If there is a belief that is at the heart of Israel’s identity in the Old Testament, it is this: God is unique (Dt 6. 4). Unlike the nations surrounding Israel, nations that worshipped many gods, Israel was designated as a people who worshipped one God. They were supposed to be monotheists.
But we must add that true monotheism is not only the belief that there is a God, it also means that this God is one. Theologians call it the simplicity of God, this does not mean that God has no depth, simplicity refers rather to the unity of God, is not a God made of parties and much less divided into parts, it is not as if you could add all the attributes of God to obtain the sum total of what we call “God”. Instead, God is one. Its attributes are its essence [i], and its essence its attributes. All that is in God is simply God, so to say that “God is one”?It not only means that there is one true God, but also that this God is one in essence.
- If you have read the history of the Bible.
- You will know that Israel’s confession of God’s unity is only the beginning of God’s revelation about himself.
- God who reveals himself as one also reveals himself as Trinitarian.
- This plurality may have been implicitly revealed in the Old Testament.
- But in the New Testament it becomes explicit with the coming of the same Son of God.
- The Lord Jesus Christ.
- The author of Hebrews says not only that God has now revealed himself at the coming of his Son.
- But that this Son is “the glare of glory and the exact expression of His Being.
- Which sustains all things with the word of his power” (Hebrews 1-3).
Why did you come? (v. 3). How did you do it? The four gospels teach us that the Son was able to save us because He was incarnate for us. He represented us in the flesh to redeem us for his life, death, and resurrection. This Son, whom John calls “the Word”, for being the supreme revelation of God Himself, “became flesh and dweln among us” so that we may receive?thank you for thank you (Jn 1:14,16). Here is the point: with the revelation of the gospel, we receive the revelation of the Godhead. This God, who is one, is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Some of the church’s best theologians have brought clarity to the doctrine of the Godhead, introducing certain words and phrases that not only give us more information about who this God of the Trinity is, but protect us from heresy. They concluded, for example, that God is one in essence even if he is in three people. As parents liked to say, each person is a livelihood of the divine essence. I know this sounds very technical, but keep in mind that this is one way to make sure the three people in the Deity are the same. The divine essence is not divided into parts to be divided between each of the three people. No, each person is totally divine, because the only divine essence exists eternally in all three people. Isn’t the Father, are the Son and the Spirit three separate gods?It’s the heresy of tritheism. On the contrary, they are a God, is he not a person inferior to another?, on the contrary, they are co-eternal and equal, being one God.
In our attempt to avoid tritheism, we dare not fall into the trap of modalism, the belief that there is a God who only transforms into three different forms is also heresy, since he denies that the Father, the Son and the spirit are true people, different from each other; instead, it teaches that these are mere masks used by the person we call God.
But what exactly distinguishes the three people? Well, think of the names used by the scriptures to reveal these three people: Father, Son, and Spirit. The first person is the Father, because He is the Father of the Son. But, contrary to our human conception of fatherhood, God the Father is the father of his Son forever. Moreover, unlike human parents, God the Father has no father, he was never a son. His fatherhood is eternal and without origin.
The second person is the Son, because he is the father. But unlike the human generation, there was never a time when the Son did not exist. Your generation is an eternal generation. The third person is called Spirit because He is?Spiritual? by the Father and the Son (of the Father and the Son). He is not a second son, as if he were the brother of the son, nor the grandson of the Father, is the Spirit because he is not begat or born, but ardent.
In theology, what we describe is called “Relationships of eternal origin”, and only they distinguish the three people and identify their personal properties (a generation [ii], kinship or generation, breath or emanation).
You may have noticed this before, but these relationships of eternal origin are unique to every person in the Godhead. They are incommunicado, which means they are not interchangeable. Take the father’s example. It is not only generated or animated. This cannot be said of the Son, who is eternally begat by the Father, nor of the Spirit, who is eternally inspired by the Father and the Son. The Father alone is not begat; this is your only personal property. For this reason, did the parents of the church like to call the Father?Beginning? (or “source” or, again, “origin”) in the Divinidad. De fact, is the principle without beginning, since it does not come on its own from anyone and is not generated by anyone. This is what fatherhood in the Godhead means and explains why God reveals his identity trina as He does.
For example, have you ever wondered why Jesus, in the Gospel of John, so strongly considers the fact that he was sent as a Son by the Father (for example, John 5. 24, 30, 36)?Why is it not the other way around?While some say it is arbitrary, we allow ourselves to disagree The reason the Son is sent by the Father is because the Son comes from the Father forever, because he is eternally begat from the Father. .
The fact is that the Trinity’s missions in the history of salvation (sending the Son to the incarnation and outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost) intentionally reflect the relationships of the three people in eternity and what is more of a reflection of the Father, as a beginning and a source, than when he sends his Son to history , the same Son who has begat since all eternity, so that there has never been a time when the Son did not exist?In this sense, the scriptures often ordain or name the Father first (Mt 28:19; 1 John 5. 7), not because the Son and the Spirit are inferior to the Father in nature or come after the Father in time?All three are co-eternal and equal, as the Athanasian Creed says On the contrary, because the Father, as cannot be denied, is the source and principle of the One who is begat by the Son and from whom the Spirit is breathed, an order reflected in history when the Son and the Spirit are sent by the Spirit. Father, your source and origin.
If the Father is the principle of the Trinity because of his fatherhood, he must also be called an architect of creation and salvation; on the one hand, any external act of the Trinity towards the created order is the unique and indivisible act of the whole whole. Trinity The external works of the Trinity are indivisible, which means that the three people act as one in salvation because they are one in nature and will.
At the same time, can specific tasks be limited to people other than the Deity?This is called “divine appropriations. ” Take, for example, the incarnation, which is not an achievement of the Son alone, but an achievement of the whole Divinity, but is the person of the Son who assumes the flesh, something similar can be said of the Spirit at Pentecost. .
But what about the Father? Although creation and salvation are the work of the three persons, we are right to speak of the Father as architect; the Father creates the world through his Word (the Son) through his Spirit; in the same way, the Father redeems his elect. by his Son, by his Spirit.
More generally, while redemption is planned, performed, and applied throughout the Godhead, the specific aspects of the economy of this work may be addressed to different people, depending on their unique personal properties. As a principle, origin, and source, the Father sends his Incarnate. Son to achieve redemption, so only (with the Son) does he send his Holy Spirit to apply redemption to God’s chosen. The Father is the architect of our salvation, the Son, the executor of this saving plan, and the Spirit, his enhancer. As the reformed theologian Johannes Van der Kemp poetically put it: “The Father commanded grace for the eled, the Son bought it, and the Holy Ghost applied it and distributed it to God’s eldest. “
If God the Father is the architect of our salvation, then we are very sure that we are his adopted children, our belonging is different from that of the second person of the Trinity (ours is by grace, his by nature). For the Father is the origin and architect of our salvation, the one who sent his only Son, who can be adopted into his family in and by Christ and invited to call him Father.
[i] The essence of God, or “ousia”, is the divine nature or substance that God does. Are they the Father, the Son, and the Holy Homoousious Spirit?,?Each of the three people is full and equally God, and they are God. Is each person the same in terms of divine attributes?Just as it is, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, truth, authority, and all other aspects of divinity.
[ii] 2. ? Undated is personal property that distinguishes the Father from the Son and the Spirit. The Father is totally divine, like the other two, but in terms of person, He will be born eternally. The Father was not born of anything or anyone.