Steve Stanley’s Reviews > 40 Questions About the Trinity > Status Update

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*).

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.

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.

In his [Aquinas's] scholastic treatment of the doctrine, there is one essence (the shared divine nature), two processions (eternal generation and eternal spiration), three persons (Father, Son, and Spirit), four relations (paternity, filiation, joint spiriation, and procession), and five notions (innascibility, paternity, filiation, joint spiriation, and procession).

[According to Aquinas, there are] five notions: innascibility and paternity (by which we know the Father), filiation (by which we know the Son), spiration (by which we know the Father and Son jointly), and procession (by which we know the Holy Spirit).