Redeemer Catechism Series, Question 8
JORDAN QUINLEY
In this series, we are working our way through the Redeemer Catechism. Having learned what God is and how we can know there is a God in questions 6 and 7, the Redeemer Catechism now addresses the next question:
Q8: “Are there more Gods than one?”
A8: There is one God only, the true and living God, who subsists in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each having the whole divine essence, while the essence remains undivided.
Here we come to two of the most fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion. The first is there is but one God, and one God only. The second is that this one God exists—or better, subsists—in three persons.
Probably what distinguished the nation of Israel from all the surrounding nations more than anything else was their belief that there was only one God, and that this God was God over the whole world, not merely over their own people. Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, was no tribal deity, but the creator and sustainer of the whole earth and heavens. To the Jew, “all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens” (1Ch 16:26, Ps 96:5), and the Lord himself told them, “Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one” (Is 44:8). This is why they recited the Hebrew Shema, the short prayer of Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
The Lord Jesus was fully committed to monotheism, speaking of the Father as “the only true God” in John 17:3. In Matthew 4, when Jesus is tempted by the devil, Jesus confronts him by citing the Old Testament, saying, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.” The man who asks Jesus about the greatest commandment responds to Jesus’ answer by saying, “Well said, teacher … You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him.” In all Jesus’ teaching, monotheism was always assumed. Likewise, this belief in one God is confirmed repeatedly in the New Testament (Rom. 3:30, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, 1 Tim. 2:5).
But there is more to the story. The Bible reveals to us that in the one God are three distinguishable Persons. That is, the Bible clearly teaches that there is only one God, and it also teaches that there are three Persons who are distinct from one another, that are each identified as God. These Persons are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The three-in-oneness of God is called the Trinity, and the triune God is sometimes called the Godhead. Jesus Christ is God the Son incarnate.
What I would like to do here is to focus on some concepts that are less often emphasized but that are of great importance when considering the doctrine of the Trinity.
Any good book on the Trinity, or systematic theology, can demonstrate from biblical texts that each of the Persons is unequivocally identified as God. What I would like to do here is to focus on some concepts that are less often emphasized but that are of great importance when considering the doctrine of the Trinity. These concepts will help us understand why the catechism uses the language it does and why precision in speaking about the Trinity is important in avoiding errors.
The Redeemer Catechism’s language is borrowed from the 1646 London Baptist confession of faith. It is careful, first, to uphold the single, undivided essence of God. God is not “composed” of the three Persons, each possessing one-third of God’s essence. If this were so, then none of the Persons would be, in himself, fully God. But just as Jesus called his Father the one true God, so the Son is also the one true God (Jn 1:1), and the Holy Spirit is the one true God (2Co 3:17-18). This is because God’s essence is indivisible.
Now, what do I mean by God’s “essence”? By this I mean God as He is in himself—the being of God, the nature or substance of God. The Persons of the Trinity do not each possess their own individual essence. Rather, the one divine essence, and the whole divine essence, is the common property of all the Persons. Each Person “subsists in the divine nature,” as Thomas Aquinas put is. But if the Persons are one in essence, what is it that distinguishes them? John Owen said that “The divine Person is nothing but the divine essence … subsisting in an especial manner.” The Persons are modes of subsistence of the divine essence. If this sounds esoteric, stick with me. I will try to break this down. But remember, the Trinity, no matter how well explained, is mysterious and beyond our full comprehension. As Dr. James White writes in The Forgotten Trinity, “Christians have struggled for centuries to express, within the limitations of human language, the unique revelation God makes of His mode of existence.” But having said that, let’s trudge on nonetheless.
The “modes of subsistence” that distinguish the Persons of the Godhead have to do with their relations of origin. And this is the only thing that distinguishes the Persons, as they are in all other respects equal. The 1646 London Baptist Confession, which I mentioned earlier, says that they are to be “distinguished by several peculiar [i.e. special or specific] relative properties.” By “relative” it is referring to the relations between the divine Persons. These are not relations of function, but of origin only. By this is meant the following: God the Father may be thought of as the principal. This is not because he is superior to the Son or Spirit in any way. (There is no hierarchy or roles of authority and subordination among the Persons of the Trinity.) Principal as used here means only that, as the Athanasian Creed puts it,
The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten from anyone.
The Son was neither made nor created;
he was begotten from the Father alone.
The Holy Spirit was neither made nor created nor begotten;
he proceeds from the Father and the Son.
None of the Persons was created. All are eternal. However, the reason the Father is “father” and the Son is “son” has to do with the fact that the Son is eternally “begotten” or “generated” from the Father. What does this mean? Matthew Barrett puts it like this: “The Father communicates all the perfection of the divine essence to his Son from all eternity.” In John 5:26, Jesus says, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” To have life in oneself is to be independent in the absolute. It is to be self-living, self-existent, not derived. God has life in himself. Specifically, the Father has life in himself, being “neither made nor created nor begotten.”
But then we run into an odd statement. The Father granted the Son to have life in himself also.
But then we run into an odd statement. The Father granted the Son to have life in himself also. In our experience, this hardly makes sense. A thing granted to you by someone else is not—normally—something you have in yourself. In this case, we see that the Son is self-existent, yet from the Father! This is possible because the Son has always existed along with the Father (Jn 1:1), and was always begotten of the Father. This relationship can never have begun at any point, or it would not entail the Son having life in himself, for self-life indicates eternal being. Any being that came into being could not have life in itself, but the Son is co-eternal with the Father. He is “the only begotten God” (Jn 1:18 NASB1995). The property, therefore, that distinguishes the Father from the Son is the eternal generation of the Son.
The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. To quote Matthew Barrett again, “he proceeds from the one divine essence communicated by the Father to the Son.” In John 15:26, Jesus promises his disciples “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out [proceeds] from the Father—he will testify about me.” Here Jesus mentions only the Spirit’s procession from the Father. But both Paul and Peter also refer to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9, 1 Pet. 1:11), so he is called the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ, and both titles are equally appropriate. And as the generation of the Son is eternal, so the procession of the Spirit is eternal, for the Holy Spirit is himself God, having the whole divine essence.
Finally, we should note that God, the three-personed God, is one eternal Being. When he acts, all three divine Persons act, so that any act of God is an act of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (Jn. 5:19). This is true in creation, providence, and redemption. Yet a work may be appropriated in a special way that is consistent with one Person’s eternal relation of origin. So in the outworking of our redemption, though all three Persons act in concert, there is a sense in which we may think of the Father as the author of our salvation, the Son as our redeemer, and the Holy Spirit as our sanctifier. The Father chooses people to redeem and to give to the Son, the Son accomplishes their redemption in his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and the Holy Spirit is gifted to them as an Advocate, Guide, and Comforter. We know that the love of God abides on us because we have the deposit of the Holy Spirit abiding within us.
It is important that we maintain the full deity, equality and one essential nature of the Persons, while also maintaining the distinction between the Persons. Failing to do either results in heresy. Yet we need not be discouraged by the mystery of the Trinity. Passage into heaven does not depend on our ability to describe the difference between substance and subsistence, but on our faith in the Son of God, who loved us, and gave himself for us. With this in mind, let me encourage you as Paul encouraged the early believers in Corinth, who were not the most theologically astute people. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
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