The concept of the triune God of Christianity is for most Christians a difficult subject to comprehend. In fact, especially regarding the three persons of the godhead, the Bible does not fully explain it. Scripture reveals that the only God is eternal and personal, having one essence in three persons. But little else regarding the details is provided to enable a thorough comprehension of the relationships of the three persons with one another. Key terms such as begotten, the Father, the Son, and procession are stated as factual with minimal if any explanation and clarification to enable a thorough understanding of these terms.
So what can we understand about God in Three Persons.
THREE PERSONS IN ONE ESSENCE
Scripture reveals that there is only one God or divine being, Jehovah (Deut. 6:4; Is. 44:6; James 2:19), who is not a created being and is not caused or derived from outside Himself. He is not self-created. God is self-existent (John 5:26; Col. 1:17). He is the eternal divine autonomous perfect being who has always been and has no beginning. God necessarily is a tri-personal being. He cannot be in any other form than the trinal form.
God is one undivided eternal essence in three persons (or subsistences) who is referred to as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:16, 17, 28:19; 1 Cor. 12:4-6; 2 Cor. 13:14; 1 Pet. 1:2). These persons are not separate individuals or beings but are distinct subsistences (or manners of being) within the essence, not sharing but each wholly possessing the entire divine essence. The three persons within the divine essence have no beginning. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each equally divine. The relationship of the three persons of the Trinity with one another is one of equality in essence.
Anything attributed to the essence is also attributed to each of the three persons. The three persons are within the divine essence, thus each of the three persons have the exact same divine will, intellect, and power. They do not need to “agree” because they all have the identical divine attributes (John 5:19).
The tri-personal form of God is not a choice of God but a necessary mode of existence. God in one eternal essence with three eternal persons is the necessary form of the godhead. Scripture reveals that God has always been a divine being of one essence within which three distinct subsistences exist. They exist not as separate substances or individuals but as distinct subsistences each possessing unique incommunicable personal properties and operations.
PERSONALITY
God’s personality must exist in an association with other divine persons in Him. God must have other divine equal personalities with which to associate in order to develop His divine personality according to His will. There can only be one God, only one divine autonomous being. If God is to have other divine equal persons with whom to associate and since there is but one God, then there must be three subsistences within the one divine essence. We know that there must be three persons and not some other number because the revealed word of God tells us that three persons are in being within the divine essence.
UNITY
There is unity in the godhead and there can be no subordination in essential being among the three persons of the Trinity. God is not three separate individuals alongside one another but as Berkhof states “personal self-distinctives within the Divine essence.”[i] The full essence is common to the three persons as a numerical oneness. The three persons do not “share” the essence and the essence is not divided among the three persons. The divine essence has no existence apart from the three persons and vice versa.
ORDER AND SUBORDINATION
Within the Trinity there is a subordination of the persons regarding order and operations. There is however no subordination in essential being. The three persons are indistinguishable in their essential attributes. There is no rank among the persons with one first and one second and one last regarding the essence of being. We do not consider the three persons as having beginnings with one first, second, and last. But in their trinitarian relationship to one another they are distinguished according to their order and operations.
The trinitarian order is related to personal properties and operations of each of the three persons. Each person has his own incommunicable properties which function in the well-ordered trinitarian operations. As the persons interact, submission exists not from positions of inferiority or superiority in rank or authority but as equal divine subsistences in the divine essence with one divine will.
Submission of one to the other results from operative acts of the various persons of the Trinity. For example, the Father never submits to the Son but the Son submits to the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son in the personal properties and operations of the Trinity. The divine order is that all things are out of the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.
Compared to the human nature, the divine nature can subsist in more than one person where the human nature can subsist in only one person. Human nature (or essence) shares a sameness with other humans but their essences are not identical with other individuals. On the other hand, the persons of the godhead have a numerical oneness in that they possess the identical essence.
ACTS OF GOD
Regarding the operations of the three persons, there are internal (Lat. opera ad intra) and external (opera ad extra) acts of God. Internal acts are those actions that happen within the Godhead. Internal works of God are the activity of each member of the Godhead as distinct from the other members. These are works of the distinct incommunicable personal properties and operations unique to each person of the godhead that are not performed jointly. For example, Generation is an act of the Father; filiation is performed by the Son; and procession is an act of the Holy Spirit.
There are also external acts of God which are those works and effects that occur outside of the Godhead in relation to the world and its inhabitants, such as creation, providence, and redemption. External acts of the Trinity are never works of one person alone but are works of God as a whole.
However, some external acts are referred to as acts of one person or another even though these acts are works of all three persons jointly. We see that creation is primarily credited to the Father and redemption is called an act of the Son while sanctification is considered the work of the Holy Spirit. In the joint economy of the Trinity, there may be a predominate person working externally but the joint work of the other persons is still necessary.
GENERATION AND PROCESSION
Scripture teaches that the Son is eternally generated by the Father and the Father and the Son eternally proceed to the Spirit. This eternal generation of the Son by the Father is a necessary act of God. The Father is such because he is unbegotten and the Son is the Son because he is begotten by the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son. The Father sends the Son and the Father and Son send the Spirit. This order of operation can never be reversed.
Generation
The Bible uses the word “begotten” to describe the relation between God the Father and God the Son, the first two persons of the holy Trinity of Christianity. In many of the ancient biblical manuscripts the word begotten when used in this context is found in conjunction with the word only as in “only-begotten.” But there exists some confusion about the exact meaning of this word since it is used to mean something entirely different in many verses of the Bible.
Begotten is the past participle of Beget. The ordinary meaning of beget is “brought into existence by.” It is often used to indicate procreation in the parent-child relationship. The words begot and begat (archaic) are the past tense of beget and the word begetting is the present participle of beget. Thus ends the grammar portion of this article.
The word “begotten” appears twenty-four times in the King James Version of the Bible. In most of these verses the word means procreation or source; brought out from (Gen. 5:4; Lev. 18:11; Nu. 11:12; Dt. 23:8; Jdg. 8:30; Job 38:28; Is. 49:21; Hos. 5:7; Ac. 13:33; 1 Cor. 4:15; Philem. 10; Heb. 11:17; 1 Pet. 1:3). But in nine verses, the word “begotten” refers to something entirely different. (Ps. 2:7; Jn. 1:14, 1:18, Heb. 1:5, 5:5; 1 Jn. 4:9; 5:1, 5:18).
For example, in Psalm 2:7, we find this statement “The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” And we see this verse repeated in Hebrews 1:5. However, these verses do not refer to human relationships such as parentage or to indicate something from God to humans. These two verses as well as all the nine verses listed with them in the parenthetical above refer to the divine relationship between God the Father and God the Son, the first two persons of the triune godhead.
The Father-Son relationship that is referred to as “begotten” in those nine verses mentioned earlier is NOT referring to the “incarnational relationship” of the Father to the incarnate Christ or to the “messianic relationship,” both of which occurred in time. Begotten here is used to refer to the divine eternal “trinitarian relationship.” Begotten in this case does not refer to origin as it does when used in human father-son relationships. This Father-Son relationship does not refer to the role the Son of God assumed in His incarnation but instead refers to the intimate trinitarian relationship from eternity.
The only-begotten Son does not intend to convey the origin of the Son. The Son like the Father has no origin; no beginning. The begotten in this eternal context intends to convey the perfect oneness and sameness of essence of the Father and the Son. The title for Christ in Scripture the “Son of God” can only refer to His divine equality with God (John 5:18, 10:30). Son of God refers to His nature not His office.
The eternal Father-Son relationship expresses the eternal oneness and sameness of essence among all the persons of the Trinity. However, begotten does not mean that the Father in any way creates the divine essence to the Son since the Son (as well as the Father and Spirit) is already within the divine essence in eternity. Instead the Father generates the Son within the divine essence as an equal divine person in eternity. There is no creation, formation, transfer, or causation involved in begotten or procession. These trinitarian relationships are a function of divine order among the three persons.
The eternal generation of the Son by the Father must not be thought of in a creaturely way but generation must be thought of as spiritual and divine. The Father generates the personal subsistence of the Son within the divine essence in its entirety as one indivisible act. The generation of the Son by the Father has been defined in this way.
It is that eternal and necessary act of the first person of the Trinity, whereby He, within the divine Being, is the ground of a second personal subsistence like His own, and puts this second person in possession of the whole divine essence, without any division, alienation, or change.[ii]
In the case of human procreation, the parents actually convey their essence to their offspring. This is a transfer of essence from parent to child. Thus we find a key difference between the eternal Father-Son relationship and the human father-son relationship. The word father, mother, and parent carry this meaning of a transfer of the parental essence to the child. This idea of the presence of the essence of the father in the son is likely why the writers of Scripture chose the “father-son” wording to describe human procreation. But the human father-son relationship is only a vague reflection of the original fatherhood of God.
So, it is this “sameness of essence” characteristic of the eternal Father-Son relationship that results in the choice of the “father-son” designation being applied to the father-son relationship in human procreation. The difference is that begotten as applied to human procreation is a statement of origin while begotten applied to the eternal Father-Son relationship is a statement of a perfect oneness of divine essence that already is, and doesn’t need to be created or transferred.
Procession
The relationship of the Father and the Son to the Spirit is labeled procession. Like the term begotten, this term is also incomprehensible. Procession comes equally from the Father and the Son and concerns the personal properties and operations of the Spirit, not His essence. The Father and the Son proceed to the Spirit (John 14:26, 15:26). Scripture makes it clear that the Spirit’s trinitarian relation to the Father and to the Son is the same.
Procession (or spiration) is the personal property of the Holy Spirit that distinguishes him from the Father and the Son. Although some of what has been said about the generation of the Son can also be said of the procession of the Holy Spirit, there are nevertheless some distinctions between the two. Generation is the work of the Father only, where procession is the work of both the Father and the Son. The Son participates with the Father since He was generated by the Father. But this does not mean that the Holy Spirit is subordinate to the Son as to essence. Since procession is accomplished within the entire divine essence there is an essential equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. Berkhof defines procession as follows.
That eternal and necessary act of the first and second persons in the Trinity whereby they, within the divine Being, become the ground of the personal subsistence of the Holy Spirit, and put the third person in possession of the whole divine essence, without any division, alienation, or change.[iii]
We readily acknowledge that the human intellect is not able to completely comprehend what is meant when the word of God teaches that the Son is generated by the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, Christians confess this as truth. Human languages are incapable of defining how these processes work― begotten and procession― or even how one essence in three persons works, but we know that Scripture testifies to the truth of these processes.
FINAL REMARKS
There is only one God. He is a tri-personal God. This God is of one divine essence and three persons and all are eternal. God is self-existent. He is eternal and not created or caused. The three persons of the godhead are three distinct but inseparable persons of one and the same divine eternal immutable essence. God’s intellect and will are within the essence and all three persons are wholly within the divine essence. Therefore, the three persons have the identical intellect, will, and power. But the three persons subsist in different personal properties and operations from one another.
We are unable to give a firm and comprehensive definition of begotten and procession. The Bible does not explain what it means by the term begotten or procession. However, it is certain from Scripture that these terms do not mean the creation of new individual beings.
There are many mysteries of God that believers cannot fully comprehend and that’s okay. But it is comprehensible that God in Three Persons is one personal triune God who loves His children. We do not understand the minutia of how begotten and procession work in the godhead. But we can understand that it exists and know something about what it isn’t. And we have some knowledge of its operations internally and externally within the trinitarian relationship. In the end though, we know that we have one God who is a tri-personal God in one eternal essence and that we worship the triune God as well as each of the three persons as God forever.
[i] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 77.
[ii] Berkhof, 83.
[iii] Berkhof, 86.
