John Piper on "Trinitarian Thinking and Feeling"

[The following is from John Piper, Think: TheLife of the Mind and the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 34-35.]

One of the gifts Edwards gave to me, which I had not found anywhere else, was a foundation for human thinking and feeling in the Trinitarian nature of God. I don’t mean that others haven’t seen human nature rooted in God’s nature. I simply mean that the way Edwards saw it was extraordinary. He showed me that human thinking and feeling do not exist arbitrarily; they exist because we are in the image of God, and God’s “thinking” and “feeling” are more deeply part of his Trinitarian being than I had realized. Prepare to be boggled. Here is Edwards’s remarkable description of how the persons of the Trinity relate to each other. Notice that God the Son stands forth eternally as a work of God’s thought. And God the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as the act of their joy.

This I suppose to be the blessed Trinity that we read of in the Holy Scriptures. The Father is the deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated and most absolute manner, or the deity in its direct existence. The Son is the deity generated by God’s understanding, or having an idea of Himself and subsisting in that idea. The Holy Ghost is the deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and breathed forth in God’s infinite love to and delight in Himself. And I believe the whole Divine essence does truly and distinctly subsist both in the Divine idea and Divine love, and that each of them are properly distinct persons. [Jonathan Edwards, “An Essay on the Trinity,” in Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumously Published Writings, ed. Paul Helm (Cambridge, UK: Clarke, 1971), 118.]

 

In other words, God the Father has had an eternal image and idea of himself that is so full it is another Person standing forth—distinct as the Father’s idea, yet one in divine essence. And God the Father and the Son have had an eternal joy in each other’s excellence that carries so fully what they are that another Person stands forth, the Holy Spirit—distinct as the Father and Son’s delight in each other, yet one in divine essence. There never was a time when God did not experience himself this way. The three Persons of the Trinity are coeternal. They are equally divine.

Trinity Blogposts by Dr. Sam Waldron

In 2011, Dr. Sam Waldron (Dean of Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary) published a series of blogposts on the Trinity. Dr. Waldron's posts come in response to the debate (which has recently re-surfaced) over whether the Son is eternally submissive to the Father. In exploring this subject, he examines issues such as, "How can [the Nicene] Creed in some sense identify the Father as the 'One God'?" and the Father as the source of all being. Dr. Waldron affirms the doctrine that the Son is "eternally begotten" of the Father. Among other beliefs articulated in these posts, Dr. Waldron argues that:

the Nicene doctrine of eternal generation is the historical and biblical basis for holding what is (perhaps a little clumsily) called by recent theologians the eternal, functional subordination of the Son [EFS], the eternal functional subordination of the Son is consistent with His full and undiluted deity, and finally this Nicene doctrine of Trinity undercuts the fundamental premise of Egalitarianism that equality of nature and subordination of role are inconsistent.

This line of thinking places him in a kind of middle ground regarding the current debate on the Trinity. Dr. Waldron, unlike many on the EFS side of the debate, is fully convinced that the "eternally begotten" language of the creeds is well-grounded in Scripture. However, unlike many on the other side of the debate, Dr. Waldron believes that EFS is properly grounded in the doctrine of eternal generation.

Links to Dr. Waldron's posts:

Part 1, Introduction

Part 2, Do we really believe the Nicene Creed?

Part 3, I believe in one God the Father???

Part 4, The Monarchy of the Father

Part 5, The Nicene Doctrine of the Eternal Generation of the Son

Part 6, An Objection to the Doctrine of Eternal Generation: Is it "Subordinationism"?

Part 7, The Biblical Support for Eternal Generation: The Meaning of "Monogeneis"

Part 8, The Biblical Support for Eternal Generation: The Fact of Eternal Sonship

Part 9, The Biblical Support for Eternal Generation: The Reality of the Eternal Wordship of Christ

Part 10, The Biblical Support for Eternal Generation: The Son Subordinate to the Father in the Work of Creation

Part 11, The Biblical Support for Eternal Generation: The Eternal Fatherhood of the Father

Part 12, The Biblical Support for Eternal Generation: Election, the Work of the Father

Part 13, The Biblical Support for Eternal Generation: The Normal Order of the Mention of the Persons of the Trinity

Part 14, The Biblical Support for Eternal Generation: The Christological Use of the Personification of Wisdom in Proverbs 8

Part 15, The Biblical Support for Eternal Generation: The Glory of the Sacrifice Proclaimed in the Gospel

Part 16, The Biblical Support for Eternal Generation: Does Eternal Generation Lead to Arianism?

Part 17, The Eternal Procession of the Spirit Proved

Part 18, Filioque?

Christians should enjoy the opportunity to contemplate, and perhaps better understand, the God we love.