Steve Stanley > Recent Status Updates

For modern Christians, the councils can serve as a reminder to extend all possible charity to those who disagree with us, but also to maintain strong views in the face of opposition.

[We] can learn to exercise great caution and care when dialoguing with people with whom we disagree. Theologian Kevin Vanhoozer described such virtue as ‘dialogical virtues,’ which he defines as ‘honesty, fairness, and clarity ... [and] in particular humility, the opposite of pride or self-righteousness.’

All that we say of God’s essence we must ascribe equally and eternally to all three divine persons. . . . They are not merely equal in essence; they are precisely *the same* in essence (cf. Nicaea’s *homoousios*).

[We] suggest that there is a Trinitarian shape to every doctrine. Following along the lines of Trinitarian *taxis*, this approach notes the every *locus* of Christian theology is ultimately from the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit.

Scripture has pride of place as the sole, inspired and inerrant, written revelation of God. But tradition, reason, and experience function as guides to interpreting the Bible.

Historical theology for the church seeks to study the development of doctrine as an act of love for God and as an act of love for neighbor.

Nathan Finn helpfully describes the task of the historian in light of the Greatest Commandments, indicating that what distinguishes the Christian historian is motive. Is one pursuing historical inquiry as ‘ultimately an act of worship done for the Lord’ and seeking to ‘understand and appreciate why people in the past did what they did, even when the historian disagrees with the act itself?’

If the Son eternally submits to the Father and the Holy Spirit eternally submits to the Father and Son, then it would seem to require a view of the divine persons as distinct centers of consciousness and will. Submission involves one will being voluntarily subjected to another.

First, the divine will is not a ‘part’ of God but just is his essence, as is the case with his other attributes. Second, for each divine person to possess their own will would imply that they possess an attribute distinct from one another, which would then mean they do not share in the same essence. This is trithesim.

[W]e need to be crystal clear on the fact that the missions are not three separate activities undertaken by three distinct agents, but instead the revelation of the one triune God through his acts of creation and redemption, acts that are singular in their willing because there is one and only one God. This is the clarification provided by the doctrine of inseparable operations.