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In this Wednesday deep-dive episode, we explore the doctrine of the Trinity through the lens of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. Building on our previous discussion of God’s triune nature, we examine how the three persons of the Godhead are distinguished while sharing one divine essence. The episode unpacks the precise theological language developed by the church to articulate this foundational doctrine, focusing on the eternal relations of origin within the Trinity. We explore how these careful formulations protect against heresies like Arianism, Modalism, and Tritheism, and why getting the Trinity right is essential to the gospel itself.
Key Takeaways
- The Trinity is distinguished by eternal relations of origin: The Father is “of none, neither begotten nor proceeding”; the Son is “eternally begotten of the Father”; and the Holy Spirit is “eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.”
- “Begotten” describes relationship, not derivation of essence: When we speak of the Son’s eternal generation, we are describing His personal relation to the Father, not suggesting His divine essence is derived or created.
- All three persons are fully God (autotheos): Each person of the Trinity is self-existent God in their essence, while maintaining distinct personal properties.
- The Nicene Creed’s precision combats Arianism: The creed’s language of “begotten, not made” and “being of one substance with the Father” defends Christ’s full deity against Arius’s claim that Christ was a created being.
- The Athanasian Creed provides crucial guardrails: It protects against both “confounding the persons” (Modalism) and “dividing the substance” (Tritheism).
- Perichoresis (mutual indwelling): The persons of the Trinity interpenetrate one another completely—”The Father is wholly in the Son, the Son wholly in the Father”—without confusion of their distinct personhood.
- Trinitarian doctrine is essential to salvation: Getting the Trinity wrong undermines the gospel itself, as only the true God can save us from our sins.
Key Concepts
Eternal Relations of Origin
The Westminster Confession distinguishes the persons of the Trinity not by differences in their divine attributes, but by their unique personal properties or “hypostatic relations of origin.” These relations are eternal, with no beginning or end. The Father is unbegotten and does not proceed from another; He is the uncaused source within the Godhead. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father, describing not a creation or beginning but an eternal relationship. The Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from both Father and Son. These distinctions allow us to recognize three persons while affirming one divine essence. The names “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit” are not names of substance but of relationship, pointing to who each person is in relation to the others from all eternity.
Perichoresis and Divine Unity
Perichoresis (or mutual indwelling) explains how the three persons can be distinct without being separate. This concept teaches that each person of the Trinity fully indwells the others in a perfect, eternal communion. As Calvin explained, “The Father is wholly in the Son, the Son wholly in the Father.” This is not three separate divine beings existing side-by-side, but one divine being in whom three persons eternally exist, each fully possessing the entire divine essence while remaining distinct in their personal properties. This preserves both the unity of God’s being and the genuine distinction of persons. When Jesus says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), He affirms this perfect unity of essence, will, and power, while the baptism narrative (Matthew 3) demonstrates the real distinction of persons as all three interact simultaneously.
Quotes
“Sin is an offense against the infinite majesty of God. Therefore, the debt incurred by our sin is an infinite debt. Only God can bear the weight of God’s wrath and not be utterly destroyed. If Jesus is a creature, as Arius claimed, then his death on the cross is the tragic martyrdom of a good being, but it cannot save us. For Christ to be our savior, He must be God.”
“The entire being of the Father is in the Son, and the entire being of the Son is in the Father, without any confusion of their persons. This is how Jesus can say in John 10:30, ‘I and the Father are one.’ He doesn’t say ‘we are one person,’ which would be modalism, but ‘we are one’—one in essence, will, and power, so completely united that they cannot be divided.”
Full Transcript
[00:00:18] Deep Dive into the Doctrine of the Trinity
Last week, we began to unpack the glorious doctrine of the Trinity, summarizing the biblical reality that our one God subsists in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We promised that we would take some time to do a deeper dive into the careful, precise language the church has used throughout its history to explain and defend this foundational truth. Today, we’re going to do just that.
This is a Wednesday episode, which means we’re going to go a little longer and a little deeper.
[00:00:49] Understanding the Distinction of the Trinity
Our goal today is to understand how we distinguish the persons of the Trinity. If the Father, Son, and Spirit are all the one God, sharing the same divine substance, power, and glory, in what way are they distinct? We’ll start with the clear summary given to us in the Westminster Confession of Faith, then we’ll see how the Confession is standing on the shoulders of the great ecumenical creeds of the church: the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed.
[00:01:18] Westminster Confession of Faith on the Trinity
Let’s begin with our own confession, Chapter 2, section 3 of the Westminster Confession of Faith. It reads:”In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: the Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.”
The first part affirms what we’ve already learned: one substance, three persons. But the second part provides the crucial answer to our question of “how?” Notice that we do not distinguish the persons by any difference in their divine attributes. The distinction, the confession tells us, is found in their unique personal properties, what theologians call their hypostatic relations of origin.
Let’s break that down.
[00:02:11] The Eternal Relations of the Trinity
First, the Father is “of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding.” This means the Father is the eternal, uncaused source within the Godhead, both in His essence, and in His person.
Second, the Son is “eternally begotten of the Father.” This is a crucial concept, and we must be precise. The Son, in His divine essence, is autotheos—God in Himself, self-existent, and not derived. His divine being is the very same as the Father’s. The word “begotten” does not describe a derivation of essence, but an eternal and personal relation. John Calvin, leaning on the wisdom of Augustine, explains this with masterful clarity. He writes: “Christ with respect to himself is called God; with respect to the Father, Son. Again, the Father with respect to himself is called God; with respect to the Son, Father.”
What Calvin is teaching us here is that names like “Father” and “Son” are not names of substance, but names of relationship. When we speak of the Son in Himself, without reference to the Father, we rightly say He is God, self-existent. But when we speak of Him in relation to the Father, we rightly call Him Son. This is exactly what we see in Scripture. In John 1:14, the apostle says “we have seen his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father.” This term, “only-begotten,” points to a unique, one-of-a-kind relationship. A thing that is made is of a different nature than its maker. But a son who is begotten shares the same nature as his father. To say the Son is eternally begotten is to say that from all eternity, without beginning or end, it is the Father’s personal property to be the Father of the Son, and the Son’s personal property to be the Son of the Father.
[00:03:56] The Procession of the Holy Spirit
Third, the Holy Ghost is described as “eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.” Just as with the Son, this describes the Spirit’s unique personal property. He, too, is autotheos in His divine essence. “Procession” describes His personal relation of origin. Jesus Himself speaks of this in John 15:26, saying “When the Comforter comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” Notice the beautiful Trinitarian action here: the Son sends the Spirit who proceeds from the Father. Likewise, Paul in Galatians 4:6 says, “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!'” He is the Spirit of the Son, sent by the Father. This eternal procession from both the Father and the Son is what distinguishes the Spirit in His personal identity.
So, the Westminster divines give us our answer with beautiful precision: we distinguish the persons not by what they are in their shared essence, but by who they are in their eternal relationships. In providing this framework, the Westminster divines followed the wisdom of the church fathers, stopping safely with these revealed relationships rather than, as Calvin warned, wandering into “evanescent speculations” by trying to penetrate the sublime mystery too deeply.
But the Westminster divines were not working in a vacuum.
[00:05:25] Historical Context: The Ecumenical Councils
To see this, we need to go back to the great ecumenical councils of the early church. The process began at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. The version we confess today was finalized at the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. This Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was forged to combat one of the most dangerous heresies the church has ever faced: Arianism.
The controversy was sparked by a man named Arius. Arius taught that the Son was not co-eternal with the Father. He was, Arius argued, the first and greatest of all created beings, but a creature nonetheless.
[00:06:02] Combating Arianism: The Nicene Creed
He famously argued, “there was a time when he was not.” Now, how did Arius arrive at this conclusion? Fundamentally, Arianism was a form of Biblicism. It’s an approach that takes verses in isolation while ignoring the unified witness of the whole. Arius would point to verses where Jesus speaks of His subordination to the Father, like “the Father is greater than I,” while completely ignoring the overwhelming testimony of passages that declare Christ’s absolute divinity.
Take, for example, Colossians chapter 1, beginning in verse 15. Paul writes that Christ “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created… all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” An Arian would latch onto the word “firstborn” and claim it means first-created. But that ignores the entire context. Paul immediately explains why He is the firstborn: because “by him all things were created.” He cannot be a creature if He is the Creator of all creatures. The term “firstborn” here is a title of supreme rank and preeminence, not a statement of origin.
This is not just an intellectual mistake; it has devastating consequences for our salvation. Sin is an offense against the infinite majesty of God. Therefore, the debt incurred by our sin is an infinite debt. Only God can bear the weight of God’s wrath and not be utterly destroyed. If Jesus is a creature, as Arius claimed, then his death on the cross is the tragic martyrdom of a good being, but it cannot save us. For Christ to be our savior, He must be God.
This is why the church fathers at Nicaea were so precise. The creed states: “And in one Lord Jesus Christ… begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father…” This wasn’t philosophical hair-splitting; it was the defense of the very heart of the gospel.
[00:08:07] The Athanasian Creed: Guardrails of Trinitarian Doctrine
Finally, while the Nicene Creed affirmed what we believe, another creed arose in the church to provide the clear, logical guardrails for how we must think about it. The Athanasian Creed is a masterclass in theological precision, protecting the church from two equal and opposite errors. It states: “And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
“Let’s unpack those two guardrails. The first error, “confounding the persons,” is the ancient heresy of Modalism. This is the idea that there is only one divine person who simply reveals himself in three different modes, or masks. This error makes the story of our salvation, as the Bible describes it, impossible. Consider the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3. The Son is being baptized in the water. The voice of the Father speaks from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” And the Holy Spirit descends on the Son like a dove. All three persons are present, distinct, and interacting with one another at the same time. If they are all just one person in different modes, this scene becomes an absurdity. The Athanasian Creed forbids us from “confounding the persons” because to do so is to destroy the gospel.
The second error is “dividing the substance.” This is the error of Tritheism, of turning the three persons into three separate gods. The creed hammers this point home: “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.” How can this be? Because while they are distinct in their persons, they are inseparable in their being and their work. This is the doctrine of mutual indwelling, or perichoresis. Calvin explains it this way: “The Father is wholly in the Son, the Son wholly in the Father, even as he himself declares: ‘I am in the Father, and the Father in me.'”
This concept is breathtaking. It means the persons are not adjacent to one another, like three separate entities sharing a space. They eternally and perfectly interpenetrate one another. The entire being of the Father is in the Son, and the entire being of the Son is in the Father, without any confusion of their persons. This is how Jesus can say in John 10:30, “I and the Father are one.” He doesn’t say “we are one person,” which would be modalism, but “we are one”—one in essence, will, and power, so completely united that they cannot be divided. They are not three separate divine substances. They are not three eternals, but one eternal; not three almighties, but one almighty. Why? Because there is only one divine substance.
Finally, we must address the creed’s solemn “warning clauses”—its declaration that this faith is necessary for salvation. This shows us how seriously the church has always taken this doctrine. This is not a secondary issue. Getting the Trinity right is a matter of salvific significance. As we’ve seen, if you deny the full divinity of the Son, you lose the gospel. If you deny the real distinction between the Father and the Son, you lose the gospel. The church’s warnings are not born of arrogance, but of a deep, pastoral love and a commitment to protecting the one, true faith that saves.
[00:11:31] Conclusion and Call to Action
So, when we bring it all together, we see a beautiful, unified witness. The Westminster Confession gives us the precise language of relations of origin to distinguish the persons. It does so by faithfully summarizing the great truths articulated in the Nicene Creed. And both are protected by the clear guardrails of the Athanasian Creed. This is the one God we worship, and this is the faith once for all delivered to the saints.