Beholding the Triune God E-Book

Matthew Y. Emerson

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 195

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

A Concise Guide to the Work of the Trinity and the Doctrine of Inseparable Operations It's crucial that believers understand the work of the Trinity in the world and in their everyday lives. In this concise introduction to the doctrine of inseparable operations, Matthew Emerson and Brandon Smith assert that the three persons of the Trinity are eternally the one God of Scripture and act inseparably in creation, salvation, and all other acts of God. Addressing complex questions—such as What does it mean that the Father is one with the Son, but is not the same person as the Son?—they present a refreshing, biblical view of the one triune God and his unified work in revelation, providence, creation, salvation, mission, communion, sanctification, and judgment. - Concise yet Expansive: Presents a historic, classic Christian view of the doctrine of inseparable operations  - Hopeful: Leads readers to deeper wonder and worship through a biblical-theological understanding of the Trinity - Accessible Resource for Students and Christian Laypeople: Features clear language and a glossary that defines complex theological terms

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“If the twentieth century witnessed a ‘revival’ of interest in the doctrine of the Trinity among dogmatic theologians, the past decade or so has seen a similar renewal among evangelical Christians, but one more explicitly committed to retrieving the doctrine in its creedal and orthodox perspective. This is the book we have been waiting for—an accessible, historically informed, and biblically rooted account of the triune God’s indivisible activity in creation, providence, and salvation history. The book provides simple (but not simplistic) definitions of many complex terms and traces their application through the various activities of the Holy Trinity. I am often asked by students and others for a good introduction to the doctrine of the Trinity. This book will now give me a ready answer to that pressing question.”

R. Lucas Stamps, Professor of Christian Theology, Anderson University; coeditor, Baptists and the Christian Tradition and The Theology of T. F. Torrance: An Evangelical Evaluation

“The Trinity is not just one Christian doctrine among many. Rather, God the Trinity is the source of all Christian doctrine and delight. Emerson and Smith capture how understanding God’s essence and action should lead all Christians into deeper fellowship with the one triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit.”

J. T. English, Lead Pastor, Storyline Church, Arvada, Colorado; Associate Professor of Christian Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; author, Deep Discipleship; coauthor, You Are a Theologian

“Unpacking texts and demystifying terms, the authors enrich our understanding through the church’s historic witnesses to the doctrine of the Trinity, teaching us through the voices of the church fathers, Reformers, Puritans, and Baptists. Drawing equally from the Old and New Testaments, Emerson and Smith offer a resource as much for the college or seminary student diving deeply into complex questions about the life of God as for the pastor instructing and inspiring congregants with a beautiful vision of the triune life and a desire to be enfolded into that life. Lay audiences will also find this book accessible and eminently rewarding.”

Stefana Dan Laing, Associate Professor of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School; author, Retrieving History: Memory and Identity Formation in the Early Church

“Two trustworthy theologians team up on a project to explain why it’s never enough to say that the persons of the Trinity team up on projects. There is a much deeper unity to the work of the triune God, and this short, readable book directs our attention to it.”

Fred Sanders, Professor of Theology, Torrey Honors College, Biola University; author, The Deep Things of God

“The doctrine of the inseparable operations of the Trinity is part of the deposit of the church’s ancient faith. Sadly, much of contemporary evangelical thought and preaching is drifting away from this historic doctrine, unflinchingly affirmed by the theologians of the Reformation, and substituting the church’s Trinitarian monotheism with a functional tritheism. The recent evangelical retrieval of this doctrine, while salutary, has not yet trickled down to the ordinary understanding of the faith. Emerson and Smith are proposing to meet that need and present inseparable operations in a way that is accessible and clearly biblical. One could not wish for a better team of Trinitarian theologians to undertake such an essential task.”

Adonis Vidu, Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Theology, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary; author, The Same God Who Works All Things

“Emerson and Smith describe the unity and distinction inherent in the Trinity as it unfolds across the canon of Scripture and as it develops historically by drawing from the work of the church fathers and resulting creeds. Emerson and Smith’s framework reinforces the importance of a Trinitarian hermeneutic for understanding the missional authority of the triune God. This is an important book, and I am grateful for their contribution.”

Cas Monaco, Vice President of Missiology and Gospel Engagement, FamilyLife

“Emerson and Smith have written a timely and helpful book for teachers, students, and church members. Though they address technical issues—Trinity, inseparable operations, appropriations, processions and missions, prosopological exegesis—they do so in an accessible manner. This book makes clear the importance of maintaining the doctrine of inseparable operations in order to maintain the biblical and historically orthodox confession of the Trinity.”

Richard C. Barcellos, Pastor, Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Palmdale, California; Associate Professor of Exegetical Theology, International Reformed Baptist Seminary; author, Trinity and Creation: A Scriptural and Confessional Account

“Emerson and Smith provide a powerful reminder of why it is vital that we think in terms of the triune God––Father, Son, and Holy Spirit––acting in history. This book offers fresh eyes to see how all three persons of the Trinity act as one and offers hope for everything that our triune God wants to do in us and in the world.”

Beth Stovell, Professor of Old Testament and Chair of General Theological Studies, Ambrose Seminary

Beholding the Triune God

The Inseparable Work of Father, Son, and Spirit

Matthew Y. Emerson and Brandon D. Smith

Beholding the Triune God: The Inseparable Work of Father, Son, and Spirit

© 2024 by Matthew Y. Emerson and Brandon D. Smith

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Faceout Studio, Spencer Fuller

First printing 2024

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-7794-9 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7797-0 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7795-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Emerson, Matthew Y., 1984– author. | Smith, Brandon D., author.

Title: Beholding the triune God : the inseparable work of Father, Son, and Spirit / Matthew Y. Emerson and Brandon D. Smith.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023040568 (print) | LCCN 2023040569 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433577949 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433577956 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433577970 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Trinity. | God—Fatherhood. | Son of God. | Holy Spirit.

Classification: LCC BT111.3 .E438 2024 (print) | LCC BT111.3 (ebook) | DDC 231/.044—dc23/eng/20240220

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023040568

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023040569

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2024-05-24 09:14:38 AM

To our wives, Alicia and Christa, who daily help us behold the triune God

Contents

Introduction: Indivisible and Undivided

1  Revelation

2  Providence

3  Creation

4  Salvation

5  Mission

6  Communion

7  Sanctification

8  Judgment

Glossary

General Index

Scripture Index

Introduction

Indivisible and Undivided

Imagine that you’re trying to describe what God did on the cross. What do you say? Here’s how we’ve heard it described (including, at times, by ourselves!):

The Father poured out his wrath on the Son.The Father turned his face away.The Father abandoned his Son.The Son felt the pangs of hell because he was separated from the Father on the cross.

Notice that in describing the cross this way, we are saying that there are two primary actors, two distinct individuals, the Father and the Son, the first two persons of the Godhead, and that each is doing something different at the crucifixion. For now, notice also that the third person of God, the Spirit, is never mentioned in these statements.

Let’s use a different example. You’re asked to describe God’s providence. What do you say? Here’s how we’ve heard it described (again, at times, by ourselves!):

The Father chose this path for me because he cares for me.When we talk about election, we’re talking about the plan of God the Father.We have a good Father who has planned all things to work together for our good.

Notice that in describing providence this way, we’re attributing God’s “plan” specifically to God the Father, and sometimes it sounds as if it’s only God the Father who plans out providence.

One last example will suffice. Imagine that you’re told to describe how a Christian receives and uses spiritual gifts. What do you say?

The Spirit gave me the gift of [X, Y, or Z].I can [use gift X, Y, or Z] because the Spirit empowers me.I’m gifted at [X, Y, or Z] because the Spirit chose to make me that way.

Are the Father and the Son involved in the spiritual gifts? Or just the Spirit?

In each of these examples, and even in the way we’ve asked the follow-up questions, what we’re trying to help you see is that we often think about God’s acts as divisible between the persons and distributed according to their roles. So in these scenarios, sometimes the actor is primarily the Father, as in the examples about providence; sometimes the actor is the Son, as in the examples about the crucifixion; and sometimes the actor is the Spirit, as in the examples about the spiritual gifts.

Let’s return to the examples related to the crucifixion. A question we often ask our students when talking about this subject, and after we’ve described the crucifixion in the ways we gave above, is, “What was the Spirit doing while the Father was forsaking the Son?” Was the Spirit just watching from the sidelines? Was he taking a break from his divine duties? Are the Son and the Spirit also wrathful toward sin? Returning next to providence, do the Son and the Spirit sit on the bench while the Father governs his creation? And with respect to the spiritual gifts, do the Father and the Son renounce their authority and hand it over to the Spirit to let him distribute gifts to whom he wills?

These questions, we hope, help us see that the way we talk about God’s acts often divides the persons of God in a way that is contrary to our confession that God is one God in three persons. If only one divine person, or in some cases two of the three, is acting on any given occasion, how is that consistent with the Christian confession of one God, or with its roots in Jewish monotheism? Aren’t there now three Gods, each of whom acts in different ways in different times? Or is there one God who is sometimes Father, sometimes Son, and sometimes Spirit? The former example is the heresy called “tritheism,” while the latter is called “modalism.” These are ancient false teachings that the church combatted through articulating what we know as the doctrine of the Trinity. And in order to combat them, we need to recover what the early church referred to as the doctrine of inseparable operations.1 As we will see, the triune God’s work in the world enables us to behold his power and goodness.

Beholding the Triune God through His Inseparable Operations

The triune God has graciously revealed himself to us. Historically and on biblical grounds, Christians have held two affirmations about who and what God is—God is one God, and he exists as three persons. This identification of God as triune stands at the heart of the Christian faith, along with the confession that the second person of the Trinity, the Son, took on a human nature without ceasing to be God. As fully human and fully God, Jesus Christ lived a perfectly righteous human life, died a penal, sacrificial, atoning death for sinners on the cross, proclaimed victory over death during his descent to the dead, and rose from the dead bodily on the third day. All of this was according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:1–4) and in order to fulfill the promise that God made to Adam and Eve, that through the seed of woman he would crush the enemy’s head and thereby reconcile himself to his image bearers and restore creation (Gen. 3:15).

But we would be mistaken if we took the Son’s incarnation and subsequent saving actions as evidence that only he is acting in the act of redemption. On the contrary, it is the one God—Father, Son, and Spirit—who acts in the whole history of salvation, including in the incarnation. Likewise, we should remember that it is this same one God—Father, Son, and Spirit—who “in the beginning created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1), who called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans, who spoke to Moses in the burning bush, who brought Israel out of Egypt, who revealed himself to Moses and gave the Torah on Mount Sinai, who led Israel through the wilderness, who scattered Israel’s enemies before her as she entered the promised land, who raised up judges and kings for Israel, who judged Israel and sent her into exile through the same nations that deserve and will receive his judgment, and who, to return to where we started, brought salvation to Israel and the nations in the person of the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. It is this same one God—Father, Son, and Spirit—who calls his church together and feeds them with word and sacrament, who governs the world and brings rain on the just and the unjust, and who will, on the last day, remake what he has made and dwell with his people forever in the new heavens and new earth. In sum, the fundamental confession of God’s people—“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4)— is still true even after the sending of the Son and the Spirit.

In articulating the acts of God this way, we are again emphasizing the unity of their action. We want to hammer this concept home at the beginning because it is one of the two major emphases of this book, and also because so much of our talk about God in contemporary evangelicalism actually cuts against God’s unity, especially as it pertains to what he does. Our songs and hymns and spiritual songs, our devotional readings, our prayers, and our sermons often isolate one of the persons of God from among the other two and speak of that one person as if he is the only one carrying out a particular act (or possessing a particular attribute). The problem with this approach, where God’s acts can be divvied up among the persons, is that it defies the logic of the Bible, Christian history, and systematic theology. The Bible speaks again and again of God acting. Systematic theology insists that for God to truly be one, his acts must be one, carried out by the one God who is Father, Son, and Spirit. And Christian history has taught throughout the last two millennia that the external works of God are indivisible.

Put simply: the doctrine of inseparable operations teaches that you cannot separate the acts of God between the persons of God. Every act of God is a singular act of Father, Son, and Spirit. So we can’t say that the Father alone creates or governs or pours out his sole wrath on Jesus at the cross. We can’t say that the Son alone saves us from our sins. We can’t say that the Spirit alone guides or comforts or gifts believers. Why? Because they are all acts of God. Thus, every act of God is the act of the one God—Father, Son, and Spirit, singular not only in purpose or agreement, but also in essence and every divine attribute. As Gregory of Nyssa explained:

Whatever your thought suggests to you as the Father’s mode of being . . . you will think also of the Son, and likewise of the Spirit. For the principle of the uncreated and of the incomprehensible is one and the same, whether in regard to the Father or the Son or the Spirit. For one is not more incomprehensible and uncreated and another less so.2

Put simply, Father, Son, and Spirit are each God but are not each other. To speak of any person is to speak of God, and to speak of God is to speak of three persons. It is one of the two main burdens of this book to demonstrate this claim from Scripture, theological reason, and Christian tradition.

Preserving the Properties of Each Person

The other burden of this book is to show that every act of God is the work of the triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit. That is, even while we emphasize the unity of God’s being and therefore of God’s acts, we also must insist that God is one precisely in the fact that he is three persons, and therefore that he acts as the one God who exists in three persons. In other words, it is Father, Son, and Spirit who act in every act of God, even if none of them act in isolation from each other. How can this be the case? How can we affirm that God’s acts are one, via the doctrine of inseparable operations, but also affirm that his acts are carried out by the three persons? Further, how does the doctrine of inseparable operations square with the kind of language that we see in Scripture, such as the Spirit distributing spiritual gifts, or the incarnate Son saying, “Not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39)?

Regarding the former example, the church historically has relied on the doctrine of appropriations. That is, it is biblically sound and theologically faithful to appropriate, or attribute, particular acts of God to one of the persons of God. When we do so, we are not saying that it is only that one person who carries out that act, but we are saying that the act is uniquely associated with the mission of that one person. So, for instance, yes, it is only the Son who becomes incarnate. In this sense, the act of redemption, specifically through the incarnate Son’s penal substitutionary death, is appropriated to the Son. Jesus saves! But it would be a mistake to say that because only the Son becomes incarnate, only the Son saves. Instead, we should say that the one act of salvation is carried out by the one God—Father, Son, and Spirit—in a way that reveals the unique personal properties of each. The Father sends the Son, the Son is sent by the Father, and the Spirit is the agent through whom the Father sends the Son. It is the Father who sends the Son to the virgin’s womb, the Son who takes on human flesh in the virgin’s womb, and the Spirit who causes the virgin to miraculously conceive the incarnate Son.

Order in the Trinity

Another more technical way to say this is that the divine missions are appropriated to each person according to their divine procession. To understand what this sentence means, we need to break down the vocabulary a bit.

Divine Simplicity. This phrase asserts the absolute unity of the Trinity. Father, Son, and Spirit are not “parts” of God as though they each make up one-third of God’s nature or essence, for the triune God is not a created being that was put together by a greater creator, but rather is eternally the one God in three persons. All of God’s attributes are shared equally and fully by each person of the Trinity, which means that Father, Son, and Spirit equally are loving, just, powerful, authoritative, and so on. They do not sit around a divine boardroom table and discuss their “plans” or divvy up their divinity, but are rather always united in will, purpose, action, and essence.Divine Processions. This phrase refers to how God is one God in three persons from eternity. God is not divided into three persons through differences in actions or attributes or deserved adoration, but only through what are called the “eternal relations of origin.” These relations refer to how each person of God subsists in the divine essence, which they equally share and together are. The Father is eternally unbegotten; that is, he does not receive the divine essence from one of the other persons. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father; that is, the Son eternally (without beginning or end) receives the divine essence from the Father; and the Spirit is eternally spirated (“breathed”); that is, the Spirit eternally receives the divine essence from the Father and the Son. Again, this generation and spiration is eternal, so whatever it means for the Son to be “begotten” and the Spirit to be “breathed,” it’s not an event that happened in time, and the persons are therefore not created.Eternal Relations of Origin andTaxis. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinguished from one another eternally via relations to one another. Further, there is a taxis (“order”) to the eternal relations of origin. The eternal relations of origin, wherein the Father is, we could say, the fount of divinity who begets the Son and who with the Son spirates the Spirit, pattern the order of God’s acts. Every act of God, because of who God is as Father, Son, and Spirit, is from the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit. And this from-through-by language does not indicate a hierarchy, but rather a unified order.Divine Missions. This phrase refers to the external works of God and their attribution to particular divine persons in the economy of salvation. The divine missions are revelations and extensions of the divine processions, the manifestation of divine persons in creation. This term, then, relates particularly to the Son, who is begotten by the Father in all eternity, being sent by the Father in the incarnation, and to the Holy Spirit, who eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son, being sent by the Father and the Son at Pentecost.Appropriation. This term refers to our ability to assign one act or attribute of God to a particular divine person while recognizing that the act or attribute to which we’re referring actually belongs equally to all three at once because they are the one God.

We hope that these terms will become clearer as they are put to use in the following chapters. However, the doctrine of creation can serve as an example to start.

The Bible begins with these words: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). We often assume that “God” here refers to the Father. But according to the doctrine of inseparable operations (and Scripture), this action is carried out by the one God, not just one of the persons of God. At the same time, we want to recognize that God always acts as triune