Romans 8 is famously the chapter dedicated to the work of the Holy Spirit. While the focus of the text is on the Spirit’s work in us, there are some interesting ways Paul talks about how it relates to the Father and the Son. So I thought it would be interesting to take a few minutes here and see what we might glean from this chapter how Paul understood these relationships, and how this may have contributed to the later doctrine of the Trinity as we know it.
As I’ve written previously, one of the ways the Church Fathers talked about the relationship among the persons of the Trinity was as perichoresis, ‘interpenetration’. The image behind this is of lines of chorus dancers weaving in and out, such that they are simultaneously distinct yet indistinguishable. The way Paul writes about the Father, Son, and Spirit reflects the sensibility that that later image ran with.
Relationships among the Father, Son, and Spirit
For the most part, Paul writes about God the Father simply as ‘God’. When ‘God’ acts in Paul, we can generally assume he has the Father primarily in mind. This is in keeping with the early stages of more formalized Trinitarian thought, which emphasized the Father as the origin and source of all divinity. (This is hard to describe, but the sense is captured well in St. Irenaeus’ famous image of the Son and Spirit as the Father’s ‘two hands’.)
We see this idea of the Father as the source or ‘mastermind’ of divine action throughout Romans 8. The Father sends the Son (to deal with sin, for the faithful). The Father condemns sin (in the Son’s body). The Father raised the Son from the dead (through the Spirit). The Father is the ‘testator’ to that which the Son is the rightful heir. The Father knows the mind of the Spirit, and the Father’s will directs the Spirit’s work.
At the same time, the Son is sent by the Father, to Whom He is the rightful heir. Through this sending, he is handed over, dies, is raised from the dead, and glorified to the Father’s right hand. The Spirit is called his Spirit.
The Spirit for its part is called the Spirit of Life in Christ (that is, the Son), and is directed by and pleases God by allowing the just provision of the Law to be fulfilled. It is the Spirit of Christ and the ‘instrument’ of his resurrection. At the same time, it is called the Spirit of ‘the One who raised the Son from the dead’, i.e., the Father.
So we see this interconnectedness among the three divine persons. They are distinct — the Father is not the Son, nor is the Son the Spirit — but it is impossible to find an act that is the act of one of them alone. Where the Spirit is at work, the Father and Son are also at work, and the corollaries are also true.
But it doesn’t end there.
The Faithful
The fascinating thing about how Paul talks about the divine life here, and really this extends to the New Testament as a whole, is that he fully expects that we (’the faithful’, ‘the saints’) will be a part of it: The Father enlivens the faithful through the Spirit. The Father’s will is for the Spirit to understand the faithful. The Father foreknows, predestines, calls, justifies, and glorifies the faithful, and all this is ‘for’ the faithful.
The Son is sent in the likeness (one might say ‘image’) of Adam, so that we might be conformed to his image. He is sent to deal with our sin and to enable the just provision of the law to be lived out in us. He dwells in us. In the new adoptive family of God, the Son becomes our elder brother. And he acts as our defense attorney, interceding for us, even as he also acts as judge. But as he dwells in us, we are ‘in him’, participating in his suffering, death, resurrection, and glorification. Through adoption, we become his siblings and co-heirs, and conformed to his image.
Meanwhile, the Spirit dwells in us, putting to death the sin and death in us, thereby bringing what was dead back to life and empowering us to live out the just provision of the law. It understands us, bears witness with us, and intercedes for us, leads us and helps us. And it’s the Spirit’s power that puts our adoption as children of the Father and siblings and co-heirs of Christ into effect. But even as it dwells in us, we dwell in it, walk in alignment with it, and are freed by it.
So even as the Trinity is caught up in the dance of the intermingling divine love, the point seems to be that we are too. It’s nothing other than Jesus’ prayer for the disciples in John 17 come to life:
As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (John 17.21b-24)
The point here is just that even though we have nothing like a formal Trinitarian theology, we see the building blocks here. There is a vision of a divinity that exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with neither confusion nor division, all participating in the same work in the world. But just as importantly, we are included within this vision too, participating by grace in the same divine dance of love.
Matthew Root 