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Divine Simplicity, Ontological and Economic Trinity, and Inseparable Operations.
Last week, we talked about the foundation of the Trinity. We talked about who God was in his trinity. And the definition that we gave of the Trinity was that the doctrine of the Trinity means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct persons.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Stated differently, God is one in essence and three in person. These definitions express what I concluded was three crucial Orthodox truths. Firstly, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons.
Two, each person is fully and absolutely God. And three, there is only one God. Remember we stated last week that we are good monotheists. We hold to the idea that there is but one God. And so we made sure not to confuse the Trinity with three gods or three beings, but three persons and one God.
And if you remember, we concluded that sermon or lermon, which is just lecture sermon, by saying that even if it sounds like a contradiction, it's not. It's not a paradox. It is what we will call a biblical mystery.
That is a secret that has been revealed by divine revelation, even if we cannot wrap our minds fully around it. There certainly is things that we can't know about God and His fullness, but that does not mean that we cannot press in and learn as much as the Bible reveals.
We can only know God in so much as God reveals Himself to us. And we are thankful that He has made Himself known to us in the pages of His holy scriptures. Today, we are moving on from Trinitarian foundations, though much more could be said in that department, to talking about Trinitarian salvation.
But in order for us to understand salvation from a Trinitarian perspective, we need to learn some new words. And I know, as we journey through this series, it's going to become quite exhausting when we learn all of these new words, phrases, and concepts that likely will not stick the first time you hear them.
And the reason for that is because, quite honestly, the Church has failed to teach on these doctrines over the last several hundred years. And so these things sound foreign to us, but they are actually the groundwork and the foundation of biblical orthodoxy.
That is, Christianity of old, the ancient truths. And so we embark upon a journey to build up, as it were, our theological dictionary. And that will help us to interact with and understand what many books we recommend say, as well as be able to know our God better.
Now, one of the things that I want to say, which I think I made clear last week, but I want to make even more clear this week, which is what I am after is for you to understand the truth that the Bible proclaims.
I am not so worried that you understand every single word that I'm saying in terms of just knowing it. So understand would be the wrong word. That was my fault. I'm not necessarily interested in you having flashcards with the name of these words on them.
I want you to see and feel the truth that you might worship God in His triunity. And so, with that said, there are three terms that I want us to look at before we can look at salvation. Those three terms are divine simplicity, and then the difference between the ontological trinity and the economic trinity.
And then we're going to talk about something called inseparable operations. And all of these are, I believe, the foundation for understanding how God saves a people for Himself in His triuneness. And so first, divine simplicity.
Divine simplicity is an important doctrine as it applies to theology proper. That is the study of God Himself. It's so important, in fact, that a theologian by the name of Adonis Vigiu once said that without a proper attention to it, speaking of divine simplicity, our understanding of salvation degenerates into mythology.
Simplicity means that God is not made up of parts. He's not composite or a compounded being. He is simple. Now, that's just a fancy philosophical way to say that all that is in God is God, period. One of the better ways to illustrate this is in 1 John chapter 4, it says God is love.
It does not say that God has love. Love is something that is bound to God ontologically. That means in His being. Very simply, it means that the attributes of God are not pieces of a pie. God is His attributes.
So it's not as if, for instance, love gets 10%, mercy gets 30, and so on and so forth. God is 100 God 100 of the time. And so though when we look at the scriptures, we can parse out different attributes because we experience them in God.
They are all the same thing because everything that is God is God. He can never be less than Himself and He can never be more than Himself. He is Himself all of the time. What this means practically is there is not one attribute that is more important than any of the others because nothing is more important than God.
That does not mean, however, that certain attributes that He holds, the things that make Him God, are not emphasized. For instance, in Isaiah 6, it is the only time in Scripture where an attribute is said three times, holy, holy, holy.
But God's simplicity must be something that we cherish and hold to as Christians because if not, we run into some very serious errors. Now, much like the Trinity itself, divine simplicity is not explicitly mentioned in Scripture.
That is, you can't find a verse that says God is simple. You have to look at Genesis all the way to Revelation and you have to do what's called biblical theology. You have to look at the Scriptures and see what it teaches from beginning to end about this particular thing.
And so it is implied more so than it is explicitly stated. It is just there. We see it, we collect it, and we do our best to make sense of it. For instance, one of the Scriptures of this doctrine is built off of this James 1, 17, which says, every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
Now, James, the brother of Jesus here, is speaking primarily about God's consistency in giving gifts to his people, right? Every good gift is given and every perfect gift is from above. However, what we see in this verse here is that it cannot be diminished or taken away because what's being justified here is the statement by virtue of the fact that he's pointing to the nature of God, which is consistent with itself.
In other words, every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above because there is no change or shifting in God. He cannot be giving one time and not giving another. He cannot be love one time and not be loving another time.
If God is a giver, God is a giver. Why is this important? Because if we deny divine simplicity, what we do is we potentially run the risk of setting one part of God against another part of God. Now, again, I have said since the beginning when we talked about divine simplicity that God is not made up of parts.
And I'm saying this for this very specific reason. If we deny simplicity, then God is divided into parts and then they can potentially stand at odds with one another. Now, you may think that's an obscure point or maybe this doesn't really matter all that much.
Well, I can tell you it matters a lot because Stephen Furtick not too long ago once stood in his pulpit or whatever they call his little chair that he stands in front of. And he said that God broke the law for love.
So what Stephen Furtick is saying, if you're paying attention, is that God's justice was at odds with God's love. But the reality is that cannot be so because God is always just and God is always loving because everything that is in God is God.
Does that make sense? I know that's a weird philosophical but very biblical and exegetical kind of a doctrine, but it's so very helpful because it helps us to understand who God is and who God is not.
The second thing that I want you to consider is the difference between what theologians call the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity. The ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity. What's going on here is theologians are trying to make sense of who God is in himself and what he does.
So the difference between the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity is being versus activity. So if you think about this description and that's what it is. It's not saying that there are two different trinities.
You know what I'm saying?
There are not two different trinities, two different gods. There is one triune God and theologians are trying to help us understand how God differentiates or aligns with the way in which he acts. Are these things analogous?
Or are they different? So what is the ontological Trinity more in-depth? The ontological Trinity or as other theologians have called it the eminent Trinity is who God is in himself. There are two words here that I know you'll forget because I forgot them many times as I was studying through this over the years.
And they're Latin phrases.
Ad intra, ad extra.
That is, ad intra is in himself or inside and ad extra is eternal. That which external, not eternal, external, that which is external to God or outside of him. So the ontological Trinity is that which is ad intra.
And it is how the triune God relates to himself. That is, the father eternally begets the son. The son is eternally generated from the father and the spirit proceeds both from the father and the son from all eternity.
Now I want to say that part again because that is one of the questions that most people missed on the questionnaire before we started the series. The father eternally begets the son. There is never a time when the father is not the father.
And the son is eternally generated from the father. There is never a time when the son was not the son. And the spirit has eternally, and the spirit proceeds from the father and the son from all eternity.
And this is what is called, as I said, the ontological or the eminent Trinity. It is who God is in himself. Now, what is the economic Trinity? The economic Trinity is how we distinguish among the three persons of the Godhead in terms of their roles in creation and redemption.
In other words, when I say things like, or when I taught through Ephesians chapter 1, which we're going to go back to today, that the father plans, the son secures, and the Holy Spirit applies salvation, I'm speaking not of the ontological Trinity, who he is in himself, but what he does in his activity.
Or when people, or I say that the father initiates, the son acts, the Holy Spirit perfects, we're speaking of the economy of the triune God. Now, the third term that we must establish before talking more about salvation is something called inseparable operations.
Inseparable operations. And let me give myself a small out before we begin talking about inseparable operations. Inseparable operations, though it is completely orthodox, is quite hard to understand. Not only that, but it's much harder to explain than even it is to understand, which means it's thrice hard to hear what is being taught.
So hang in there with me, and hopefully we'll be able to make some sense of it. Because it's going to require some conceptual thinking. We've left the boots on the ground, and we're peeking behind the veil of eternity, as it were.
Another thing that I want to say before we move forward into this. This is not just the musings of some ivory tower theologian. These are found in Scripture, and I hope to prove that to you. And we do our best to proclaim it because we see it, but it's present for us to understand so that we ultimately will worship the God who is.
So what is inseparable operations? Inseparable operations teaches the absolute unity of God's identity and action. I'll say that again. Inseparable operations teaches the absolute unity of God's identity and action.
Now, I like that definition, but after talking to some people in our church, I found that maybe this absolute unity part might not be the most clear. Because sometimes when you think about the word unity, you think about what?
You think about someone going along to get along. What I mean by that is, you think about maybe people having differences of opinion, but having a unified front, right? So think about church, for example, or leadership in any capacity.
You might be leading with a group of people, and no group of people are going to agree on absolutely everything. But that doesn't mean that those leaders walk around talking about how stupid the other one is for thinking differently.
That would be ridiculous, and it would not be good leadership. There must be a unified front. And so the person who acquiesces and lets the other idea go forth, he's preserving unity, but he has a different will, and he has a different purpose, and he's obviously another person.
So what we're not saying when we talk about inseparable operation is that there are three members, three persons in the Trinity, rather, who are just unifying for the sake of getting something done, and they all have their rogue roles.
Matthew Barrett has a very good definition of inseparable operations, and he says this, and for the women in the room, this is in your book, Simply Trinity. Inseparable operations means every act of God is the single act of the triune God.
There are not different acts by different agents, but one act according to one divine agency. Singularity in will, singularity in operation. Now, if that confused you, let me try to come down one more step.
What Matthew Barrett is trying to say, and what I was trying to say in the first definition, is the entire Trinity is acting in every work of God. Now we look to our text. 1 Corinthians 8 6, and I choose this text to look at first because it's essentially a rephrasing of the text that we started with last week, which is Deuteronomy 6 4, which says, Hero Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one.
And 1 Corinthians 8 6, Paul says, Yet for us, there is one God, the Father, from who are all things, and we exist for him and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him. So we've got God the Father, and God the Son, and here it says that they are both one, and they are ascribed the same acts, right?
The Father, from whom are all things, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, the Father, we exist for him, Jesus Christ, we exist through him. So once again, the entire Trinity is acting in every work of God.
This means, for instance, when the Father works, Jesus works. When Jesus works, the Spirit works. Or a better way to understand that, that is less confusing, because that can actually kind of convolute things, is when the Son works, God is working.
You can see this replete throughout the Scriptures. There are a lot we can choose from, a lot of them coming from the Gospel of John. I'm going to shotgun fire, I'm going to hit you with some buckshot here real quick, as it were, and read John 5, 19.
I saw a few laughs, that's probably because buckshot, and as it were, we're probably never in the same sentence ever before this very moment.
But here we are, nonetheless.
John 5, 19. John 5, 19. Therefore, Jesus answered and was saying to them, truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing from himself unless it is something he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in the same manner.
John 5, 30, same thing. I can do nothing from myself, as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is righteous, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me. John 6, 38. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one God, and they have one will, and their operations are inseparable. John 15, 26. When the advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.
John 16, 13. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will disclose to you what is to come.
Clear as mud?
John Owen helps us. He's one of the Puritans of old who most certainly agreed with the doctrine of inseparable operations. And he said, the persons of the Trinity are undivided in their operations, that is, in their work, especially in creation and redemption, acting all by the same will, the same wisdom, the same power.
Every person, therefore, is the author of every work of God, and the divine nature is the same undivided principle of all divine operations. Very practically, this means that when God the Father planned redemption before the foundations of the world and the covenant of redemption, as we talked about in Ephesians chapter one, the triune God planned redemption.
It's not as though he planned, the Father planned redemption and the Son and the Spirit were out to lunch. Nor does it, nor is it that they were sitting around the table in agreement. They're one God.
So their operations have to be inseparable. So when one member of the Trinity acts, God acts. This is why it begins to make more sense, for example, when we see in Jude 5. Now, I want to remind you, Jude says, another brother of Jesus, though you know all things, that Jesus, listen to me, that Jesus, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.
Jude is pointing back to the Old Testament where God is working on behalf of the Israelites far before Jesus was born in the incarnation. And yet Jude has no problem saying that it was Jesus who saved the Israelites in the land of Egypt.
Well, how can that be possible unless their operations are inseparable? Or we can look at another example. Isaiah's anticipation that every knee shall bow in Isaiah 45 .23 before the return to Yahweh.
Why is that fulfilled in the exaltation of Christ in Philippians 2 .10 and 11? There isn't inseparable operations. Here's the payoff here. If the doctrine of inseparable operations is not Orthodox Christianity, then Yahweh never came to save his people.
The entire Trinity is acting in every work of God. Now, that is not to say that the three persons of the Trinity can't be distinguished from one another in the economy of redemption or in the economic Trinity.
Scripture often appropriates divine works to one person of the Trinity at any given time. But what you must understand when you look at Scripture and you begin to parse these things out is that all of God is involved in every work of God.
And so what does that have to do with Trinitarian salvation?
Everything.
That means that God is Savior. That means that God is Savior. That means the Father is Savior, the Son is Savior, and the Spirit is Savior. And nothing that they do can be separated from one another. Friends, you're starting to see how we've become accidental heretics if you paid attention to the last sermon and this sermon.
Because we start turning Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Father into three gods who have three different wills, who are doing three different things. And we don't mean to do that. We've just been poorly educated.
And so we have to pour through ancient tomes and we have to look at the Scriptures in depth and we have to look at these things and we have to say, no, they are there. They are in Scripture. And they help us to understand who our God is, that we might behold him in all of his glory.
That's why you hear me say all of the time, we must behold our God. I can tell you to increase your worship all day and give you three ways to do that. But what if I tell you that this God is so infinite and we are so finite that we can barely chip away at his godness.
And we can see, though it seems contradictory and paradoxical at times, that he is one God in three persons who is simple, not made up of parts, that he is 100 himself all of the time, that he is in himself, the father who is eternally begetting, the eternally generated son who is proceeding or spirating from both of them from eternity.
And yet in redemptive history, there is this beautifully panorama, if you will, where they are acting on behalf. Even that, see, you catch yourself. And I'll own up to it because I'm telling you how easy it is to mess up.
It's not a they, it's a he. The father, the son, and the spirit are a he. One God, we're monotheists, three distinct persons. And so in the remainder of our time, I wanna look at the economy of redemption because it is beautiful.
But with the understanding that you now have of what it means that God is simple and that there is a difference between the ontological trinity and the economic trinity and what it means that God's operations are inseparable and that when one member of the trinity acts, God acts.
So turn with me to Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians chapter one, Paul, remember, is worshiping the triune God for his Trinitarian salvation. And he says in verse three, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
You see, God the father blesses his people with every spiritual blessings in Christ. And of course we know when we do biblical theology and we see as we read through, he does that by extending his Holy Spirit to his people.
What's that? Separable operations. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. So he chose us, the father chose, as it says here, that we'd be holy and blameless before him in love.
He predestined us, verse five, to adoption as sons through who? Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. Nothing is done in isolation. To the praise of the glory of his grace which he graciously bestowed on us in the beloved, in Jesus, God's beloved son, or the son in whom he loved.
In him, now we're speaking of Jesus, we have redemption through his blood. So we have redemption through Jesus. The forgiveness of our transgressions according to the riches of his grace which he caused to abound to us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him.
You see, they're bound up together. So that we have the father and the son and yet they are not separated. It says in verse 10, for an administration of the fullness of times, that is the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth, in him we also have been made an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will to the end, that we who first hoped in Christ would be to the praise of his glory.
In him, you also, so that's in Christ, you also, after listening to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise. Now we see the Holy Spirit and it is the Holy Spirit who has sealed the believer after hearing the gospel in Christ who was given as a pledge of our inheritance unto the redemption of God's own possession to the praise of his glory.
For this reason, I too, and then he goes on and on and on, praying and so on and so forth. But we see this, salvation is a triune effort from the one God who exists in three persons and they have inseparable operations.
Now, another reason that this is important. It guards us from other forms of heresy or pseudo heresy or almost heresy. For instance, what are we to conclude about Jesus at the garden of Gethsemane when he's sweating blood, for instance, and he's crying and he's saying, let this cup pass from me.
That sounds like what? A divided will and a separated operation. But Jesus, you remember, had two natures. He's fully God and he was fully man. So my question to you, this is quiz time, is when Jesus submitted in that moment in the garden of Gethsemane after saying, I'd rather this cup pass from me, was that the ontological second member of the Trinity or was that the economic redemptive work on display?
It's the economic work on display.
Jesus in his humanity asked the cup to pass from him.
You know why?
Because human beings act like human beings and Jesus was a human being. That's why Luke chapter two, for example, says that he grew in wisdom and stature with men. He was a human. He was 100 human, he was truly human.
Actually, most theologians reject 100 because they're like, how do you quantify that? They say truly or fully. And he was fully and truly God. But God's will is never at odds with God's will because God is one.
And every time God acts, or a member of the Trinity acts, God acts. Now, how does Jesus' human nature fit in with all of this? Well, we're not covering that today. Look, I know this is heavy stuff and I understand that I've probably created more questions than I've answered.
But let me end by saying this. Is the well not deep, friends? Is the well not deep? Is our God not amazing? And how lucky are we that our infinite God has so condescended to reveal himself to us that we might get a morsel of understanding?
And the good news is a morsel of understanding is enough to propel you for the rest of your life in piety. Would you pray?
