I used to teach the biblical basis for the Trinity by starting in the OT and working my forward to the NT. After reading @FredFredSanders' The Triune God a few years ago, I shifted this approach around...

As Fred argues, the Trinity is *revealed* in the saving missions of the Son and Spirit, *attested to* in the New Testament, and *adumbrated* (i.e., foreshadowed) in the Old Testament.

This way of approaching the issue more clearly grounds the Trinity in the gospel--the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation of the world--and in the way it is brought to bear in our lives--the regenerating and indwelling Spirit.

As @FredFredSanders argues in his earlier book (The Deep Things of God), the Triune God spelled out in the ecumenical councils is not some other God than the one we know in our Christian experience. God is as he reveals himself to be.

If the Son is *sent from* the Father in the incarnation, it is only because he *is from* the Father in his eternal generation. If the Spirit is *sent from* the Father and the Son at Pentecost, it is only because he *is from* the Father and Son in his eternal procession.

Understand this, and you go a long way toward understanding the heart of the Christian faith--and of the Christian's destiny: the temporal missions reveal the eternal processions. God's acts lead us back to God himself.

The Son's mission is parabolic: God becomes man to lead man back to God. As Torrance argues, the divinization of man is the obverse of the hominization of God.

my *way* #editbutton