Here’s a claim that sounds abstract but turns out to be load-bearing: if God weren’t three, there’d be no world.
Stay with me.
‘If God were not triune, creation would not be possible.’
Love That Overflowed
God’s complete sufficiency without creation is the basis of his unreserved commitment to be for, with, and over it. The eternal communion of Triune relationship — mutual knowledge, love, and honour between Father, Son and Holy Spirit — is what God is.
Creation is the communication and extension of that Triune love, calling into existence creatures designed precisely to reflect, share in, and glorify the God who does such wonders.1So it is that ‘[t]he task of the Christian doctrine of creation is rational contemplation of the Holy Trinity in the outward work of love by which God established and ordered creaturely reality, a work issuing from the infinite uncreated and wholly realized movement of God’s inner life in himself’ (Webster, God Without Measure, 1:83).
Now notice something easy to miss. Being Creator is not essential to God’s Fatherhood. ‘God is, and always is, Father, but to create something out of nothing utterly different from himself is an act of his will … while God was always Father, he was not always Creator or Maker.’2Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith (T&T Clark, 1988), 87.
God is God the Father without any creating at all. The eternal generation of the Son from the Father, and the procession of the Spirit from Father and Son, show that productivity and movement are already going on inside the Triune Being of God.
Which leads to a startling comparison:
‘Without generation, creation would not be possible. If, in an absolute sense, God could not communicate himself to this Son, he would be even less able, in a relative sense, to communicate himself to his creature. If God were not triune, creation would not be possible.’3Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Baker Academic, 2011), 269.
So the first principle of creation ‘out of nothing’ is the eternal fullness of the Holy Trinity. Teaching about the Trinity is the underpinning for teaching about creation, not a separate topic filed elsewhere.
Every Work of God Is a Three-Person Job
That means teaching about creation requires Trinitarian exposition. All God’s works are fashioned by a cooperative tri-personal structure — creation, redemption, and consummation alike.
There’s personal distinction in every work of God, but no inequality between the Persons, and their activity is indivisible.4‘To say that through the Son and the Spirit God the Father makes the heaven and earth is to repeat that God alone acts in creating’ (Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 142). The creativity of the Three is collaborative and co-active, each playing their part in one undivided operation.
Some of God’s works — incarnation, resurrection, ascension — land particularly on just one of the Three. But all his outward actions toward creation are threefold, with Father, Son, and Spirit expressing themselves in unified yet distinct ways.
John Owen put it well. ‘Every person … is the author of every work of God, because each person is God … and this arises from the unity of the person in the same essence.’ And yet, he adds, ‘there is no divine work but is distinctly assigned to each person.‘5John Owen, ‘Pneumatologia, or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit,’ in The Works of John Owen, Volume 3 (Murray and Gibb Printers, no date), 93; slightly amended. The distinct work of each Person doesn’t shut the others out: when one works, they do so according to the influence of the other two.
Look Again at Genesis 1
Biblical monotheism is unique among monotheisms in crediting creation out of nothing — the origin of all things — to the common yet differentiated work of the Triune God.6See Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons (T&T Clark, 1996), chapter 8.
And Genesis 1 itself carries a threefold shape. There’s command: immediate, spoken, calling into being from nothing. There’s formation: the moulding and shaping of what has been brought into existence. And there’s influence: growth built into the very nature of creatures themselves. The text also plainly distinguishes God, God’s speech, and God’s Spirit.7Robert Letham, Systematic Theology (Crossway, 2019), 275-77.
Although the Father is the initiating source of all creation, he created the world through the Son together with the Spirit. That’s why the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (AD 381) attributes creation ‘of all things visible and invisible’ not only to the Father, but to the Son by whom ‘all things were made,’ and to the Holy Spirit, named ‘Lord and Life-Giver’.
God doesn’t create through any intermediary — angels included.8This matter was discussed definitively by Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.2 and 4.20; ed. Philip Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers 1 (The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus), 361 and 487. He creates through his Son (John 1:3; Col 1:16) and his Spirit (Gen 1:2; Psa 104:30). To create ‘is common to the whole Trinity. … God the Father made the creature through His Word, which is his Son; and through His Love, which is the Holy Ghost … who quickens what is created by the Father through the Son.’9Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.45.6; ed. Ave Maria, 237-38.
Who Does What
In drastic summary, here’s the particular contribution of each Person.
The Father originates. His work is to purpose, intend, will, direct, ground, generate, and author — the beginning of God’s creative work. ‘It is the Father from whom everything that exists has been formed.’10Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, 2.6; trans. Stephen McKenna (The Catholic University of America Press, 1954), 39. ‘[T]he Father of the Logos [Word] was the primary Creator because he commanded his Son the Logos to create the world.’11Origen, Contra Celsum [Against Celsus] 6:60; trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 375. He is the one from whom all things issue and to whom all creatures are directed.
The Son executes. His role is executive and performative.12Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 270. He is the one by whom all things ‘in heaven and on earth’ were created (Col 1:16). Being God’s Word and Wisdom, he is the Mediator of creation — the one through whom and for whom the Father communicates his thoughts.
Careful here: the Son is not an intermediary between God and the world, nor an instrument God uses. He is ‘the immediate Creator and … direct Maker of the world.’13Origen, Contra Celsum [Against Celsus] 6:60; trans. Chadwick, 375. As mediator he is both the source of created life and the one who organises all creation in tune with the Father’s determination, human creatures included. As the God-man he’s also the point of contact between Creator and creature, modelling that relationship through loving obedience. Union with the Son is the goal of all created things (Eph 1:9-10).‘God’s eternal electing purpose to be God in Christ, governing the cosmos, in union with humanity, is the great underlying theme’ (Letham, Systematic Theology, 290).[/mfn]
The Spirit perfects. His particular work is implementation — putting the work of the Triune God into effective action, operating within creation through the immediate exercise of God’s personal power.
As God-in-action, the Spirit energises God’s life-providing activity by establishing and sustaining the world in being, and brings creation to its appointed destination in regeneration and renewal. ‘By the Spirit’s motion, creatures fulfil their natures.’Webster, God Without Measure, 1:97.[/mfn]
Same caution as with the Son: the Spirit is no intermediary or instrument. In absolute deity and personhood he is co-equal with Father and Son. By his work, creatures come to life.
Basil’s Summary
Basil of Caesarea called the Father ‘the original cause’, the Son ‘the creative cause’, and the Spirit ‘the perfecting cause.’De Spiritu Sancto [The Holy Spirit], 16:38; ed. Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2:8 (Basil: Letters and Select Works), 23.[/mfn] Here’s the fuller version: ‘When you consider creation I advise you to first think of Him who is the first cause of everything that exists: namely the Father, and then of the Son, who is the creator, and then the Holy Spirit, the perfector. … The Originator of all things is One: He creates through the Son and perfects through the Spirit. … “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the Spirit of His mouth.” [Psa 33:6]’Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 16:38, trans. David Anderson (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 62. ‘The creation thus proceeds from the Father through the Son in the Spirit in order that, in the Spirit and through the Son, it may return to the Father’ (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 271).[/mfn]
—
- 1So it is that ‘[t]he task of the Christian doctrine of creation is rational contemplation of the Holy Trinity in the outward work of love by which God established and ordered creaturely reality, a work issuing from the infinite uncreated and wholly realized movement of God’s inner life in himself’ (Webster, God Without Measure, 1:83). ↩︎
- 2Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith (T&T Clark, 1988), 87. ↩︎
- 3Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Baker Academic, 2011), 269. ↩︎
- 4‘To say that through the Son and the Spirit God the Father makes the heaven and earth is to repeat that God alone acts in creating’ (Webster, ‘Creation out of Nothing,’ 142). ↩︎
- 5John Owen, ‘Pneumatologia, or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit,’ in The Works of John Owen, Volume 3 (Murray and Gibb Printers, no date), 93; slightly amended. ↩︎
- 6See Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons (T&T Clark, 1996), chapter 8. ↩︎
- 7Robert Letham, Systematic Theology (Crossway, 2019), 275-77. ↩︎
- 8This matter was discussed definitively by Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.2 and 4.20; ed. Philip Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers 1 (The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus), 361 and 487. ↩︎
- 9Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.45.6; ed. Ave Maria, 237-38. ↩︎
- 10Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity, 2.6; trans. Stephen McKenna (The Catholic University of America Press, 1954), 39. ↩︎
- 11Origen, Contra Celsum [Against Celsus] 6:60; trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 375. ↩︎
- 12Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 270. ↩︎
- 13Origen, Contra Celsum [Against Celsus] 6:60; trans. Chadwick, 375. ↩︎