Status Updates From 40 Questions About the Trinity

In sum, 'heresy' is not a term to be thrown around lightly. It does not apply to tertiary or even secondary matters of biblical interpretation. Instead, it connotes a willing departure from the clear teaching of the Bible on a matter of first importance.

[H]eresy is demarcated by its departure from Scripture on a primary doctrine. . . . Primary doctrines are those that, if they were denied, would change the very essence of the Christian faith. Therefore, denying the Trinity or the deity and humanity of Christ would be considered heresy.

Heresy ... requires some definition. Heresy is not just any disagreement among Christians regarding biblical interpretation. Heresy is sometimes too flippantly or hastily thrown out in theological debate. As we are using it here, *heresy is a willful departure from the clear teaching of Scripture, as it has been interpreted by a consensus of the church throughout space and time, on a matter of primary importance*.

Thus Hebrews 1:11-12, in applying Psalm 102:25-27 to the Son, attributes to the Son divine actions (creation), divine attributes (eternality), and divine appellations ('Lord').

We should also note that, in this text [Heb 1:8-12], the writer [of Hebrews] names the Son 'Lord' (*kyrios*), and in the OT text the term 'Lord' (*kyrios*) is clearly a reference to YHWH, God himself. This gives further credence to the idea that when we see 'Lord' used as a name for Jesus in the NT, it is no mere honorific—it is an indication of his shared divinity with the Father and the Spirit.

Paul also attributes the names of 'God' and 'YHWH' to Jesus in Romans 9:5 and Philippians 2:9-11, respectively. . . . Additionally, we could point to the fact that Paul's nearly constant use of *kyrios* ('Lord') as a title for Jesus appears to be a deliberate ascription of the Tetragrammaton ('YHWH') to Jesus.

In order to identify whether or not Jesus or the Holy Spirit stood on the divine or creaturely side of the equation, the early church commonly referred to four markers: appellations, attributes, actions, and adoration.

One helpful way of thinking through these questions is the so-called Wesleyan quadrilateral, which is associated with the founder of Methodism, John Wesley: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Although Wesley himself never framed his thinking in this way exactly, it still summarizes a useful method that Protestant theology should aim for.

Everything God does outside himself he does indivisibly as Father, Son, and Spirit. But within this action, each of the divine persons acts in a manner fitting to his personal identity; the one act of God proceeds from the Father, through the Son, by or in the Holy Spirit.

In God's external activity, the persons are distinguished from one another not by distinct roles and functions but by distinct modes of actions in the one inseparable action of God.

These eternal processions ('goings forth') are unique from creaturely processions (like a parent who has a child) in two important ways: (1) they are *eternal*, having no beginning or ending in time, and (2) they are *internal*, so to speak, in the life of God. They do not produce a second and a third God but take place within the one divine essence or nature.

In God's inner life, the three persons are distinguished only by their . . . *eternal relations of origin*. The Father is from no one; he is unbegotten. The Son is eternally begotten from the Father; and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from (or is 'spirated,' breathed out by) the Father and the Son.

[T]he Trinity indicates that there are processions (Latin, *processiones*, 'goings forth' so to speak) and personal relations (*relationes*) in God. . . . God's being eternally goes forth from the Father to the Son and from the Father and Son to the Spirit. . . . Each of the three persons is identical with the divine essence, and they are only distinguished from one another by these eternal personal relations.

God is not composed of parts; no one created him or put him together. But at the same time, mysteriously, this one true God exists from all eternity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three are *persons*, not *parts*, of God.

Doctrine is important because God is important, and no doctrine is more important than the doctrine of God himself.