All the Persons of the Godhead Are God The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Hence, there is one being, one reality. There are not three Gods, but only one. Christian faith is not tri-theistic. The Father is the one and only God, so likewise are the Son and Holy Spirit. Thus the Father is totally God, the Son is totally God, and the Holy Spirit is totally God: there is no depth, width, or breadth of the divine reality that is not fully Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Godhead, accordingly, is not something lying behind (or out of which comes) the being of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Hence, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same essence. To use the language of the Nicene Creed (A.D. 325), they are homoousios.Thus Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while differing personally, do not differ essentially. The whole undivided essence belongs to each of the three persons. To use the Latin expression, they are una substantia, "one substance"; they are "consubstantial." There is some danger that such terms as essence and substance imply that God is impersonal. However, the intention is simply to say that the concrete being of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is the same: they are identical in being. Hence, whatever may be said about the Father begetting the Son and the Spirit proceeding from the Father is not to be understood as if the Son and Spirit receive their essence or being from the Father. What is begotten and proceeds is not essence but personhood. The begetting and proceeding are eternal; hence the relationship is one that inheres within the one divine reality. This is sometimes referred to as the perichoresis (or "coinherence") of the persons, so that the three persons are said to be in and to interpenetrate one another. Each of the persons accordingly contains the whole of the Godhead and is the one undivided God. Another way to describe this oneness of the Triune God is to understand it as a superpersonal union of three Divine persons-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit-of such an intense kind that there is only one God. Since love is the essential nature of God, and love (iagape) means self-giving to another, then God is within Himself such a totality of self-giving that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are united as one God. As one writer has put it: "God is within Himself not sheer unity but a complex and manifold being, the union and communion of three Divine persons." Hence, the technical language of perichoresis takes on living significance in the supernatural union of love. Since Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same in essence or being, they are each to be worshiped and honored as the one God. The Creed of Constantinople (A.D. 381), which affirmed the full deity of the Holy Spirit (Nicea had already done this in relation to Jesus Christ), speaks of "the Holy Spirit ... who is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the Son." Also they have the same attributes. Whatever is said of God-for example, that He is infinite, eternal, holy, loving, all-powerful, all-knowing-applies alike to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Finally, they are one in works: the one and same God is at work in creation, redemption, and empowerment. What the Father does, the Son does, and the Holy Spirit does. Or, to put it a bit differently, there are no works of the Father that are not also works of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. All the works of the Triune God are indivisible. This is highly significant for the Christian life....
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