Christ the Center: Trinity, Processions and Missions

Over on the Reformed Forum, the most recent Christ the Center podcast focuses on the topic of the Trinity, which has gained much interest in light of the recent controversy, and it can be found here. Of course, having followed this controversy when it blew up and having much concern over all the fighting, which to me I find unnecessary and unhelpful, I listened intently to the podcast. I must say this podcast is excellent and expresses my views better than I could have phrased it myself. This one podcast in my opinion is better than all of Trueman's posts, Goligher's posts, Grudem's and Ware's posts, and Mark Jones' posts put together, and much more edifying.

One of my worries over some of the polemics from the "classical theist" side is that it seems to lean towards functional modalism. This piece especially was very worrying. As I have said in a previous piece, God's will is one yet it must subsists in the three distinct (not separate) personal wills. If we insist on just the one will, we end up almost as it were de-personalizing the persons and reduce them to mere things which are different yet we totally have no idea what the difference is. We end up moving towards modalism materially, even while being orthodox formally.

The guys at the Reformed Forum have really come up with the third way those of us who are biblical and confessional desire, and it is beautiful. God is three AND one. We should never reduce the reality of the three in service of the one, or the other way around. When Trinitarian theology is done right, we have both the three and the one without trying to emphasize one over the other, and I think the podcast have accomplished just that beautiful balance and the right position.