The Processed and Consummated Triune God

The Processed Triune God

Unarguably, the Son of God is the subject of the incarnation, the redemption, and the resurrection. Nevertheless, as previously established, the Three of the Divine Trinity are eternally distinct yet never separate. Therefore, in every step of Christ’s human experience and work, the entire Trinity had to be inextricably involved. Scripture indeed supports the notion that the Triune God has been processed in Christ insofar as the Son, being the complete God (Heb. 1:8, 1 Tim. 3:15-16), became flesh, lived a human life, died, and resurrected, and that the entire Trinity existed and operated in every stage of Christ’s process. Of course, the realization that the Triune God is forever immutable, unchanging in His essence and in His attributes, underlies all our discussion of the processed Triune God. The Triune God cannot and does not change in His essence. Nevertheless, the economical Trinity has taken steps in Christ to become flesh, die, resurrect, and become the life-giving Spirit (John 1:14; 1 Cor. 15:45). It is in this sense that we allude to the Triune God as being “processed.”

The three Persons of the Trinity have one operation, and when one Person is mentioned, the other two are included by implication. To speak of the Spirit is to imply the existence of the Father from whom He proceeds, and of the Son whose Spirit He is…. Where the Father is, there is the Son; where the Son is, there is the Holy Ghost. The grace, love, and fellowship of the Three are one and the same. Though the Persons are three, the Divine Name is One.

—Ambrose (Swete, Ancient, 318-319)

In Incarnation

When fundamental Christians speak of the incarnation, the Word becoming flesh (John 1:14), they are typically–and accurately–referring to the human birth of the Son of God. Strictly speaking, however, the incarnation is not only that of the Son, but of the Word, who is God (John 1:1). The Son is certainly the subject of the incarnation, as He was begotten by the Father of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18, 20), yet John 1:1 gives us ground to say that God–that is, the entire Triune God–was incarnated. While admittedly the Son was sent by the Father (John 7:29), the Son was nevertheless also with the Father, who never left the Son alone (John 8:29). The Son and the Father are one (John 10:30). The Son shares with the Father not merely a oneness in purpose, but also an intimate coinhering oneness, in which the Son was able to say, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me” (John 14:11). In Christ dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9). Hence, the entire Triune God was included in the Son’s incarnation.

In Human Living

Just as the entire Trinity was included in Christ’s incarnation, so the Three were intimately involved in His human living. Jesus lived much more than an upright, moral, sinless, and righteous life; primarily He lived His human life by the divine life, expressing God’s divine attributes through His human virtues. He worked with the Father (John 5:17-19), did the Father’s will (John 6:38), spoke the Father’s word (John 14:24), and sought the Father’s glory (John 7:18). By living a life that expressed God, He could claim that “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Furthermore, in His ministry, He was anointed by the Spirit (Luke 4:18), was full of the Spirit (Luke 4:1), and worked by the Spirit (Matt. 12:28). Hence, the God-man in His human living was the Triune God manifested in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16).

In Crucifixion

Hebrews 9:14 testifies of the divine Triune activity on the cross: Christ the Son offered Himself to God the Father through the eternal Spirit. The Lord Jesus was uniquely qualified to die a redemptive death on the cross in that He was the physical embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9). His perfect humanity enabled Him to shed sinless blood to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29), while His complete divinity afforded His death its eternal efficacy. Hence, only by His dual nature as both God and man could He have accomplished complete and eternal redemption. Although the Father forsook Him on the cross economically in order to judge Him as sin itself on our behalf (Matt. 27:45-46; 2 Cor. 5:21), the Son essentially continued to exist as Deity, possessing complete divinity. Thus we can say that the Son of God, indeed, the entire Triune God Himself, shed His blood on the cross (Acts 20:28).

In Resurrection

As with the previous steps of Christ’s process, the complete Triune God is likewise involved in Christ’s resurrection. The Father certainly raised Christ from the dead (Rom. 6:4; Gal. 1:1). Yet the Son of God, by virtue of His divinity, also raised Himself from the dead (John 10:17-18). Furthermore, Romans 1:4 reveals the particular role of the Spirit in Christ’s resurrection. Christ, as the seed of David according to the flesh, was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness out of the resurrection of the dead. In resurrection, Christ was designated the Firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29) when the Spirit of holiness as the divine essence of Christ sanctified, transformed, and uplifted His humanity, hitherto belonging to the old creation, into the divine sonship.

The Triune God was thus processed in Christ through the steps of incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection. In resurrection, Christ became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), who is the consummation of this divine process. Hence, we can refer to the life-giving Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God. This Spirit is the “Spirit of the glorified Jesus, the Spirit of the Incarnate, crucified, and exalted Christ, the bearer and communicator to us, not of the life of God as such, but of that life as it had been interwoven into human nature in the person of Christ Jesus” (Murray 38).

The Holy Spirit in some sense is Jesus Christ Himself, but a Christ hidden from sight, a Christ within, who converses with souls and teaches these things; gives understanding.

—Victorinus (Swete, Ancient, 307)

Here we need to point out the distinction between the essential and economical aspects of the Trinity. Essentially speaking, just as the Son retained His divine essence as He underwent incarnation, so the Spirit’s divine element was in no sense compromised or altered when He was consummated in Christ's resurrection. Economically speaking, just as certainly as the Triune God became a man through incarnation, so the Trinity was consummated as the Spirit in resurrection.

The Consummated Spirit