The One and the Three
How does Christian confession name real distinction without partition and unity without modal collapse?
Trinitarian doctrine is the grammar by which Christians identify the one God revealed in the missions of Son and Spirit.
This seminar reconstructs the Nicene grammar of one divine essence and three irreducible persons. It moves from biblical missions through fourth-century controversy to Eastern and Western accounts of relation.
- 01
Explain the theological work of ousia and hypostasis
- 02
Relate missions and processions without collapsing them
- 03
Compare Eastern and Western relational grammars fairly
- 01
From missions to identity
Trinitarian doctrine begins with the identity of the one sent, raised, worshiped, and given in the economy.
- 02
The Nicene rule
Homoousios protects the claim that the Son gives God rather than a supreme creaturely intermediary.
- 03
Relations that subsist
Personal distinction is constituted by relations of origin within the undivided divine life.
- 04
The rule and its limits
The doctrine does not explain God from above; it disciplines faithful speech before mystery.