¹ Direct engagement with various forms of social trinitarianism lies outside the scope of this article.

² Thomas McCall says that it would be wrong to insist on ‘a single divine subjectivity’ in the Trinity: ‘Relational Trinity: Creedal Perspective’, in Jason S. Sexton (ed.), Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2014), p. 137. McCall also speaks of ‘distinct centers of consciousness and will’ (Whose Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), p. 70) and holds that ‘we should think of the divine persons as co-inhering in “I–Thou” relationships’ (Two Views, p. 156). Bauckham, Richard speaks of relational intimacy (Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2015), p. 34)Google Scholar, and Kevin Vanhoozer envisages relationality involving communicating agents: ‘the three persons are distinct communicative agents that share a common communicative agency’ (Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (Cambridge: CUP, 2010), p. 244). Paul Fiddes disagrees with such formulations. He accepts the presence of intratrinitarian communication but not of distinct communicators (Two Views, p. 152). Adonis Vidu can speak of mutual or reciprocated love but rejects the idea of a separate or numerically distinct love and knowledge between the Father and the Son (The Same God Who Works All Things: Inseparable Operations in Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2021), pp. 99, 265). Vidu also speaks in terms of divine self-love and knowledge; he describes the Son as being ‘by nature the self-knowledge of the Father and yet by consequence the self-love of the Father’ (Same God, p. 316). References to mutual love are common in the Christian tradition (e.g. Augustine, On the Trinity, 15.19; Richard of St Victor, On the Trinity, 3.14–20), but many theologians use the language of reciprocity in a very restricted way, placing their greatest emphasis on divine unicity and simplicity. Paul Molnar describes the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as being ‘perichoretically one in relations of mutual knowledge and love’ (Two Views, p. 52), but rejects the idea that the divine persons enact ‘I–Thou’ relations with each other (Two Views, 147). Katherine Sonderegger takes a more negative stance, directly challenging the claim that the relations between the divine persons are characterised by mutual love (The Doctrine of God, vol. 1 of Systematic Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), pp. 475–81).

³ For emphasis on the relations of origin, see Vidu, Same God, pp. 112–13; and Stephen R. Holmes, ‘Classical Trinity: Evangelical Perspective’, in Two Views, p. 43. For the view that trinitarian relations are not limited to those of origin, see Kevin Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology, p. 148. Fred Sanders seems cautiously open to this view; see his comments in ‘Redefining Progress in Trinitarian Theology: Stephen R. Holmes on the Trinity’, Evangelical Quarterly 19 (2014), p. 19.

⁴ See e.g. Kilby, Karen, ‘Is an Apophatic Trinitarianism Possible?’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 12 (2010), pp. 65–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Van Kuiken, E. Jerome, ‘“Ye Worship Ye Know Not What”? The Apophatic Turn and the Trinity’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 19 (2017), pp. 401–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ See e.g. Leftow, Brian, ‘Anti-Social Trinitrianism’, in Davis, Stephen T., Kendall, Daniel and O'Collins, Gerald (eds), The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity (Oxford: OUP, 2003), pp. 203–49Google Scholar; Dolezal, James E., ‘Trinity, Simplicity and the Status of God's Personal Relations’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 16 (2014), pp. 79–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sonderegger, Katherine, ‘Risking Simplicity for Love's Sake: Paul Hinlicky's Trinitarian Personalism’, Pro Ecclesia 26 (2017), pp. 175–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spencer, Daniel, ‘Social Trinitarianism and the Tripartite God’, Religious Studies 55 (2019), pp. 189–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Thomas Joseph, ‘Divine Simplicity and the Holy Trinity’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 18 (2016), pp. 66–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ I follow the usage of the Gospel writers here by referring to ‘God’ and Jesus. In other contexts, it will be necessary to highlight Jesus’ own divine status and consider what these passages reveal about the trinitarian person of the Father.

⁷ Other relevant biblical material includes those passages which directly affirm the presence of love, knowledge and communion between the Father and the Son (Matt 11:27; John 5:20; 10:38; 14:31; 15:10; 17:34), and Romans 8:26, which stands by itself in ascribing the communicative act of intercession to the Holy Spirit. While such passages describe general principles or features of the trinitarian relations, the narrative depictions of communication between Jesus and the Father (e.g. Mark 1:11 and pars., 14:36 and pars.; 15:34; Luke 22:32; 23:46; John 12:28; 17:1–26) portray specific instances or moments of intratrinitarian conversation.

⁸ E.g. Holmes, Two Views, p. 44: ‘when we hear Jesus pray, either in Gethsemane or in the high-priestly prayer of John 17, we necessarily hear the authentically human voice of the incarnate Son pleading with God, not an internal triune dialogue between the eternal Father and the eternal Son’. Vidu likewise warns against taking the earthly conversations between Jesus and the Father as a direct picture of internal trinitarian relations, although he allows that they indicate something about those relations obliquely: ‘the eternal receptivity of the Logos, that is, the thought that his entire being and existence are received from the Father, is played out on a human level through the human obedience of Jesus Christ . . . It is thus quite wrong to say that the human existence of Jesus reveals nothing of the Son's proprium’ (Same God, p. 177).

⁹ On the inscrutable nature of the divine persons, see Vidu, Same God, p. 122; Sonderegger, ‘Risking’, p. 180; Kilby, ‘Apophatic’, pp. 67–71.

¹⁰ See Vidu, Same God, pp. 94–5: ‘Our experience of “divine acts” cannot be taken to be epistemically basic or absolute in any way … the nature and reality of the divine acts in history is not fully expressed by what may be experienced … Divine action ad extra does not wear its meaning on its sleeve.’

¹¹ Mark describes how Jesus progressively withdrew from others to be alone with God in Gethsemane. He describes Jesus’ inward distress and trouble twice, first in third person narration, then by citing Jesus’ own words: ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.’ In the case of Jesus’ cry of desolation, the words are taken from Psalm 22, but the themes that Mark develops in the preceding context show that they also represent a genuine cry from the heart.

¹² In contrast to Matthew's account, where the words from heaven are presented in the third person and address the bystanders.

¹³ In Mark 9:7, God speaks from heaven and affirms that Jesus is his Son in a manner very similar to the declaration made at Jesus’ baptism. But in this passage, God's words are not directly addressed to Jesus, but to Peter, James and John.

¹⁴ The stretches of narrative lying between Jesus’ baptism and Gethsemane and between Gethsemane and the cross cohere well with this storyline. While other plots and subplots also run through Mark's Gospel, the interconnected themes of mission, faithfulness and testing are present throughout. The three scenes involving direct address between Jesus and the Father are simply high points that bring those themes into greater focus.

¹⁵ In this context, it is often pointed out that, while Jesus cites the opening words of Psalm 22 on the cross, that psalm ends with an affirmation of God's deliverance.

¹⁶ For a fuller analysis of the storyline conveyed through Mark 1:9–11, 14:32–42 and 15:34, see Wiarda, Timothy, Interpretating Gospel Narratives: Scenes, People, and Theology (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2010), pp. 117–26Google Scholar.

¹⁷ The structure of the Gethsemane narrative reinforces such a conclusion. Mark sets Jesus’ struggle to remain faithful alongside Peter's similar struggle, such that Peter's failure serves as a foil for Jesus’ positive example. Μark's wider Gospel narrative likewise supports the view that he wishes Jesus’ interactions with God to serve as an example, in that several other Markan passages also present Jesus as a model for disciples to follow, e.g. 8:31–8, 9:30–7, 10:32–45.

¹⁸ See Hays, Richard, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016), pp. 62–78Google Scholar.

¹⁹ While some manuscripts of Mark 1:1 do not include ‘Son’, it remains the more probable reading.

²⁰ Jesus’ unique status is further reinforced at the end of the transfiguration episode, when the human figures Moses and Elijah disappear, and the disciples are left seeing Jesus only.

²¹ Although the narrative connections linking Mark 1:9–11, 14:32–42 and 15:34 have not received as much attention as they deserve among commentators, they can be well supported on purely historical-critical grounds. Despite the predominantly episodic nature of the Gospel narratives and the general tendencies of ancient Greek biography (the literary genre to which Mark is increasingly assigned), there are other quite evident examples of carefully plotted storylines that develop across multiple Gospel episodes. Two of the clearest examples are the story of Peter's struggle and failure that runs from Mark 14:27–31 through 14:32–42, 54 and 66–72 to 16:7; and in the Gospel of John, the progressing story of Nicodemus (3:1–12, 7:45–52 and 19:38–42).

²² This theologically oriented exegesis will also involve analysing Mark's narrative using terms and conceptual categories that belong to a later period of theological reflection, such as the distinctions between the divine and human natures of Christ and between immanent and economic aspects of the Trinity.

²³ Many theologians appear to hold this view, or at least to affirm that the triune God was the ultimate cause of the address from heaven at Jesus’ baptism, even if the speech is ascribed specifically to the Father. E.g. Allison, Gregg and Köstenberger, Andreas, The Holy Spirit (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2020), p. 288, n. 34Google Scholar: ‘both the Father and the Son work together with the Spirit in all divine communications, and … at times those communicative acts are ascribed to the Father or to the Son. For example, at the baptism of Jesus, the Father speaks words of commendation about his beloved Son.’ Vidu cites Augustine: ‘the Trinity together produced both the Father's voice and the Son's flesh and the Holy Spirit's dove, though each of these single things has reference to a single person’ (On the Trinity, 4.5; cited in Same God, p. 162). While such judgements may be appropriate with respect to the effects experienced by those who observed Jesus’ baptism, Mark does not focus on third-party observers, but only on the heavenly speaker and Jesus as the one addressed.

Vidu takes up the somewhat different issue of identifying the speaking subject when it is Jesus who addresses the Father. ‘Are the human actions of Jesus to be attributed to the Son exclusively, or to the whole Trinity? When Christ is praying in Gethsemane, is it appropriate to say that the Son of God alone, through his human nature, is praying to the Father? Or should we say, the Trinity is praying in and through the human nature of the Son?’ While acknowledging diversity in the tradition, Vidu takes the position that ‘the Son is indeed the subject of Christ's human activity, while the causality of these actions belongs properly to the whole Trinity’ (Same God, p. 181).

²⁴ On the basis of Markan passages that refer to Jesus having ‘come’ (Mark. 1:24, 38, 2:17, 10:45), Simon Gathercole argues that Mark alludes to Jesus’ pre-existence in heaven before the period of his ministry on earth (see his The Preexistent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2006). If this is correct, it would be yet another reason not to restrict the Gospel's picture of the Father–Son relationship to the period of the incarnation. It would also suggest that Mark was conscious of a distinction between Jesus’ heavenly and earthly existence, which in turn would heighten the possibility that when he depicted the relationship between Jesus and God, he was not entirely oblivious to embryonic trinitarian questions. Some would argue that a further hint that Mark viewed Jesus as being pre-existent may be found in the words of Psalm 2:7, which lie in the background of Mark 1:11. McCall points out that the words of the psalm (‘The Lord said to me, “You are my Son”’) were traditionally interpreted as a reference to eternal generation (Two Views, p. 120).

²⁵ Still another aspect of human father–son relationships that plays a central role Mark's story is relational asymmetry: the Father sends, the Son carries out the mission; the Father makes his will known, the Son accepts it. But this raises complex questions about authority and submission which cannot be treated here. See Butner, D. Glenn Jr., ‘Eternal Functional Subordination and the Problem of the Divine Will’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 58 (2015), pp. 131–49Google Scholar; Erickson, Millard, ‘Language, Logic, and Trinity: A Critical Examination of the Eternal Subordinationist View of the Trinity’, Priscilla Papers 31 (2017), pp. 8–15Google Scholar.