A Digest on theTrinity - Part 5: External Acts

This article is the fourth in a series called A Digest on the Trinity.

In the previous article, we looked at the eternal processions as the way to distinguish between the otherwise indistinguishable persons in the simple being of God. We noted how the Son proceeds from the Father in eternal generation and the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son in eternal spiration.

However, because these processions happen within the ineffable divine essence and belong to the incomprehensible life of God, we cannot know these things without prior revelation. Therefore, God has pleased to reveal His triunity by way of His acts towards creation, otherwise known as His economic missions/operations. Through these economic missions do we understand the eternal processions within the one God.

These acts are known as economic because they happen within the economy, i.e. the created order. They are otherwise known as ad extra acts, which mean “at the exterior”, which include all acts of God towards the created order, external to Himself.

Internal order and external acts

Recall in the second article where we mentioned that because the three persons all share the same divine essence, every act of God towards creation is undivided. This means that in every ad extra act, the Father, Son and Spirit are equally involved. This was to make sense of the passages in Scripture which spoke of all three persons sharing in the same acts. However, though all three persons act inseparably through the one divine essence, they work distinguishably because they are distinguishable from one another – the Father acts as the Father, the Son as the Son and the Spirit as the Spirit. What this means is that every act comes from the Father as the originating source (what it means to act as the Father), through the Son as the mediating source (what it means to act as the Son) and in the Spirit as the perfecting source (what it means to act as the Spirit). In other words, the Father acts from Himself, the Son from the Father, the Spirit from the Father and the Son.

This is why we note that the eternal processions provide the foundation for the external acts of God in the previous article. As the Ingenerate, the Father originates all ad extra acts. However, He never acts alone, for He only ever acts through the one He generates. As the Generated, the Son mediates all of the Father’s acts. Yet this work is not complete – we have its origin, its mediation but not its completion. As the Breathed, the Spirit brings to completion all of the Father’s acts through the Son.

There is an irreversible order grounded in the eternal processions, where the Father is always the first, the Son always the second and the Spirit always the third. This irreversible order is made known to us through the way God acts towards creation, which is always reflective of this internal irreversible order: from the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

We sometimes say that the Father sends the Son and through the Son sends the Spirit, as another way of saying that the Father does all things through the Son and in the Spirit. Note the reflection:

• Externally: The Father sends the Son and through the Son sends the Spirit.
• Internally: The Father generates the Son and through the Son breathes the Spirit.

 

The external acts of God correspond to the internal order within God. The sending of the Son corresponds to His generation from the Father, while the sending of the Spirit corresponds to His spiration from the Father through the Son. That is why the Son cannot send the Father and neither can the Spirit send the Son. The irreversibility in the internal order is present and manifest in the same irreversibility of the external acts. Thus, we say that the external acts of God reflect the internal order within God.

External acts and Incarnation

However, there might be an objection to God’s inseparable external acts, because visibly the Son does things that the Father and Spirit do not – for instance, the Son alone was conceived, born, died and rose from the dead.

We resolve this by saying that the Son alone became flesh (John 1:14) by taking on a human essence, also known as the Incarnation. This human essence unique only to Him was the reason why He could do human things like hunger, sleep or die, while the Father and Spirit could not, since essences provide the necessary attributes for persons to act. We note also that this does not contradict inseparable acts, since the creation of the human nature was the work of the whole triune God. The Father created the Son’s human nature through the Son and in the Spirit.

We can put it in a catechetic form:

Q: Who was incarnated and baptised?

A: The Son alone was incarnated as man and baptised. Therefore, whatever He did as a man, the Father and the Spirit did not do, for they were not incarnated.

Q: Who was involved in the creation and sustaining of the human nature of the Son in the Incarnation?

A: The whole triune God was involved in the creation and sustaining of the human nature of the Son. The Father created and sustained the human nature of the Son through the Son and in the Spirit.

Therefore, although the Son alone was incarnate and thus did things unique to Him, the Incarnation itself was an undivided act by the whole triune God.

Revelatory nature of salvific sendings

However, that is not all to the sendings of the Son or the Spirit. Fred Sanders is a modern theologian who strongly advocates for understanding the revelatory nature of the sendings in his great book The Triune God. In it, he argues that the sending of the Son and Spirit are the actual revelation of God’s triunity. From the vagueness and fog of the Old Testament, which emphasised God’s oneness, the New Testament provides documentary records of the Son who came as a man and the Spirit who came as the life-giving breath of God.

Therefore, as Sanders argues, the Incarnation of the Son was revelatory in that it revealed to all who would hear that the God of Israel has a Son. Likewise, Pentecost was revelatory in that it revealed to all that the God of Israel who has a Son also has a Spirit. The result of this thinking is the conclusion that the actual revelation of the Trinity came not in the Scriptures, but in the co-dependent and co-explanatory missions of the Son and Spirit. The Scriptures are then simply placeholders for the actual revelation; the OT expects the revelation and the OT explains the revelation.[1]

Implications of external acts

A Trinitarian gospel

If the sendings of the Son and Spirit are revelatory of God’s triunity, it follows necessarily that the revelation of the gospel is bound up with the revelation of the Trinity. When the Son came as a man proclaiming the gospel of the Father (Rom 1:1), part of His own exposition of His mission involved the declaration that He was the eternal Son of the Father (John 5:19; 5:26; 14:13), and that He was the one who would send the Spirit (John 16:7). When the Spirit was poured out on all flesh at Pentecost, His primary task was to bring people into an understanding of the Son through whom the Father is known. Therefore, when God was revealing to us the gospel, He was revealing to us as well His Son and their Spirit.

Order of worship and piety

If all things God does towards us comes from the Father through the Son and in the Spirit, it follows that all things we do towards God is done in exactly the opposite direction: in the Spirit through the Son to the Father.

That is why when we pray, we are said to be praying in the Spirit (Rom 8:26-27), through the mediation of the Son (1 Tim 2:5), to the Father (Matt 6:9). When we worship, we worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth, the Truth being none other than the Son Himself (John 14:6). Every act of worship and piety we bring to God, we bring in the Spirit through the Son to the Father.

Lest we think that the Son and Spirit are then not worshipped in the same way as the Father, we must understand that this is the one God we are worshipping. When we direct worship to the Father, our worship terminates on Him appropriately as the one from whom are all things. When we direct worship to the Father through the Son, our worship terminates on the Son appropriately as the one through whom are all things. When we direct worship to the Father through the Son in the Spirit, our worship terminates on the Spirit appropriately as the one in whom are all things. After all, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is “God above us, God [amongst] us, God within us”.[2]

Appropriation

Despite inseparable operations, Scripture does attribute certain actions to specific persons of the Trinity. For example, it attributes creation primarily to the Father, salvation primarily to the Son and sanctification primarily to the Spirit, although strictly speaking, creation/salvation/sanctification comes from the Father through the Son and in the Spirit.

This manner of Scripture’s language gave rise to the method of “appropriation”, where though all external acts of God are undivided and inseparable, some acts are appropriated to specific persons because of their unique personal properties. We will explore this idea tangentially across the next three articles, when we look at the divine persons individually.

The next article will focus particularly on the Father.