The Triune God, Part 3.

On pages 142 to 159 Calvin explains the relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit. Here are the summary points.

1. True faith, as Calvin writes, "Ought not to gaze hither and thither ...... but to look upon the one God, to unite with Him, to cleave to Him" (Pg., 141).

2. There truly is only one true God, but this one true God is in three Persons. "Father, Son, and Spirit imply a real distinction - let no one think that these titles, whereby God is variously designated from His works, are empty - but a distinction, not a division” (Pg., 141).

3. The Bible makes this clear. (Zech 13:7; Jn 5:32; 8:16; 1:3; Heb 11:3; Jn 1:18; 17:5; 15:26; 14:26; 14:16).

4. Calvin expresses the "distinctions" between Father, Son and Holy Spirit in this manner. "To the Father is attributed the beginning of activity, and the fountain and wellspring of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and the ordered disposition of all things; but to the Spirit is assigned the power and efficacy of that activity" (Pg., 142).

5. These distinctions do not demise or destroy the perfect simple unity of God.

6. "The Son is one God with the Father because He shares with the Father one and the same Spirit; and that the Spirit is not something other than the Father and different from the Son, because He is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. For in each hypostasis the whole divine nature is understood, with this qualification - that to each belongs His own peculiar quality" (Pg., 143).

7. Though each Person in the Godhead has "his own peculiar quality", we do not concede that one is separated from the other by any difference of essence or substance.

8. Augustine explains: "Christ with respect to Himself is called God; with respect to the Father, Son. Again, the Father with respect to Himself is called God; with respect to the Son, Father. In so far as He is called Father with respect to the Son, He is not the Son; in so far as He is called the Son with respect to the Father, He is not the Father; in so far as He is called both Father with respect to Himself, and Son with respect to Himself, He is the same God" (Pg., 144).

9. The people of the church must always say, "We profess to believe in one God, under the name of God is understood a single, simple essence, in which we comprehend three Persons, or hypostasis" (Pg., 144).

10. Gregory of Nazianzus said, "I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three; nor can I discern the three without being straightway carried back to the one" (Pg., 141).