and Lynn Bled, Unity and Distinction, an Evaluation of One God in Three Persons by Bruce Ware. Following this, we'll have a lunch break in the afternoon and then our final two sessions this evening. A reminder again, as you have questions about the previous sessions and as you come across questions about this session as it progresses, Please take time to write them down, save them, get them to Dr. Rich Barcellos. And with that, we'll go ahead and begin and welcome Stephen up for this lecture. Thank you, Rob Roy. As he mentioned, my title for this lecture is Unity and Distinction. It's a review of The book, One God in Three Persons, Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life. The book is an edited volume by Bruce Ware and John Stark, and it was published by Crossway in 2015. The review article will be, I think, published in the next edition of the Journal of Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies. I guess it depends on, I got the thumbs up from the back, so that will be the case. So what I do not get to here, in this context, you can read it in its published format. The subject of one God and three persons is no insignificant theological topic. As I write, however, the doctrine of the Trinity, or as I speak, the doctrine of the Trinity, and particularly formulations of that doctrine defended in this particular volume, is a topic of much online debate. And I hesitate to broach the subject for this very reason. By the time of my speaking today, or even by the time this review article is published, it is likely that all that need be said will have seen the light of day. Yet this debate is not new, and as this volume, or even as this volume attests. And every indication is that apart from wholesale retractions, the doctrinal formulations advanced within the pages of this volume will remain contentious for some time. According to Warren Stark, the unified burden of these essays is to demonstrate from across the various theological disciplines that a proper conception of gender relations and roles is grounded in and patterned after the ad intra life of the triune God, in which the son is understood to be eternally subordinate or submissive to the authority of the father. The aim, in other words, is to establish and defend the doctrine of eternal relational authority submission, or eras, against its critics, and so to maintain that Eras grounds gender complementarianism. These essays, however, are not as unified as Ware and Stark lead us to believe. Neither Haken nor Oliphant, in their essays, make any mention of Eras or gender complementarianism. Lethem's survey, that is Robert Lethem's survey of the patristic development of the doctrine of eternal generation, stands in uneasy tension with Eras, especially in view of the varied reception of the doctrine of eternal generation by other contributors to this volume. There's also significant divergence on the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11.3 and the understanding of the divine will with Claunch criticizing the argumentation of Grudem and Ware on both topics. Despite these and other points of disagreement, this book, taken as a whole, does portend to handle the major topics necessary to any discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity, namely, as the subtitle would indicate, the unity of the divine essence, the distinction of the divine persons, and the practical implications of the doctrine of the Trinity. With some notable exceptions, moreover, these essays articulate and defend varying formulations of these three topics that depart from creedal and confessional orthodoxy. In order to substantiate this rather sweeping and serious claim, rather than evaluating each essay on its own terms, what follows will analyze the variegated argumentation of the book on the three aforementioned topics, that is, unity of divine essence, the distinction of the divine persons, and practical implications. Before we get there, there are at least two issues raised by this collection of essays that deserve some comment before substantive analysis. Both of these considerations contextualize not only my review, but also the argumentation of these essays. The first consideration is the specter of heresy. A number of essays legitimately worry over the charge of heresy leveled by critics of Eras, wherein Stark insists in the introduction that these indictments tend to trivialize the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity. Clonch briefly introduces the allegations of Arianism or semi-Arianism, voiced by Kevin Giles, Thomas McCall, and others. While for Michael Ovey, Gonson-Nasselli, and Bruce Ware, respectively, the charge that ERAS entails the Aryan heresy frames the state of the question and subsequent argumentation of their respective essays. We should commend these authors for being concerned to answer such serious charges. It is, however, quite insufficient to argue, as do Ovey, Gonson-Nasselli, and Ware, that ERAS is not Aryan. the charge against Eras has never been that it is a point-for-point repristination of this particular 4th century heresy. Rather, a number of historians and theologians have argued that Eras compromises the doctrine of consubstantiality by proposing that the son's personal mode of subsistence is one of eternal subordination to the authority of the father. Rather than locating the personal distinction between the father and the son, in the doctrine of the intra-eternal processions, Eras introduces a substantial difference among the persons that divides the divine essence. Such a position no doubt has some affinity to Arian argumentation, but it is not Arianism full-blown. Nevertheless, given the gravity of the charge, it is necessary for adherents of Eras to prove positively that their doctrine is consistently and coherently orthodox. The burden of proof lies with Ovey, Gons, Naselli, Ware, and any other theologian proposing the eternal submission of the sun to explain how Eras coheres with the universal Christian confession that in the language of the so-called Athanasian Creed, we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the essence. To refer only that Eras is not inconsistent with consubstantiality is different than arguing that Eras teaches and upholds the doctrine of consubstantiality. In view of the supposed subordination of the son to the father's authority, the question of how the son is as omnipotent as the father, the question of how the divine essence is yet undivided, remains glaringly unanswered in this volume. In this respect, this book does little to allay the concerns of Eras's opponents. One can only hope that forthcoming works will answer the question. The second preliminary consideration that I have here is a matter of historiography. And the point that I make is that many of these essays approach relevant biblical texts and theological texts without due attention to the history of interpretation. Three of the four biblical essays in this volume do not mention a single interpreter of scripture prior to the 20th century. And the fourth that does mentions, I believe, Augustine, but I know for sure Calvin, and that's it. There's no representation of the traditionary readings of relevant biblical texts. On the historical side, there are a number of anachronisms. Scott Oliphant, for example, continues to critique Thomas' doctrine of divine simplicity as if it was formulated entirely on the basis of reason alone, which is not true. John Stark responds to arguments that have been used against Eras. by appealing to Augustine to say that Augustine's doctrines of eternal generation and inseparable operations somehow imply an order of authority and submission in the Godhead. And that's to make Augustine, in fact, he actually argues the same point from Calvin and Owen, and to make that argument is entirely anachronistic. In order for Augustine, Calvin, and Owen to have to give any support to ERAS, they have to state the doctrine explicitly. We cannot go back and say, well, my dogmatic position looks a lot like what they're saying, or my dogmatic position is somehow implied by what they're saying, and then somehow argue that these authors from the past had articulated that very argument. The point I make is that the burden of proof, for example, rests with Stark to argue that a point very much different than he does, but actually it is one that is, strictly speaking, impossible, since the only versions of eternal subordination or submission, rather than incarnate submission, of which Augustine, Calvin, and Owen were aware, those of Arius, Servetus, Osinus, and Biddle, to name only a few, were ones that they rejected as unbiblical and anti-Trinitarian. And so there are two major historiographical problems here and a major problem. with a lack of attention to the history of interpretation. I should say that there is at least one essay that escapes these problems, and that's Michael Haken, and it's probably because his essay really has no other intent but to analyze Andrew Fuller's Trinitarianism without any regard whatsoever to the contemporary debates regarding eras and gender roles. So with that said, we turn to the issue of the unity of the divine essence To discuss the unity of the divine essence prior to the distinction of the divine persons within that essence is not to suggest that the two topics are unrelated as if to speak of the one God is not to speak of the Holy Trinity. The one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each divine person has the whole undivided divine essence, and each subsists within the one undivided divine essence, so that whatever is true of the divine essence is true of each divine person. To be sure, this is a great mystery, but it is one confessed without reservation by the Catholic Universal Church. Perhaps the primary question raised by this book regarding the unity of the divine essence pertains to what we might call the mode of that divine unity. Is it understood with the vast majority of the Christian tradition as singular and substantial, or in line with more recent theological proposals as generic and social? The question is not insignificant, not only in view of the book's subtitle, which promises some consideration of the topic, but also in view of the criticism that Eras entails a denial of singular and substantial unity, especially in its conception of the divine will, and so parts company with classical formulations of divine simplicity and the consubstantiality of the divine persons. Unfortunately, the topic does not receive the direct and explicit attention it deserves, and where it is broached, the discussion is marred by unexplained assumptions and problematic argumentation. I will consider three such instances. The first instance that's problematic I have as a question, wither divine unity? Where has the doctrine of the unity of the divine essence gone? Several authors simply assert that they affirm the full deity of all three persons of the Trinity, as if such an affirmation was a sufficient explanation of how the Son can be both of the same essence and eternally subordinate to the Father. Grudem employs this tactic, stating that the three persons are equal in deity, so that each person is fully God, and there is only one God. Yet the remainder of his essay never once explains the mode of this unity, which is rather disconcerting, given that he affirms multiple wills in God, claims the doctrine of the Son's eternal subordination is orthodox, and levels the charge of modalism against the doctrine of inseparable operations, all the while rather consistently conflating the revelation of God's works ad extra with the ad intra subsistence of the divine persons. Not only does he fail to explain the mode of divine unity therefore, but Grudem proposes a doctrine of the son's eternal subordination which does not, and in my estimation, cannot cohere with any reasonable attempt to uphold the simple biblical confession, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Christopher Cowan's argumentation unfolds similarly, though in his case, as he looks at the Gospel of John. He affirms that John 1.1 teaches that the Father and Son have the same divine nature, essence, or being, but without any consideration either of the mode of this unity or the implications of this unity of essence for John's inspired record of the incarnate Son's mission. Like Grudem, he conflates ad extra with ad intra without so much a word of rationale as to how an eternal relation of hierarchy and subordination, his words, is consistent with any doctrine of the unity of the divine essence, let alone Jesus' own declaration, I am the Father, are one. Several essays that attempt to answer the charge that Eras denies consubstantiality never address the topic of the divine essence itself, where, for example, begins and ends his essay by asserting that, quote, advocates of eras have consistently affirmed the full, unqualified, and eternal homoousios of the son with the father and the spirit, end quote. The intervening argument, however, never once touches on the nature of the divineousia that the persons are said to have in common or the mode in which the divine persons actually have thatousia or being in common. In the meantime, the argument where it does advance is that the son's personal relation to the father is one of eternal subordination or submission. This is not only less than helpful, but it leaves the doctrine of the divine unity floating in the air and proposes an argument for eternal filial subordination that leaves no conceptual space for a coherent biblical and theological explanation of the unity of the divine essence. The second issue is divine simplicity. The doctrine of divine simplicity, as we know from last year's conference, teaches that God is not composed of parts. There is no distinction in God between his existence and essence. And while God reveals and we apprehend his attributes in a distinct manner, since we cannot comprehend God as he is in himself, there is no real distinction in God between his attributes. All that is in God is God. There is therefore nothing prior to or apart from God that accounts for his existence and essence. Given the pedigree of such a doctrine in the history of the church, and its important function in the codification of creedal Trinitarianism in the early church, it is rather troubling that the historical essays of this volume are marked by serious inconsistency on the topic. Augustine's doctrine of divine simplicity has no bearing on Stark's argumentation, the doctrine making only the briefest of appearances in a footnote. Michael Ove's analysis of Athanasius, among some other church fathers of the fourth century, not only ignores his doctrine of divine simplicity, but is in fact contradicted by Lethem's documentation of Athanasius' adherence to the doctrine vis-a-vis the doctrine of the eternal generation of the sun. And that documentation by Lethem is actually in this book. In fact, what Ove fails to recognize in his treatment of the 4th century sources is what Lethem makes clear. The human father-son relation is of a different order than the divine father-son relation, and that on account of the simplicity and the unity of the divine essence. Ove argues that the patristic doctrine of ordinal relation entails the authority of the father and the submission of the son. Such hierarchy, however, necessitates composition and gradation, contrary to Athanasius' own insistence that the divine essence is non-composite, simple, undivided, indeed one. The philosophical and theological essays in this book offer no correction to these problems. In fact, the matter is further complicated. Only Scott Oliphant addresses the topic of divine simplicity at any length. He seems to affirm against certain analytic philosophers aspects of the classical doctrine. God is not composed of parts. The essential attributes are identical to God. and nothing outside of God accounts for his existence or his essence. At the same time, there are several deeply troubling lines of argumentation which undermine Oliphant's affirmation of even these aspects of the classical doctrine. First, Oliphant averts that the historical doctrine of divine simplicity has never denied distinctions in God. There is, he argues, a real distinction in God among the divine attributes, distinctions that, quote, accrue to him essentially, end quote. Apart from the fact that it's hard to make sense of how attributes accrue, are they added to God essentially? The historic doctrine of divine simplicity has rejected the real distinction of the divine attributes. Divine simplicity does affirm both modal and personal distinctions, modal being distinctions of the revelation of the divine attributes, and so our rational apprehension of them, and personal, that is the distinction between the divine persons as they subsist in relation one with another within the divine essence, so that the father is not the son and the son is not the spirit, et cetera. Oliphant however fails to distinguish between real modal and personal distinctions and so affirms the real distinction of the divine attributes. This is to affirm composition in God and so to deny divine simplicity. Now I should interject here that there's some people who want to say that there's a hard doctrine of divine simplicity and a soft doctrine of divine simplicity. I think the fact of the matter is there just is divine simplicity and we either accept it or reject it. Second, Oliphant predicates simplicity of God only apart from and prior to his decree to create, stating that there are, quote, properties that accrue to him by virtue of his decision to create. God assumes these covenantal properties in the same manner, Oliphant argues, as the sun unites to his person a true human nature in the incarnation. Just as the hypostatic union does not change the sun's deity, so the argument runs, the assumption of covenantal properties does not change God's essential character. Oliphant wants to distinguish between essential and covenantal properties in part to argue against facile analogies between human relations and the intra-divine life, including the order of subsistence of the divine persons. Yet the argument against such analogies does not require a Christological foundation for the doctrine of the divine attributes. Indeed, the cost of Oliphant's argument is too high. In addition to the fact that scripture does not anywhere extend the logic of the hypostatic union beyond the person of the incarnate son, nor is it the case that Christology is the foundation of theology, Such an argument assumes that God as such cannot work ad extra or relate to the created order. That is, God can neither create nor redeem without taking to himself created covenantal properties. That is, the argument denies that God is pure act and thus omnipotent. If Oliphant were to reply that these covenantal properties are in fact divine rather than creaturely, then the analogy with the hypostatic union falls apart, since the Eternal Sun united to himself a created human nature, not a covenantal divine nature. Moreover, this would also contravene divine simplicity. It would suggest that new divine properties accrue to God by virtue of creation, which is to say that God would be a composite of essential attributes and covenantal properties. Whatever covenantal properties are then, they are not in God according to the same mode of existence as his essential properties. Perhaps this explains why Oliphant does not affirm that God's essence is his existence or that God's attributes are not really distinct in God. By speaking of God's essential attributes and distinction from this new set of properties that accrue to him by virtue of his decree to create, it would appear that Oliphant is attempting to create conceptual space for a mode of existence at extra that does not change God's mode of existence at intra. In addition to the fact that this is entirely unnecessary given the traditional doctrine of divine omnipotence, for example, it is also the case that to separate the divine existence from the divine essence or to posit a real distinction among the divine attributes is to suggest that there is in fact something prior to or apart from God that accounts for his very existence. In Oliphant's construal, it seems that the divine will, God's decision to create, ultimately accounts not just for the existence of the world order outside of God, but for God's own full existence and essence. In any case, this is not the doctrine of divine simplicity, as it necessitates composition and succession, indeed becoming in the very essence and life of God. Finally, we should say this about Oliphant. He insists that we must think of simplicity and Trinity in biblical terms. This is no doubt correct. He makes this claim as a counterpoise to Thomas's supposedly rationalistic formulation of simplicity without, however, any shred of biblical argumentation for his own formulation. Oliphant has not only confused Thomas's a posteriori use of reason in theological reflection for an a priori cognitive foundation, but he has himself positioned the hypostatic union as the a priori foundation for his own doctrine of the divine attributes, again without any biblical argumentation. Perhaps then the simplest critique we can offer is this, what's good for Thomas's gander is good for Oliphant's goose. Now why is the doctrine of divine simplicity so important to a proper formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. And why is the historical and theological argumentation of this book regarding that doctrine so woefully deficient? Quite simply because the triune God is simple. Composition is denied of both the one divine essence and the three divine persons who have that essence. Simplicity is in God, according to Lucas Trocadious, altogether indivisible and absolute, admitting of no diversity, composition of parts, or accidents, neither in God himself, nor in the persons, nor in his works. Simplicity, then, is a perfection of the persons, Since, as John Webster points out, the whole and the same essence is in them all, and the whole and the same essence abiding in each one. Excuse me, that's trocadious again. I quote Webster later. Simplicity and the distinction of persons are not competitors that need to be reconciled, opposites that need correlation. Here's Webster. God is so to be conceived that personal distinction and simplicity are acknowledged as equiprimordial, fully coherent and mutually though asymmetrically determinative. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit thus each have the one simple non-composite divine essence. The personal relations are subsistent, that is, within the undivided divine essence. As such, divine simplicity circumscribes the kind of personal properties that can be attributed to each of the divine persons. Properly understood, divine simplicity does not allow for the attribution of personal properties that divide the divine essence, such as submission or subordination. but instead compels us to speak of the personal relations and properties in a way that acknowledges that the triune God is one simple non-composite. The doctrine of divine simplicity then necessitates a doctrine of the divine processions that unlike eras does not entail composition, division, gradation, or succession within the essence. The third matter regarding the unity of the divine essence relates to the divine will. Critics of Eras have argued that to predicate eternal authority and eternal submission of the Father and the Son, respectively, is to divide the divine will, and so to divide the singular and simple divine essence. Since authority and submission are predicates of will, by arguing that the eternal relation of Father and Son is defined by authority and submission, proponents of Eras predicate separate, distinct wills of the persons of the Trinity. But as Butner indicates, quote, if a will is a property of nature, then the Trinity has one will, and thus one person of the Trinity cannot qua divinity eternally obey or submit to another. Rather than one divine will then, Eras posits three distinct divine wills, and so three divine natures or essences. On these terms, eras entails a form of tritheism. Responses to this criticism in this book are varied. None of the philosophical or theological essays address the topic apart from Ware's opaque references to the son as the agent who implements the father's will. Stark answers the criticism by asserting without explanation that the son's will is not a second distinct will, but a will that he shares from the father. Hamilton, in an essay on 1 Corinthians 15, 24, and 28, retreats to mystery and biblicism in the face of the problem. He says we must allow the Bible to shape our theology rather than constraining the Bible with the cords of what we deem admissible. This, however, is to evade the question and to obscure the fact that critics of Eras have raised this concern on valid and biblical and theological grounds. By attributing both a divine will and a human will to Christ, the God-man, scripture itself suggests that will is a property of nature, not of person. If these approaches are insufficient, others are simply dangerous. Grudem and Cowan, for instance, do not hesitate to affirm that will is a property of the person and that therefore there are distinct divine wills. According to Grudem in John 5.21, Jesus attributes, quote, superior authority to the father, authority by which he carries out this activity of choosing as the father has directed. In light of John 6, verses 37 through 39, he concludes further, therefore the son only chooses in conjunction with what he has been shown of the will of the father. When the son chooses people for salvation, he is simply following the directives of the father. Yes, both father and son participate in choosing, yet their actions are not identical but distinct. The father chooses, the father shows the son who has been chosen, and the son chooses those who have been given to him by the father. Cowan covers far more material in the Gospel of John, but he argues much the same as Grudem. In response to those who emphasize the unity of divine action, Cowan goes so far to write that, quote, the emphasis on the father and the son's unity runs the risk of swallowing up any distinction between the two. Jesus' will is in harmony with the father's, but he obeys him nonetheless. Now get this, the oneness of their wills should not be used to trump John's presentation of the son's loving, willing obedience to his father's commands. According to Grudem and Cowan then, the father and the son have distinct wills, even if they are marked by an external relation of participation or harmony. The problem with this argumentation is twofold at least. First, neither author acknowledges any distinction between the son's acts as the incarnate mediator, which are acts of the person according to both natures, and his subsistence as the eternal son of God. They reduce without remainder the ad extra missions of the persons to the ad intra life of the triune God. The economy swallows whole theology proper. In this construal however, the sun incarnate has one will, contrary to the Christological formula of Chalcedon, and the pronouncement of the sixth ecumenical council at Constantinople in 681 against the monothelite heresy. That is, that Christ had one will rather than two. Second, the second problem is that by attributing distinct wills to the divine persons, both Grudem and Cowan attribute ultimate active willing to the father and submissive passive willing to the son, such that the son participates in the father's willing only by way of submission. Not only does this undermine divine simplicity, but it effectively denies the son's co-equality and consubstantiality with the father, since the divine will the father has is not the divine will the son has. The son may be said to participate in the father's will, but only insofar as he submissively wills. The net effect of such argumentation is multiple wills rather than one simple, immutable, eternal divine will. By any other name, this is tritheism. If there was any doubt that most proponents of Eras divide the one divine will, Klonch argues in this very volume that Ware, Grudem, and others have opted for a doctrine of three distinct divine wills. Not only does Clonch interpret some of the biblical material regarding Christ's submission in a different manner than his cohorts, circumscribing submission to the Son's incarnate mission, but he also rightly points out that their argumentation for three defined wills is a departure from orthodoxy. Here is Clonch at length. One often overlooked feature of such a proposal for Eras is that this understanding of the eternal relationship between father and son seems to entail a commitment to three distinct wills in the imminent trinity. In order for the son to submit willingly to the will of the father, the two must possess distinct wills. This way of understanding the imminent trinity does run counter to the pro-Nicene tradition as well as the medieval reformation and post-reformation reform traditions that grew from it. According to traditional Trinitarian theology, the will is predicated of the one undivided essence so that there is only one will in the imminent Trinity. Though Claunch thinks that Grudem and Ware have not abandoned all traditional Trinitarian thinking, I'm not so sure, He nevertheless admits that they have made, quote, a conscious and informed choice to conceive of will as a property of person rather than essence. Such a three-willed trinity thus grounds the conviction that structures of authority and submission actually serve as one of the means of differentiating the divine persons. Klontz recognizes that this raises the specter of the monothelite heresy denounced at Constantinople in 681, and thus proceeds to argue that the distinction of the divine person should not be rooted in the divine will, but in the doctrine of the divine processions. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct within the divine essence, not on account of three distinct divine wills, but on account of the order of origination, or taxus. The father is unbegotten, the son is begotten of the father, and the spirit proceeds from both. Despite problems with Klontsch's further insistence that this provides an indirect link between the imminent trinity and human gender relations, he is absolutely correct in his assessment that Eras, as argued by Grumman Ware, entails a doctrine of three divine wills. in which case, as already noted, because Eras predicates will as a property of the divine persons rather than the divine essence, it is guilty of dividing the one simple and substantial divine essence, and so of compromising both the doctrine of the unity of essence and the doctrine of the full unqualified consubstantiality of the divine persons. If the son's divine will is subordinate or submissive to the father's divine will, then despite claims to harmony or participation, the son is of another divine essence than the father. Again, by any other name, this is tritheism. As we think of what we've considered regarding the unity of divine essence as is explained by proponents of eras, I want to say that eras, I think, has two roads it could take. Given the insufficient and problematic argumentation of this book with respect to the unity of the divine essence, proponents of ERAS have two theological roads they could travel. If they wished to maintain Eras, they could openly reject the doctrines of singular and substantial unity, divine simplicity, and one divine will, and wrote Eras more explicitly in some version of social Trinitarianism in which the divine essence is conceived of as generic, that is, a genus of deity which father, son, and spirit share or in which they participate equally. To do so, however, does not necessarily free Eras from the difficulties identified above. since the proposition upon which social doctrines of the Trinity hang, that the divine persons are individual centers of consciousness, has not been immune from some of the very same criticism. How can there be three minds, three wills in one divine mind and one divine will? Same criticism applies. The other road, the one less traveled in contemporary theology, but far more preferable on biblical, historical, and theological grounds, would be to articulate a clear and coherent commitment to the classical doctrines of divine unity, simplicity, and the one divine will. This would also entail commitment to a doctrine of the distinction of the divine persons focused solely on the eternal processions or subsistent relations. This second road, however, would require the rejection of eras. that a well-formed doctrine of the eternal processions does necessitate the rejection of eras, forms the burden of the next section. And so it is to the subject of the divine persons or the distinction of the divine persons that I want to now turn. So we've considered the unity of the divine essence, now the distinction of the divine persons. The one simple divine essence is common to all three persons of the Trinity. each person true and complete God, distinct one from another, not essentially, not according to nature as if there were another thing and another thing in the Godhead, but personally according to distinct modes of subsistence within the divine essence as another one and another one. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are therefore of the same essence, homoousios, distinct according to their intra-relations and incommunicable personal properties. They are distinct, in other words, by virtue of the eternal processions. The father is of none, unbegotten, or to use an older term, inassable. The son is begotten of the father, and the spirit proceeds from both, according to the Western tradition. Not surprisingly, the argumentation of this book on the distinction of the divine persons is varied. Some authors explain the distinction only in terms of the father's eternal authority and the son's eternal submission. In other cases, the doctrine of the divine processions is affirmed but modified as if eras is a necessary entailment, for example, of the son's eternal generation. To suppose, however, that the personal modes of subsistence within the divine essence entail authority and submission is, as I will argue, contrary to the doctrine of the divine processions. By proposing, moreover, that the son's incarnate submission is indicative of eternal submission, Eras flattens the eternal processions and the temporal missions, failing to maintain the necessary though asymmetrical relation between the ad-intra-divine acts and the ad-extra-divine operations. There are several things we want to consider here. First of all, we need to think of the way the book presents the question of the relative and personal properties of the persons of the Trinity. One of the principal arguments employed to defend Eras against the charge that it entails the denial of consubstantiality is that authority and submission are not essential divine properties, but relative and personal properties of the father and the son respectively. Authority and submission, according to Ware, are person-specific properties that do not pertain in any way to the divine essence. He explains, quote, Advocates of Eras, in line with the structure of Trinitarian understanding proposed by Athanasius and Nicaea, distinguish between the one common divine nature possessed eternally and fully by each of the three persons of the Godhead, and person-specific properties that are not of the nature or essence of God, but are distinguishing properties of each of the persons of the Godhead. The son's property of eternally submitting to the father is a relational property that pertains to his distinctive personhood and not to his essence, which essence is common to and fully possessed by each Trinitarian person. Gons and Nasseli advance a similar argument against the criticisms of Thomas McCall and Yandel. At some length, they aver that if ERAS compromises the co-equality and consubstantiality of the divine persons, then so does the Nicene doctrine of the divine processions. They counter that authority and submission, however, are not properties of the divine essence, but unique, incommunicable properties of the persons that define their intra-Trinitarian relationships. As such, they say, properties that adhere in the persons, and not in the essence, do not entail a denial of homoousion. Consequently, by affirming the eternal generation of the sun, and the eternal procession of the Spirit, the Church has not been unknowingly denying homoousion since Nicaea. Neither then do other properties inherent in the persons, like authority over and submission under, necessarily entail the denial of homoousion. This argument, however, entails a rather gratuitous assumption, namely that all relative and personal properties are alike. or to be more specific, that authority and submission are of the same order as unbegottenness, generation, and procession. It is no doubt correct that the predication of relative and personal properties, per se, does not entail a denial of co-equality and consubstantiality. Credal Trinitarianism emphatically insists that what is predicated of the divine persons regarding their personal subsistence is not and may not be predicated of the divine essence. The relative and personal properties are incommunicable. Filiation and generation predicated of the son, for example, cannot be predicated of the divine essence, let alone of the father or the spirit. Nevertheless, neither Gonson-Nasselli nor Ware admit that Nicene logic does preclude the predication of just any relative and personal properties. As stated without qualification, the argument assumes that we could predicate any property of the divine persons without compromising co-equality and consubstantiality. Is it plausible, however, to argue that the son is a finite creature personally, but infinite and divine essentially? To be sure, the incarnate son is finite according to his assumed human nature, and infinite according to his divine nature. As it pertains, however, to the son's personal mode of subsistence as the eternal son of the father, the contradiction is obvious. Yet as stated, the argumentation of these authors does nothing to preclude attributing finitude to the son qua son. I assume they would recoil at the very thought, but they nowhere acknowledge that certain relative and personal properties cannot be attributed to the son, and that precisely because he is of the same essence as the father, precisely because he has the whole undivided divine essence from the father. A very important rule of Trinitarian predication is well stated by the Reformed Orthodox theologian Francis Shynel. He says, when we describe the divine nature, we should not abstract it from the three persons. And when we describe a divine person, we should not abstract him from the divine nature. By insisting that authority and submission are predicated of the father and the son, Without any reference to their subsistence within the divine essence, Ghans, Naselli, and Ware have abstracted the divine persons from the divine nature and thus introduced division in the divine essence. Yes, the persons are not the essence. but the persons are distinct from one another, subsisting within the divine essence. Their ad intra relation is subsistent. Co-equality and consubstantiality therefore limit or circumscribe the relative and personal properties that can be predicated of the divine persons. Or to put the matter more plainly, co-equality and consubstantiality necessitate a well-formed doctrine of the divine processions and simultaneously rule out the predication of authority and submission as relative and personal properties of the Father and the Son. And so this necessitates a more specific treatment of the topic of the divine processions. So we want to consider whether the the discussion in this book of eternal processions or eternal authority submission. The doctrine of eternal processions answers a most important question. What personal and relative properties account for the real distinction of the three persons subsisting in the one undivided divine essence? The Western theological tradition has answered that the father is of none, unbegotten, The Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from both. Apart from Lethem's analysis of the historical development of the doctrine of eternal generation, the other authors of this book render two basic theological judgments regarding the doctrine of the divine processions. The first replaces the doctrine with eras. The second regards eras as a logical entailment of the doctrine of processions. Both approaches are problematic. First, then a consideration of the thesis that ERAS replaces processions. The doctrine of the divine processions is replaced with ERAS by a whole host of authors in this book. None of them denounce the doctrine of divine processions, at least not in this volume. None, however, clearly affirm the doctrine, each arguing that eras by itself accounts for the real distinction of the divine persons. Grudem, Cowan, and Hamilton appeal to scripture to make the case. Grudem, despite his insistence upon the orthodoxy of both the real distinction of the divine persons and the full deity of the Son, sets aside the doctrine of the divine processions for a doctrine of eternal authority and eternal submission, arguing, quote, the New Testament teaches that the Father had authority over the Son and the Son submitted to that authority even before the world was made. For Grudem, what makes the father the father is authority, and what makes the son the son is submission or subordination. Cowan argues that the Gospel of John teaches that the son's incarnate subordination is reflexive of an eternal relation of hierarchy in which the son is eternally subordinate to the eternal authority of the father. while Hamilton contends that 1 Corinthians 15, 24 and 28 teaches that as the son is eternally subordinate to the father, so he will continue to be subordinate to the father after the consummation of all things. Perhaps the most basic criticism of such a construal of the biblical material is that none of the biblical texts adduced in favor of Eras actually teach either that the father's personal mode of subsistence is defined by authority or that the son's personal mode of subsistence is defined by submission. The point is simply taken for granted. Hamilton, for example, passes over several viable alternatives to his reading of 1 Corinthians 15, 24, and 28. He disregards the context which speaks at length of the appropriated acts of the son incarnate, namely death and resurrection. Is it not possible that the son's handing over the kingdom to his father is likewise an appropriated act of the incarnate mediator? Yet Hamilton, without justification, assumes that son in First Corinthians 1528 refers to the second person of the Trinity in his eternal mode of subsistence. He not only ignores the possibility that this is a royal and therefore messianic and mediatorial designation as the context suggests, but also without a word of explanation construes the apostles instruction about God's add extra work of consummation as if it were constitutive of God's own Trinitarian being. The same problem persists in Cowan's interpretation of the submission language in John's gospel. In addition to arguing that the very names father and son denote a relationship of hierarchy, Cowan averts that the sender-sent language in the gospel is indicative of an eternal relation of authority and subordination. Notably absent, however, is any justification for a flattening of the divine economy or divine missions into the ad intra subsistence of the Trinitarian persons. A theological privileging of the economy runs roughshod over God's life in himself, as if the economy of revelation and redemption could encompass and exhaust the fullness of the divine life. This is all the more disconcerting in light of the absence of any treatment of John's declaration that the eternal word, John 1.1, the Son, is monogamous, the only begotten of the Father. None of the texts, moreover, that Grudem proposes in favor of Eras actually teach that the son's personal mode of subsistence in the divine essence is one of eternal submission. All of the texts that he cites refer instead to Trinitarian acts that have their term or their fulfillment at extra. They all refer to God's transient acts that go forth from him towards objects external to him, predestination, creation, and even Christ's exaltation, which are the three sets of texts that Grudem appeals to. All of these divine works originate in God, to be sure, and in their execution, they mirror, not exhaustively, but in principle, the order of subsistence. They do not, however, constitute the relative and personal properties of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The argument for replacing the doctrine of eternal processions with eras is marked by a second problem, evident not only in the aforementioned biblical essays, but also in the philosophical and theological argumentation of the book. And that is, to replace the doctrine of the divine processions with eras is to replace ontological categories with functional categories as the explanation for the distinction of the divine persons. It is to posit then ineluctably subordination or submission as constitutive of the son's personal mode of subsistence in relation to the father. And so it is to undermine the necessary theological justification for the co-equality and consubstantiality of the divine persons. As already noted, Gons and Naselli, as well as Ware, respond to the charge that Eras denies the homoousios by arguing that in the same way as Nicene Orthodoxy predicated generation as the personal property of the son, so Eras predicates submission or subordination as the personal property of the son. This assumes that generation and submission are of the same order. They are not. The divine processions are subsistent relations. They are within the undivided divine essence, and as such, they are ontological categories. To be sure, the son's generation from the father is not predicated of the divine essence. But because the generation of the son from the father is a necessary, eternal, immutable, impassable, and therefore internal act of procession, it does not then terminate at extra. Subordination and submission, however, are functional categories pertaining to those divine works that do terminate at extra. That is, they go out from God into the created order. The father sends the son into the world, and the son humbles himself, taking the form of a servant, freely we might add, for us and for our salvation. Philippians 2 and verses 6 and 7 is in fact a key text ignored by Eras. The principle or the foundation from which the son humbles himself and takes the form of a servant is not one of already being in submission to the father, but one of true and complete deity as the eternal only begotten son of the father. The ad intramodes of subsistence, in other words then, are not functional categories. on account of adopting such a category mistake where, for example, evades the key question that Thomas McCall asked of Eras. That is, given the doctrine of divine processions or subsistent relations, why would we need to appeal to functional categories to account for genuine distinction? Moreover, whereas eternal generation and the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Son are mutually reinforcing, submission or subordination leaves co-equality and consubstantiality hanging in the balance. Eternal generation, that is, the internal, eternal, immutable, and impassable personal act of the Father communicating the divine essence to the Son, explains the mode or manner in which the Son has the very same simple undivided essence as the Father and the Spirit. He has the essence from the Father, even as the Father has the whole undivided essence from none, and the Spirit from the Father and the Son. eternal generation entails no subordination. Since as John Webster notes, both the father's generating and the son's being generated are ontological perfections. In fact, each of the divine processions, excuse me, each personal mode of subsistence is an ontological perfection in virtue of the fact that each divine person subsists in relation with the other persons within the divine essence, each having the one simple divine essence. One of the basic features of the doctrine of eternal generation, according to Webster again, is the denial that the relation between begetter and begotten is one between two realities who thereby come to be opposed to each other in an external relation. Begetting and consubstantiality are inseparable. One could make the case that authority and submission are explanatory concepts that uphold the real distinction of the divine persons. But the relation that thus obtains between the two persons, a relation of authority and submission, actually oppose the divine persons in an external relation. Co-opting and reimagining the doctrine of taxis, or order, as if it justified predicating authority and subordination as personal modes of subsistence, offers no help to Eras on this point, since the order of subsistence is also marked by the divine perfection. Taxus does not entail that the son is under the father. It indicates that the son is eternally the son of the father in subsistent relation to him. Taxus therefore admits of no superiority, priority, rank, or hierarchy, contra, gons, and nocelli. If being under the father is constitutive of the son's eternal relation with the father, co-equality and consubstantiality can be maintained by eras only by way of special pleading. In which case, by omitting the divine processions in favor of Eras, these authors offer no explanation of how authority and submission as modes of subsistence perform the same vital theological function as the eternal processions. If eternal generation, for example, is jettisoned for eternal subordination, how is the son of the same essence as the father, let alone of the same power and majesty? The case is rather grim, in fact. By substituting authority and subordination for unbegottenness and generation, proponents of eras have introduced priority, sequence, gradation, and rank into the Trinitarian relations, and thus unavoidably contravene co-equality and consubstantiality. Now there's a different argument in the book. Not that eras replaces processions, but that processions somehow entail eras. What are we to make of the seemingly different argument of Clonch and Stark that a divine order of authority and submission is the logical entailment of the divine processions? Despite the fact that both appeal to Augustine's Trinitarianism, the form of the argument differs between these two authors. Having affirmed the doctrine of the divine processions, Klont argues that the doctrine of Taxus provides some rationale for what he calls an analogical correspondence between the Trinitarian missions at extra and the order of subsistence at intra. The question of whether the sun's eternal subsistence itself entails submission, that is, whether taxis entails the eternal submission of the sun, Clanch does not say explicitly. His discussion focuses so much on the appropriation of the one divine will by the divine persons that the question receives no formal answer. Stark, on the other hand, argues that Augustine's doctrine of eternal generation provides the ground for an order of paternal authority and filial submission in the Godhead. On occasion, Stark speaks as if this order is a feature of God's external operations, while in other instances the order is clearly understood as eternal, as if it was in fact a logical entailment of eternal generation. Two responses are in order here. First, the order of origination or subsistence, that is taxis, does not entail an order of subordination, unless of course one wishes to argue that the father is primary essence and the son secondary essence, but that would be tritheism. If notions of order and origin are to retain their distinctly Trinitarian cast, it is necessary to recognize that taxes is not in order of sequential superiority or successive priority. It is necessarily absent all notions of degree, rank, hierarchy, indeed, subordination. Immanuel Durand correctly observes that the father's unoriginate status can only be envisaged in a rigorous fashion if one accepts to refine analogically two complex notions, that of an order of nature and that of an origin. It is necessary, he continues, to purify these notions of any compositional complexity in order to apply them to the inner life of the Trinity without projecting on that life falsely any notion of interiority and posteriority or of supremacy and subordination. In effect, it is necessary to conceive of the primacy of the father without disfiguring his completely unique expression of primacy. That is to say, without wedding to this an erroneous notion of the subordination of the son and the spirit. What Durand is getting at is that the father's primacy as being of none is not of the same order as the primacy of a human father, and the latter cannot be projected onto the former without grave error. A man without a son is not a father, but God is not a man, and the divine person of the father is the eternal father of his eternal son. He is unbegotten not in the absence of the Son and the Spirit, as if the fullness of divine perfection belonged only to him originally. or as if the internal divine acts of generation and procession supplied some ontological lack or want of perfection to the Son and the Spirit. The Father is unbegotten necessarily and eternally in relation to the eternally begotten Son and the eternally proceeding Spirit. Inassibility or unbegottenness, generation and procession are modes or relations of divine perfection. And as such, Taxus delineates an irreversible order that maintains both the distinction and the relation of the divine persons absent any notions of becoming, succession, degree, rank, gradation, or hierarchy. Generation, therefore, is a perfection of the Son. It means that the Son possesses no passive potency that must be actualized by the Father. And the Son's eternal generation has no termination, that is, no movement outside the divine essence. Submission or subordination, then, can be no necessary entailment of eternal generation. It is, in fact, necessarily excluded from the Son's eternal generation. The second response to this line of argumentation. The divine processions are the ad intra works of the divine persons and do not, as we've already said and as Moeller says, issue forth from the Godhead. In themselves the acts of begetting and proceeding have no egress. They do not pass forth from God into his external works. That is not to say that the divine processions have no bearing whatsoever on what God does ad extra. The processions in a very specific and limited sense are the principle or the foundation of the ad extra personal missions. Both Claunch and Stark acknowledge this point, but seem to speak of the relation between processions and missions as if it was marked by some kind of reciprocal correspondence. Yet the divine missions, we must say, neither constitute nor comprehend entirely the divine processions. It's another way of saying that the divine economy does not constitute who God is, and the divine economy does not comprehend what God is. The divine missions reflect the divine processions, but the relationship is asymmetrical. The former in some measure reveal the latter, but the latter is not completely identical to the former. As John Webster puts it, God's economic acts elucidate his inner being, even though they do not exhaust it. In fact, the divine missions need to be understood in relation not only to the processions, but in relation more broadly to the distinction between God's works ad intra and God's works ad extra. I guess we could name the conference ad intra, ad extra, we might say. The divine works ad extra are the works of the undivided Trinity because they originate in the undivided knowledge and will of God. The ad extra works are undivided because they are the execution of God's essential ad intra work the decree, for which reason, in every ad extra operation, the divine persons accomplish one and the same thing, but not after the same manner. There is a rather specific sense in which the undivided Trinity executes the decree in a mode or manner that reflects the divine processions. That is, the Father works from none, the Son works from the Father, and the Spirit works from both. The undivided divine works at extra are personal then in a certain manner or mode of fulfillment. They are termed also the appropriated works. that are attributed more specifically to one person than the other, because as Muller explains, the undivided works at extra do manifest one or another of the persons as their terminus, their limit of operation. The incarnation and work of mediation, for example, terminate on the son, even though they are willed and affected by father, son, and spirit. In this way, the appropriated personal works at extra reflect the personal works at intra, or the processions, but the perfect fullness of the divine life, even the processions, is not circumscribed by God's external works. In which case, the son's personal works in the economy, his works of incarnation, satisfaction, and the like, are fitting They are appropriate to him because he is the son of the father. His incarnate submission is fitting, but such submission is not and cannot be projected back upon his eternal mode of subsistence, as if his generation from the father included or by some absolute necessity entailed eternal submission or eternal subordination. to claim otherwise would be to conflate or to confuse the processions and the missions or more broadly it would be to conflate or to confuse the divine works at intra and the divine works at extra as if what God does constituted what he is rather than vice versa. The foregoing analysis has labored to demonstrate that the distinction of the divine persons cannot be explained as if it entailed both the divine processions and eras. The choice is clear. either affirm the creedal and confessional heritage of the doctrine of the eternal processions or affirm Eras. To opt for Eras, however, is to overhaul entirely the doctrine of the Trinity, both the unity and the distinction of the divine persons. Tritheism in some form must be adopted and co-equality and consubstantiality must be rejected. This, however, is a rather grim prospect, one which has no biblical, historical, or theological warrant. The practical consequences, in fact, are too great. And so we turn very briefly to consideration of the implications for life as explained in this book. Despite the promise of the, and I promise this section is much shorter than the rest. Despite the promise of the subtitle, the topic of the implication, or to use an older term, uses of the doctrine of the Trinity receives scant attention, even on the question of the relation between the doctrine and the structure of gender relations. In the preface, Ware and Stark assert that this book arose out of the conviction that proper Christian devotion requires appealing to the Trinity to ground a proper understanding of human relations, including the relation of husband and wife. The remainder of these essays, however, do very little to justify this claim. To be sure, it is implied in the argument for Eras, and on occasion the claim is mentioned explicitly, even by Lethem, who does not argue for Eras. Yet an argument proving that the doctrine of the Trinity necessarily generates a construct of gender relations is entirely absent apart from Claunch's exegetical consideration of 1 Corinthians 11 3 in which he argues that this passage grounds male headship in the home not in the imminent Trinity but in the economic submission of the incarnate Christ. Now he goes on to argue that analogical correspondence between The order of subsistence and the order of operations provide some indirect link between the imminent trinity and gender relations, but there is no direct analogy or correspondence between the doctrine of the trinity as such and gender complementarianism. Apart from Claunch then, there is no delivery on the promise of the subtitle and the preface. This is a notable lacuna. If for no other reason that there are theologians committed to some form of gender complementarianism, myself included, who would argue that the doctrine of the Trinity is incapable of generating any construct of human relations, gender or otherwise. The question of gender roles in the home and in the church which are the only gender roles discussed in scripture explicitly, does not depend on the doctrine of the Trinity, let alone the very problematic formulations espoused in this volume. In fact, because the triune God is not a man, care should be taken to avoid not only projecting human relations onto God, but also confusing the eternal subsistence of the triune creator with the relations that obtain among his creatures. The question of gender relations and roles, therefore, should be settled not by an appeal to the Trinity, but by careful interpretation of those biblical texts that address the topic. The terms of the debate regarding gender relations and roles, that is, the terms of the debate between complementarians and egalitarians, is not and cannot be the doctrine of the Trinity but biblical exegesis. Now an important question arises at this point. Given the absence of much discussion of the implications of the doctrine of the Trinity in this book, are there any legitimate implications or uses for the doctrine of the Trinity? Yes, at least two, doxology and soteriology. Unfortunately, neither receives attention in the pages of this book, with one notable exception. Michael Haken analyzes Andrew Fuller's Doctrine of the Trinity, noting that Fuller not only maintained the Orthodox doctrine against the anti-Trinitarianism of Joseph Priestly, and it's interesting to notice that Fuller defended the Doctrine of the Trinity against Priestly's Biblicism. Fuller maintains the doctrine against Priestley, but also that he did so emphasizing the vital doxological implications of the doctrine. For Fuller, according to Haken, the doctrine of the Trinity has a doxological orientation. Christian worship, that is, prayer, baptism, the Lord's Supper, these things are necessarily Trinitarian. Haken concludes his essay with this poignant observation. The reason why doctrinal confession of the triunity of God is vital is that it lies at the heart of Christian worship. Fuller clearly saw baptism into the name of the Triune God as not only the initiatory rite of the Church, what made it a Trinitarian community, but also the beginning of a life of worshipping the Trinity. Fuller made the same point in yet another text. Some from among the grand ends of Christian society are unitedly to worship God. And this meant nothing less than to devote ourselves to the blessed Trinity by Christian baptism and to acknowledge the atonement made by the Redeemer by a participation of the ordinance of the Lord's Supper. Fuller's choice notes Haken, of the verb devote here is noteworthy. Christian baptism is an act of dedicating oneself to the triune God, an act that is surely to continue throughout the Christian life till it culminates in the beatific vision of the Trinity. Now, I would quibble with the fact that baptism is dedicating oneself to the Trinity. I think God himself signifies that we are dedicated to him by his work of grace, and there certainly is the response of faith in which we do dedicate ourselves to the blessed Trinity. But beyond that minor quibble, what Hagen says is absolutely correct. The God whom we worship is the triune God, and true worship is necessarily Trinitarian. And it is so, we might add, precisely because what the Triune God pronounces in worship through the Word and Sacraments is that He bestows every blessing of salvation upon needy sinners. The Trinitarian orientation of worship reminds us of the Trinitarian origin and goal of our salvation. The entirety of the Christian salvation is from the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit. The Christian is brought into and kept in saving communion with the Triune God, by the Triune God, unto the end of the praise of the Triune God. Is it not the case, in fact, that the only begotten Son of the Father came down from heaven and became incarnate? for us and for our salvation? Why such implications of the doctrine of the Trinity are so woefully neglected by the contributors of this book is difficult to understand. Indeed, it is a rather sad commentary on the state of evangelical theology that such doxological and soteriological implications of the doctrine of the Trinity are passed over in favor of the untenable supposition that the life of the Blessed Trinity is the ground and exemplar only of human gender relations. My conclusion. If mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics, as Hermann Baving suggested at the very beginning of his Reform Dogmatics, The preeminent mystery of dogmatics, the mystery of mysteries, if you will, is the doctrine of the Trinity. That the God whom we worship is one in Trinity and Trinity in unity is a staggering claim, but it is one that stands at the headwaters of the Christian faith. To err here is to err with tremendous theological and practical consequence. For which reason, in light of significantly problematic argumentation regarding both the unity and the distinction of the divine persons, this book is to be avoided at all costs. In fact, with few exceptions, notably Lethem and Hakan, the only valuable service this volume performs is as a salient warning against treading lightly, even if unintentionally, upon the high and holy mystery of the Triune God. Amen.