A Trinitarian Aporetic Triad

I’ve thought a lot about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity over the years. I’m persuaded that the core of the doctrine is coherent and true, but there are three commonly affirmed trinitarian theses that I see no way to reconcile. Indeed, they constitute an aporetic triad. It’s a triad because there are three claims at issue. It’s aporetic (from Greek aporia) because the triad creates a conceptual puzzle from which there is no (a-) easy way out (poria = way, passage). The reason there is no easy way out is because there are strong reasons to endorse each member of the triad, and yet when put in combination with each other, they seem contradictory.

Here are the three theses in question:

1. Divine aseity: To be God (or to be fully divine) entails existing a se, i.e., from oneself. In other words, it entails that one’s existence is not derivative, that one is not ontologically dependent on anything else, that one exists in a foundational way.
2. Monarchy of the Father: The Father is the singular (mono-) ontological foundation (archē) of the Trinity. The Son and the Spirit are ontologically derivative from the Father, the Son by being “begotten” of the Father, the Spirit by “proceeding” from the Father.
3. Ontological equality: The Father, Son, and Spirit are equally and fully divine because they are homoousias, sharing the same (homo-) concrete instance of the divine nature (ousia).

In the background, of course, is the core doctrine of the Trinity. For present purposes I take this to be thesis that there is (a) one God (b) eternally consisting of three “persons” (Father, Son, and Spirit) who are (c) formally and hypostatically distinct from each other and (d) equally and fully divine. The diagram at the top roughly summarizes points (a–d).

Note: By “formally distinct” in (c) I mean that the persons of the Trinity are inseparable but non-identical. By “hypostatically distinct” (from Greek hypostasis, meaning a subsistent individual) in (c) I mean that the persons are irreducibly individual. They are not interchangeable with each other. Each has a unique identity by virtue of having distinguishing personal properties or idiomata.

The aporetic nature of the triad should be evident.

• (1) and (2) in combination entail the denial of (3).
• (1) and (3) in combination entail the denial of (2).
• (2) and (3) in combination entail the denial of (1).

Let me explain each of these in turn.

First, if we assume (1) and (2), then it follows that only the Father is fully divine. By (1) and (2), the Son and the Spirit, because they are ontologically derivative from the Father, lack aseity and so lack full divinity. This entails a denial of (3) and leads to ontological subordination, the thesis that the Son and Spirit are ontologically “less than” the Father. The Father is foundational; they are not. The Father is fully divine; they are not.

Second, if we assume (1) and (3), then it follows that the Father is not the archē of the Trinity. After all, if Father, Son, and Spirit are homoousias and thus each fully divine, and if full divinity entails aseity, then all three Trinitarian persons are equally foundational. None of them is ontologically derivative, contrary to what (2) says.

Third, if we assume (2) and (3), then it follows that aseity is not essential to full divinity. This is because, if the Father is the singular archē of the Trinity, then He is more ontologically foundational than the Son and Spirit. If the Father, Son, and Spirit are also each fully divine, then it follows that the Father’s being more ontologically foundational is irrelevant to the full divinity of the Son and Spirit. Hence, full divinity does not entail aseity, which is contrary to (1).

The aporetic triad considered

If (1), (2), and (3) constitute, as I have argued, an inconsistent set, then the only way to resolve the aporia is to give up one (or more) of those theses. Before we consider how best we might do that, though, it behooves us to consider what there is to say for each thesis. What would we have to give up to deny any of them? And is that a cost we can tolerate?

First, on behalf of (1) it may be urged that divine aseity is a defining characteristic of monotheism. That God is the sole ultimate foundation of reality is entailed by the mono– part of monotheism. That God is an ultimate foundation of reality is entailed by the theism part of monotheism. To exist a se is just to be (part of) the ultimate foundation. So, monotheism entails divine aseity. God’s aseity is what puts God on the Creator side of the Creator–creation distinction. This is the distinction between ontologically foundational being (God) and ontologically derivative being (creation). If something were ontologically more fundamental than God, then God would be ontologically derivative and so would not be God, properly speaking, but would instead be part of creation.

Interestingly, of (1)–(3), (1) is commonly denied in light of (2). If we accept the monarchy of the Father as defined in (2), then only the Father exists a se and the Son and Spirit do not. They derive their existence from the Father and yet are supposedly somehow just as divine as the Father. I confess that this strikes me as a very implausible line to take. As I see it, divine aseity is non-negotiable for monotheists logically prior to any consideration of the Trinity. Thus, if we bracket the Trinity for a moment and ask whether to be fully divine entails aseity, then the answer (I submit) is obviously yes. To give up the essential connection between full divinity and aseity is implicitly, I say, to give up monotheism. And without monotheism, there is no Trinity.

Second, on behalf of (2) it may be urged that the monarchy of the Father is (a) implicit in Scripture and (b) has been canonically affirmed by Church fathers and ecumenical councils. In Scripture the Son is said to be “begotten” of the Father (John 1:14,18; John 3:16) and the Spirit is said to “proceed” from the Father (John 15:26). And John 5:26 seems to suggest that the Son is ontologically dependent on the Father: “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.” The Nicene Creed of 381 also seems to teach the monarchy of the Father. The opening line seems to equate God with the Father (“I believe in one God, the Father …”). Of the Son it says that He is “begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” The repetition of “from” (Greek, ek, “out from”) seems to suggest the ontologically derivative status of the Son. Finally, the Creed says that the Spirit “proceeds from [ek] the Father,” which again seems to suggest ontological derivation.

In my judgment, the considerations on behalf of (2) are weighty but not decisive. For one thing, I don’t see any verses in Scripture that clearly teach the ontological dependence of the Son and Spirit on the Father. Indeed, all of the verses that speak of either the Son’s being “begotten” or the Spirit’s “proceeding” arguably have to do with what theologians call the economy (how God relates to creation) rather than the immanent Trinity or the Trinity ad intra (i.e., independently of creation). The first verse in John that speaks of the Son as “begotten” (1:14) occurs with explicit reference to the incarnation (“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father”). Moreover, the words “as of” (Greek, hos) occurring right before “begotten” suggest that this begetting is not to be taken with full literalness. In any case, every use of “begotten” in reference to the Son within the Johannine corpus (1:18; 3:16; 3:18; 1 John 4:9) seems either explicitly or implicitly connected to the incarnation. As for the Old Testament, Psalm 2:7 speaks of a “begotten” son in the context of God establishing a new king. Acts 13:33 (quoting Psalm 2:7) later speaks of Christ as “begotten” in the context of His resurrection. And Hebrews twice quotes Psalm 2:7, speaking of the Son as “begotten” in the context of his being “appointed” to an eternal priesthood (Hebrews 5:5) and his post-resurrection exaltation to glory (Hebrews 1:5). As far as I can tell, all of these passages have to do with the “economy.” As for the proceeding of the Spirit spoken of in John 15:26, the context clearly points toward the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost: “But when the Helper comes” (my emphasis), i.e., He hasn’t yet come, “the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” Sure, one could take the “who proceeds from the Father” clause as being about the immanent Trinity, but there’s no necessity to read it that way in context, and indeed, it seems rather tangential to the overall economic focus of the verse to read it that way.

What, then, about the Creed? Here again, if the Son’s being begotten is tied to His incarnation and eventual exaltation, then “begotten from the Father before all ages” can (I submit) plausibly be understood in terms of God’s eternal plan of salvation established “before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20). In other words, God the Father always planned for there to be an incarnational “begetting” of a divine Son to be Emmanuel, God with us. As for the “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God” refrain, that can be understood as an affirmation of the incarnate Christ’s full divinity and His bringing the true light of God’s glory into the world (John 1:9). In sum, I don’t see anything in the text of the Creed that requires the Father’s ontological priority to the Son and Spirit. Even if some of the Church fathers who framed the Creed intended the language in that way, the Creed itself doesn’t clearly say this. Bishops at Nicea 1 and Constantinople 1 could easily have signed off on the language of the Creed without reading the Father’s ontological priority into it.

Note: The Nicene Creed, like other normative texts produced and authorized by a large group of people (e.g., the U.S. Constitution), should, I submit, be interpreted primarily in accordance with the original public meaning of the text and only secondarily in terms of the putative intentions of the authors. The main difficulty with the latter is that neither we today nor the fathers then have any way of knowing whether every bishop at those councils had the same intentions. Neither we nor they can read minds. For all we or they could have known, there may have been multiple, subtly diverse intentions represented among the attending bishops. What they individually and collectively agreed upon was a text, something the original public meaning of which we can discern (with reasonably high probability) through historical research. We know, for example, that the term homoousias was chosen to describe the essential equality of the Trinity despite its potentially Sabellian connotations precisely because the Arians and semi-Arians would have trouble affirming it. The goal was to come up with a text that people who held those heretical ideas could not in good conscience sign off on.

In sum, I don’t see anything in Scripture or in the Nicene Creed that requires an ontological hierarchy within the Trinity. That’s a good thing in my view, because if Scripture or Church tradition required an ontological construal of “begetting” and “proceeding” with the Father being the sole ontological foundation of the Trinity and the Son and Spirit being ontologically derivative, then I don’t see any plausible way to avoid the conclusion that the Son and Spirit are not fully divine given that I regard (1) as non-negotiable for monotheists.

Thirdly, on behalf of (3) it may simply be urged that this is part and parcel of the Trinity. As the Creed says, the Son is “true God from true God.” He’s not a second-tier deity but “true God.” He has the same kind of divinity that the Father does. Likewise, the Creed says that the Spirit “with the Father and the Son is together worshipped and together glorified.” This is not second- or third-tier worship. It’s the same kind of worship due to the fully divine Father and Son for they are all worshipped and glorified together. Thus, (3), the equal and full divinity of Father, Son, and Spirit is non-negotiable for Trinitarians.

A solution to the aporia?

I have argued that (1) and (3) are non-negotiable. (1) is entailed directly by monotheism and indirectly by Trinitarianism because the latter is a type of monotheism. (3) is entailed directly by Trinitarianism. That leaves (2) as the weak link in the aporetic triad. That’s the one I think Christians should reject. Christians can—and I think should—affirm that Father enjoys some sort of priority over the Son and Spirit. They can even describe that priority as a kind of “monarchy” if they wish. But they should not construe that priority along ontological lines on pain of implicitly denying the full divinity of the Son and Spirit.

More specifically, we might understand the “monarchy” of the Father not as His being the sole ontological foundation (mono-archē) of the Trinity but as His being the preeminent member of the Trinity, its mono-archon. So understood, the Father is a “first among equals,” so to speak. In Greek an archon is a ruler like a king or prince. Hence, a monarchy is a system of government in which there is a sole legitimate ruler. The mere fact that the Father commissions the Son’s incarnation (1 John 4:9) and sends the Spirit (John 14:26) suggests that the Father is the functional or positional head of the Trinity without implying that He is the ontological source of the Son and Spirit. Again, to construe the priority of the Father in ontological terms is implicitly to deny the aseity of the Son and Spirit and with it their full divinity.

There are at least a couple ways in which we might try to “cash out” the idea of the Father as the positional head of the Trinity.

In the first place, we might accept the “causal” language used by many Church fathers to describe the Father’s eternal “begetting” of the Son and “proceeding” of the Spirit, while being careful not to read ontological priority into that language. The Greek word the Church fathers and other ancients used for “cause” was aitia. From this we get the English word etiology, which connotes the causal history of a thing. As is well known, Aristotle used aitia for his “four causes” or four ways in which one thing could contribute to the coming-to-be of something else. In sculpting a statue, for example, the sculptor is an agent (efficient cause) who acts upon some kind of matter (material cause), imparting to it a structure (formal cause) in accordance with a guiding idea (final cause). It should be clear from this example that the ancient understanding of causation was much broader than our modern term “cause” normally suggests. Typically, when we speak of a “cause,” we have an efficient cause in mind. We think of causes as change-agents, i.e., as things that bring about a change of some sort, such as when one falling domino hits another and causes it to fall too. But the ancients thought of causes more broadly, roughly as anything that in any way contributes to something else. To suppose that the Father is the efficient cause of the Son and Spirit is problematic because it implies that the Father brought about the existence of the Son and Spirit from an explanatorily prior state in which the Son and Spirit did not exist. That, however, is a straightforwardly Arian way of thinking, and it implies that the Son and Spirit are creatures. But if the Church fathers didn’t have (or shouldn’t have had) efficient causation in mind for the intra-Trinitarian relations, then what sort of causation could they have been thinking of? I haven’t done enough research to know how explicitly or consistently various fathers might answer that question, but it should be immediately obvious that material causation is irrelevant, as the Son and Spirit are not physical constructs. I suppose there may be some analogical way to stretch the notions of formal and/or final causation so as to apply those to the begetting of the Son and the proceeding of the Spirit, but I’m quite unsure about that. Theologically speaking, the safest bet is to suppose that whatever “causal” relations begetting and proceeding imply, they are sui generis, that is, utterly unique and unlike any other causal relations anywhere else. Perhaps. On the positive side, it’s very hard to refute such a nebulous claim. On the negative side, it guts intra-Trinitarian causal language of any clear meaning. But perhaps that’s tolerable as we’re dealing with matters that are, to some extent at least, unavoidably mysterious. What I am sure of is that if we want to continue using “causal” language for the Father–Son and Father–Spirit relations, then both efficient and material causation should be kept cleanly off the table. And since modern English speakers tend to hear causal language in efficient causal terms, such usage is bound to generate confusion. For that reason alone, I think causal terminology is best avoided when speaking of the intra-Trinitarian relations.

A second way in which we might try to make sense of the Father’s preeminence within the Trinity is to look for non-causal analogies that are (a) grounded in the Biblical text (so that it’s not sheer armchair speculation) and that are, at least arguably, (b) not purely “economic,” that is, not merely a function of how the divine persons relate to creation. I’ll mention two such ideas.

The first relies on the idea of authority. In Acts 1:7, the resurrected Christ speaks to his disciple of matters that “the Father has fixed by his own authority.” This suggests that the Father has a unique authority relative to the Son and Spirit. This fits in well with the idea the the Father is the archon (not archē) of the Trinity. On this idea the Father is the positional head of the Trinity in much the same way that the U.S. President is the positional head of the executive branch. Indeed, according to Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the President is the executive branch. All executive power rests in the President and is then delegated to his functional subordinates. Obviously, the President has the same nature as his subordinates—he and they are all human beings—but authority-wise he’s on top. So we might suppose that the Father is the chief authority within the Trinity. He’s the head of the Trinitarian household, so to speak. Arguably, in any stable and efficient grouping of persons, somebody’s got to be “in charge” and “call the shots.” So maybe the Father is the ultimate source of divine authority, which authority He delegates to the Son and Spirit. As Jesus says in Matthew 28:18, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me” (emphasis added). That could be a merely economic declaration, but it could also reflect an intra-Trinitarian dynamic. In this vein Jesus speaks of the “glory that you [the Father] have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24, emphasis added). If we take that “glory” to involve, among other things, the Father’s delegated authority, then we have at least some biblical justification for thinking of the Father’s preeminence in these terms.

The second idea, noted in John 17:24 (“you loved me before the foundation of the world”) and emphatically emphasized in 1 John 4:8 (“God is love”) is that of love. I argue elsewhere that love is an inherently triadic relation. It’s not just lover (L) loves beloved (B), a dyadic relation, but L loves B by way of E, an expression of L’s love for B. The reason is that love, genuine love, cannot remain wholly unexpressed (cf. John 14:15, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments”). Now, I submit that God is not just love, but perfect love, love in its fullest possible realization. Such love cannot be less than personal, for persons are more deserving of love than mere things. Minimally, it would be the love of a person for a person by way of a person. But not just any person will do. Love in its fullest possible realization would be the love of a perfectly loving person for a perfectly loving person by way of a perfectly loving person. That much is already at least suggestive of the Trinity. But to arrive at a genuine Trinity and not, say, modalism or tritheism, we would need further reason to think (a) that these three perfectly loving persons are mutually distinct and (b) that there can be at most one concrete instance of God’s perfectly loving nature, (c) that the number of fundamental persons is limited to three, and (d) a way to ground the irreducible uniqueness (the idiomata) of each person as Father, Son, and Spirit, with the Father as in some sense preeminent.

With respect to (a) if L=B=E, then our perfectly loving person loves himself by way of himself. That, however, sounds more like ultimate narcissism than perfect love. Arguably, perfect love must be inter-personal. As Jesus says, the greatest kind of love that us humans can realize is to give our lives for the sake of someone else (John 15:13).

As for (b), in the same place I argue that perfect love entails all of the standard divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, necessary existence, etc.) including uniqueness and being ontologically fundamental or a se. From there it is easy to argue that there can be at most one perfectly loving being. If all this is on the right track, then what we get is this: God is Love in its fullest possible realization and therefore God is essentially both unique and multi-personal. God, in short, is essentially both One and Many, one in being/nature and many in person.

With respect to (c), we need a way to get from multi-personal specifically to tri-personal. The simple answer is that love is an inherently triadic relation and so there is no need for a fourth or more. Additional fundamental persons would introduce unnecessary redundancy and could be analyzed down into multiple sets of three.

Finally, for (d) it should be noted that love is a structured relation, involving a subject (L), a direct object (B), and an indirect object (E). In grammar the parts of speech are not interchangeable without changing the meaning of the sentence. Likewise, in love, the L, B, and E roles are not interchangeable without changing the relation. While each person in the relation is a perfectly loving person and so takes the roles of L, B, and E in reciprocal perichoretic relation to the other persons—more specifically, the Father loves the Son by way of the Spirit and the Spirit by way of the Son; the Son loves the Father by way of the Spirit and the Spirit by way of the Father; the Spirit loves the Father by way of the Son and the Son by way of the Father—each of these is a different relation. And if God is essentially Perfect Love, then there must be a primordial structured arrangement of the three persons that parallels the fundamental structure of love. The Father, we may plausibly suppose, is the primordial Lover; the Son the primordial Beloved; and the Spirit the primordial Expression of love. As the primordial Lover, the Father is, in a way, the source of the Trinity. Without a Lover, there can be no Beloved or Expression of love. But neither can there be a Beloved without a Lover or Expression, or an Expression of love without a Lover or Beloved. So, the sourcehood of the Father is not an ontological priority. The one concrete nature (Perfect Love) includes the three persons, and each person in turn includes the nature and the other two persons.

Here’s another connection. In the same place I also argue that love has three essential facets: (a) volitional, (b) cognitive, and (c) practical or effective. As I say there, “interpersonal love involves willing (volition) and working toward (practice) the true good of its object, as that good is known and understood (cognition).” As the primordial Lover, I see the Father as the focal point of divine volition, sovereignty, and omnibenevolence. Love starts with, indeed is, an act of will. This fits with the above-noted theme of the Father’s authority. As the primordial Beloved, I think it plausible to see the Son as the focal point of divine cognition, wisdom, and omniscience. Cognition modifies, indeed informs, the act of will and gives it specific direction or intentionality. It directs the will toward a specific goal, the Beloved’s well-being. This fits with John’s description of the Son as the Logos or Word (John 1:1–5, 14). Finally, as the primordial Expression of love, I see the Spirit as the focal point of divine action, power, and omnipotence. Thus, the Spirit is “the Helper” (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7). He puts the Father’s Son-informed love into effect by aiding, strengthening, guiding, and bestowing power (Acts 1:8).

Closing thoughts
Some of the above is, admittedly, speculative. I do not insist on all of my constructive proposals, but I do think they are sufficiently plausible to be worthy of serious consideration. My main contention that I do wish to insist on is that, for there to be a coherent model of the Trinity, each of the persons must exist a se and therefore each of the persons must be ontologically basic and thus on the same level. This rules out any construal of the “monarchy” of the Father on which the Father is ontologically prior to the Son and Spirit.