Re: Understanding the Trinity
Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2016 5:43 pm
This is more speaking to you (and anyone else acquainted enough), as such a discussion is really an advanced extension of thought upon the Trinity understood at its most basic level. I'm not sure I necessarily disagree with anything you wrote, so I expect you'd agree with much of what I'm going to say here.Jac3510 wrote:Laserbeam: John 1:1. If Jesus really is God, then by definition, there can be no subordination of God to God. When we subordinate ourselves to another, we are submitting our wills to them. But the three Persons do not have distinct wills. There is, numerically, one will in God, and that will is the same (numerically) in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
I also don't like the language about "roles." I think there is a poor mixing of metaphors based on a confusion of the Incarnation with the Divine Essence. Jesus, the man, is subordinate to the Father (and the HS, for that matter). So that's our "in virtue of" language. He submitted in virtue of His humanity, not His divinity. Moreover, I deny a common evangelical practice of distinguishing between the Persons by their activities, as if the it is the Father who declares one righteous while the Son advocates and the Spirit sanctifies. It's pretty language, and it has some devotional value. It even has some strictly theological value in precisely the same sense that distinguishing between God's omnipotence and omniscience has theological value. I could say a lot more, but the point is that I think evangelicals are wrong on this. We traditionally hold to what is called an economic subordination in the Trinity. I just reject that as ultimately untenable.
I kind of see the confusion as similar to our modern theological divide over Divine Simplicity. Whether knowingly aware, there is a tendency within us (due to the physical reality that we experience) to also understand God in a "substance-property" framework, versus what would be more the case of God who is pure Immaterial self-existence which then necessitates an "act-potency" framework.
We must affirm, I believe, that all three have no potency within the three to be other than who they are i.e., God (Christ's incarnation being an exception due to Christ taking upon human nature without which, such was a potential for God like "creation" was once potential). Equally, as I see matters, any eternal contingency of two upon one (e.g., Son and Holy Spirit upon the Father), the one must also be eternally contingent upon the two. The video author uses an analogy like "rays" of the "Sun" for the Son and Spirit having their being in the Father, without any vice-versa and this I think is wrong -- such must be mutually shared each sharing in the existence of each other (Perichoresis (Gk) or Circumincession (Ln) -- such that the three interpenetrate each other as God. Thus, we can truly refer to the Father as God, the Son as God and the Holy Spirit as God as they each lack nothing due to this mutual indwelling and inter-penetration.
THAT SAID, I consider it largely secondary, how the three relate, to the more foundational doctrine of three persons, one God (while I'm also uncomfortable using the term "person" it seems to me adequate enough, interesting Jewish thinking of old referred to "powers" or something the like).
Despite commenting on some deeper thinking above, I'm not about to haul anyone over the coals if they see matters differently. This is man's thinking, including my own, so it's merely enough to understand that the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son are identifiable as three yet the one God. This is what Scripture presents, what the Apostles laid down in their written deposit, and so such is the foundation we must affirm if we wish to follow correct Christian teaching.
