Trinity

The term "Trinity" is not a Biblical term, and we are not using Biblical language when we define what is expressed by it as the doctrine that there is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three coeternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in subsistence.

We must recognize that we cannot be in unity with the risen Christ unless we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us into that unity. If we do not have the Holy Spirit, we are not saved because Christ ascended into the heavens, and how is it possible for us as created, finite, and limited beings to be united with the risen Christ? The Holy Spirit makes the risen Christ available to all and unites all to Christ. It is important to our ecclesiology. The Holy Spirit makes the future Christ, actively present in history. The Holy Spirit makes the final event in the divine plan present and it is the one who constitutes our being as communion. It makes us a relational being, who gives us the power to be with Christ and to embrace everything that Christ has embraced.

There is no salvation without the Holy Spirit, even though Christ gave us salvation. But after His ascension how can we be united with Him, if we do not have the Holy Spirit? How do we feel the presence of Christ apart from the Holy Spirit? How is it possible for us to receive the fullness of Christ? There is a danger sometimes in Christian piety to reduce our Trinitarian faith to a dual faith. A Christian faith without an enriched theology of the Holy Spirit is reduced to an institution.

The way we communicate our faith to each other, sermons, are not only moralistic and reducing theology to moralism, but they are also reducing the trinity by acknowledging the importance of the work of the Holy Spirit.

The unity of God lays in God the Father out of whom the Holy Spirit proceeds and God is begotten, the difference between begotten and procession remains a mystery and cannot be explained.

Holy Trinity operates in God’s economy as one, but does not mean that the three persons do the same thing, God the Father remains forever inaccessible and transcendent, Holy Spirit operated in every aspect of Christ’s ministry, but Holy Spirit is the one who moves history into the final event and the final event into the present.

A doctrine so defined can be spoken of as a Biblical doctrine only on the principle that the sense of Scripture is Scripture. And the definition of a Biblical doctrine in such un-Biblical language can be justified only on the principle that it is better to preserve the truth of Scripture than the words of Scripture.

The doctrine of the Trinity lies in Scripture in solution; when it is crystallized from its solvent it does not cease to be Scriptural, but only comes into clearer view. Or, to speak without figure, the doctrine of the Trinity is given to us in Scripture, not in formulated definition, but in fragmentary allusions. We may state the doctrine in technical terms, supplied by philosophical reflection; but the doctrine stated is a genuinely Scriptural doctrine.

The Church began to formulate its doctrine of the Trinity in the fourth century.

The Council of Nicea declared the Son to be co-essential with the Father (325 A.D.), while the Council of Constantinople (381 A.D.) asserted the deity of the Holy Spirit, though not with the same precision. As to the interrelation of the three it was officially professed that the Son is generated by the Father, and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

In the East the doctrine of the Trinity found its fullest statement in the work of John of Damascus, and in the West, in Augustine’s great work “De Trinitate”.

Since man is made in the image of God, man also has three natures. Both man and woman have three parts: body, soul, and spirit. God the Son is comparable to the body since the Son is God incarnate. God the Father is comparable to the soul, or mind, since he was the mind that created everything. The Holy Spirit is comparable to man's Spirit. As the body of man is the temple of our spirit, the body of Jesus Christ is the temple to the Holy Spirit which precedes from the Father through (dia) the Son. [http://orthodoxwiki.org/Holy_Trinity]

As we can see man is created in the image of God; we learn to understand something of the personal life of God from the contemplation of personality as we know it in man. We should be careful, however, not to set up man’s personality as a standard by which the personality of God must be measured. The original form of personality is not in man but in God; His is archetypal, while man’s is ectypal. We should not say that man is personal, while God is super-personal (a very unfortunate term), for what is super-personal is not personal; but rather, that what appears as imperfect in man exists in infinite perfection in God. The one outstanding difference between the two is that man is uni-personal, while God is tri-personal. And this tri-personal existence is a necessity in the Divine Being, and not in any sense the result of a choice of God. He could not exist in any other than the tri-personal form. This has been argued in various ways. It is very common to argue it from the idea of personality itself. The argument from personality, to prove at least a plurality in God, can be put in some such form as this: Among men the ego awakens to consciousness only by contact with the non-ego. Personality does not develop nor exist in isolation, but only in association with other persons. Hence it is not possible to conceive of personality in God apart from an association of equal persons in Him. His contact with His creatures would not account for His personality any more than man’s contact with the animals would explain his personality. In virtue of the tri-personal existence of God there is an infinite fullness of divine life in Him. Paul speaks of this “pleroma” (fullness) of the Godhead in Eph. 3:19 and Col. 1:9; 2:9. In view of the fact that there are three persons in God, it is better to say that God is personal than to speak of Him as a Person.

The doctrine of the Trinity is very unquestionably a doctrine of revelation. It is true that human reason may suggest some thoughts to substantiate the doctrine, and that men have sometimes on purely philosophical grounds abandoned the idea of a bare unity in God, and introduced the idea of living movement and self-distinction. And it is also true that Christian experience would seem to demand some such construction of the doctrine of God. At the same time it is a doctrine which we would not have known, nor have been able to maintain with any degree of confidence, on the basis of experience alone, and which is brought to our knowledge only by God’s special self-revelation.

The Church confesses the Trinity to be a mystery beyond the comprehension of man. The Trinity is a mystery, not merely in the Biblical sense that it is a truth, which was formerly hidden but is now revealed; but in the sense that man cannot comprehend it and make it intelligible. It is intelligible in some of its relations and modes of manifestation, but unintelligible in its essential nature. The many efforts that were made to explain the mystery were speculative rather than theological. They invariably resulted in the development of tritheistic or modalistic conceptions of God, in the denial of either the unity of the divine essence or the reality of the personal distinctions within the essence. The real difficulty lies in the relation in whom the persons in the Godhead stand to the divine essence and to one another; and this is a difficulty which the Church cannot remove, but only try to reduce to its proper proportion by a proper definition of terms; it has never tried to explain the mystery of the Trinity, but only sought to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity, in such a manner that the errors which endangered it were warded off.

Paul's Trinitarianism

When we turn from the discourses of Jesus to the writings of His followers with a view to observing how the assumption of the doctrine of the Trinity underlies their whole fabric also, we naturally go first of all to the letters of Paul. Their very mass is impressive; and the definiteness with which their composition within a generation of the death of Jesus may be fixed adds importance to them as historical witnesses. Certainly they leave nothing to be desired in the richness of their testimony to the Trinitarian conception of God which underlies them.

Throughout the whole series, from 1 Thessalonians, (which comes from about 52 AD), to 2 Timothy, (which was written about 68 AD), the redemption, which it is their one business to proclaim and commend, and all the blessings which enter into it or accompany it are referred consistently to a threefold divine causation. Everywhere, throughout their pages, God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit appear as the joint objects of all religious adoration, and the conjunct source of all divine operations. In the freedom of the allusions which are made to them, now and again one alone of the three is thrown up into prominent view; but more often two of them are conjoined in thanksgiving or prayer; and not infrequently all three are brought together as the apostle strives to give some adequate expression to his sense of indebtedness to the divine source of all good for blessings received, or to his longing on behalf of himself or of his readers for further communion with the God of grace.

It is regular for him to begin his Epistles with a prayer for "grace and peace" for his readers, "from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ," as the joint source of these divine blessings by way of eminence:

(Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:2; Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2; Philippians 1:2; 2 Thessalonians 1:2; 1 Timothy 1:2; 2 Timothy 1:2; Philemon 1:3; compare 1 Thessalonians 1:1).

It is obviously no departure from this habit in the essence of the matter, but only in relative fullness of expression, when in the opening words of the Epistle to the Colossians, the clause "and the Lord Jesus Christ" is omitted, and we read merely: "Grace to you and peace from God our Father." So also it would have been no departure from it in the essence of the matter, but only in relative fullness of expression, if in any instance the name of the Holy Spirit had chanced to be adjoined to the other two, as in the single instance of 2 Corinthians 13:14 it is adjoined to them in the closing prayer for grace with which Paul ends his letters, and which ordinarily takes the simple form of, "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you":

(Romans 16:20; 1 Corinthians 16:23; Galatians 6:18; Philippians 4:23; 1 Thessalonians 5:28; 2 Thessalonians 3:18; Philemon 1:25; more expanded form, Ephesians 6:23,24; more compressed, Colossians 4:18; 1 Timothy 6:21; 2 Timothy 4:22; Titus 3:15).

Between these opening and closing passages the allusions to God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are constant and most intricately interlaced.

Paul's monotheism is intense: the first premise of all his thought on divine things is the unity of God:

(Romans 3:30; 1 Corinthians 8:4; Galatians 3:20; Ephesians 4:6; 1 Timothy 2:5; compare Romans 16:22; 1 Timothy 1:17).

Yet to him God the Father is no more God than the Lord Jesus Christ is God, or the Holy Spirit is God. The Spirit of God is to him related to God as the spirit of man is to man and therefore if the Spirit of God dwells in us, that is God dwelling in us and we are by that fact constituted temples of God: (1 Corinthians 2:11), (Romans 8:10), (1 Corinthians 3:16).

And no expression is too strong for him to use in order to assert the Godhead of Christ: He is "our great God" (Titus 2:13); He is "God over all" (Romans 9:5); and indeed it is expressly declared of Him that the fullness of the Godhead, that is, everything that enters into Godhead and constitutes it Godhead, dwells in Him. In the very act of asserting his monotheism Paul takes our Lord up into this unique Godhead. There is no God but one he roundly asserts, and then illustrates and proves this assertion by remarking that the heathen may have:

"gods many, and lords many," but "to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him" (1 Corinthians 8:6).

Obviously, this "one God, the Father," and "one Lord, Jesus Christ," are embraced together in the one God who alone is. Paul's conception of the one God, whom alone he worships, includes, in other words, recognition that within the unity of His Being, there such a distinction exists of Persons as is given us in the "one God, the Father" and the "one Lord, Jesus Christ."

The indwelling of the divine produced by the Spirit is spoken of indifferently as the indwelling of the Spirit, or of the Spirit of Christ, or of Christ Himself:

(all three terms in Romans 8:9-11; compare: 1 Corinthians 2:12; Galatians 4:6; Ephesians 3:17, etc.).

The variations are in part due to the inadequacy of the Old terminology (2 Corinthians 3:17), in part to the nature of the subject.

Distinctions made between the operations of the persons of the Trinity on the soul can never be much more than verbal, and the terms are freely interchangeable. At all events, through the Spirit Christ is in the believer or, what is the same thing, the believer is in Christ "We have become united with him" in a union once and for all effected (Galatians 3:27) and yet always to be made more intimate The union so accomplished makes the man "a new creature".

(Romans 8:10; Galatians 2:20; 4:19; Ephesians 3:17), (Romans 6:11; 8:1; 16:7, etc.). (Romans 6:5, "grown together with"), (2 Corinthians 5:17), (Romans 13:14), (Galatians 3:27)

In numerous passages scattered through Paul's Epistles, from the earliest of them to the latest), all three Persons, God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, are brought together, in the most incidental manner, as co-sources of all the saving blessings which come to believers in Christ.

(1 Thessalonians 1:2-5; 2 Thessalonians 2:13, 14),(Titus 3:4-6; 2 Timothy 1:3, 13, 14

A typical series of such passages may be found in Ephesians 2:18; 3:2-5, 14, 17; 4:4-6; 5:18-20. But the most interesting instances are offered to us perhaps by the Epistles to the Corinthians.

In 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 Paul presents the abounding spiritual gifts with which the church was blessed in a threefold aspect, and connects these aspects with the three Divine Persons:

"Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all."

It may be thought that there is a measure of what might almost be called artificiality in assigning the endowments of the church, as they are graces to the Spirit, as they are services to Christ, and as they are energizing to God. But thus there is only the more strikingly revealed the underlying Trinitarian conception as dominating the structure of the clauses: Paul clearly so writes, not because "gifts," "workings," "operations" stand out in his thought as greatly diverse things, but because God, the Lord, and the Spirit lie in the back of his mind constantly suggesting a threefold causality behind every manifestation of grace. The Trinity is alluded to rather than asserted; but it is so alluded to as to show that it constitutes the determining basis of all Paul's thought of the God of redemption.

Even more instructive is 2 Corinthians 13:14, which have passed into general liturgical use in the church as a benediction:

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all."

Here the three highest redemptive blessings are brought together and attached distributivly to the three Persons of the Triune God.

There is again no formal teaching of the doctrine of the Trinity; there is only another instance of natural speaking out of a Trinitarian consciousness. Paul is simply thinking of the divine source of these great blessings; but he habitually thinks of this divine source of redemptive blessings after a trinal fashion. He therefore does not say, as he might just as well have said, "The grace and love and communion of God be with you all," but "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all." Thus he bears, almost unconsciously but most richly, witness to the trinal composition of the Godhead as conceived by Him.

The phenomena of Paul's Epistles are repeated in the other writings of the New Testament. In these other writings also it is everywhere assumed that the redemptive activities of God rest on a threefold source in God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit; and these three Persons repeatedly come forward together in the expressions of Christian hope or the aspirations of Christian devotion (e.g. Hebrews 2:3,4; 6:4-6; 10:29-31; 1 Peter 1:2; 2:3-12; 4:13-19; 1 John 5:4-8; Jude 1:20,21; Revelation 14-6).

Perhaps as typical instances as any are supplied by the two following:

"According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:2);

"Praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life" (Jude 1:20, 21).

To these may be added the highly symbolical instance from the Apocalypse:

“Grace to you and peace from Him which is and was and which is to come; and from the Seven Spirits which are before His throne; and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:4, 5).

Clearly these writers, too, write out of a fixed Trinitarian consciousness and bear their testimony to the universal understanding current in apostolic circles. Everywhere and by all it was fully understood that the one God whom Christians worshipped and from whom alone they expected redemption and all that redemption brought with it, included within His undiminished unity the three: God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, whose activities relatively to one another are conceived as distinctly personal. This is the uniform and pervasive testimony of the New Testament, and it is the more impressive that it is given with such unstudied naturalness and simplicity, with no effort to distinguish between what have come to be called the ontological and the economic aspects of the Trinitarian distinctions, and indeed without apparent consciousness of the existence of such a distinction of aspects. Whether God is thought of in Himself or in His operations, the underlying conception runs unaffectedly into trinal forms.

Johannine Discourses

It is in the sermons recorded in John, however, that Jesus most copiously refers to the unity of Himself, as the Son, with the Father, and to the mission of the Spirit from Himself as the dispenser of the divine activities.

Here He not only with great directness declares that He and the Father are one (10:30; compare 17:11,21,22,25) with a unity of interpenetration ("The Father is in me, and I in the Father," 10:38; compare 16:10,11), so that to have seen Him was to have seen the Father (14:9; compare 15:21); but He removes all doubt as to the essential nature of His oneness with the Father by explicitly asserting His eternity ("Before Abraham was born, I am," John 8:58), His co-eternity with God ("had with thee before the world was," 17:5; compare 17:18; 6:62), His eternal participation in the divine glory itself ("the glory which I had with thee," in fellowship, community with Thee "before the world was," 17:5). So clear is it that in speaking currently of Himself as God's Son (5:25; 9:35; 11:4; compare 10:36), He meant, in accordance with the underlying significance of the idea of sonship in Semitic speech (founded on the natural implication that whatever the father is that the son is also; compare 16:15; 17:10), to make Himself, as the Jews with exact appreciation of His meaning perceived, "equal with God" (5:18), or, to put it brusquely, just "God" (10:33). How He, being thus equal or rather identical with God, was in the world, He explains as involving a coming forth on His part, not merely from the presence of God (16:30; compare 13:3) or from fellowship with God (16:27; 17:8), but from out of God Himself (8:42; 16:28). And in the very act of thus asserting that His eternal home is in the depths of the Divine Being, He throws up, into as strong an emphasis as stressed pronouns can, convey, His personal distinctness from the Father. “If God were your Father,” says Hebrews (8:42), “ye would love me: for I came forth and am come out of God; for neither have I come of myself, but it was He that sent me.” Again, He says (John 16:26, 27): “In that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you that I will make request of the Father for you; for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that it was from fellowship with the Father that I came forth; I came from out of the Father, and have come into the world.” Less pointedly, but still distinctly, He says again (John 17:8): “They know of a truth that it was from fellowship with Thee that I came forth, and they believed that it was Thou that didst send me.” It is not necessary to illustrate more at large a form of expression so characteristic of the discourses of our Lord recorded by John that it meets us on every page: a form of expression which combines a clear implication of a unity of Father and Son which is identity of Being, and an equally clear implication of a distinction of Person between them such as allows not merely for the play of emotions between them, as, for instance, of love (John 17:24; compare 15:9 (3:35); 14:31), but also of an action and reaction upon one another which argues a high measure, if not of exteriority, yet certainly of exteriorization. Thus, to instance only one of the most outstanding facts of our Lord's discourses (not indeed confined to those in John's Gospel, but found also in His sayings recorded in the Synoptists, as e.g. Luke 4:43 (compare parallel Mark 1:38); Luke 9:48; 10:16; 4:34; 5:32; 7:19; 19:10), He continually represents Himself as on the one hand sent by God, and as, on the other, having come forth from the Father (e.g. John 8:42; 10:36; 17:3; 5:23).

It is more important to point out that these phenomena of interrelationship are not confined to the Father and Son, but are extended also to the Spirit. Thus, for example, in a context in which our Lord had emphasized in the strongest manner His own essential unity and continued interpenetration with the Father ("If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also"; "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"; "I am in the Father, and the Father in me"; "The Father abiding in me doeth his works," John 14:7,9,10), we read as follows (John 14:16-26):

“And I will make request of the Father, and He shall live you another (thus sharply distinguished from Our lord as a distinct Person) Advocate, that He may be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth .... He abideth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I come unto you. .... In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father. .... If a man love me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him and we (that is, both Father and Son) will come unto him and make our abode with him. .... These things have I spoken unto you while abiding with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.”

It would be impossible to speak more distinctly of three who were yet one. The Father, Son and Spirit are constantly distinguished from one another--the Son makes request of the Father, and the Father in response to this request gives an Advocate, "another" than the Son, who is sent in the Son's name. And yet the oneness of these three is so kept in sight that the coming of this "another Advocate" is spoken of without embarrassment as the coming of the Son Himself (John 14:18, 19, 20, 21), and indeed as the coming of the Father and the Son (John 14:23). There is a sense, then, in which, when Christ goes away, the Spirit comes in His stead; there is also a sense in which, when the Spirit comes, Christ comes in Him; and with Christ's coming the Father comes too. There is a distinction between the Persons brought into view; and with it an identity among them; for both of which allowance must be made. The same phenomena meet us in other passages. Thus, we read again (John 15:26):

“But when there is come the Advocate whom I will send unto you from (fellowship with) the Father, the Spirit of Truth, which goeth forth from (fellowship with) the Father, He shall bear witness of me.”

In the compass of this single verse, it is intimated that the Spirit is personally distinct from the Son, and yet, like Him, has His eternal home (in fellowship) with the Father, from whom He, like the Son, comes forth for His saving work, being sent thereunto, however, not in this instance by the Father, but by the Son.

This last feature is even more strongly emphasized in yet another passage in which the work of the Spirit in relation to the Son is presented as closely parallel with the work of the Son in relation to the Father (John 16:5).

“But now I go unto Him that sent me .... Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go away; for, if I go not away the Advocate will not come unto you; but if I go I will send Him unto you. And He, after He is come, will convict the world .... of righteousness because I go to the Father and ye behold me no more. .... I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He shall guide you into all the truth; for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, He shall speak, and He shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify me: for He shall take of mine and shall show it unto you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore said I that He taketh of mine, and shall declare it unto you.”

Here the Spirit is sent by the Son, and comes in order to complete and apply the Son's work, receiving His whole commission from the Son--not, however, in derogation of the Father, because when we speak of the things of the Son, that is to speak of the things of the Father.

It is not to be said, of course, that the doctrine of the Trinity is formulated in passages like these, with which the whole mass of our Lord's discourses in John are strewn; but it certainly is presupposed in them, and that is, considered from the point of view of their probative force, even better. As we read we are kept in continual contact with three Persons who act, each as a distinct person, and yet who are in a deep, underlying sense, one. There is but one God--there is never any question of that--and yet this Son who has been sent into the world by God not only represents God but is God, and this Spirit whom the Son has in turn sent unto the world is also Himself God. Nothing could be clearer than that the Son and Spirit are distinct Persons, unless indeed it be that the Son of God is just God the Son and the Spirit of God just God the Spirit.

Conclusion

In the Bible there is one true living God. In the Old Testament among many names, He is called Father. It is important to realize that the whole mystery of God begins with this conviction that there is one God, Father. It is the Father, and the Spirit of God (of the Father) and it is the Father who sends the son. Primacy or monarchy, or priority of the Father - this is the basis of the doctrine of Trinity, which is biblical in this way.

We see in the Gospel of John, that it is the Father who sent me, the authority of the Father, etc. all these things are quite obvious. At the same time we have in John 5, references that He has equal honor, equal authority over life and death. If you honor him you honor the Father.

A clear stress, that Christ is the Incarnate and eternal Word and is clearly on the side of God. And yet he is also somehow obedient to the Father, he does the works of the Father. That language smacks of subordination, in some ways; but, we cannot forget the other language of being equal to the Father.

How do we deal with this theological problematic?

The Bible doesn’t solve this problem because exegetically you have to affirm both of those things. Exegetically looking for the original meaning, you have to affirm that the origins of the Eternal Word are not merely moral origins but that His Eternal Word comes from the very being of God. This is one of the many issues of the doctrine of the Trinity.

If there is any sense that you can understand the verse, it is only through the model of the Trinity. The Father is “Source” or cause of all divinity. Even eternally He is primary, it is from HIM that the SON comes and from HIM that the Holy Spirit comes. So this solution is that everything begins with the Father, He is the source. This way Jesus Christ can say that His source is in the Father (which He does).

Perhaps a better analogy is to have concentric circles. We know them in their epiphany. We have parts of scripture that talk of all 3 like in baptism. What is the most critical element?

From the time of the apostles the church believed that the one who was incarnate was the son and not the father nor the Holy Spirit.

In 2nd c. Sabelius moved in the direction of saying that the incarnate son is just the father, it was the father who was incarnate. This is heresy. He had such a concentrated, exaggerated sense of the Trinities’ singularity it’s one-ness. So, according to him the one, who suffered on the cross, was the father. This is the most fundamental element that leads to the doctrine of the Trinity.

The three persons are united, but distinct in so far as the son was always the son, the spirit was always the spirit and the Father was always the Father, based on the fact that the Son was Incarnate.

Father, Son and Spirit share ALL things.

They share divinity, will, grace, kingdom, essence, in everything. That is why we say that God is one. Except, the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the spirit. We know this from history. The one Incarnate is the Son and He is distinct. It was the spirit given at Pentecost.

While they share everything they are also distinct.

Certain terminology was chosen to explain the unity and distinctiveness of the life of the Trinity. The Cappadocians chose this from the passage of 15:26. This is very important for the understanding of John and his gospel. “Porevo” means to go, or go out of. They chose it to indicate that it is the Father who is the fountainhead, the cause. Then we have this other verb “ego pexo” or I will send to you from the Father, I will send you the spirit who proceeds from the Father. The Son shares in the sending into the world. Why? The Father and Son and Spirit are always united.

The “Filioque” and Augustine and the West use the word “procedere” in Latin, which means proceeds. The Creed means that the Spirit proceeds from the father and the son. The key part here is being AND the Son. The “and” makes the Son also the source.

We said that the Father is the source.

Dogmatically, you would have a hybrid hypostasis being a Father-Son hypostasis which would go against the biblical understanding that they are separate. The Son can send, but he can never be the source. Instead of using “and” maybe we should use “through” or “dia” in Greek. The father sends, THROUGH the son, not with the son.