Personal distinction and perichoretic unity

A strong account of personal distinction ad intra is inherent to social models of the Trinity. Keith Ward suggests that social trinitarianism claims that triune ‘persons are ontologically prior to substance’ and that they are unified insofar as they mutually indwell one another (i.e. perichoresis).Footnote ⁹

This strong sense of personal distinction and prioritisation of individuation is evident in Robert Letham's articulation of Owen's doctrine of the divine persons. Letham contrasts Owen with the ‘classic Latin Trinitarian doctrine’, in which ‘God is essentially one, except in the divine persons, who are defined in terms of relations’.Footnote ¹⁰ That is, the Augustinian account of persons as subsisting relations fails to adequately appreciate the personal distinction present in Owen's trinitarian theology. In other words, it is supposed that Owen considers the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as persons in relations (i.e. persons are prioritised), rather than the Augustinian view of persons as relations (i.e. relations are prioritised).

So if distinct divine persons are the initial and primary category of ad intra trinitarian thought, then social models must account for the divine unity of the one God. One common way of establishing the unity of these distinct persons is through the doctrine of perichoresis – or, mutual indwelling of divine persons. The theme of perichoresis is something of a ‘theological black box’ full of ambiguity and plasticity and, while it is not limited to ‘eastern’ or ‘social’ accounts,Footnote ¹¹ it is central in social doctrines of the Trinity, serving as the key unifying principle of the three divine persons.Footnote ¹²

Even some of Owen's most classical interpreters use this category prominently in considering his account of trinitarian action. For example, Ryan McGraw claims that perichoresis is the ‘foundation of the opera trinitatis principle’, the ‘order and unity of divine operations’ and ‘mutuality of worship’.Footnote ¹³ Likewise, Tyler Wittman suggests that Owen ‘roots the unity of will in the doctrine of perichoresis, which then enables him to distinguish the one will in each person’.Footnote ¹⁴

Distinct centres of will and the covenant of redemption

As stated above, social trinitarian accounts are frequently characterised by a commitment to distinct wills of the divine persons. The seeming possibility of multiple divine wills in John Owen is prominently evident in his account of the covenant of redemption, the ‘pre-temporal’ covenant in which the Father and Son covenant together to redeem humanity when humans fall into sin.Footnote ¹⁵ Because the Father wills something in reference to the Son and the Son wills something in reference to the Father, it is supposed that there is, minimally, a strong sense of distinction between the willing of the Father and the Son.Footnote ¹⁶ More maximally, this distinction may indicate that there are at least two wills and even two independent actors in the triune God. If this is the case, then the covenant of redemption not only pushes Owen in a proto-social direction, but it also may lead to tritheistic accusations.Footnote ¹⁷

Distinct centres of action and triune operations

Often central to social trinitarian thought is the distinction between the actions of the divine persons in history. Representative of various accounts of social trinitarianism, McCall says that the divine persons are distinct and discrete ‘agents who are (or have) distinct centers of consciousness and will’ and he later interprets the gospel narratives of Jesus to imply that Christ is a ‘divine agent who is distinct and discrete from his Father’, enabling social models to articulate the ‘distinct actions of the Father … and the distinct actions of the Son’.Footnote ¹⁸

Likewise, some interpreters of Owen consider him to be a trailblazer as he putatively ‘radically’ distinguishes between the operations of divine persons.Footnote ¹⁹ Especially advocated for by Alan Spence and Brian Kay, Owen's trinitarian theology was supposedly only nominally and occasionally committed to the doctrine of the indivisible operations of the Trinity and, in practice, deviated from this traditional principle. The supposed breach in the indivisible operations is particularly obvious in Owen's understanding of the incarnation. They view Owen's theology as claiming that generally divine actions ‘end’ with the Spirit (since God indivisibly acts as Father, Son and Spirit), but the incarnation uniquely ‘ends’ with the Son, evidencing a unique action and breach of the indivisible triune pattern. If it were not for this reordering, they suppose, then it would have been the Spirit who becomes incarnate.Footnote ²⁰

Brian Kay further specifies an interpretation of Owen's account of trinitarian action by distinguishing between indivisible essential works of the triune God that are ‘performed by God in reference to his one-ness, such that each divine person is equally involved’Footnote ²¹ (i.e. general acts) and divisible and distinct salvific acts wherein a ‘real distinction exists between each person's work’.Footnote ²² In these latter kinds of acts there is supposedly a

Distinct communion

Finally, Owen's commitment to the Christian's communion with each divine person is maybe the most obvious objection to his Augustinian account of trinitarian unity. Owen's widely read book, Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Each Person Distinctly, in Love, Grace, and Consolation, argues for the distinct nature of the Christian's distinct communion with each distinct person. Owen is insistent that this ‘distinct communion’ with each divine person ‘is very plain in Scripture’.Footnote ²⁴ As such it would seem to intimate that the distinct persons act and are related to by the Christian in distinct ways, resisting many classical accounts of divine unity and inclining toward social constructions of God. This kind of distinction in Owen's trinitarian theology is a substantial part of Dale Stover's claim that Owen holds an ‘extreme view of the personality of Father, Son, and Spirit’.Footnote ²⁵ That is, each person seems to have a distinct personality, capacity to form relations and ability to act distinctly.

Personal distinction and essential unity

While some argue for an ‘eastern’ interpretation of Owen's view of divine relations, I contend that Owen's doctrine of the distinction of the persons in the divine essence is defined by the relations of origin and their order of subsistence. Letham contrasts Owen with the ‘classic Latin Trinitarian doctrine’, in which ‘God is essentially one, except in the divine persons, who are defined in terms of relations’.Footnote ²⁶ Yet Owen himself follows this very definition of a divine person. Owen defines a divine person as a distinct manner of subsistence in the divine essence and this distinct manner is determined by ‘an especial Property’ – i.e. a relational property (e.g. begetting the Son; being begotten of the Father). As such, ‘In the person of the Father there is the divine essence and being, with its property of begetting the Son, subsisting in an especial manner as the Father’.Footnote ²⁷ Owen clarifies: ‘Because this person hath the whole divine nature, all the essential properties of that nature are in that person.’Footnote ²⁸ The relations of origin (i.e. begetting, being begotten, spirating and being spirated) are not ‘essential properties’ (i.e. properties that belong to the divine essence), but ‘personal properties’ (i.e. properties of each particular person). For Owen, like the Augustinian tradition before him, the relations of origin define and constitute the divine persons.Footnote ²⁹

This, therefore, aligns Owen with the ‘western’ view of ‘persons as relations’. As Owen says, the triunity of God is not to be conceived of primarily as a ‘unity of three’ distinct persons, but instead as three subsistent relations ‘in the same essence’.Footnote ³⁰ Based on his doctrine of divine simplicity (whereby everything in God is God), Owen claims that a divine person is ‘nothing but the divine essence, upon the account of an especial Property, subsisting in an especial manner’.Footnote ³¹

Finally, in contrast to the prominence of the theme of perichoresis in Owen's interpreters, Owen, in one place, flatly rejects the explicit use of perichoresis and instead insists on the subsistence of the three persons in the one divine essence as the unifying feature of the three persons. Of ‘divine circumincession’, Owen suggests, ‘I could heartily wish that they [i.e. theologians of the church who use this language] had … been less curious in their inquiries and less bold in their expressions’.Footnote ³² He goes on to call ‘mutual circumincession’, or ‘ἐμπɛριχώρησις’, a ‘barbarous term’ since it communicates a ‘disjunction’ of the three persons in ‘their nature and being’.Footnote ³³ Significantly, this claim immediately follows after Owen's presentation of divine simplicity and the definition of persons according to subsistent relations.Footnote ³⁴

Even Owen's positive uses of the language of the divine persons’ ‘in-being’ is primarily in reference to the persons’ subsistence in the one divine essence, not their personal mutual indwelling of one another. Commenting on John 10:37–8, he appeals to the ‘divine indwelling which oneness of nature gives to Father and Son’.Footnote ³⁵ And elsewhere he says that ‘the blessed συμπɛριχώρησις, or in-being of each person, the one in the other’ is ‘by virtue of their oneness in the same nature’.Footnote ³⁶

Therefore, perichoresis is far from a prominent theme in Owen – especially insofar as it is understood to mean the personal mutual interpenetration of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and it ought not to indicate Owen's strong personal distinction. In the places that Owen does not outright reject the concept, his articulation of the divine persons ‘in-being’ is to be primarily understood in reference to the persons’ subsistence in the one divine nature, further supporting Owen's Augustinian understanding of divine persons as subsisting relations and the unity of the divine essence.

Singular will unity and the covenant of redemption

While the covenant of redemption does seem to imply multiple divine wills, Owen himself noted and responded to this concern explicitly. Rather than conceding that the covenant of redemption implies multiple wills in God, Owen insists on his Augustinian inheritance of one divine will. So in his discussion of the covenant of redemption, he raises the potential problem and prefaces his response by assuring the reader that whatever we call this covenant, mutual agreement, compact between the Father and Son ‘they are single acts of the same divine understanding and will’.Footnote ³⁷ From this Augustinian foundation, Owen avoids the putative social implications of the covenant of redemption by leaning on Augustinian commitments to (1) the eternality of God and (2) divine appropriations.Footnote ³⁸ First, Owen clarifies the nature of the covenant by reminding the reader that this is an analogical description and a creaturely way of talking about a non-temporal reality. He reaffirms that, because God is simple and omniscient in himself, God does not discursively reason or experience succession of time.Footnote ³⁹ Therefore, when we speak temporally and discursively of God, we do not mean it in a univocal sense. Second, Owen employs the concept of appropriations, or predicating properties of the divine nature to a divine person. So we can say that the Father is love and the Son is wisdom, while simultaneously recognising that love and wisdom belong to the essence of God and not to any person exclusively. Likewise, Owen can appropriate the one divine will to the Father which he enacts in a fatherly way (since the Father is fully divine and acts as the Father) and also appropriate the one divine will to the Son which he enacts in a filial way (since the Son is fully divine and acts as the Son). Owen says,

So even in this point of seeming plurality, Owen is insistent on the unity of God. He claims that the triune God is ‘one … in nature, will, and essential properties’.Footnote ⁴¹ Owen carefully delineates the way in which each divine person possesses the one will, wisdom and understanding of God, stating: ‘The wisdom, the understanding of God, the will of God, the immensity of God, is in that person, not as that person, but as the person is God.’Footnote ⁴² That is, each divine person possesses the singular divine will ‘as the person is God’ and subsists in the one divine essence. Owen summarises:

Unified action and triune operations

The supposed distinct trinitarian actions in Owen's theology have received significant attention. Particularly in reference to Spence's claim that Owen violates the principle of indivisible operations, Tyler Wittman has rightly argued for Owen's continuity with Augustinian trinitarianism, noting the reliance of Owen upon Thomas Aquinas and John of Damascus (whom Owen explicitly cites in Pneumatologia 2.3) and the historical employment of the ‘terminus’ of indivisible triune actions – the divine person to whom the action is predicated, even though all three are causally involved. Wittman argues that Owen is not dividing the indivisible operations, but that Owen is claiming that the ‘terminus’ of the assumption (as an indivisible operation of the triune God) is the Son.Footnote ⁴⁴ Adonis Vidu likewise engages Spence's interpretation and helpfully provides the analogy of an Elizabethan butler who is helping his lord dress in formal attire. Both the butler and lord are actively causing the dressing (e.g. the butler is holding the jacket, the lord is placing his arms in the sleeves), yet the action terminates only upon the dressed lord (i.e. only he is ‘dressed’).Footnote ⁴⁵ Therefore, argue Wittman and Vidu, all the acts of God are still indivisibly accomplished by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; yet, different acts ‘terminate’ upon (or can be predicated to) distinct divine persons based on the effect of the action.Footnote ⁴⁶

Importantly, Owen insists that it is not as though ‘one person succeeded unto another in their operation, or as though where one ceased and gave over a work, the other took it up and carried it on’; instead, ‘every divine work, and every part of every divine work, is the work of God, that is, of the whole Trinity, inseparably and undividedly’.Footnote ⁴⁷ This is not a divine relay race in which some actions ‘end’ before the Spirit gets the baton, but is more like, as Vidu elsewhere suggests, the acts of a magnet in which both poles are causally active, yet a paperclip only attaches itself to one side or the other.Footnote ⁴⁸

Kay's interpretation of Pneumatologia, whereby Owen is supposedly ‘stretching’ indivisible operations so that the Son can ‘leave the Father's side’ to accomplish a ‘very different kind of work’ from general, indivisible divine acts has not received as much attention, but requires a similar reinterpretation. If Kay's reading is accurate, Owen would indeed be inclining himself toward a social doctrine of God. However, I contend that Kay misunderstands this text, which when interpreted properly supports Owen's Augustinian foundation. Kay views these two categories that Owen mentions (i.e. ‘essential works’ and redemptive acts) as mutually exclusive kinds of divine action (i.e. an either/or distinction between ‘kind A’ and ‘kind B’). However, it seems that Owen is not indicating mutually exclusive categories, but describing the specification of one category as the subset of another (i.e. a species within a genus). So Owen's first category does not describe 50 per cent of divine acts, but 100 per cent of divine acts: Owen says that this ‘is absolute in all divine works whatever’.Footnote ⁴⁹ That is, all divine acts ‘undividedly belong unto and proceed from each person’. And he follows immediately by stating, ‘And the reason hereof is, because they are all effects of the essential properties of the same divine nature, which is in them all, or rather, which is the one nature of them all.’Footnote ⁵⁰ Hereby, any and every act of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit can rightly said to be an act of God – e.g. God reveals himself in Jesus and God indwells Christians. The second category is a further specification of the first, but made under the consideration of ‘the order of its accomplishment [which] was made necessary from the order of the subsistence of the distinct persons in the Deity’.Footnote ⁵¹ That is, there is a further specification of the act on the basis of the triune order of operations. This second category goes beyond saying that ‘God gives grace’, to specifying that the ‘Father, who is the original of all grace and glory’ communicates grace to Christians ‘from the Son, whom he … hath given all things’ and ‘he doth it immediately by the Spirit’, who ‘shows’, ‘bestows’ and ‘works’ grace in Christians because these graces ‘are the fruits of the mediation of Christ’.Footnote ⁵² So Owen's distinction that Kay draws out here does not violate or stretch the trinitarian unity of divine actions, but further supports and specifies the indivisibly trinitarian shape of divine actions.

Rather than constituting an exception to the traditional position of indivisible operations, Owen's trinitarian theology is adamantly committed to it. His commitment to this principle of indivisible operations is rooted in his establishment of trinitarian operations upon an ontological foundation of essential unity.Footnote ⁵³ Owen says, ‘The order of operation in the blessed Trinity, as unto outward works, answereth unto and followeth the order of their subsistence’, such that ‘they have the same dependence on each other in their operations as they have in their subsistence’.Footnote ⁵⁴ So, just as the subsisting persons are essentially related, so too are their operations. Owen calls this order ‘unalterable’ because God's ‘working is a consequent of the order of his subsistence’. The unity of the triune relations produces the indivisibility of the triune operations ad extra. Indivisible operations is rightly called the ‘regulative principle in his [Owen's] theological thinking’ and the foundational ‘axiom’ for his thought.Footnote ⁵⁵

Based on his consistent and Augustinian account of indivisible operations, Owen can affirm that all acts of God can be attributed to ‘God absolutely’ (i.e. the triune God) because ‘the several persons are undivided in their operations, acting all by the same will, the same wisdom, the same power. Every person, therefore, is the author of every work of God, because each person is God, and the divine nature is the same undivided principle of all divine operations; and this ariseth from the unity of the persons in the same essence.’Footnote ⁵⁶ Yet Owen continues on in order to distinguish between the appropriated acts of the distinct divine persons and does so in an Augustinian way. He says, ‘In the undivided operation of the divine nature, each person doth the same work in the order of their subsistence … as one common principle of authority, wisdom, love, and power.’Footnote ⁵⁷ Rooted in the essential unity of the one God, the acts of God are indivisible acts of the three persons. Yet, as indicated above with the language of terminus, and his account of divine appropriations, this formulation need not result ‘in a loss of the distinctiveness of the Spirit's work’, nor does it indicate ‘undifferentiated [triune] action’ as some worry.Footnote ⁵⁸ Instead, Owen follows his Augustinian forebears in arguing for indivisible triune operations, rooted in the triune relations ad intra, that can be appropriated to distinct persons by virtue of an act's terminus.

Distinct communion, appropriations and ‘peculiar actions’

Finally, we can address the seemingly social trinitarian thought in Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Owen's account of distinct communion with each divine person begins with an important cautionary note: ‘Only this caution I must lay in beforehand: – whatever is affirmed in the pursuit of this truth, it is done with relation to the explanation ensuing, in the beginning of the next chapter.’Footnote ⁵⁹ And when we turn to the beginning of the next chapter in Communion we see that Owen begins by ‘premising some observations … as was promised.’Footnote ⁶⁰ The first premise is:

That is, when ‘we speak of these things’ (i.e. distinct communion with each person) we do so under the consideration that no person is excluded in any act because of the indivisibility of divine operations ad extra. Yet, even though all trinitarian acts are ‘common in respect of their acts, they are distinguishable’ by way of appropriating an act to a distinct person as the terminus according to their ‘manner of operation’. This prefatory note and premise evidence that Owen is not subverting Augustinian thought but building his entire account of distinct communion with each person upon an Augstinian understanding of indivisible operations and appropriations. As Owen nears the end of the treatise he reminds the reader, ‘When any work of the Holy Ghost (or any other person), which is appropriated to him (we never exclude the concurrence of other persons), draws us to the worship of him, yet he is not worshipped exclusively, but the whole Godhead is worshipped.’Footnote ⁶² Owen can devotionally speak of distinction without hesitation, yet he does so in accordance with Augustinian commitments to indivisible operations and appropriations.

So Owen is able to distinguish the communion that believers have with each divine person not on the basis of discrete actions of distinct persons toward the Christian, but by virtue of actions that are appropriated to that person. Owen says, ‘There is no divine work but is distinctly assigned unto each person, and eminently unto one.’Footnote ⁶³ That is, each work is rightly said to be enacted by all three persons (because they share in the one power, will and operation), yet it may be eminently ascribed to one divine person by virtue of the correspondence of the created effect with the relation of origin. He says, ‘When any especial impression is made of the especial property of any person on any work; then is that work assigned peculiarly to that person.’Footnote ⁶⁴ So the correspondence of the created effect to the personal relation justifies the appropriation of a particular action to that divine person. This predication does not exclude the causal action of the other persons, but it indicates the correspondence of that effect to a particular relation. Later, he states that by the divine works ad extra ‘there is an especial impression of the order of the operation of each person, with respect unto their natural and necessary subsistence’ in which we are ‘distinctly taught to know them and adore’ each divine person.Footnote ⁶⁵

As the created effects reflect the relations ad intra, we see further support for the mirroring of distinction ad intra in the works ad extra. Owen clarifies that the ‘order of operation’ among the persons ‘depends on the order of their subsistence’.Footnote ⁶⁶ For Owen, this means that the works of ‘power and authority’ belong eminently to the Father, ‘the procurement of grace’ and display of wisdom to the Son, and the ‘works of God whereby grace is made effectual unto us’ to the Spirit.Footnote ⁶⁷ Owen summarises:

Owen's designation of the Father as source, Son as wisdom and executer, and Spirit as power and efficacy is not unique to Owen but is a fixture throughout the tradition.Footnote ⁶⁹ Owen elaborates upon this pattern of divine originating (appropriated to the Father), accomplishing/procuring (the Son) and perfecting/applying (the Spirit) throughout his corpus.Footnote ⁷⁰ He bases the predication of distinctions in divine action on the order of subsistence, claiming, ‘The beginning of divine operations is assigned unto the Father, as he is fons et origo Deitatis, – “the fountain of the Deity itself” … Rom. 11.36. The subsisting, establishing, and “upholding of all things,” is ascribed unto the Son: … Col. 1.17 … as he is the power and wisdom of the Father. … And the finishing and perfecting of all these works is ascribed to the Holy Spirit.’Footnote ⁷¹ As the Father is the origin of the divine relations ad intra, so too the Father is the ‘spring or fountain of … the kindness and love of God’. Likewise, as the Wisdom and Word of God ad intra, the Son is considered the ‘procuring cause … of the love and kindness of God’. Finally, the Spirit, as the one who is the communicated love and gift of the Father and Son, is the ‘immediate efficient cause in the communication of this love and kindness of the Father, and through the mediation of the Son, unto us’.Footnote ⁷² However, authority, wisdom and love do not belong exclusively to one divine person but instead are appropriated to the persons based on their order of subsistence. The reason that we might ascribe the work to all three persons is because in the ‘undivided operation of the divine nature, each person doth the same work in the order of their subsistence … as one common principle of authority, wisdom, love, and power’.Footnote ⁷³ The reason there is the possibility of ascribing distinct acts to distinct persons is ‘on the account of the order of his subsistence in the holy Trinity’.Footnote ⁷⁴

By virtue of this account of appropriations on the basis of the created effects of indivisible divine actions, Owen is able to articulate the Christian's distinction communion with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit without departing from his Augustinian heritage.