise of prayer is profitable. Surely, with good reason the Heavenly Father affirms that the only stronghold of safety is the presence both of his providence, through which he watches over and guards our affairs, and of his power, through which he sustains us, weak as we are and wellnigh overcome, and of his goodness, through which he receives us, miserably burdened with sins, unto grace; and in short, it is by prayer that we call him to reveal himself as wholly present to us. Hence comes an extraordinary peace and repose to our consciences. For having disclosed to the Lord the necessity that was pressing upon us, we even rest fully in the thought that not one of our ills is hid from him who, we are convinced, has both the will and the power to take best care of us. (Institutes III.20.2) In prayer we sit in on our Father’s presence and call upon his providence, power, and goodness. We bring not only our adoration and confession but also the worries, difficulties, and pressures that afflict us in this life. We cast our anxieties upon him, knowing

T he We e kly P raye r Me eti ng B rings Us Togethe r as a Congre gati on There is something unique about a congregational prayer meeting. It helps to knit us together as a body.

Prayer requires humility and open honesty before the Lord. There is no room for pretense in prayer.

When we join together to pray for one another, it moves us beyond superficial chitchat. It drives us to strive together for the sake of the gospel and the communion of saints (Rom. 1:8–10; 15:30–33; Eph. 1:15–19; 3:14–21; 5:18–20; Phil. 1:3–11; 4:6–7; Col. 1:9–10; 4:2–4; 1 Thess. 1:2–3; 5:17; 1 Tim. 2:1–3, 8; 2 Tim. 1:3; Phil. 4–6).

As we travel through this wilderness age, let us take advantage of the blessed privilege of prayer! Our Lord Jesus Christ secured this opportunity for us through his incarnation, active obedience, death on the cross, resurrection, and ascension. Let us follow his example and seek to be people of prayer. May God grant more and more that our churches will be praying congregations filled with praying disciples.

Michael Brown is pastor of Christ United Reformed Church in Santee, California.

ModernReformation.org

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T HE

GREA T ES T S T ORY EVER T OLD

The New Testament

p a r t VI

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T he

Unhindered Gospel

T

by Zach Keele

he honeymoon , at least proverbially, is one of the best of times. It is when Cinderella’s happily-ever-after meets a beach in Bermuda. The flavors of the food sing higher notes. Your fabrics feel softer. The days crawl by with laughter and the constant touch of your new spouse. Upon the white sand, you gaze into the eyes of your beloved, doing nothing and yet doing all that is worth it. Honeymoons are the fairytales of our times, your own personal music video or Hollywood romantic movie. At least, this is how honeymoons are supposed to be.

After Christ showered the Spirit upon his people and Peter delivered his mighty oration, the honeymoon of the church arrived. Having been ratified in Christ’s blood and inaugurated by the Spirit, the church was constituted as the bride of Christ on Pentecost. And what a sweet time burst out on the stage of history. The silken words of the gospel, flowing from a fisherman’s mouth, cut the people to the quick. The people pleaded, “What shall we do?

How can we be saved?” To which Peter answered, “Repent, believe, be baptized! All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” By the dozens, men and women lined up, believed in their hearts, and confessed with their mouths that Jesus Christ is Lord. The lines for baptism snaked through the streets, and by the time the sun set, the membership roll reached three thousand.

And what joy reverberated through this youthful church! Daily they joined for worship in the temple and to hear the apostolic teaching. “At least

weekly” was not frequent enough for these saints; they broke the bread of the Supper together in their homes every day, and generosity was their overflowing cup. If one saint lacked, another had a garage sale and gave the proceeds to the needy. The word mine dropped from their vocabulary. The sweet harmony of Christian communion and fellowship rang in the streets of Jerusalem.

Additionally, the apostles finally grew out of their fear and confusion into their Spirit-fullness.

Through Peter a 40-year-old cripple leaped and danced in Christ. Peter preached the gospel sermon for the ages. In fact, the apostles refused to stop preaching Christ in the temple and from house to house every day. Imagine a daily diet of apostolic preaching! The Spirit even used Peter’s shadow to heal the sick who lined the streets. It is no wonder the number of saints swelled to five thousand in no time. You can almost hear them singing the words of Isaiah, “The ransomed of the Lord shall return and ModernReformation.org

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T H E G R E AT E S T S T O R Y E V E R T O L D

come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads... and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (35:10). Generous love and joyful communion nurtured daily with word and sacrament as the church enjoyed her fairytale honeymoon.

But storms were brewing on the horizon and pollution washed up on shore as external opposition grew as quickly as the membership list.

First, the chief priests banned all teaching in the name of Jesus. Then they threw the disobedient apostles in jail. And after the Lord freed them, the priests recaptured them and beat them. It was during this Pentecost honeymoon that scars for Christ were left on the apostles’ backs.

Internal strife also sprang up like a thistle in a rose garden, and jealousy and deception confronted extreme generosity. Ananias and Sapphira desired the credit without the effort, and with their lie to the Holy Spirit, Satan dug his talons into the church. Likewise, complaints stained the church’s joy and unity. The Hellenists (the Jews who spoke only Greek) were not getting their fair share, while the Hebrews (who spoke Aramaic) were keeping more for themselves. The care for the needy was not being done with fairness.

Favoritism and prejudice dwelt among the saints.

But the final problem of the early church went all the way to the top. In the early chapters of Acts, everything was happening in Jerusalem—the apostles and their gospel-preaching hadn’t yet left Jerusalem and its vicinity. But Jesus had told them to be witnesses to the ends of the world (1:8)!

Where was the apostles’ missionary activity?

Why were they refusing to get their passports?

The apostles were content in their comfort zone.

Therefore, the Lord had to give them a push.

Stephen couldn’t be matched in the wisdom of preaching and debating. And when you are outmatched in reason, the temptation is always to grab a bigger stick. Likewise, when the priests were routed by him, they reached for rocks. When the time was right, they dragged Stephen outside Jerusalem and stoned him. Approvingly, the rising star for their cause—Saul of Tarsus—stood by and watched the first martyr’s blood be shed. Then, like a hound on the scent, Saul hunted the saints

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“IT was during this Pentecost honeymoon that scars for Christ were left on the apostles’ backs.” from house to house, scattering them among the nations—and sending the gospel along with them!

The Lord had made clear that the road from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth was paved with suffering, the pathway of the cross. It turned out pretty quickly that the life of the church was not going to be some fairytale honeymoon. On the road to Damascus, Stephen’s executioner met Jesus and became Paul, who would be shown how much he must suffer for Christ. As Paul took the gospel to the ends of the earth, the fruits of his ministry were unmistakable and marvelous.

Although every step of the way he was harassed by imprisonment, flogging, and rejection, Paul preached the cross—and he bore it as well. At the end of his life in Acts, Paul sat in a Roman prison due to the opposition of the priests. Yet despite his physical confinement, Paul boldly proclaimed the kingdom of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ through his letters to the worldwide churches, exhorting young pastors such as Timothy and Titus. The gospel went forth unhindered. To bear the cross was—and is— no honeymoon, but what a privilege it is to be servants of the unhindered, unstoppable, and inexorable gospel of Jesus Christ!

Zach Keele is pastor of Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Escondido, California.

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features 16

Trinitarianism 101

20

The Biblical Witness to the Holy Trinity

26

Scripture Twister

30

From Jerusalem to Nicaea

36

Union and Communion with the Triune God

15

Trinitari Evangelical Confusion and Problems

by Carl R. Trueman

anism 101

ModernReformation.org

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O

f all the doctrines of the Christian faith honored in name and neglected in practice by evangelicals, the Trinity probably has no rival. Ask any evangelical if he believes in the Trinity, and you will almost certainly receive a strongly affirmative answer. Ask what difference the doctrine makes, and you might well be greeted by embarrassing silence.

Two Co m m o n E rro rs : Modal i sm a n d T rit h e is m Prayer is often a good measure of someone’s theology. Our guard tends to drop a little when we pray.

The words we speak reveal our theology at its most instinctive level. Most of us will have heard (perhaps some of us have even spoken) prayers that thank God the Father for dying on the cross at Calvary. The intention may be good, but the theology is awful. It is what theologians call patripassianism, the notion that God the Father suffered for us. It is a type of modalism, the idea that God is one but has morphed over time from Father to Son to Holy Spirit. It fails because it simply cannot make sense of the New Testament’s teaching on the interpersonal relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit. After all, if the Father is, in a sense, the Son, then to whom is Jesus talking in his high priestly prayer in John 17?

Modalism is not the only heresy into which evangelicals can accidentally fall. There is the opposite problem of tritheism, the idea that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are so separate that they can even be thought of as being in opposition to each other.

Perhaps one common manifestation of this relates to the notion of atonement. Evangelicals know that God is angry against sin and that Christ takes the punishment for our sin upon his own shoulders.

Yet sometimes this can be understood in a way that raises problems for the doctrine of God. It is not uncommon to hear Christians, and sometimes even pastors, speak as if God the Father is angry with sin in such a way that he has to be persuaded by his Son, on the basis of the latter’s sacrifice, to look with kindness and mercy upon us.

This latter view is problematic because it fails to see two basic biblical truths. First, the plan of

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salvation is the plan of God the Father, and thus it cannot be the case that Christ is somehow in opposition to him. Indeed, is that the obvious implication of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane (Luke 22:42)? Second, the New Testament points clearly toward the fact that Jesus is God: he forgives sins, which only God can do (Luke 5:20–21; cf. Ps. 103:3); he considered it not robbery to be equal with God (Phil. 2:6); and he was the Word made flesh (John 1:14). The importance of this is that it has to be the case that both Father and Son will the same thing. They are not two gods, each struggling to impose his will upon the other. They are one God, united in saving purpose.

“ Our prayers are tenuous enough anyway, without adding a further weak link in the prayer chain by misunderstanding the relationship between the Son and the Father.”

We might also add confusion over the role of the Spirit at this point. How many prayers are addressed to the Spirit? How many worship services seem preoccupied with talking and singing about the Spirit?

Pardon the pun, but sounding so spiritual does not really capture the role of the Spirit, as we shall see.

More correctly, we should remember that the role of the Spirit is to witness to Christ. Like a flashlight in the dark, the Spirit illuminates the Savior.

When looking for something in a darkened room with a flashlight, we do not typically talk about the flashlight but rather about what the flashlight is illuminating. Indeed, we would typically only talk about the flashlight in such circumstances if it was not working or we did not have one. That has serious implications when we apply it to constant talk about the Spirit.

Does It R e a l ly M atte r?

Of course, one of the responses to this will be: What difference does it make? So what if my prayers are worded a little loosely, or if I think of God the Father and God the Son as being in some opposition to each other? Does it change how I live as a Christian?

There are a number of responses to this.

First, it is important to understand that we ought to have appropriate and accurate thoughts of God. God has revealed himself to be and to act in a certain way. We are to strive to conform our thoughts of God as closely to his revelation as is possible. That is one reason why we listen to good preaching, read good books, and meditate upon Scripture’s teaching. As Christians, we want to know the God we worship so we might worship him better.

Second, there are actually some immediate practical benefits that come from a proper Trinitarian understanding of God. For example, think of how it enhances prayer. The Bible teaches that Christ is the One who intercedes for us. If we think of Christ and the Father as being in some kind of opposition to each other, then the success of Christ’s prayer always depends upon his persuasive powers and the willingness of the Father to be persuaded.

Perhaps today the Father will listen to Christ, but tomorrow he might change his mind. That serves to undermine our own confidence in our prayers.

Our prayers are tenuous enough anyway, without

“ Prayer is often a good measure of someone’s theology.” adding a further weak link in the prayer chain by misunderstanding the relationship between the Son and the Father.

If, however, Father and Son are one God and will precisely the same things, then we know that the Son’s intercession must succeed. When he prays to his Father, he is merely asking for that which the Father desires to give him. What tremendous practical confidence that gives to believers when they come to the Lord in prayer. As Christ takes our prayers, perfects them, and presents them to the Father, he asks for nothing that the Father is not already eager to grant in abundance. The Spirit also plays his role. As the bond of union with Christ, he is intimately connected to our prayers, and—as Paul so beautifully yet mysteriously states—he too intercedes for us in our weakness. The same applies to his prayers: as he is God with the Father and the Son, he joins them in the holy confluence of intercession and divine will.

Trinitarianism is very trendy among theological academics, both evangelical and liberal, yet it has to grip the imagination of typical believers.

While the language of Trinitarianism is common among evangelicals, the importance of it for piety and everyday practice is perhaps not so obvious. Yet the usefulness of the doctrine, both in making sense of Scripture’s teaching and in forming the foundation of a healthy Christian life, especially in terms of prayer, is incalculable. Pastors and preachers need to spend time reminding and teaching, by precept and pious example, the importance of the doctrine for even the humblest Christian.

Carl R. Trueman is the Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Ambler, Pennsylvania.

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The Biblical Witness to the Holy

by Kim Riddlebarger

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t is common to hear claims that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God—the God of Abraham is often claimed as the father of the three great monotheistic faiths. A survey of the Bible, however, reveals a Triune God completely unlike the god of the Qur’an or even the God of contemporary Judaism.

The doctrine of the Trinity is Christianity’s most distinctive doctrine, despite the fact that this doctrine stretches the limits of human language and logic. Admittedly, in many ways the Trinity is beyond our comprehension, yet we confess it because this is how God reveals himself to us in his word.

The biblical witness to the doctrine of the Trinity is extensive and can be set forth in any number of ways. We begin by noting that the Scriptures are absolutely clear that there is only one God. In Deuteronomy 6:4 Moses declares, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” In Isaiah 44:6 we read, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.” In 1 Corinthians 8:4–6 Paul proclaims, “There is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth— as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” James writes, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (2:19). The Scriptures of both testaments teach there is but one God. One G o d i n Thr e e P e rs o ns Yet the Bible also teaches that, although there is one God, he is revealed in three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, the Father declares, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” even as the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus as a dove (Matt.

3:16–17). In Matthew 28:19, Jesus commands his disciples to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The mission of the church is to go and make disciples by baptizing

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them in the name (singular) of the three persons of the Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

In the benediction concluding his second letter to the church at Corinth, Paul blesses his readers with, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14). In John 14:26, Jesus informs the disciples that “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things.” As God in human flesh (cf. John 1:14), Jesus speaks of both the Holy Spirit and the Father as equals.

Another line of biblical evidence for the Trinity is that the same divine attributes of glory and majesty are assigned to each of the three persons of the Godhead. The Scriptures teach that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are eternal. According to Isaiah, God says, “I am the first and the last” (44:6), and Paul adds that God is “eternal” (Rom. 16:26), without beginning or end. John records the Son saying, “I am the first and the last” (Rev. 22:13), and Micah notes that God’s “coming and going are from everlasting” (5:2). In Hebrews we read of the Holy Spirit as “the eternal Spirit” (9:14). All three— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are eternal, without beginning or end.

The Scriptures also teach that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit created all things. Paul speaks of the “God who created all things” (Eph. 3:9), while the psalmist declares, “Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his” (Ps. 100:3).

Yet in John’s Gospel we read of the Son: “All things were made through him, and without him was not

anything made that was made” (1:3). In Colossians 1:15–17, Paul writes that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Genesis 1:1 tells us that at creation “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are said to have created all things.

As we see from this brief summary of biblical evidence of the work of the Triune God in creation (and we can do the same in a number of other areas, such as redemption), there is good reason to affirm that there is one God who exists in three distinct persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who are equal in glory, majesty, and power. This is how God reveals himself in his word.

Jesus Chr i st When it comes to Jesus Christ the Son, the Bible affirms that Jesus is true and eternal God, uncreated, and without beginning or end. Given Jesus’ central place in Christianity, no one wants to say anything bad about Jesus, and non-Christian religions often attempt to co-opt Jesus and make him one of their own. But if Jesus is indeed true and eternal God, then the Christian doctrine of God is unique among world religions. The irony is that while virtually all religions honor Jesus as a prophet or teacher, nevertheless most tend to reject (implicitly or explicitly) the main point the New Testament makes about Jesus: that he is God in human flesh (John 1:1–18), something Jesus clearly believed and proclaimed about himself (cf. John 8:58).

That the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ is not the invention of the early church can be seen by merely scanning the pages of Holy Scripture, with its substantial teaching regarding the deity of Jesus in both testaments. Powerful evidence for his deity is found in several Old Testament prophecies written hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, such as Isaiah 7:14, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” The Messiah will be miraculously conceived and given

“ There is one God who exists in three distinct persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who are equal in glory, majesty, and power. This is how God reveals himself in his word.” the title “God with us.” “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6). This too refers to Jesus Christ (cf. Col. 2:9).

In addition to the messianic prophecies in Isaiah, we have a number of messianic psalms (e.g., Pss. 8, 89, 110), in which the Father speaks of the Son as highly exalted and equal in majesty and glory. In Proverbs 8:22–31 the author speaks of “wisdom” personified. When seen through the lens of New Testament fulfillment, this is clearly a reference to the eternal Son who is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:30). In Micah 5:2, the prophet speaks of the one, Jesus, to be born in Bethlehem as eternal.

The coming Messiah is repeatedly identified as the almighty God and eternal Father, the wisdom of God, righteous, highly exalted, yet to be born of a lowly ModernReformation.org

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virgin. These prophetic verses can be speaking of only one person: Israel’s coming Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who is the God of Abraham (cf. John 8:58).

In the New Testament, Jesus is said to be eternal and preexistent. In John 1:1 we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus is described by both John and Paul as the creator and sustainer of all things.

“All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3), and in a passage cited above (Col. 1:16–17), Paul says Jesus created all things and holds them together.

Jesus is identified as “God” throughout the pages of the New Testament. In John 20:28, Thomas falls before Jesus and confesses, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus accepts Thomas’s worship. In Titus 2:13, Paul speaks of Jesus’ second coming as “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”

The author of Hebrews writes of Jesus, “But of the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom’” (1:8).

Then there are those attributes applied to Jesus that can only apply to God: Jesus is the object of worship (Matt. 28:16–17); he has the power to raise the dead (John 5:21; 11:25); he is the final judge of humanity (Matt. 25:31–32); and he has universal power and authority (Matt. 28:18), as well as the power to forgive sins (Mark 2:5–7). He not only identifies himself as God (John 14:8–9) but calls himself the Alpha and Omega, “the first and the last”—a divine self-designation (Rev. 22:13).

Throughout the Bible, Jesus is revealed to us as true and eternal God, the almighty, the second person of the Godhead, the creator of all things, and that one whom we must worship and serve.

Although we must keep their persons distinct, whatever we can say of God, we can say of Jesus.

The same holds true of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.

The H o ly Spi r i t Far too often we hear people speak of the Holy Spirit as an “it,” not a “who.” One reason why this is the case is that the nature of the Holy Spirit’s work is to bring glory to Jesus Christ, not to himself. In light of this, J. I. Packer describes the Holy Spirit as the “shy member of the Trinity.” This self-effacing role of the Spirit

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does not mean that the Holy Spirit is impersonal, a mere force or power. The Spirit possesses the same divine attributes as the other members of the Trinity.

Even as we speak of the Father as God and the Son as God, so we must also speak of the Holy Spirit as God. He is the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.

While there is not as much biblical evidence for the deity of the Holy Spirit as there is for the deity of Jesus, it would be a mistake to conclude that the evidence is neither clear nor decisive. We start with the Bible’s direct assertion that the Holy Spirit is God. In Acts 5:3–4, we read the story of Ananias and Sapphira, specifically of their deceit and the charge brought against them: “You have not lied to men but to God.” To lie to the Holy Spirit (as they did) is to lie to God. In 1 Corinthians 3:16 Paul tells us that the Spirit who indwells us is God’s Spirit. He makes the same point in 1 Corinthians 6:19. At the very least, both of Paul’s comments are indirect assertions of the deity of the Holy Spirit.

There is also significant evidence for the deity of the Holy Spirit found in the Old Testament. In Isaiah 63:10 the prophet speaks of the Spirit of God, as does the psalmist in Psalm 95:9. In Hebrews 3:7–9 the writer attributes the words spoken by God in Psalm 95 to the Holy Spirit: “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your

“ Although we must keep their persons distinct, whatever we can say of God, we can say of Jesus. The same holds true of the Holy Spirit.”

hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test . . . for forty years.’” What the Old Testament prophets attributed to God, the author of Hebrews attributes to the Holy Spirit.

Throughout the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit is said to possess divine attributes. In Genesis 1:1–2 we read that “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Even as John and Paul attribute the work of creation to the Son (who is true and eternal God), Moses also assigns the work of creation to the Holy Spirit. In Psalm 33:6 the psalmist states that the Holy Spirit (the Ruach, the breath of God) creates all things. As the Son is eternal, so also is the Holy Spirit, who was with God before all things were created.

In Job 33:4 we read, “The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”

As the Father and the Son are said to give us life, so also does the Holy Spirit. But not only does the Holy Spirit grant us life and breath, he also gives the new birth—something only God can do (John 3:5). We cannot enter God’s kingdom until God’s Spirit gives us eternal life.

Then we have a whole catalogue of divine attributes applied to the Spirit. He is omniscient and omnipresent. Psalm 139:7–10 proclaims that the Holy Spirit is everywhere present. In 1 Corinthians 2:11 Paul says the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. The Scriptures also teach that the Holy Spirit is omnipotent. In Isaiah 11:2 the Holy Spirit is described as possessing the power that God alone possesses. He is, in fact, all-powerful because God is all-powerful. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is God. The Scriptures mention other divine attributes of the Holy Spirit as well. The Holy Spirit is the author of our sanctification (1 Pet. 1:2). He seals us unto the day of redemption (Eph. 1:13–14), ensuring that the work God has begun in us will reach completion (Eph. 4:30). It is through the Holy Spirit that the prophets and apostles spoke (1 Pet. 1:11). Peter proclaims that “prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (1 Pet. 1:21). Finally, there are verses that speak of the work of the Spirit in uniting believers to Jesus Christ, enabling them to approach God without fear. The Holy Spirit is described by Paul as the “Spirit of prayer” (Rom. 8:15–16). Indeed, it is the Spirit who unites us to

“ As the Son is eternal, so also is the Holy Spirit, who was with God before all things were created.”

Christ and enables us to cry out to God. It is also the Spirit’s work to ensure that the saving benefits of Christ become ours.

Since the Spirit is the Third Person of the Holy Trinity and is true and eternal God, we must invoke, worship, and serve him, even as we do the Father and the Son. After all, we are baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:9); and the apostolic benediction is given in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14). Therefore, we must ascribe all glory, majesty, and honor to the Holy Spirit, even as we do to the other members of the Godhead. We pray to the Holy Spirit, we worship the Holy Spirit, and we invoke the blessed Holy Spirit.

Given this vast amount of biblical evidence (which we have barely surveyed) and given the confusion of our age regarding the God of the Bible, it is important for Christians to confess with boldness and clarity that we worship the one true God in unity and the Godhead in tri-unity. For God is one, yet he reveals himself to us in three distinct persons, who are each God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Kim Riddlebarger is pastor of Christ United Reformed Church in Anaheim, California, and cohost of the White Horse Inn radio broadcast. He is the author of A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times (Baker, 2013) and Man of Sin: Uncovering the Truth about the Antichrist (Baker, 2006). Kim blogs at www. kimriddlebarger.squarespace.com.

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Scripture Twister: Common Trinitarian

by James White

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he doctrine of the Trinity is the highest affirmation the Christian church professes in her teaching and worship of God. The doctrine separates the Christian faith not only from the world’s polytheistic religions, but it likewise makes her worship distinct from the other great “monotheistic� religions of Judaism and Islam.

Historically, Christians have refused to fellowship with those who have denied its truth or sought to modify its claims. Many theologians have identified it as the central truth of the Christian religion, the definitional doctrine that gives form to everything else Christianity says and does.

One would expect, given the centrality of the Trinity, that your average serious believing

Christian would know the Trinity well, would think about this divine truth daily, would worship in light of it, and would feel comfortable explaining it, teaching it, and defending it. But honesty forces us to admit that there is a great disconnect between what we profess in our confessions and creeds, and what we experience in our worship and our lives. Very few even of our ministers could explain, with compelling biblical reasoning and theological clarity, why the Trinity is central to the faith.

Liberal Christianity, that wholly other religion, as G. Gresham Machen rightly saw it, may still print the ancient creeds in their prayer books, but the actual confession of the Trinity as a divine truth ceased among them long ago.

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The B i b l e Te l l s M e S o Christians are Trinitarians because they have a firm, sure word from God in the Holy Scriptures.

Those Scriptures consistently and harmoniously reveal three fundamental truths about God’s selfrevelation that is focused in the coming of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. First, the absolute, foundational reality of monotheism: there is only one true, eternal God, Creator of all things.

Second, the revelation of the existence of that one God in three divine persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in eternal relationship to one another. Third, the personality and equality of the divine persons: more specifically, the deity of the Son, and the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit. All Trinitarian controversies may be said to be perversions—or typically outright rejections—of one of these three biblical teachings. It was the weight of the entirety of Scripture, not individual texts in isolation, that drove the church to clearly confess her faith in the Trinity.

Let’s briefly consider five common errors regarding the Trinity, and in so doing, grow in our appreciation of this central revelation of the nature and being of the God we worship.

Unitarianism

Often associated with dying liberal denominations (and universalism, which refers to an aberrant view of salvation), unitarianism is actually a technical theological term that, in our present context, refers to the idea that the being of God is shared by only one (unitary) person, in opposition to the idea that the being of God is shared equally and fully by three persons (Trinitarianism). In general, Judaism is unitarian, and Islam’s central theological affirmation about Allah, the concept of tawhid, is essentially a statement of unitarianism.

Many confuse unitarianism with monotheism, as if the category of the being of God (there is only one) is the same as the category of person. This is probably the most common confusion in the cultic misrepresentations of the Trinity.

Unitarianism would be a logical position to hold if the Scriptures were not so clear in their affirmation of the existence of three divine persons. Unitarians are forced to either subject the persons in a specific order (such as making the Father the only truly divine person, with the Son taking a lesser role, and

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the Spirit, if seen as personal at all, an even lesser role; see “Subordinationism” below), or they must deny the personal distinctions completely, leading to the modalist/Sabellian error, where the three divine persons become modes of expression or manifestation (e.g., T. D. Jakes), rather than eternal, divine persons (see “Modalism” below).

Unitarianism has always led to a dry, sterile theology for the simple reason that it is unbiblical and cuts the very heart of the redemptive work of the Triune God out of the Christian faith. You cannot turn the Jesus of the Bible into anything less than the inspired Scriptures describe him: the unitarian “Jesus” always ends up as little more than a moral teacher or social campaigner, not the powerful Lord whose kingship is the heart of the Christian proclamation. In the same fashion, the work of the cross always ends up being diminished in unitarian systems, for the divine self-giving of the atonement is necessarily sacrificed when Jesus becomes less than truly God.

Polytheism

Many would think the second error, polytheism (the belief in many gods), is no longer a common belief in today’s world. The reality is that polytheism is alive and well, not just in the formal sense (e.g., what is taught in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, whose theology takes polytheism to the ultimate extreme), but likewise in the less-than-informed views of many Christians who so separate the divine persons that they unintentionally enter into a functional form of polytheism.

There is surely no more fundamental affirmation of the Scriptures, taken as a divine and inspired whole, than monotheism. As the psalmist expressed it, “All the gods of the peoples are idols, but Yahweh made the heavens” (Ps. 96:5). Everything else we believe about God begins with his uniqueness, his complete “otherness,” and all of that is grounded in the truth that there is no other god: Yahweh alone made all things.

The unity of the three divine persons in sharing (fully, completely, equally) the one divine essence is necessitated by Scripture itself. Recognizing the primacy of monotheism protects us from falling into many errors, including a functional form of polytheism that afflicts many conservative churches today.

This is seen especially when we nurture the idea in our devotional life of God the Father as distant,

“All Trinitarian controversies may be said to be perversions—or typically outright rejections— of one of these three biblical teachings.” angry, and harsh, while envisioning Jesus as close, loving, and gracious. Jesus makes the Father “play nice” with us. Nothing could be a more distorted idea of the actual biblical teaching, which presents a perfect consistency between Father, Son, and Spirit in bringing about redemption, with the Father as the very fountainhead of all grace and mercy. A serious understanding of monotheism would preclude such incipient polytheism.

Modalism

As noted above, one specific form of unitarianism is known as modalism. This system teaches that instead of three eternal, divine persons, the Father, Son, and Spirit are modes or manifestations of a single divine person. The United Pentecostal Church, for example, teaches that Jesus is two persons, the divine Father indwelling the created and non-divine Son, the Father then adopting the role of Spirit after the ascension of Christ. However the system is constructed, the key element is the denial that there has existed in eternity past a divine relationship between three divine persons.

Modalism strikes at the most misunderstood element of the Trinity—that of the perfect sharing of the one divine being by three coequal and coeternal persons. This element of the doctrine is most unlike our

human experience, and hence it defies any kind of comparison or analogy (though man has tried mightily to construct them). We tend to import our own creaturely meaning into the words and as a result struggle at this very point. But if we adopt modalistic thinking, the Bible becomes a mishmash of contradiction and empty words. Jesus’ prayer life becomes unintelligible, John 17 incoherent, the concept of Jesus’ mediation on our behalf before the Father impossible. Yet the reality is, due to a lack of preaching and teaching on the Trinity in our churches, many unknowingly fall into a form of modalism.

Subordinationism

Here we have the other noted form of unitarianism, which is much more readily recognized in mainstream liberal churches and in the cults. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, turn Jesus into Michael the Archangel, the greatest of the creatures of Jehovah. The list of cult groups that have demoted Jesus (and the Spirit), so as to maintain some form of unitarianism, is long.

Confuseditarianism

I will admit to some level of linguistic creativity in the construction of this term, but I think it is expressive of many in conservative churches today.

I expressed this years ago when I asked, at the beginning of my book on the Trinity, “When was the last time you heard someone say, ‘I love the Trinity’?” I explained the rarity of the statement in light of the fact that we do not profess passion for that which we do not understand. We know the Trinity is important, but for a variety of reasons, we find ourselves uncomfortable and confused, and hence lacking in passion for the very highest of God’s self-revelation in divine Scripture. And for believers in Jesus Christ, confuseditarianism should be the last proper description of our own faith. We should be known as a people who properly profess the Trinity to be central to our faith because we know and adore why it is central, why it is so important. May the Triune God guide his people to an ever more passionate knowledge of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author of more than twenty books, a professor, an accomplished debater, and an elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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From Jerusalem to Nicaea The Development of the Trinity in Church

by Michael S. Horton

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n its earliest years, the Christian church was a Jewish sect, preoccupied with the challenge of bringing the gospel to Jerusalem and Judea. Soon, however, it entered the Gentile world—first through the Diaspora (that is, Jews scattered throughout the Roman Empire). In the process, the gospel encountered different objections and challenges. On the popular level, Greeks and Romans were not offended by the addition of another foreign deity to the pantheon of gods. Early Christians repeated traditional Jewish objections to polytheism. Yet as Christianity gained converts and critics among cultural elites, it had more philosophical challenges to face.

How do you explain and defend the Christian faith to those with a fundamentally different worldview—without accommodating that faith to the presuppositions of unbelief? That perennial question of Christian mission pressed itself on the consciousness of the ancient church. The dogma of the Trinity would never have emerged out of a synthesis of Christian and pagan thought. On the contrary, the early pioneers of Trinitarian theology were remarkably adept at exploiting their inherited vocabulary and philosophical concepts in service to revelation.

Ea rly Tr i n i ta r ian D e b at e s For centuries, the Greek mind had been preoccupied with the so-called problem of “the one-and-the many.” In simplest terms, this is a question of how to think about and explain both the unity and plurality of all things. Is reality ultimately made of one thing or “essence,” or of many diverse things? In the ancient world, most Greek philosophers (famous thinkers such as Parmenides, the Stoics, even Plato) assumed that reality was made up of one pure thing—essence, or being—but that we nonetheless experience the world a little differently. Instead of seeing this oneness, we experience a world of multiple copies and shadows that have fallen away from the one pure, original thing. This explained unity and plurality.

All reality is in truth, in its purity, oneness. But we experience instead plurality and diversity. The priority of oneness is maintained and preferred, while plurality is acknowledged and tolerated.

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Early Christian theologians emerged in this intellectual world and began to reflect on the Bible’s revelation of the nature of God. One early thinker, Origen (AD 185–254), founded a school in Alexandria where he not only translated but transformed biblical teaching into the categories of Platonism (i.e., the Greek worldview described above). Origen tried to merge the Bible with Plato.

Since “oneness” was the favored term and cannot be divided, Origen began to describe Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as a creature who was subordinate to the Father. The Father and the Son cannot both be God in the same way, he reasoned, because that would imply a plurality in the Godhead. To many Christian ears, the effect of Origen’s reasoning was to suggest that the Son was less divine than the one, singular Father. A third-century presbyter named Arius, who also served in Alexandria, went a step further, arguing that the Son is the first created being. “There exists a trinity [trias],” he said, “in unequal glories.”

The Father alone is God, properly speaking, while there was a time when the Son did not exist.1 Seeking a middle way, Semi-Arians argued that the Son is of a similar, though not exactly the same, essence as the Father. At this moment, orthodoxy hung on a vowel: homoousios (“of the same essence”) versus homoiousios (“of a similar essence”).

A somewhat different way of preserving the unity of God and the divinity of the Son and the Spirit was struck by Sabellius. He argued that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are “masks” or personae worn by the one divine person. God is one indeed, without any real plurality; but like an actor on the stage,

God could appear sometimes as the Father, other times as the Son, and other times as the Spirit.

However, these are not actually three different actors. Though the third-century Roman presbyter was excommunicated by the bishop of Rome in AD 220, Sabellianism—more commonly known as modalism—has remained a recurring challenge throughout church history.

Summing up, all of these early challenges were the result of the inability of the Greek mind to comprehend a plurality that is not in some sense a division or falling away from the pure unity of being.

Part of the problem was that there just weren’t enough conceptual tools in the toolbox to make the point that the threeness (plurality) did not pertain to God’s essence.

F indi ng t he Wo rds The real breakthrough at this point came with the Cappadocian theologians in the fourth century: Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil of Caesarea. Instead of confusing Greek terms for “essence” and “individual,” they used words such as hypostasis (an individual substance with its own characteristics) to describe the persons of the Trinity, while also affirming the unity of God’s one, divine essence. They affirmed, in other words, that God is at the same time one indivisible “essence” and three individual persons or subsistences with special characteristics. Unity and plurality—God is one in essence and three in persons. It is not God’s essence that is plural but the persons.

These theologians of the East argued that while each person of the Trinity shares equally in the one divine essence (avoiding the ontological subordinationism of Origen and Arius), the Son and the Spirit receive their personal existence from the Father.

Thus unity and plurality receive equal appreciation: “No sooner do I conceive of the One,” said Gregory of Nazianzus, “than I am illumined by the Splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One.”2 This interrelationship between persons is further underscored by the term perichoresis, which refers to the mutual indwelling of the persons in each other. This relationship is underscored in John’s Gospel, where the Son is in the bosom or at

“ ‘No sooner do I conceive of the One,’ said Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘than I am illumined by the Splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One.’” the side of his Father (1:18). No one comes to the Father except through the Son; in fact, to know the Son is to know the Father also (14:6–7). “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” (v. 10). Jesus declares that the Holy Spirit “will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (16:14–15). And in his prayer he says, “And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (17:5). He asks that all of those who will believe in him “may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.…I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one” (vv. 21, 23).

Up to this point, Christians objected to the charge of logical contradiction, but they did not yet have the precise vocabulary for articulating it.

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Even though it’s more complex philosophically, the terms employed by the Cappadocians enriched the church’s theology immeasurably.

Ea st-W e st Te n sio ns Differences between the churches of the East and the West have been often exaggerated. Despite initial debate in the West over certain Greek vocabulary, both the Eastern and Western church fathers agreed on the Trinitarian formula, “One in essence, three in persons.” In fact, it was the Latin father Tertullian who coined the expression.3 The ecumenical consensus reached at the Council of Nicaea in 325 (subsequently codified as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed) was remarkable and remains the church’s confession to this day. Nevertheless, differences (both political and theological) eventually precipitated a formal schism in 1054, when the Western church unilaterally amended the Nicene Creed. According to the original Latin wording, the Spirit proceeds “from the Father,” but Rome added the clause, “and [from] the Son” (et filio). Hence, it is called the Filioque controversy. This confirmed some of the East’s suspicions about lingering Western emphasis on God’s oneness over against his triunity. But the West had taken such steps for good reason in order to guard against a revival of Arianism in Spain. In spite of a promising beginning, the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) failed to heal the East-West schism.

Refor m e d Co n t r ibu t io ns to Cat ho l i c Co n s e nsu s Some in our own day have mistakenly suggested that the Reformers added little to Trinitarian theology beyond affirming the ecumenical creeds and catholic consensus. However, John Calvin did contribute his own insights to this age-old debate between the East and the West. In the sixteenth century, because many of the ancient heresies returned (for example, neo-Arianism and Socinianism, later called unitarianism), Calvin took direct action in his ministry. He insisted that the Trinity is central. Without it, “only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God.”4

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Calvin affirmed the equality and unity of the Godhead, while keeping a sharp lookout to avoid the error of subordinationism on one side and modalism on the other. In doing so, he emphasized with the West generally that each person is God in exactly the same sense, but also emphasized with the East that each person is different from the others and that this personhood is not merely a concept or relation but identifies real “subsistences”—that is, a distinct entity with his own personal characteristics. “For in each hypostasis the whole divine nature is understood,” he says, “with this qualification—that to each belongs his own peculiar quality.”5 In other words, when it comes to the attributes of God, there is no qualitative or even quantitative difference between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Yet this unity of essence is not itself a person—a fourth member of the Trinity, as it were. We never encounter the divine essence, but the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—and even then, according to their works.

Furthermore, besides the one essence that each person shares in exactly the same way and degree, each person has attributes that distinguish him from the others. This is the point that seems to be lacking in traditional Western treatments since Augustine.

By giving equal weight to the essential attributes that are shared equally by the three persons as well as the personal attributes that distinguish each from the others, Calvin believed, “In this sense the

“ Both the Eastern and Western church fathers agreed on the Trinitarian formula, ‘One in essence, three in persons.’”

“ From him and through him and to him are all things.”

opinions of the ancients are to be harmonized, which otherwise would seem somewhat to clash.”6 The Son and the Spirit do not receive their divine nature from the Father, but they do receive their personal existence from the Father. The Son is eternally begotten and the Spirit is eternally spirated (breathed forth) by the Father. In any case, essences are not the sort of thing begotten or spirated in the first place; only persons are. “It is not a mere relation which is called the Son, but a real someone subsisting in the divine nature.”7 This is evident in the external works of the Godhead: It is not fitting to suppress the distinction that we observe to be expressed in Scripture. It is this: to the Father is attributed the beginning of activity, and the fountain and wellspring of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and the ordered disposition of all things; but to the Spirit is assigned the power and efficacy of all that activity.8

In talking this way, Calvin is simply following the formulation of the Cappadocian fathers: for example, in Gregory of Nyssa’s statement that all of God’s external activity has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion: Practical Benefits of th e D o ctr i n e o f t h e T rinit y Other essays in this issue of Modern Reformation will defend the claim that the doctrine of the Trinity is pregnant with practical implications. But given the technical sophistication of the preceding history, a few concluding thoughts are in order. The most important question in any age is whether our own faith and practice as Christians are thoroughly defined by and immersed in this Trinitarian faith. The Trinity is not just an orthodox dogma to which we yield our assent. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit stride across the chapters of redemptive

history toward the goal whose origins lies in an eternal pact between them. We worship, pray, confess, and sing our laments and praises to the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. We are baptized and blessed in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. From the word of the Father concerning his Son in the power of the Spirit, a desert wasteland blooms into a lush garden in ever-widening patches throughout the world.

We are adopted as children, not of a uni-personal God, but of the Father, as coheirs with his Son as mediator, united to the Son and his ecclesial body by the Spirit. Paul’s doxology in Romans 11:36—“From him and through him and to him are all things”—now takes on new significance; it means that all good gifts come from the Father, through the Spirit, and to the Son. No less than the Father, the Son and the Spirit are also our creator and preserver. No less than the Son, the Father and the Spirit are our savior and lord. No less than the Father and the Son is the Spirit “worshiped and glorified.”

Michael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

1 Quoted from Arius’s poem “Thalia,” in Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 102.

2 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40: The Oration on Holy Baptism, ch. 41 in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second Series, The Early Church Fathers, Second Series, So14, edited by Alexander Roberts et al. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996), 7:375.

3 This formula first appears in chapter 2 of Tertullian’s’ Against Praxeas, NPNF2, 3:598.

4 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by John T. McNeill, translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: The Westminster Press, 1967), I.13.2.

5 Calvin, I.13.19.

6 Calvin, I.13.18–22.

7 Calvin, I.13.6.

8 Calvin, I.13.18.

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Union and Communion with the Triune

by Fred Sanders

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ruth should be practical, and the doctrine of the Trinity, being utterly true, surely ought to show itself practical in some way. “Sound knowledge,” said James Ussher (1581–1656), is “knowledge which sinketh from the brain into the heart, and from thence breaketh forth into action, setting head, heart, hand and all a-work.” This is especially the case with theological truth, which is why Ussher, a Reformed theologian and archbishop in the Church of Ireland, went on to admonish, “So much only must thou reckon thyself to know in Christianity, as thou art able to make use of in practice.”1 But just how are we to make use of the doctrine of the Trinity in practice? The doctrine itself states nothing about who we are, how we exist, or how we should behave. It is manifestly and magnificently a very different kind of doctrine; one about who God is, how God exists, and how God behaves. The Westminster Confession of Faith summarizes the Trinity as follows: In the unity of the Godhead there be three Persons of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.2 To follow those sentences with the charge “so act accordingly!” would be absurdly anticlimactic. Even the Heidelberg Catechism—so intent on teaching the immediate pastoral implications of doctrine— does not follow its presentation of the Trinity with its standard application question, “What benefit do you receive from this?” Instead it asks simply, “Since there is only one God, why do you speak of three persons?”3 (Answer: “Because God has so revealed himself in his Word.”) If even the Heidelberg doesn’t readily deliver the practical value of the Trinity, perhaps we are seeking it in vain. Modern thinkers pretty uniformly assumed this to be the case, following Immanuel Kant who announced that “the doctrine of the Trinity provides nothing, absolutely nothing of practical value, even if one claims to understand it.”4

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Yet Reformation theology provides at least two resources that help us see what is practical about the doctrine of the Trinity. The first is the connection between knowledge of God and knowledge of the self, and the second is the biblical dynamic of union and communion.

P racti ca l Knowle dge o f God a nd Se lf First, the connection between knowing God and knowing the self shows that we cannot have accurate knowledge of God without simultaneously knowing ourselves to be different from God: dependent on him, infinitely less than God, rebellious against him.

Conversely, we cannot have accurate knowledge of ourselves without becoming aware of God’s exaltedness over us. The knowledge of both comes bundled together. Calvin opens his Institutes with this theme: “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”5 For the next thirteen chapters of the Institutes, he develops the knowledge of the true God (in contrast to idols) as culminating in revealed knowledge of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Only with this concrete knowledge of the true God in mind can we begin to understand ourselves; otherwise we are in constant danger of projecting a false god and consequently misunderstanding ourselves in relation to this imagined deity.

Just how specific and thorough our knowledge of God the Trinity needs to be is indicated by how long and detailed that thirteenth chapter of the

Institutes is: knowledge of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the capstone of Calvin’s treatise on knowing God. But an even clearer example can be seen in a later popularization of the theme of knowledge of God and knowledge of self. One of the best-selling devotional books of all time is The Practice of Piety: Directing a Christian How to Walk That He May Please God by Lewis Bayly (d. 1631). An eminently practical book that gave believers counsel for various phases of life, Bayly’s The Practice of Piety was widely influential. Two examples show its popularity: When John Bunyan married, his wife brought two books with her into the marriage, one of which was Bayly. And when missionary John Eliot finished translating the Bible into Algonquin for the Native Americans, his next project was to translate The Practice of Piety.

Bayly begins The Practice of Piety by saying, “Forasmuch as there can be no true piety without the knowledge of God; nor any good practice without the knowledge of a man’s own self; we will therefore lay down the knowledge of God’s majesty, and man’s misery, as the first and chiefest grounds of the Practice of Piety.”

And the knowledge of God that he teaches is knowing “the diverse manner of being” of the three persons in the divine essence. Bayly takes his readers through a careful account of the three persons, always beginning with who each person is in the Trinitarian life itself: “The first Person is named the Father; first, in respect of his natural son…the second Person is named the Son, because he is begotten of his Father’s substance, or nature.”

In short, Bayly judged that in order for a believer “to walk that he may please God,” a great deal of Trinitarian theology was necessary and helpful.

Imagine translating into Algonquin passages such as, “The divine essence is in the Father unbegotten, in the Son begotten, and in the Holy Ghost proceeding, we make not three essences, but only shew the diverse manners of subsisting”! In this tradition, Trinitarian theology does not dictate any specific ethical commands, nor does it prescribe any sort of program for imitating the Trinity’s tri-unity; in my judgment this is all to the good. Instead, Bayly considers Trinitarian theology to be the only route to accurate knowledge of who God essentially is, and

Defining our terms Dialectic A dialectic is a mental exercise that entertains two ideas at the same time, zigzagging back and forth between them without giving up on either.

The two ideas do not contradict each other (that would be a paradox, not a dialectic); in fact, each requires the other. In the case mentioned here, John Calvin says that on the one hand you can’t know God (who exists in infinite majesty and purity) without knowing yourself (finite, fallen); yet you can’t know yourself (dependent, created) without knowing God (creator, sustainer).

“Which one precedes and brings forth the other,” he says, “is not easy to discern.” There is no right starting point because they mutually presuppose each other. To introduce the Institutes, though, Calvin decides that “the order of right teaching” places knowledge of God at the beginning.

reckons that believers have no other path to accurate self-knowledge than to know who their God is.

U ni on a nd Commu ni on The second resource that Reformation theology brings to bear on showing how the doctrine of the Trinity is practical is the dynamic of union and communion. The believer’s union with God in Christ is the foundational reality, the accomplished and perfect work that brings us into the saving relation with God. From that union arise specific acts of communion, or experiences of fellowship, with God. “Union is the foundation of communion,” said Richard Sibbes.6 It was the Puritan authors who made the most of this distinction. When they wrote actual theological treatises, they tended to focus on union with Christ and its foundational reality. But when they preached, or published their sermons in the ModernReformation.org

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“Our union with Christ the incarnate Son reconciles us with his Father and fills us with his Spirit.” form of spiritual or what we might call devotional writing, their focus shifted to acts of communion.

The reason is obvious: Communion comes into the realm of actual experience; unlike union, it rises and falls; it can be increased or can suffer diminishment; it can be cultivated or neglected. While it would make no sense to tell a congregation to “get more united to Christ,” it makes perfect sense to exhort them to engage in spiritual disciplines and stir themselves up to improve their communion with God. We can observe the same dynamic when it comes to Christian experience of the Trinity.

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Foundationally, Christian existence is existence in union with the Trinity. Our union with Christ the incarnate Son reconciles us with his Father and fills us with his Spirit; to be saved is to be brought into saving contact with the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is a Trinitarian depth to Christian salvation that necessarily results from the Trinitarian nature of the God who saves.

The gospel, even when it is expressed in a way that does not make the doctrine of the Trinity explicit, is always an engagement with the Trinitarian God. This is because the publication of the gospel is not a

side project for God but an action that comes from the Holy Spirit by the way of immediate efficacy.”10 his heart, which emerges from his inmost being. It We could say it more concisely: Our fellowship is an undertaking to which Father, Son, and Holy with God is from the Father, through the Son, in Spirit commit themselves fully. the Spirit.

As Thomas Goodwin wrote, The fact that our threefold “The things of the gospel are communion is “bottomed upon” depths… the things of the gospel a union with the Trinity has farare the deep things of God.”7 reaching implications for our Built on this fundamental understanding of salvation, for union is communion with the our worship together, and for our Triune God, which is somepersonal prayer. Salvation makes thing that varies from church to most sense when it is underchurch, from time to time, and stood in most Trinitarian terms; from one believer to another. for instance, not bluntly as “getUnion and John Owen (1616–1683) wrote ting saved” but more abundantly Communion the classic treatise on the subas being adopted by the Father Although the words rhyme ject of the believer’s Trinitarian through the only-begotten Son and the ideas seem simifellowship: Of Communion with and receiving the Spirit of adoplar, it is worth learning God the Father, Son, and Holy tion. In our worship, we do not the theological distincGhost.8 There, Owen describes need to rehearse all the theologition between union and the sort of communion we have cal terminology of Trinitarian communion. Union with with God, a communion that theology (valuable as it is in its God in Christ is a spiritual “consisteth in his communicaproper place), but we do need to reality brought about unition of himself unto us, with be reminded consistently through laterally by God; it is the our returnal unto him of that Scripture, hymn, and prayer that fundamental truth of what which he requireth and acceptour worship is directed to this God has accomplished for eth, flowing from that union particular God, the true one. And our salvation in Christ and which in Jesus Christ we have in personal prayer, there is a great applied to us by the Holy with him.”9 Considering first the advantage to becoming increasSpirit. Communion with Father, then the Son, and finally ingly aware that all Christian God, on the other hand, the Holy Spirit, Owen attentively prayer is directed to the Father includes all of our Spirittraces what the Bible teaches through the Son in the Holy Spirit, empowered responses, about each person’s movewhether or not we are attending to actions, habits, and disments toward us in Christ, and its direction. Prayer has a current ciplines of maintaining our most appropriate “return­al” of mediation running through it, fe l l o w s h i p a n d c o m or responses to that particua Trinitarian directionality built munication with God. lar person. Attending to these into it as a result of our commuThough the distinction is makes for a rich biblical theolnion being grounded on our union. not taught in Scripture in ogy, highlighting “the grace of When our liturgies and personal these terms, the need for our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of devotions feel weak, rote, and it impresses itself upon God [the Father], and the fellowineffective, we need to remember anyone who interprets ship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. that these are only expressions of Jesus’ teaching in John 13:13). All of this communion our communion with God, while 15 about abiding in the flows from God in a Triune way, beneath them are the everlasting true vine: we are made which Owen summarizes in the arms of actual union with Christ. to abide, and we are comformula, “The Father does it by When our intellectual undermanded to abide. the way of original authority; the standing of the Trinity is hazy Son by the way of communicatand remote, we need to rememing from a purchased treasury; ber that the reality of our saving

Defining our Terms

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engagement with the Trinity does not depend on our understanding of the doctrine. In fact, the opposite is the case: a believer’s understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity is enabled by faithful participation in the life of God in Christ. When we are in the grips of these weaknesses, we also ought to stir each other up to seek fresh awareness and renewed experiences of communion with God the Father (his love and electing), God the Son (his grace and truth as our mediator), and God the Holy Spirit (his indwelling and formation). If there is always the promise of resting in the deep union beneath our acts of communion, there is also the danger of staying in the shallows of our own life and forgetting the abundance on which we stand. In this context, Sibbes warned that “we are only poor for this reason, that we do not know our riches in Christ.”11

“we need to remember that the reality of our saving engagement with the Trinity does not depend on our understanding of the doctrine.”

Conc lu si o n

a truth he called “most practical and most tender.”

He preferred to preach the doctrine straight from Scripture, because God’s word is the best guide to the heart of what Trinitarian theology is all about.

On his deathbed, Monod gave one final sermon about the Trinity, in which he said,

How practical is the doctrine of the Trinity? We should not expect to go to this doctrine to fetch specific ethical commands, or patterns for imitation, or blueprints for human society. If that’s what we mean by practical, then no doctrine about God himself will ever be practical in that sense, and least of all the doctrine o f t h e Tr i n i t y, which names one of the ways God is unlike us. But the connection of knowledge of God John Owen and knowledge of self dictates that Communion With we need this accuGod: Fellowship rate, Trinitarian With Father, Son, understanding of and Holy Spirit God in order to (Christian Heritage, walk faithfully.

2007) And the dynamic of union and communion shows how the Trinitarian depth of Christian existence supports and funds the daily conduct of our Christian lives.

French pastor Adolphe Monod (1802–1856) had a special regard for the doctrine of the Trinity,

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There we find the basis of the Gospel, and those who reject it as a speculative and purely theological doctrine have therefore never understood the least thing about it; it is the strength of our hearts, it is the joy of our souls, it is the life of our life, it is the very foundation of revealed truth.12

Fred Sanders is associate professor at Torrey Honors Institute, Biola University, in La Mirada, California.

1 Archbishop Ussher’s Answer to a Jesuit, with Other Tracts on Popery (Cambridge: J. & J. J. Deighton, 1835), 719.

2 Westminster Confession of Faith II:3.

3 Heidelberg Catechism, Q 25.

4 Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary J. Gregor and Robert E. Anchor (NY: Abaris Books, 1979), 65.

5 John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (St. Louis: Westminster Press, 1960), 1:35.

6 Richard Sibbes, “Bowels Opened,” in Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, vol. II (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1862), 174.

7 Thomas Goodwin, “The Glory of the Gospel,” in The Works of Thomas Goodwin (Lafayette, IN: Sovereign Grace, 2000), 4:227–346. See 238 and 272.

8 A good modern edition is Communion with the Triune God, eds. Kelly Kapic and Justin Taylor (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007).

9 Communion, 94.

10 Communion, 104.

11 Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax (London: Pickering, 1838), 75.

12 Adolphe Monod, Adolphe Monod’s Farewell to His Friends and to His Church, trans. Owen Thomas (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1962), 114.

What Would Happen If Christians Really Knew Their Bible?

Recovering Scripture.

We all need to recover Scripture: in our churches, in our devotional lives, as the source of our theology, and as the living voice of God today. We believe the Reformation recovered the central themes of Scripture that the church slowly had abandoned—as it tends to do in every generation.

As a thank you for a gift of $100 or more, we will send you a copy of our Recovering Scripture MP3 CD, which includes over 40 WHI episodes and over a dozen MR articles. Will you stand with us for a modern Reformation?

L e a r n m o r e a n d do nate at W h iteHo r seInn.org/donat e 2014.

Theology On Tap.

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Every day voices are being raised in the public square that claim all religions are essentially the same, that we each “find God” in our own unique way, that there is no real difference between the world religions. Join the White Horse Inn hosts and special guests as we launch the series “Do We All Worship the Same God?”

Visit W h iteHo rse Inn.org/God.

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book reviews

The Eternal Generation of the Son: Maintaining Orthodoxy in Trinitarian Theology

By Kevin N. Giles IVP Academic, 2012 270 pages (paperback), $24.00

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n the introduction to his magisterial Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to FourthCentury Trinitarian Theology (Oxford University Press, 2004), Lewis Ayres observes that despite the revival of “Trinitarian theology,” many theologians have engaged the legacy of Nicaea “at a fairly shallow level, frequently relying on assumptions about Nicene theology that are historically indefensible.” If Kevin Giles is right, some of the most respected conservative, evangelical theologians are prime exhibits of Ayres’s complaint. An Australian Anglican minister and noted scholar, Giles writes as a member of the evangelical and Reformed family.

If the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one in essence (homoousios), how are they distinct persons? The focus of Giles’s book is the Father-Son relation. There are several ways of coming to a wrong answer, and the church became well aware of all of them by the late fourth century. The Nicene consensus, forged through controversy and finally adopted at the Council of Constantinople in 381, is that the unbegotten Father eternally begets the Son. This procession is eternal; it is perfect, admitting no

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degrees of sharing in the essence; and it is necessary. While the Triune God freely chose to send the Son and the Spirit in history (the economy), the Father’s begetting of the Son and breathing out of the Spirit are intrinsic to the very life of the Godhead independently of an external world.

The Son’s eternal generation is not an isolated theory, Giles argues. Delete it from the creed and “the very doctrine of the Trinity” is threatened, along with the deity of the Son and therefore our salvation.

But are there conservative evangelical theologians today who reject the eternal generation of the Son? Frankly, I didn’t know that there were so many before reading this book (see sidebar on page 49).

Scripture is our only foundation, but “doing theology” is a spiritual work of discernment not only for the church but also within the church— the whole church a c ro s s i t s d i ve rs e times and places. And it involves not only induction from biblical statements but also deduction from t h e b ro a d e r se n se of Scripture. Nearly every heresy in history resulted from literalistic exegesis of a handful of prooftexts, set over against a consensual reading of Scripture over many times and places. Reasons offered for rejecting “eternally begotten of the Father” are that the doctrine is more speculative, illogical, obscure, and/or trivial. But Giles thinks the complaints reflect a superficial (and erroneous) knowledge of the positions they are revising or rejecting, as

“Nearly every heresy in history resulted from literalistic exegesis of a handful of proof-texts, set over against a consensual reading of Scripture over many times and places.” well as the history that produced them.

Chapter 3 takes on the charge that there is no biblical warrant for the eternal generation of the Son. Giles observes that many textual scholars have concluded that monogenēs in John (John 1:14, 19; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9) is more likely “one of a kind.” I still hold out for “only begotten” since: (1) “unique/ only God” contradicts the difference between the Father and the Son expressed in verses 1–3; (2) John always refers to Jesus as “Son” (huios) and believers as “children” (tekna); and (3) the phrase monogenous para patros suggests that Jesus reveals God as an only begotten son of a father can do. Nevertheless, I appreciate the way in which Giles shows that the theological sense of John’s teaching in many places confirms that Jesus is “unique” because he is the “only begotten.” He is “from the bosom of the Father” (eis ton kolpon; John 1:18). This is certainly how the Greek-speaking fathers of Nicaea understood monogenēs. “The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son arises and is predicated primarily on the biblical revelation that the ‘first’ and ‘second’ persons of the Trinity are eternally and indelibly

identified and related as ‘the Father’ and ‘the Son.’ A father-son relationship presupposes begetting.

Fathers beget children” (69).

Giles demonstrates that for the church fathers, Augustine, and Aquinas, the eternal generation of the Son was the lynchpin for identifying both his unity with and difference from the Father (chapters 4–6). Chapter 7 shows the continuity of the Reformers and post-Reformation confessions with this catholic consensus, citing Richard Muller’s point that the anti-Trinitarians of the era “often advocated a starkly rational Biblicism over against the tradition” (see “The Triunity of God,” in PostReformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4 [Baker, 2003], 20). He also does a fine job of dispensing with the attempt of those who reject eternal generation to recruit Calvin. He also cites several post-Reformation theologians. “For those evangelicals who call themselves ‘Reformed,’ this is a ‘tradition’ that cannot be ignored or perfunctorily dismissed” (204).

In chapter 8 he enters into the heart of the argument: Does the orthodox doctrine “imply or necessitate the eternal subordination of the Son?” (205). He delineates four versions of the opposition: (1) The doctrine should be endorsed because it teaches ontological subordination.

(2) The doctrine should be rejected because it teaches ontological subordination (Arianism).

(3) The doctrine should be accepted “because it reflects the belief that the Son is eternally subordinated in role and authority, but not ontologically, a belief all evangelicals should hold.”

(4) The doctrine should be rejected because it implies or necessitates the Son’s eternal subordination to the Father.

Giles judges that the now widespread assumption that eternal generation entails the Son’s eternal subordination reveals “a minimum of knowledge of the historical development of the doctrine of the Trinity” and fails to “understand what this doctrine teaches and safeguards.” It was precisely against the Arian subordinationists that the Nicene fathers affirmed the eternal begetting of the Son. “Wayne Grudem’s argument that the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds, along with the Anglican ModernReformation.org

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book reviews

Thirty-Nine Articles and the Westminster Confession of Faith, actually teach the eternal subordination in authority of the Son is profoundly perverse,” given their explicit claims to the contrary (212). Ironically, William Lane Craig regards the doctrine of the Son’s eternal begottenness as Arian only because he seems to accept the Arian presuppositions concerning it.

The whole point of the pro-Nicene party was to affirm that the Son was “one in being (homoousios) with the Father.” Similarly, Calvin defended the Son’s aseity precisely on the basis of his being eternally begotten of the Father.

From here, Giles asks whether there are “better ways to ground the Father-Son distinction than the eternal begetting of the Son” (ch. 9). The theologians he has been challenging fall into two alternatives to the orthodox view. Some lodge the distinction between persons in their works in the economy, which “eternally and primarily differentiate them” (220). I cannot help but interject my own reaction at this point. The conservative theologians Giles criticizes have been at the forefront of defending classical theism. Nevertheless, any move that makes the external works of the Godhead somehow constitutive of the immanent life of the Trinity differs from the “open theism” and the panentheistic theories of Pannenberg, Moltmann, Jenson, Weinandy, and others only in degree. So, as Giles points out, this thesis (lodging the difference of divine persons in their works in the economy) “is to be rejected because what God does in the world does not establish in any sure way what is true in eternity” (222). Further, this thesis violates the patristic rule that the works of the Godhead are undivided. In other words, Scripture teaches clearly that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all engaged together in every work.

Others lodge the distinction in that the “differing authority of the divine three seen in the economy eternally and primarily differentiates them” (220). Giles observes that this thesis arose in direct connection with “the debate about the subordination of women. Virtually every evangelical who argues theologically for the Son’s

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“For the church fathers…the eternal generation of the Son was the lynchpin for identifying both his unity with and difference from the Father.” eternal subordination in authority is committed to the permanent subordination of women” (226).

Astonishingly, Wayne Grudem asserts that this is the heart of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.

Instead of eternal begottenness, he suggests that “authority and submission between the Father and the Son…and the Holy Spirit, is the fundamental difference between the persons of the Trinity” (Systematic Theology [Zondervan, 1995], 250). Without such “subordination…we would not have three distinct persons” (Grudem, 251). And in another place: “If we did not have such differences in authority in the relationships among the members of the Trinity, then we would not know any differences at all” (Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth [Crossway, 2004], 433). The “differing authority” is only part of what distinguishes the persons. “The differences in authority among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the only interpersonal differences that the Bible indicates that exist eternally among the members of the Godhead” (Grudem, Evangelical Feminism,

433). Thus authority and submission is “the most fundamental aspect of interpersonal relationships in the entire universe” (emphasis added; Grudem, Evangelical Feminism, 429).

This is a dangerous view chiefly because it pro­ jects an ontological subordinationism onto the life of the Godhead. Although Grudem insists that this is only subordination in terms of roles and authority, he seems unaware of the Arian provenance of this theory. Just as mainline theologians like Jürgen Moltmann project their ideal of human society (democratic socialism) onto the Trinity, resulting in tritheism, these conservative theologians project onto God their questionable (at least reductionistic)

view of what distinguishes men and women. In Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Crossway, 2005), Bruce Ware gives a full-scale defense of this view. Like Grudem, he claims erroneously that this is what orthodoxy has always taught. Driscoll and Breshears offer a more popular defense of the view in Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe (Crossway, 2010).

Regardless of how it is presented, the doctrine of the Trinity is in danger of becoming a political football on both sides of the debate over male-female roles. Despite their disagreements, there appears to be a common error: namely, to undermine the crucial difference between God and the world by seeing a one-to-one correspondence between the immanent Trinity and human relations.

Giles responds to the thesis set out from the conservative side by pointing out that even human persons are distinguished from each egarding the eternal generation of the Son, Kevin Giles other by more than authority roles. says, “Those who have put this argument in writing More importantly, the unity of the include J. Oliver Buswell, Loraine Boettner, Walter Martin, Son with the Father (John 10:30; Wayne Grudem, Bruce Ware, John S. Feinberg, Millard Erickson, 17:11, etc.) is lost, and the persons are Robert Reymond, Paul Helm, William Lane Craig, and Mark Driscoll no longer coequal in every respect. and Gerry Breshears, while John Frame admits to ‘a certain amount The thesis amounts to ontological of reverent agnosticism on this doctrine.’” subordinationism; the Father is With the recent appearance of his Systematic Theology (P&R, more sovereign than the Son. There 2013), John Frame’s position is more definitive. While tentatively is no lesser status or authority withaffirming eternal generation, he argues at length in favor of “the out lesser being, the orthodox argued ‘eternal subordination’ of Son and Spirit”—an “eternal hierarchy of against the Arians. Yet the rejecroles.” Much else provokes serious questions and at least confution of the rule that the works of the sion, such as his endorsement of the notion of God as “one person” Trinity are undivided also reflects a (despite affirming the Trinity). He repeatedly confuses essential tendency toward tritheism. Finally, and personal attributes (e.g., suggesting that since God is personal, Giles points out that both Scripture he must be one person and, on the other hand, that three persons and the tradition teach that the Son entails “real complexity in God’s nature”). In fact “subordination… voluntarily submits to the Father’s is clearly a divine attribute.” Though I’m sure unintentionally, his will. If so, the roles of authority and confusion of person and essence threatens divine simplicity and submission cannot be either eternal immutability, and “an eternal subordination” even in roles entails or necessary to the divine persons. an ontological subordination.

In any case, according to orthodox Recent defenders of the orthodox doctrine include Roger teaching, the difference between Beckwith, Jung S. Rhee, Donald Macleod, Robert Letham, Fred divine persons is grounded in who Sanders, and Keith Johnson. For an excellent exegetical defense, they are, eternally and necessarily, see especially Andreas Köstenberger and Scott Swain, Father, Son not just their roles. This is why the and Spirit: The Trinity and John’s Gospel (IVP Academic, 2008). church fathers and Reformation/ post-Reformation orthodox teachers affirmed both the essential

Identifying Key Figures in the Debate

R

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“the now widespread assumption that eternal generation entails the Son’s eternal subordination reveals ‘a minimum of knowledge of the historical development of the doctrine of the Trinity’ and fails to ‘understand what this doctrine teaches and safeguards.’” attributes that all three persons share identically and the personal attributes that render each person different from the others.

Giles spends the final pages summarizing the critique of eternal generation among mainline (both Protestant and Roman Catholic) theologians. While similar moves are made (especially erasing the immanent-economic distinction), these theologians are more fully aware of and upfront about the points at which they diverge from traditional formulations.

Giles concludes the book with a clear summary of his case. Giles’s outspoken advocacy of an “egalitarian” view of male-female roles in the church sometimes compromises his critique.

Nevertheless, he is at his best when his argument focuses on the dogmatic concerns. Evangelicalism has produced first-rate biblical scholars and a number of skilled philosophers. However, even among its systematic theologians there is a weakness in the area of historical theology that seems grounded in a flawed and superficial theological method. To the extent that the movement and even its theologians continue to assert a naive Biblicism, and that it is not even aware of what

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it is rejecting, evangelicalism has yet to mature into a tradition that thinks with the church and for the church.

Michael S. Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America’s Image Abroad

By Martha Bayles Yale University Press, 2014 336 pages (hardback), $30.00

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n the first dozen pages of Through a Screen Darkly, Martha Bayles explores the foreboding feelings many have about the United States’s soured image abroad as pop-culture exporters. Bayles should be thanked for her cultural analysis and wake-up call to America’s citizens and policymakers. But her elucidation of this complex problem, and the reader’s subsequent ability to articulate it, isn’t going to make you feel one whit better. Our country’s present

scandalmongering trajectory seems unalterable given our increasingly secularized society’s starting point: an optimistic anthropology. Such naiveté, pleads the author, must be checked with a dose of religious realism—indeed, a sober Augustinian anthropology that understands total depravity— if we expect America to ideologically reengage a deeply religious and largely morally conservative world with ideals consonant with principled democracy, dignified human rights, and responsible freedoms.

American pop culture must be defined and understood as more than a benign marketing medium, argues Bayles. It also includes our collective “way of life (customs, values, and ideals); elite artistic expression (literature, fine arts, perform ing arts); and popular culture (the products of commercial entertainment industry)” (5). Consider the history: since 1951, the U.S. Government consciously helped all three by supporting efforts aimed at promoting the American story of ideals and lifestyle.

“These activities were part of public diplomacy,” explains Bayles, “a term that also covers government-sponsored efforts to explain and defend US policies and, more important, project American ideals” (5).

Things changed after the Cold War. In 1999, for example, when the instruments responsible for placarding the brightest and best of America before the world—the United States Information Agency (USIA and internationally located USIS offices)—were closed down. Partly by design, partly an accident of circumstances, the mantle for the promotion of American ideas and lifestyle fell upon the entertainment industry: Hollywood, TV,

music, social media, and video games. This transition prompted Bayles to wonder “whether a bigger mistake had been [made] letting the entertainment industry take over the job of communicating America’s policies, ideals, as well as its virtues... in effect, to make it America’s de facto ambassador” (6). This is pop culture for good or for ill (and mostly for ill).

Bayles admits that her theses cannot be established through the analytical method alone (though the chapters are replete with statistical data).

Consequently, the mostly nonscientific, largely anecdotal evidence that follows makes a defensible argument that, yes, it has been a mistake: pop entertainment is not winning hearts and minds for democracy and freedom, but rather evoking disdain and distrust. Pop culture cannot adequately reflect the American ethos (248). Here enters the strength of Bayles’s analysis. Whereas once there was a time when the entertainment sector exercised self-regulation with governmental oversight and cooperation that assisted in the demise of Communism, now three crucial things have changed in the wake of deregulation and the Supreme Court perspective that recategorized the industry from accountable business to inscrutable art: “Transformations in the tone and content of pop culture, in the technology that conveys it to the world, and in the audiences that receive and interact with it” (7). The real culprit, avers the author, is a human nature that slouches toward Gomorrah, which was once honestly addressed with measures religious, social, and structural. But now the measures are gone, having been replaced with “reckless optimism” and secularism’s “religion of progress.”

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The result is an unfiltered pop deluge into foreign domains. Forgotten in the minds of others is that America ever possessed high culture, or even classic pop culture (18).

This work is far more than mere exposé.

Bayles’s observations and critiques come with neither Theodore Dalrymple’s cultural pessimism nor his signature governmental cynicism. Instead, Bayles concludes with pages of non-draconian, plausible suggestions to promote public diplomacy through listening, cultural and educational exchange, reporting the news, and advocacy (233).

Religion, particularly the contributions of the Judeo-Christian tradition, plays a significant and in fact necessary role for public diplomacy in every dimension, because the wider world engages, interprets, and interacts with America in religious categories. Though presently hushed in the public square, it is American’s religious dimension that stands common ground with values that resonate with rather than alienate people the world over. Her counsel is both seasoned and sage. But is anyone listening?

A glaring omission from the analysis (especially given the impressive and comprehensive scope of this work) is the domain of sports—a veritable religion in its own right and a topic constantly paired with the idea of “diplomacy.”

The NFL, NBA, MLB, and NCAA are more closely associated with American culture and ideas than rock-n-roll. Bayles must cede pages here. Through a Screen Darkly could have moved more quickly, leaning on tacit knowledge shared by her readers.

Still, this is a fantastically winsome and important book that should be read by the widest audience— especially parents, business professionals, and even pastors and church leaders who themselves have imbibed the mediums and, inextricably so, the commingled messages of pop culture in their worship “styles” and ministries, thereby contributing to America’s sagging image abroad.

Rev. John J. Bombaro, PhD (King’s College, University of London) is senior minister at Grace Lutheran Church, San Diego, and lecturer at the University of San Diego.

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Word versus Deed: Resetting the Scales to a Biblical Balance

By Duane Litfin Crossway, 2012 224 pages (paperback), $15.99

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n most areas of our lives, balance is key.

My transition from the single life of microwavable pizzas and Doritos to the healthy home-cooking of my wife taught me the importance of a balanced diet. My belt size is proof. A biblical balance is precisely what Duane Litfin (president emeritus of Wheaton College) aims for in Word versus Deed. And he strikes really close to the mark.

If the title wasn’t a giveaway, Litfin’s book is about trying to balance the Christian’s responsibility to speak gospel words and practice good deeds. As Litfin claims, ever since St. Francis of Assisi is supposed to have said, “Preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary,” the pendulum has swung between a “lifeboat theology,” bent on saving souls from a dying world through the preaching of the gospel, and a so-called “social gospel,” which downplays the supernatural in Christianity and emphasizes the demonstration of mercy and justice to one’s neighbor. Neither is biblical, Litfin argues. The alternative is the biblical balance of heralding gospel words and helping in good deeds.

Litfin is primarily writing to two kinds of Christians. First, if you believe the gospel can be preached without words, Litfin’s book is for you.

A challenging and helpful teacher, Litfin hopes to persuade you toward a more biblical way of thinking. Second, if you believe the gospel cannot be preached without words, then Litfin hopes to support that conviction and insightfully show you some of its scriptural implications (14).

The book is divided into three parts. In part 1, Litfin shows the importance of our words. His explicit goal in this section is “to put to rest once and for all the false notion that we can preach the gospel by our deeds” (35). Using the categories of verbal and nonverbal communication, Litfin demonstrates how communication of the

gospel is only verbal. While nonverbal communication may be helpful in demonstrating our moods, feelings, attitudes, and relationships, it is insufficient for communicating cognitive, abstract, or historical information.

The gospel is history. Only words can communicate that Jesus of Nazareth lived, suffered, and died under Pontius Pilate and was raised on the third day in Jerusalem. Our evangelism, then, must be done with our words, not our deeds. Evangelism is verbal because the gospel is historic news.

The gospel is effective in transforming hearts and lives not because of our deeds, no matter how good, but because of its inherent, Spirit-infused power that should make us humble and confident heralds of God’s word.

Evangelism, or gospel heralding, is the single most unique service that Christians offer the world. But as Litfin explains in part 2, evangelism is not the Christian’s only calling.

The church is also called to model the shalom that God intended for his creation. Our gospel words must be accompanied by good deeds. As John Calvin wrote, “The faithful do not only make claims with their lips, but prove their service of God in concrete acts” (75).

Helpfully, Litfin demonstrates what gospelworthy conduct looks like in five circles of application: personal life, family, God’s people, society at large, and the natural world (83). In six concise chapters, Litfin guides readers through each of these areas, showing biblically how God’s word and the gospel impacts and instructs the nitty-gritty details of life in this world. In particular, I found the chapter on adorning the gospel and stewarding the creation to be most intriguing. Here Litfin suggests what gospel-worthy conduct outside the walls of

the church might look like as we love and serve our neighbor. Further, Litfin deals with the issue (often unaddressed in Reformed circles) of creation care.

While admitting that the problems are complex and thorny, Litfin maintains that God values the created order and made us its custodians. Unfolding texts like Hebrews 12, 1 Corinthians 15, and 2 Peter 3, he biblically navigates between the extremes of environmentalism and “it’s-all-going-to-burn-anyway” perspectives.

In part 3, Litfin demonstrates the importance of handling Scripture well.

Specifically, he addresses several interpretive and hermeneutical problems that arise when passages are taken out of their immediate, canonical, and covenantal contexts. For example, is the Lord preferential toward the poor?

Merely counting the references doesn’t do the Bible justice. Proverbs informs us that sometimes people are poor because they are slothful (10:4; 14:23), or self-indulgent (23:21), or unteachable (13:18).

Mishandling God’s word does disservice not only to God’s special revelation but also to us. If we blur and distort God’s word, we won’t be able to clearly hear what God’s will for us is as we seek to serve the poor, the widow, and the orphan.

I appreciated the book. While it is introductory, Litfin’s clarity and brevity serve the reader well. He provides thoughtful avenues for further reflection.

He also maintains an effective balance between the abstract and the concrete—a practice he commends as we seek to herald the good news of Jesus with our words and help our neighbors and world as the body of Christ with our deeds.

Eric Chappell is an associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, California.

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geek s quad

To o L i tt l e o r To o M u c h : T r o u b l e s h o ot i n g C o n t e m p o r a ry T r i n i ta r i a n i s m

by Fred Sanders

T

he doctrine of the Trinity is one of the classic achievements of early Christian theology. The fathers of the early church drew together the strands of biblical argument so compellingly that all through the Middle Ages and the Reformation, theologians have gratefully affirmed the doctrine of the Trinity in the classical form bequeathed to them by the early church. Protestant theologians, as is only right for sola scriptura believers, have reserved the right to check all received doctrines against Scripture itself. But when the Reformers investigated the patristic arguments, what they found was that the fathers got it right: Scripture confirmed classic Trinitarian doctrine, or to put it the right way around, classic Trinitarianism arose from what the Bible says.

To o L i tt l e In recent years, however, a trend has developed that reaches different conclusions. A number of Protestant theologians (including evangelicals) have declared that, while the overall doctrine is

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definitely biblical, certain components of its traditional form allegedly fail the Bible test. One aspect of traditional Trinitarian theology that has been increasingly criticized is the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. This doctrine teaches that the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, stands in a coeternal and coessential relationship to the First Person, the Father, and that this relationship is one of origination: the Son comes from the Father in a relation of origin that is spiritual and eternal. The early church found its way to this doctrine mainly by two paths: first, by reasoning back into the being of God from the way the Father sends the Son (Gal. 4:4) and the Holy Spirit (Gal. 4:6) into human history; and second, by analyzing the ultimate meaning of the revealed name “Son.” Among the contemporary theologians and teachers who deny eternal generation, there is definite agreement about the eternal nature of the Son’s Sonhood—remember, these teachers are Trinitarian. But there is less confidence about whether the classical tradition of Christian doctrine was wise to trace that eternal Sonship back to a relation of eternal generation. Sometimes this is expressed as outright denial of eternal

generation. Other times it is expressed as reticence and reserve about saying anything more than what the Bible itself says on these points. We can be confident that the Son of God was and is eternally God the Son, and the Spirit of God eternally God the Spirit, apparently, but we ought not to speak about arcana such as eternal processions in the essence of God. Too M uc h So some modern teachers want to say less than the classic tradition did on this subject. But on another subject they want to say more than the tradition, and that is on the subject of the personhood of the three persons. The classic tradition, both East and West, both patristic and Reformation, spoke with a certain reserve about what “person” meant when applied to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For the great tradition, naming these three as persons (a word not used in Scripture itself in this context) certainly meant that they were real, distinct, and non-interchangeable; but with equal certainty it meant that they were not self-sufficient entities who were theoretically separable. The three persons could not be thought of as three people. When the classic tradition did get specific about the nature of the three, they gave precise definitions that opted for the metaphysical (“a person is an individual substance of a rational nature”), rather than the psychological or experiential (such as “a person is a center of self-conscious willing ”).

In recent decades, however, the psychological account of

personhood has come to seem so self-evident that Trinitarian theologians are increasingly applying it more directly to the Trinity, resulting in a description of God as three spiritual people. Again, teachers who move in this direction are not crossing the line into heresy. They are Trinitarians, not tritheists. But their modern account of psychological personhood, and their strong preference for a social or more communal model of the Trinity, marks their Trinitarianism as significantly different from the classical form of the doctrine.

These modern Trinitarian teachers appeal directly to the Bible and can be corrected only by scriptural evidence and argumentation. That is fine. But the major Protestant confessions were also hammered out on the anvil of sola scriptura, and in their considered judgments they set forth a doctrine of the Trinity far more aligned with the patristic doctrine: One God in three persons distinguished by their eternal relations of origin. As the Westminster Confession puts it, “The Father is of Fred Sanders none, neither begotten nor proceedThe Deep Things of ing; the Son is eternally begotten of God: How the Trinity the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally Changes Everything proceeding from the Father and the (Crossway, 2010) Son.” The classic and consensual tradition of Christian doctrine may need to be investigated and confirmed by Kevin Giles every new generation, but their great The Eternal strength was in perceiving the main Generation of the outline of God’s self-revelation in Son: Maintaining the words of Scripture. If contempoOrthodoxy in rary theologians turn away from this Trinitarian Theology confessional legacy in an attempt to (IVP, 2012) be more biblical, they run the risk of being not only out of step with the Stephen R. Holmes classical form of Trinitarianism, but The Quest for the also of being too narrowly and selecTrinity: The Doctrine tively biblical and failing to see the of God in Scripture, big picture.

Recommended Resources

History, and Modernity (IVP, 2012)

Fred Sanders is associate professor at Torrey Honors Institute, Biola University, in La Mirada, California.

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b a ck PAGE

T h e t r i n i t y c h a rt

is not

Father

Son

is

is

t

t

is

no

no

is

God is

Holy Spirit Ousia

Hypostasis

Essence or Substance

Person or Subsistence

The ultimate nature and concrete reality of a thing.

A distinct instance of a given essence.

God is dynamic deity that is infinite spirit.

God exists in the co-equal and co-eternal

The single, unique, and undivided divine

hypostases of the Father, the Son, and the

ousia is possessed together by the Father,

Holy Spirit. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father, Son,

are relationally distinct within a coinhering,

and Holy Spirit are of one and the

reciprocal, and mutually interpenetrating

same ousia (homoousia).

unity (perichoresis).  

Adapted from an Ancient Christian Symbol Peter D. Anders is a visiting fellow at Harvard University and adjunct professor at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts.

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Contentment, Plain and Simple.

New From Michael Horton.

Restless. Epic. Extreme. Every word we read seems to call us to the “next big thing,� if only we would change our comfortable, compromising lives. Ordinary by Michael Horton provides a renewed appreciation for the commonplace ways in which God works, teaching us to seek contentment and a sustainable faith in humble places.

Lear n mo r e at W h iteHo r seIn n.org/ordi n ary.

What Would Happen If Christians Really Knew Their Bible?

Recovering Scripture.

As a thank you for a gift of $100 or more, we will send you a copy of our Recovering Scripture MP3 CD, which includes over 40 WHI episodes and over a dozen MR articles.

See page 43 for more information.

L e a r n m o r e a n d do nate at W h iteHo r seInn.org/don at e 2014.