The Divine Missions: An Introduction

by Adonis Vidu

Christian theology affirms that the persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit are sent into the world to gather a scattered and rebellious humanity back to God. But how are we to understand these divine missions , given that the Son and the Spirit have already been present in the world from its foundation? Moreover, in what sense are they on a mission if they never leave the unity of the Trinity? In this volume, Vidu introduces us to the profound riches of this ancient and foundational doctrine. With ample illustration, he explains the technical concepts, the operative principles, and he clarifies the historical and contemporary debates. In the process, a constructive theology emerges where the category of divine missions frames topics such as the incarnation and life of Christ, his atoning death and ascension, the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit, the invisible indwelling of the Spirit, and finally the eschatological beatific vision.

Genres: Theology

138 pages, Paperback

Published December 24, 2021

About the author

Adonis Vidu (PhD, University of Nottingham) is associate professor of theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, and is the author of several books, including Theology after Neo-Pragmatism. He previously taught at Emmanuel University and at the University of Bucharest in his home country of Romania.

Reviews

[Richard Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Devotionally Delightful exploration of the sending of the Son and the Spirit. This book is in my lifetime top ten reads. It's fairly hard work, after reading it 3 times, I know I’ve not fully grasped it, but it’s worth the effort.

Vidu introduces the work by highlighting how we often simplistically assert theological truths without considering their implications. We believe the Divine Son was and is specifically incarnate, we believe that the Spirit was poured out. We believe they both dwell in us. But what do these statements even mean?

The Divine Missions, the sendings of the Son and the Spirit into this world, what are they? Affirming their divinity is affirming that the Son and Spirit are omnipresent before during and after their sending. Affirming the unity of the Trinity is affirming that any operation of divine power is an undivided operation of the whole Trinity. So how is it that the Son specifically came? How is it that the Spirit specifically was poured out? How can all divine operations be common to the trinity but the missions proper to the individual persons?

Emmanuel, God with us, is the very heart of the Gospel but how often do we ask the question, “what does that mean”? This book is a wonderful exploration of that question encouraging us to find an ever increasing delight in our God. Encouraging us to consider, not so much that we "know about God" or even that we "know God" but how he knows us and makes himself known to us. The book pushes us to contemplate a growing delightful union with our God which will transform and transfigure us, that we may better display his glory to the world and be better shaped to enjoy him.

This book functions a bit like a spiral, each chapter repeats some of the ground of the previous chapters whilst further developing the thoughts, as the whole way of thinking is likely unfamiliar to most readers the repetition is helpful; it also serves as a model for the way our experiential knowledge of God (which the book seeks to promote) is gradually developed and growing, NOT merely built up as a sequence of propositions.

I’ll summarise the main chapters of the book then present a few concluding thoughts.

Chapter 1 “The Nature of the Missions”
Vidu begins by problematising the concept of a divine Mission. Making the following points:

1. Hebrews 1:1-3 insists that something unique has occurred in the coming of The Son, prior revelation was something qualitatively lesser.
2. We cannot think of a mere spatial arrival like greek Gods descending Mt Olympus, for God is transcendent, the person of the Son sustains all things (Heb 1:3) and if he had ceased to be transcendent, ceased to sustain all things, he would have ceased to be God. Neither the Spirit nor the Son could leave behind anything in order to Come. If they did they would leave behind being God, they would not be unchanging, they would not be the ground of all being, such ideas destroy the distinction “between God and Creation”.
3. We cannot think of a mere arrival as God is already “intimately present to his creatures, more intimately indeed than they are to themselves” (In this context Vidu discusses Romans 1 - mankind’s ignorance of God’s presence is folly, we are “bedazzled by the diversity of particular things” and don’t take the “effort required to see through the many contingent and finite beings, to the infinite ground of them all”, but our ignorance of God’s presence does not falsify its reality)
4. God is fundamentally a different sort of thing to us, he exists in a different kind of reality - Vidu illustrates this drawing on a novel called “Flatland” that imagined a 3d visitor to a 2d world; just as a Sphere in a 3d world truly appears in the form of a circle that changes size, God visiting us truly appears but in forms that are not not identical to his being (to use technical language every revelation of God is analogical; Vidu’s explanation here parallels in some ways the argument CS Lewis makes in his ‘Transposition’)

Building from this, Vidu presents an idea of progressive revelation of God through history in the working of the Son and the Spirit going out from God to bring his children home. He then briefly presents 4 categories of revelation to be explored further i) Theophanies - appearances worked by the united divine power of the Trinity. ii) The Visible mission of the Son in the Incarnation. iii) The Visible mission of the Spirit at Pentecost. iv) The invisible missions of the Spirit and the Son “an inward invisible indwelling of the Spirit” (Rom 5:5) and “the Son” (John 14:23

In light of all this Vidu asks what is “the distinction between the ‘long ago’ and ‘in these last days’ of Hebrews 1?” To explore the answer Vidu looks to Augustine and Aquinas asking “What do the Missions Reveal?” Ultimately developing the answer that whereas Theophanies were simply acts of Divine power, belonging inseparably to the whole trinity the Missions entail an actual union of a divine person with a created effect; and in this union they display the very identity of God.

God the Son is eternally distinguished from the Father and the Spirit only by the fact that he alone is begotten from the Father; in the incarnation we see this “begottenness from the Father” united to a created effect (his human nature); the intra-Trinitarian relations of Origin (Generation of the Son and Procession of the Spirit) are the very identity of the divine persons and hence to distinctly reveal the persons (and not the divine essence) the Missions MUST reveal these relations. The created effects to whom the persons are joined are works of God’s power and as such are produced inseparably by the Trinity, hence the uniqueness of the mission to the person must be seen in its union to personal identity (the relations of origin) or it cannot be seen at all.

Following Augustine, Vidu highlights that this concept requires spiritual perception to perceive and should be considered slowly with prayer and contemplation aiming to lift our minds beyond the natural plain.

Going further, and building on Aquinas’s discussion of this, Vidu argues that the missions are in fact extensions of the trinitarian processions (the Son’s generation from the Father and the Spirit’s proceeding from Father and Son) or in other words they very identities of the divine persons into time (illustrated by considering vectors or the poles of a magnet).

On this point Vidu explores Rahner’s critique of Aquinas, are the Missions seen only through “Created Grace” or is there some additional presence, Vidu argues for “Created Grace” as sufficient, whilst affirming a real union of Divine Person to created effect, Vidu argues that Divinity is unchanging and hence the observable impact of that union must be a change in the created effect with which the Person is united. And so, a divine mission extends a procession into time only by elevating something created to a new manner of existence (like a needed attracted to a magnet), Christ’s humanity was elevated and changed by union with the Person of the Son, similarly we are elevated and changed by union with the persons of the Spirit and the Son, they themselves as God are not changed.

Chapter 2 “The Visible Missions of the Son and the Spirit”
Building on Chapter 1, Vidu focusses on the Incarnation and life of Christ as the “visible mission of the Son”, the human nature of Christ acquires “the mode of existence of the Son… one of coming from the Father and of receiving life from the Father (John 5:26)”, it’s not that Christ’s humanity is swept away by Divinity but rather that, “In Christ human nature comes to participate in the divinity precisely at the point of sonship” And so, in the life of Christ we find “the realisation and expression in human categories of the eternal sonship of the Word.”

Just as the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, the Spirit’s mission comes as a consequence of the Son’s. The Spirit was not given (John 7:39) until the Son’s visible mission was complete, this provokes some interesting questions about the nature of Old Testament Saints, strongly implying at a minimum that during their earthly lives their form of connection to God was not of the same nature as ours.

Vidu argues that whilst Christ is the incarnation of the Son from the moment of conception his relation to the Spirit develops over time, hence for instance Christ growing “in favour with God” (Luke 2:52). Christ passes through every experience of human existence ultimately completing the human realisation of divine Sonship as he passes through his cursed death on the cross submitting in his humanity to the God-abandoned death his people deserve. It is then Christ ascends having completed his earthly mission that he (as both God and Man) sends the Spirit the Spirit who will unite us to God but also specifically to Christ including in his humanity and hence to all that has been experienced in the human life of Christ, Vidu suggests this from the timing of Pentecost, the fact that Christ said he must ascend or the Spirit would not come AND the Spirit’s description as the “Spirit of Christ” (a title of mediator) not only the “Spirit of God”.

“It may then be said that the ultimate outcome of the Son’s mission is the Spirit’s own mission.”

Chapter 3 “The Invisible Missions
Building on the previous two chapters, Vidu explores the reality of being indwelt by the Son and the Spirit. He argues (following the Thomistic tradition) that the indwelling of the Son comes in the form of Knowledge in particular knowing God, building on the fact that seeing him incarnate was “seeing the Father”, coming to him in faith is to See him and hence See/know the Father. Further as we know him, as his Procession is extended as an Invisible Mission’ within us we become (and Know that we have become) Sons of God. The Spirit comes as a result of this (Galatians 4:6) in the from of Love (Romans 5:5).

Vidu is keen to retain an ordering of Invisible Missions that reflects the order of the Visible Missions which as above reflects the order of the Trinitarian processions; to defend this he argues that Regeneration/being Born again by the Spirit is a Divine Operation and not a mission. In more common language, first God causes us to be born again, which leads us to being united by Faith to the Son which in turn leads to the Spirit being poured into our hearts; though Vidu clarifies that there is no gap in time between these activities.

The presence of the Son and the Spirit in us is seen not discursively but experientially by a slow infusion or influence of this Knowledge and Love upon us.

A few key implications Vidu draws out from this model are:
1. That the Spirit “seals” us (Eph 1:13) guarantees that we can never be snatched from Christ’s Hands (John 10:28), for (in classical trinitarian theology) the Spirit is the very bond of love between the Father and the Son, the Ultimate Metaphysical glue and hence an absolutely unbreakable bond.
2. The love that the Spirit pours into our hearts (Rom 5:5) should in an important sense be seen as the Love for the Father that grew in Christ in his human life; this is the Spirit of Christ who comes to us via the God-Man uniting us essentially to the life of that God-Man. Yes we are slowly infused with/changed by this BUT in the first sense we are joined to it and hence it is seen as ours. This provides an ontological ground for both Progressive Sanctification and the Reformed doctrine of the Imputation of the Active Obedience of Christ.
3. Other Religions cannot be seen as containing missions of the Son or the Spirit as they do not contain the knowledge of Sonship through Christ which constitutes the Son’s mission which in turn is a necessary prerequisite for the Spirit’s Mission. Vidu leaves open the possibility of general Divine Operations being seen in Natural Religions, such that people “worship what they do not know” (Acts 17:23) but rules out any true knowledge of the Trinity.

Vidu seeks to recast the whole Christian life as an active of the experience of the Trinity and true elevation into Divine life through Knowledge (the Mission of the Son) and Love (the Mission of the Spirit). “The indwelling of the divine persons… cannot be reduced to its forensic dimension… though it… presupposes it.” “In the invisible missions we are given a foretaste of eternity, but a real taste nevertheless. In the experiential knowledge enabled by the missions we are communicated a genuine participation in the personal properties of the Son and the Spirit: knowledge and love.”

Chapter 4 The End of the Missions
“The end [goal] of our faith is not simply a human paradise, however grand, but perfect communion with God, where our proximity to him is described as seeing him face to face.”

In closing, Vidu explores the the Beatific Vision, the Saints’ ultimate reward of beholding the Glory of God. Vidu seeks to develop an account of this based primarily on Aquinas’s thought that focuses on receiving “the Light of Glory” some created way of Intellectually (not visually) beholding the essence of God though God himself rather than through creation. Engaging with critiques of this, he seeks to emphasise that it:
1. Includes sight of the Divine Persons who ARE the Essence
2. Maintains continuity with this life. Whilst there is a step change in reaching our Reward, Vidu argues that through the Divine Missions in our present “life of Grace” we develop an ever growing “taste” for God, a Taste which will be satisfied in the eschatological Divine Banquet.
3. Does not exclude the humanity of Christ, interacting with John Owen and Jonathan Edwards; Vidu argues that in seeing Christ (and all things) through God we will see Him more completely.

“The beatific vision represents the glorious fulfilment of all human desire. The enjoyment of God for which we have been creates consists in perfected knowledge and love, in union with the Father, Son and holy Spirit… By seeing the essence, we not only see God as he sees himself, i.e., through his essence, but we also see everything else in that same act. Consequently, our vision of all created things, persons, natures, and supremely, Christ himself is going to be from that lofty vantage point of the divine understanding.

My Concluding Thoughts
Vidu has presented a delightful and impressive vision of the Gospel as God himself coming out to his creation to draw us to himself.

Ironically for a work so academically stretching he argues that the “experience” of God in the Christian life is far more important than Reformed theology has often acknowledged.

Vidu’s vision seeks to “warm” every concept within theology making it experientially and devotionally rich. And his work has strengthened my joy in God. He also builds an integrated model connecting the very nature of the Trinity to the nature of Revelation and the works of Salvation and on to the Christian life and our future Reward. He does this in ways that seem obvious once stated.

This is a brief and introductory book, the case is incomplete in places, some references are missing and many implications are not explored. I would love to see further work done exploring this vision:

1. Building on this fuel for experiential religion
2. Buttressing a stronger understanding of salvation through Union with Christ in his work (including but not limited to Active Obedience, Death, Descent and Resurrection)
3. Considering the Covenants in light of the commencement of the missions at the incarnation (I think this could lend itself to the 1689 federalist view)

In Summary, this book is dense but Awesome, a book to push you to ponder the Incomprehensibility of God and even The ineffability of the works of God. It is a book to make you excited to know God, and excited to show God to others and excited to see God face to face in the next life. It's also a book to melt your brain and remind you that God is far beyond us and our grasp of these things is "as in a glass darkly".

[Wyatt Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genuinely one of the best theological works I have ever read. At only 111 pages of text, it avoids the typical fluff that many such books have and instead focuses on the argument. Further, what makes this book so good is that Vidu argues through the whole scope of how God reveals himself to us, making all the connections one would want to know. I am perturbed when books simply make affirmations biblical or otherwise without even attempting the intellectual labour of making sense of it all. Why write a book then? It's useless to just affirm, explain! I can affirm all day long. I can read a confession. Tell me why and how and when and where.

[Cbarrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rooted in Classical Trinitarianism, Vidu provides an introductory, but dense, presentation of the missions of the Son and Spirit. Following in the tradition of Augustine and Aquinas, Vidu argues that there is a close relation between the missions and the processions, stating, "the missions are illuminating the relational distinctions within God, not a distinct substance of the persons" (15.) In other words, there is no eternal functional subordination of the Son or the Spirit. The Son is sent, not because is subordinate, but "because he himself comes from the Father. The mission of the Son reveals his procession, that is, it reveals his eternal identity as the only begotten one of the Father" (quoting Augustine, p. 10-11). Vidu also addresses the implication of the mission of the Son and Spirit for the Christian's salvation and how this brings the Christian into communion with the Triune God.

It was Vidu's conviction that the missions do not flow from some kind of ontological subordination that initially drew me to this work. But the insights into the the salvific benefits delievered the greatest reward: Vidu summarizes: "In the invisible missions of the Son and the Spirit we have the most precious gift of salvation. Much more than the removal of guilt, the gift consists in a participation in the very life of the Trinity, through the indwelling in the believer of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...In the invisible missions we are given a foretaste of eternity, but a real taste nevertheless. In the experiential knowledge enabled by the missions, we are communicated a genuine participation in the personal properties of the Son and the Spirit: knowledge and love" (p. 79).

This introduction is best appreciated alongside Vidu's larger treatment of the inseparable operations of God, The Same God Who Works All Things.

In various places, Vidu also offers analysis and critique Rahner and Moltmann.

[Sam Nesbitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short, but dense read on an important albeit neglected aspect of Trinitarian theology, especially in the context of Protestantism. Although it claims to be an introduction, it is rather technical. Vidu, however, does a good job breaking complex ideas and arguments down, especially by utilizing easy-to-grasp examples. A prior knowledge of Trinitarian dogmatics will help the reader get through this work quicker, but for the novice there is a glossary provided in the back of the book. Overall, the book is clear and concise, and the reader will definitely walk away edified and challenged, especially if he reads carefully.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rooted in classical Trinitarian, Vidu presents an easy to understand elaboration of the divine missions, and gives glimpses of his scholarship found in other books on the inseparable operations.

Honestly, this was a breeze to read through, even though it is a complicated topic and needs precision.

[Scott Gregory · Rating 4 out of 5]

A needed book but contains some imperfections and could afford greater precision and clarity.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the most accessible work, but interesting and profound. This is an “introduction” only in terms of length, but not depth.

[Cory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was thought-provoking but very challenging as well. The author is not the best writer I have read.