Avoiding Heresy When Explaining the Trinity

Trinity Pie Chart

There are higher and worse methods to elucidate the Trinity. We are able to have a pie chart thought the place we break up God up into components, and this is among the worst methods to elucidate the Trinity. There’s something to the truth that the biblical materials talks in regards to the actions of God generally in ways in which applicable that motion to a selected divine particular person.

Take into consideration Ephesians 1, for example, and this lengthy assertion by Paul about how the Father is doing this and the Son does this and the Spirit does this. So it’s not improper to speak about sure actions of God just about simply one of many divine individuals, so long as that’s within the context of a wider understanding of the truth that God’s actions are literally inseparable.

The issue comes once we neglect that wider context the place we’re not instructing our individuals the doctrine of the Trinity, we’re not instructing them about God’s unity, and we’re not instructing them the grammar of the doctrine of the Trinity. After which we begin singing songs like that or talking that means, and so they don’t have any context for that assertion, and so they assume that pie chart of their head, even when we’re not instructing that.

In order that’s the actual type of analogy that we need to keep away from, the place the Father is doing this, the Son’s doing that, the Spirit’s doing this, and the three of them usually are not really doing something without delay. They’re every doing their very own factor.

The illustration I usually use in school is the cross. Once we discuss in regards to the cross, we discuss how the Son bears the Father’s wrath, which is a real means of talking about what’s taking place on the crucifixion, however we will discuss that in such a means that what we’re actually speaking is the Son is the one one who experiences something when it comes to the crucifixion. After which the Father is the one one who’s pouring out wrath.

There are applicable methods to explain that, however what we’re doing is we’re separating out an attribute of God—particularly, wrath—and saying it’s solely the Father that’s doing this. That’s that pie chart. Once we discuss in regards to the cross, we’re nearly pitting the Father and the Son in opposition to one another—each of their attributes and their actions.

I ask my college students, “What’s the Spirit doing? Is he on a break, taking his fifteen minutes? What’s taking place with the Spirit?”

That’s the unhelpful means of speaking in regards to the Trinity. I need to assist us change and develop in our understanding of how we discuss God, particularly when it comes to the oneness and the unity of his actions.

Matthew Y. Emerson is coauthor with Brandon D. Smith of Beholding the Triune God: The Inseparable Work of Father, Son, and Spirit.

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