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Trinity (22)
The doctrine of the Trinity is simply that there is one eternal being of God - indivisible, infinite. This one being of God is shared by three co-equal, co-eternal persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.https://www.aomin.org/aoblog/1998/04/29/a-brief-definition-of-the-trinity
The word trinity comes from the Latin word trinitas, which means threefold or three in one. The Bible affirms that the one true God exists as a Trinity: the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. They are three distinct persons who are distinguishable from one another, and yet they share the same divine nature or essence and relate to one another in unbroken fellowship. It is important to note that the word trinity is not found in the Scriptures, but was first employed by Tertullian, one of the early Church Fathers, to describe what the Bible teaches about the triune nature of God.One True God, 12
The distinction is, that to the Father is attributed the beginning of action, the fountain and source of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and arrangement in action, while the energy and efficacy of action is assigned to the Spirit.Institutes, Book 1 Chapter 13
The Father is unbegotten, uncreated, and incomprehensible. The Son is begotten, but he is also uncreated and incomprehensible. The Holy Spirit is not begotten or created. He is not the Son's twin brother, nor his uncle, nor his grandfather nor his grandsonAncoratus 7
homoiousios [taught] that the Son is of similar substance with the Father...
The term homoousios could not be twisted to mean anything else than that the essence of the Son is identical with that of the Father.The History of Christian Doctrines (87)
Only if Christ is God, in the full sense of the word and without qualification, has God entered humanity, and only then have fellowship with God, the forgiveness of sins, the truth of God, and immortality been certainly brought to man.Hist. of Doct. I, p211
When Jesus speaks of God as Father, he is implying that he is divine, an implication that is not lost on those around him. The God Who Is Triune: Revisioning the Christian Doctrine of God (Kindle Locations 261-262). Kindle Edition.
The ontological trinity will be our interpretative concept everywhere. God is our concrete universal; in Him thought and being are coterminous, in Him the problem of knowledge is solved. If we begin thus with the ontological trinity as our concrete universal, we frankly differ from every school of philosophy and from every school of science not merely in our conclusions, but in our starting-point and in our method as well.
I have thought it better not to touch on various topics, which could have yielded little profit, while they must have needlessly burdened and fatigued the reader. For instance, what avails it to discuss, as Lombard does at length (lib. 1 dist. 9), whether or not the Father always generates? This idea of continual generation becomes an absurd fiction from the moment it is seen, that from eternity there were three persons in one God.Institutes, Book 1 Chapter 13
The words Father, Son, and Holy Spirit certainly indicate a real distinction, not allowing us to suppose that they are merely ephithets by which God is variously designated from his works. Still they indicate distinction only, not division.Institutes, Book 1 Chapter 13
the [eternal] generation of the Son: It is that eternal and necessary act of the first person in 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.Systematic Theology, 94
opera ad extra are ascribed more particularly to one person and some more especially to another... creation is ascribed primarily to the Father, redemption to the Son, and sanctification to the Holy Spirit. This order in the divine operations points back to the essential order in God and forms the basis for what is generally known as the economic Trinity.Systematic Theology, 89
opera ad intra... are personal operations, which are not performed by the three persons jointly and which are incommunicable. Generation is an act of the Father only; filiation belongs to the Son exclusively; and procession can only be ascribed to the Holy SpiritSystematic Theology, 89
We do not speak of two gods, we do not think of the unity of the Son with the Father in terms of the similarity of their teaching, but in terms of being (ousia) and reality. So we speak...of one God who exists as one form of divinity, like the relationship of light to its ray.De synodis, 52.1
John of Damascus still spoke of the Father as the source of the Godhead, and represents the Spirit as proceeding from the Father through the Logos. This is still a relic of Greek subordinationism. The East never adopted the 'filioque' of the Synod of Toledo. It was the rock of which the East and the West split.The History of Christian Doctrines (92)
The Cappadocians followed in the footsteps of Athanasius and vigorously maintained the homoousis of the Holy Spirit. Hilary of Poitiers in the West held that the Holy Spirit, as searching the deep things of God, could not be foreign to the divine essence.The History of Christian Doctrines (90)
According to him [Athanasius] the unity of God as well as the distinctions in His being are best expressed in the term 'oneness of essence'. This clearly and unequivocally expresses the idea that the Son is of the same substance as the Father, but also implies that the two may differ in other respects, as, for instance, in personal subsistence.The History of Christian Doctrines (85)
As to the objection which they make from the Gospel (John 15:26), we respond as follows: Although in that text Truth says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, he does not add alone, and so he does not deny that the Spirit proceeds also from himself. But he names the Father alone, "because he usually refers to the Father even that which is his own," because he has it from the Father.The Sentences, Book 1, D-XI, Ch1
So, tell me, heretic, was there ever a time when the all-powerful God was not the Father, and yet was God? For if he began to be the Father, then he was first God and afterwards became the Father. But then, how is God unchangeable? For if he was first God and afterwards the Father, surely he has been changed by the addition of begetting. But may God preserve us from this insanity.De fide, bk1, c10 n62
it is called simple because it is what it possesses, except that each person is named relative to another, but is not the other. For it is true that the Father has a Son, in relation to whom he is named, yet he is not the Son; and the Son has a Father, yet he himself is not the Father. But in what is said in regard to himself, apart from his relation to the other, he is what he possesses. Thus, in having life, he is called alive with regard to himself, and he is the very life which is in him. It is for this reason that this nature is called simple, because there is no distinction between the one who possesses and the thing which is possessed, as is the case in all other things. For the liquid's container is not the liquid, and the body is not its colour, and the soul is not wisdomCity of God, Book 11
In God knowledge and will are one and the same, as also are foreknowledge and predestination. Thus, although the nature and will of God are one, yet it is said that the Father generated the Son by nature, not by will, and that he is God by nature, not by will.The Sentences, Vol 1, 40
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