A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance
by Steve West
Table of Contents
- The Son in the Divine Trinity
- Before the Beginning
- The Word Became Flesh
- The Incarnate Son
- Touchstones of Christological Orthodoxy
- The Interpretation of Chalcedon
- Person and Nature, Action and Will
- Consolidation in East and West
- Reformation Issues
- Post-Enlightenment Questions
- For Us and Our Salvation
Appendix A: Classic Christology and Adoption
Appendix B: A New Approach to an Old Error
Summary
Chapter 1: The Son in the Divine Trinity
“The names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit concern who God is in himself, not how he relates to his creation.” The Father and Son are Father and Son from all of eternity. God’s Son is the logos who preexists creation and is the maker of all things. Only God can save us, so Christ must have been fully God. Modalism and subordinationism were two main trinitarian heresies in the early church, but it was the challenge of Arianism which precipitated a crisis in the fourth century. It was at the Council of Constantinople (381) that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was produced, and this creed explicitly identified Father, Son, and Spirit as three distinct persons in the one God. Since they are one, they are indivisible; the three hypostases are subsistences in the one God. They are identical in being but genuinely distinct hypostatically. However, since they are comprehensively and exhaustively God, and each hypostasis is identical with the one being of God, there cannot be any internal division. God is simple and therefore cannot be divided into parts. We must not think of the Son as detached from Father and Spirit, but together with them. The Son and the Spirit do not derive their deity from the Father. The eternal relations of the immanent Trinity are seen in the work and missions of the three divine persons in this world. The Father begets the Son, the Son is begotten, and the Spirit proceeds from Father and Son (or from the Father in the Eastern tradition). Since God always acts in accord with his nature, that the Father is never sent nor proceeds is significant. In Scripture, the relations are clear that everything is from the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit, and these relations cannot be reversed. It is in this regard that the persons in the Trinity are numbered. The relations they sustain are inseparable from their personal identities and thus are eternal and unchangeable.
Since the second century, orthodox theology has held that the Father begat the Son in eternity. The Son is the same being as the Father, but the personal distinction is eternally generated. It is vital to uphold the creedal truth that the Son is begotten, not created. The historic mission of redemption reflects the eternal processions. Since the three persons are one being, they must mutually indwell one another (perichoresis). Since each person is fully God and the whole God is in each one, they must mutually contain one another; they occupy the same infinite divine space. Human persons do not exist in one another, and social Trinitarianism can border on tritheism. God is indivisible, so his external works are likewise indivisible. Creation, providence, and redemption reveal the indivisibility of the triune God in his operations. However, although their work is inseparable, it is always appropriated or specially attributed to one of the three (e.g., only the Son becomes incarnate). The processions in the Trinity are eternal and necessary, but the mission and external works of God are freely chosen. If the economic Trinity does not reveal the eternal relations, then we have no revelation of the true nature of God. . . .
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