Simply Trinity: The Unmanipulated Father, Son, and Spirit

THESIS
Modern teaching about the Trinity has drifted away from Orthodoxy.
The Trinity has been manipulated to promote politics, religious pluralism, environmentalism, gender identity, a patriarchal society, and one's sexuality.
Studying the Bible and the early Church Fathers and Nicene Creed can restore a proper view of the Trinity.

NICENE CREED (of Constantinople, 381 AD)
We believe in one God, the Father All Governing, creator of all heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all time,
Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father, through Whom all things came into being; Who for us men and because of our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became human. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and wad buried and rose on the third day, according to the Scriptures; and ascended to heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father, and will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom shall have no end.
And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-giver, Who proceeds from the Father, Who is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and Son, Who spoke through the prophets;
and in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism for the remission of sins. We look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

ARIUS' TEACHING – THE SON had a BEGINNING
If he was the same as God, then there were two gods.
But there is only one God.
Also, Jesus died on the cross.
God cannot die.
Therefore, Jesus is not God.
Instead, he was created, like Wisdom in Psalm 8 (personifying the Son) was "brought forth" or "given birth."
He is a begotten Son by grace, not by nature.
He is the first and the best of God's creation. But He is not divine.

ATHANASIUS' TEACHING – THE SON has ALWAYS BEEN BEGOTTEN of the FATHER
The Son is "the only begotten from the Father" (Jn 1:14).
He is begotten from the Father's essence (ousia).
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was WITH God, and the Word WAS God" (Jn 1:1).
The Son is identical to the Father in divine nature. He is of the same essence (homoousios) as the Father.
"And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature" (Heb 1:3).

THE SIMPLICITY of GOD
God's essence is without parts. He is indivisible.
Athanasius said, "God, being without parts, is Father of the son without partition. He is Father of One Only Son. Let us preserve undivided the oneness of nature."
Hilary of Poitiers says it is because God has no body, bodies being divisible by parts, that God is "simple essence: no parts, but an all-embracing whole."

The three persons are not "parts" that compose God.
His divine essence is simply three persons in one God.
His attributes are not parts because He IS all of His attributes.
He doesn't HAVE love, He IS love.
He doesn't HAVE goodness, He IS all goodness.
God is identical to His perfections.

Each person is fully God because each person is indwelled by the other two persons.
The Father is indwelled by the Son and the Spirit.
The Son is indwelled by the Father and the Spirit.
The Spirit is indwelled by the Father and the Son.
So the three persons together are equal to any one, or two, of the persons.
Aquinas says, 'The whole fullness of divine nature is present in each of the persons."

The simplicity of God keeps us from straying from the truth of three persons in one essence.
Of simplicity, Gregory of Naziansus says, "The aim is to safeguard the distinctness of the three hypostases within the single nature and quality of the Godhead."
Extreme oneness is Sabellianism (God is just one person who changes into three different forms). Extreme threeness is tritheism (three gods).

Each of the three persons is uncreated, infinite, eternal, and almighty.
Each of the persons is God, yet there is only one God, not three.
The three persons are identical in all things EXCEPT their eternal origins.

HOW the THREE PERSONS are DISTINGUISHED
By their personal relations to one another, also referred to as their eternal relations of origins, or modes of susbsistence (existence).
(Paternity) The Father is UNBEGOTTEN.
(Filiation) The Son is BEGOTTEN (eternally generated by the Father).
(Spiration) The Spirit PROCEEDS from the Father and the Son.

ETERNAL GENERATION
There was never a time when the Son was not.
If there was a time when the Son was not, then there was a time when the Father was not a Father.
But the Bible never refers to the Father as being anything other than the Father.
So there was never a time when the Father was not a Father.
So there has never been a time when the Son was not.
Gregory of Nyssa says, "He exists by generation indeed, but nevertheless He never begins to exist."
Athanasius says, "When did the Father not see Himself in His own Image [the Son]?" Never. (Heb 1:3)
Anselm wrote, The Father "has His essence from nothing but Himself, but the Son has His essence from the Father, as well as having the same essence as the Father."
Aquinas said, "The divine essence is the source by which the Father begets."
Augustine wrote, "Just as for Him to be is to be God,...thus also for Him to be is to be personal."

Augustine also wrote that in eternal "generation the Father bestows being on the Son without any beginning in time, without any changeableness of nature."
Generation of the Son by the Father is not like human generation. How it is done is inexplicable.
Prior to His incarnation, eternal generation alone is what distinguishes the Son from the Father.

The first composed Nicene Creed of 325 AD ended with,
"But, those who say, Once He was not, or He was not before His generation, or He came to be out of nothing, or who assert that He, the Son of God, is of a different hypostasis or ousia, or that He is a creature, or changeable, or mutable, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them."

ETERNAL SPIRATION
Augustine wrote, "so does procession from them both [Father and Son] bestow being on the Holy Spirit without any beginning in time, without any changeableness in nature."

THE TRINITY in the SCRIPTURES
Sometimes the Scripture speaks of the Father, sometimes of the Son, and sometimes of the Spirit, but whenever it refers to any one Person it assumes that Person is consubstantial with all the others, co-eternal, and co-equal in divinity. The one God, the one Lord, is none other than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In some cases, all three Persons make an appearance all at once.

(Gen 1:26) "Then God said, 'Let US make man in OUR image.'"

(Matt 3:16,17)
"After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.'"

(Matt 28:19)
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit."

(Jn 1:29-34)
John the Baptist said, "He [the Father] who sent me to baptize in water said to me, 'He [Jesus] upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.'"

(John 14:26)
"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you."

(I Cor 8:6)
"Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him."
The apostle Paul does the unthinkable and includes another person's name (Jesus) in the Jewish Shema.
"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One!" (Deut 6:4)

(2 Cor 13:14)
"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."

(Eph 1:13,14)
"In Him [Christ] also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation – having also believed, you were sealed in Him [Christ] with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory."

(Eph 2:18)
"For through Him [Christ] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father."

(Eph 2:22)
"In whom [Christ] you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit."

(Eph 3:14-17)
"I bow my knees before the Father...that He would grant you...to be strengthened with power through His Spirit...so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith."

(Eph 4:4-6)
"There is one body and one Spirit,...one Lord,...one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all" (Eph 4:4-6).

(2 Thess 2:12,14)
"God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ."

THE FATHER and the SON
Jesus said no one shall snatch His sheep our of HIS hand (Jn 10:28), and then, His FATHER'S hand (Jn 10:29).
"I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30; 17:22).
The Jews said, We stone you "for blasphemy, and because You, being a man, make Yourself our to be God." (Jn 10:33)
Jesus answered them, Am I "blaspheming, because I said, 'I am the Son of God?'"
"The Father is in Me, and I in the Father" (Jn 10:38).
The Greek word "perichoresis" means mutual indwelling.
Jesus can only be in the Father if He is homoousios, from the same essence, as the Father.
And He can only be homoousios if He is begotten from the Father's ousia (essence).

Hilary of Poitiers said, "The Father is in the Son, for the Son is from Him; the Son is in the Father, because the Father is His sole Origin; the Only-begotten is in the Unbegotten because He is the Only-begotten from the Unbegotten."

Jesus said, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father." (Jn 14:9)

THE HOLY SPIRIT
The Holy Spirit is called "Lord."
"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (2 Cor 3:17,18)
The Spirit unveils our face to behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord as we are being transformed into the same image.
The Spirit searches the depths of God, and reveals Him to us (1 Cor 2:10).
Only God could search the depths of God!
"No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God" (1 Cor 2:11).
He helps us to have "the mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16).
The Spirit lives within our hearts and enables us to cry, "Abba! Father!" (Gal 4:6)

THE SON is BEGOTTEN from the FATHER
Jesus Existed Before All Ages.
Jesus claimed to have existed before Abraham (Jn 8:58)
Jesus had glory with the Father before the world was created (Jn 17:5).
The Messiah's "coming forth is from of old, from ancient days" (Micah 5:2).
God the Father is called the "Ancient of Days" in Daniel 7:9,13,22.

Jesus is "Light from Light" (Nicene Creed)
Jesus is the "radiance of His glory" (Heb 1:3).
As light naturally radiates its brightness, so too God radiates His Son.
He is "the self-diffusive presence of the One who is Himself unapproachable splendor. God's glory is God Himself in the perfect majesty and beauty of His being. The glory is resplendent. Because God Himself is light, He pours forth light." (John Webster, "God Without Measure")

Jesus is "True God from True God" (Nicene Creed)
Jesus is "the exact imprint of His nature" (Heb 1:3). "He is the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15).
"For to which of the angels did He ever say, 'You are My Son, today I have begotten You'? And again, 'I will be a Father to Him and He shall be a Son to Me'"? (Heb 1:5; Ps 2:7)

Jesus is the Wisdom of God
"Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:24).
"Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom of God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Cor 1:30).
The Son is the wisdom of God personified in Proverbs 8.
The church fathers said, There was never a time when God was without His wisdom.
God's wisdom is "of old" and whose origin is "the Lord" (v.22), "From everlasting" He was established (v.23).
Both Wisdom and the Son of God
were born of God,
reflect God's glory,
are from the beginning,
are the agents of creation,
descended from heaven,
enlighten those in darkness.

Some argue that God created wisdom (and therefore at some point created the Son) because of the language used in Proverbs 8. Wisdom says, "I was brought forth" and "set up" (v.23-25).
But why would God need to create wisdom to help Him create the world, if He is already infinitely wise?
"For among all the wise men of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is none like You" (Jer 10:7).

Jesus Allowed Himself to be Worshiped
after He healed a blind man (Jn 9:38),
after He calmed the storm (Mt 14:33),
after He rose from the dead (Mt 28:9,17).
Jesus taught, "All will honor the Son even as they honor the Father" (Jn 5:22)
"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing...To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever." (Rev 5:12,13)

THE HOLY SPIRIT PROCEEDS from the FATHER and the SON
The Holy Spirit does works that only God can do.
Conversion
"No one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3).
Regeneration
Jesus said, "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (Jn 3:5).
Adoption
"God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!" (Gal 4:6).
Sanctification
"by the sanctifying work of the Spirit" (1 Pet 1:2).
Glorification
"He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you" (Rom 8:11).
Inspiration
"No prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Pet 1:21).

What distinguishes the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son?
The Spirit eternally proceeds (spirates) from the Father and the Son.
Jesus told His disciples He would not leave them "as orphans." (Jn 14:18).
Instead, "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever...But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you" (Jn 14:16,26).
"When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds [ekporeuetai] from the Father, He will bear witness about Me." (Jn 15:26).
"It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you" (Jn 16:7).

Anselm said whenever Scripture speaks of "the Spirit of Christ," it is assumed that the Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father (Rom 8:9; Phil 1:19; 1 Pet 1:11).
The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one source, not two, since the Father and Son are of the same essence.

The Spirit as Breath
The Son is generated from the Father, which is why He is called Son. The Spirit is not called Son because He is not generated but spirated, proceeding from the Father and the Son as Spirit.
Spiration is another way to refer to procession. The word "Spirit" means "breath."
The Spirit is the one breathed out by the Father and the Son in eternity, which explains why the Spirit is the one sent from the Father and the Son.

The Father breathed out His Word through His Spirit.
"All Scripture is breathed out by God" (2 Tim 3:16).
Jesus breathed on His apostles and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (Jn 20:22).
Augustine said, "Not that the physical breath that came from Christ's body and was physically felt was the substance of the Holy Spirit, but it was a convenient symbolic demonstration that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father."

The Spirit is a Gift
He was the "living water" Jesus said comes as a result of believing in Christ.
Jesus said to the woman at Jacob's well, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." (Jn 4:10).
"He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.' But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those whom believed in Him were to receive" (Jn 7:38,39).
The Spirit is given as a gift from God when we believe in Christ.
Peter said, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38; 10:45).
Augustine said, "The Holy Spirit is a kind of inexpressible communion or fellowship of Father and Son."

The Spirit is Love
"The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Rom 5:5).
The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as Love itself proceeds from the Lover and the Beloved. Augustine explains, "There is no love where nothing is being loved. So then there are three, the lover, and what is being loved, and love. According to the Scriptures, this Holy Spirit is not just the Father's alone and the Son's alone. but the Spirit of them both, and thus suggests to us the common charity by which the Father and the Son love each other."

If the Spirit does not spirate from the Father and the Son's divine essence from all eternity, if He is not Breath, Gift, and Love, then the Father and the Son have no Spirit to give us, no Spirit to indwell us, no Spirit to sanctify us, and no Spirit to bring us into communion with the one who is simply Trinity.

THE THREE PERSONS of the TRINITY WORK INSEPARABLY
(Latin) "Opera Trinitatis as extra indivisa sunt" = the outward works of the Trinity are indivisible.
Augustine said, "All the works of one God are the works of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" because "the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are inseparably united in themselves."
This is not "cooperation." That would assume there are three wills, or three gods who always "get along" with each other.
But since the three Persons are of the same essence, they have one will, not three wills.
Father, Son, and Spirit all perform one single act. Works are not divvied up among the Persons.
They perform one and the same action because they have the same divine nature.
They act as one because they are one.
Gregory of Naziansus said, "No sooner do I conceive of the One 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 Son is Inseparable from the Father
"Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all that He Himself is doing...For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will." (Jn 5:19-21).

The Holy Spirit is CONJOINED WITH the Father and the Son
Basil of Caesarea says, "the Holy Spirit is inseparable and wholly incapable of being parted from the Father and the Son. In every operation the Spirit is closely conjoined with, and inseparable from, the Father and the Son."

Barrett is a strong communicator, and this book is a worthy read. The doctrine of the Trinity is worth dying for, and getting it right is no mere intellectual exercise. Knowing our one God in Three Persons is a sacred, saving privilege, and Barrett's book is illuminates this doctrine with strong clarity in a way that glorifies Him.

Presents an interesting argument against social trinitarianism on both the left and the right and defends the classic doctrine of the Trinity.

This is a hard book to review. The author is attacking the view that Jesus Christ is, functionally, eternally subordinate to the Father even while being ontologically equal with Him. This view is known as eternal functional subordination (EFS). Barrett’s tone at the beginning was so unnecessarily off-putting to me that I had to get over my irritation before I was ready to fairly assess his argument. Eventually he was able to convince me.

As far as the positives go, Barrett is clearly an accomplished expert on the church fathers, both pre- and post- Nicene. His arguments are firmly grounded in logic, philosophy, and the historical development of the theology of the Trinity. The vast bulk of his assertions come from these quarters, less so from Scripture (though he handles the Scripture well). Unfortunately, Barrett dismisses opposing arguments that rise from Scripture by perjoratively labeling his opponents as “biblicist,” as though they were unaware of the context and larger narrative of Scripture.

Barrett’s main argument is that the only distinctions between the persons within the ontological Trinity (ad intra) are “eternal relations of origin:” the Father is unbegotten, the Father eternally begets (generates) the Son (meaning the Father eternally communicates to the Son His own essence and nature), and the Father and the Son spirate, or send forth, the Holy Spirit. Barrett admits to additional distinctions in the outward operations (ad extra) of the economic Trinity.

In chapter three, Barrett does a good job in tracing modern liberalism’s illegitimate reconstruction of the Trinity to fit their own agenda for society. But in my opinion, he wrongly accuses conservative, biblical theologians of doing the same thing: starting with their desired construct of social relations and then imposing that construct on the Trinity. This seems to me to be a grossly uncharitable charge: is it not possible that those theologians derive their view of the Trinity (even though incorrect) from their honest understanding of Scripture and then see analogs in human relationships? Barrett gets in the way of his own message repeatedly with accusations like this. Another example is found on page 36 where he throws out the accusation that sola scriptura has been interpreted as “me and my Bible alone.” This is unfortunate: Barrett’s debate is with theologians, not the average believer in the pew. Does he really think any credible theologian would hold such a silly view?

Occasionally Barrett appears to overstate his point. On page 104 we find this statement: “For the first-century believer, to become a Christian was to embrace the salvation given and accomplished by none other than the triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…. For these early Christians, to believe the gospel was to believe that the one God of Israel was triune. Anything less was simply not Christian. A gospel that was not trinitarian was no gospel at all.”

Well, yes. And, no. While belief that Jesus is the divine Son of God was (and is) crucial to salvation, there was still much confusion, even among believers, as to exactly how that truth was to be reconciled with the historic monotheism of the Jews. Barrett’s confident assertion flies in the face of 400 years of church history, in which godly men were seeking to untangle the mystery of the Trinity. Barrett seems to claim that the first century Christians had it all figured out. But does not the early history of the church record their debates, disagreements, and difficulty in fitting the pieces together?

On the other hand, there are places in which Barrett is able to condense his argument to a single, brilliant statement, and this constitutes a large part of the value of his book. For example, on page 123 Barrett states: “[Christ’s] eternal relation to the Father constitutes his redemptive mission to the world, but not vice versa. Get that order right, and we see the gospel in proper trinitarian perspective; get that order wrong, and we misuse the gospel to redefine the Trinity in eternity.”

In my view, Barrett makes his strongest argument against EFS on pages 138-9. He builds a case that to be one in essence but manifested in three persons, means of necessity that there cannot be three different wills. Because the three (persons) are one in essence, there can only be one unified (simple) will. The one shared will of the Trinity rises out of the one shared divine nature of the Trinity. The problem with EFS is this: if Christ is eternally submitted to the Father’s will (rather than sharing the one and same will), it implies that there are two different wills—the Father’s, and Christ’s—which would then argue for two different natures. This creates an untenable division in the ontological Trinity; such a thing cannot be.

Barrett makes another powerful argument on page 239:
"But EFS is asking the wrong question. The right question is this: is submission ad intra or ad extra; is it intrinsic to the immanent Trinity, or is it something that occurs in the economy (in the context of salvation history)? Biblical Christian orthodoxy has always acknowledged that the economy of salvation involves the incarnate Son submitting to the mission his Father has given to him for the purpose of salvation."

Barrett goes on to flesh out the thought. I think this is the point in which I finally allowed Barrett to sharpen my understanding, by understanding the Son’s submission to the Father to be connected to his redemptive mission but not to his eternal relation to the Father. Barrett deals with 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 on page 243, stating that it applies not to the Son in the form of God, but to the Son in the form of a servant: “The context is not the immanent Trinity but the economy, the redemptive mission of the incarnate Son.”

Like Barrett’s book, this review has already gone on too long. In conclusion I believe Barrett makes his principal point, demolishing EFS and asserting that the distinctions in the immanent Trinity have to do with eternal relations of origin. It is unfortunate that Barrett occasionally gets in his own way by unnecessary and uncharitable characterizations of people on the other side of the fence. For his excellent command of the early church fathers, Barrett gets five stars. For his at-times-uncharitable tone and the excessive length of the book and the sense of repetition, three stars. For the fact that he did ultimately convince me that my former position (EFS) on the Trinity was wrong, we’ll settle with four stars. Recommended.

If you don’t have the time to read Barrett’s book, read Mike Riccardi’s excellent five-page blog post entitled, “EFS Redux: Aiming for Closure on the Trinity Debate.” Google it. Riccardi gets right to the point (in five short pages), and his logic is unassailable.

There’s been a lot of discussion about controversies about the Trinity among Evangelical circles the last few years and do you want to not only be informed about these discussions but also see a defense of the historic view? Specifically the book examines Social Trinitarianism across the theological spectrum and also the doctrine of the Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS). The author Matthew Barrett who is the Associate Professor of Christian Theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has given us a great resource for not only Baptists but the greater Reformed world and Evangelicals and Protestants. I found the book engaging, biblical, informative, fair to those whom he disagree with and at times funny and witty yet also God exalting and worshipful.
The book consists of ten chapters grouped in two parts. After the opening chapter on “Trinity adrift” part one is on “How Did we Drift Away?” followed by part two “How do we find our way home?” Part one consists of two chapters with the first on why we can trust the Church fathers with the Trinity and the second gives us a survey and history of Social Trinitarianism. Part two is explains the historic Orthodox view of the Trinity and also its defense along with critiques of Social Trinitarians and EFS advocates’ error. There’s quite a lot of discussion about the Members of the Trinity relations and also the economic versus and Immanent Trinity.
For some readers of this review, the question might arise “Why is this book important?” The danger that Barrett sees with Social Trinitarianism that is prevalent among some circles is that it is not only unbiblical but also to have a view of the Trinity in terms of the members as “society” also risks being Tritheism (there are three gods instead of One God). There’s also the issue of some Evangelicals not engaging or even being aware of some of the lobbed against the historical view of the Trinity has already been dealt with in church history. What was extremely helpful for me as I read this is to read of the author’s own journey as part of the regular everyday Evangelical Christian in college and seminaries hearing some of these teachings that he’s critiquing. I give the author much credit for representing EFS correctly as I have seem some people online equivocate EFS as the same thing as Arianism. Still Barrett does think EFS is problematic and his evaluation and criticism lands where its suppose to instead of on strawman. I think a big factor of this is the author’s own tutlege under Evangelical EFS advocate Bruce Ware and also the author’s reading of Wayne Grudem.
I appreciate the author’s use of analogies and his own stories from his life to help us better understand what he’s trying to teach; this was quite helpful and also puts the readers at ease as the topic at first glance can be quite intimidating for some! I won’t be able to write down everything I learned from this book in this review as the subject matter is heavy and the pages the author has in this book is quite a decent amount. But it is worth pointing out that a powerful point that the author made in this book is that it is important to make a distinction between the Economic Trinity versus the Immanent Trinity. There’s a relationship with both though we can see the distinction between the Trinity as the Trinity is (Immanent Trinity) and the Trinity in the work and relations with Creation for things such as the act of Creation and Salvation (Economic Trinity). This important category must be kept in mind as EFS advocates makes the faulty assumption that simply showing roles that seems subordinate between the Son to the Father must mean in eternity must mean the Son is subordinate to the Father. The works of the Triune God is always from eternity even with the Economic Trinity. Here the author then consider the contexts of these passages and notes the subject manner has to do with the Triune God saving us so its economic Trinity that is in view. And we must be careful not to read the economic Trinity back into Immanent Trinity. One thing (of many things) that I did learn that was new as a result of reading this book is the doctrine of Divine Appropriation. I’ve wondered from time to time about how we reconcile God’s act as being one while also the Biblical data makes clear that Members of the Trinity plays different roles with certain acts like Salvation that suggests many acts. This is the doctrine that God works is one when considered as Ad Extra but in that single act there are personal properties unique to each Members of the Trinity Ad Intra. Even as I read this book I also realize there’s so much I still need to learn and do further study such as the one authored by the theologian who wrote the forward: Scott Swain.
I do recommend this book. It might not be the first book on the Trinity I recommend but as one studies more the Biblical Data, wrestle with historical theology, systematic theology, confront heresies and face new concepts of the Trinity (that are actually not totally all new) this book will be important.