Class #10: How do we speak about the Triune God? The Athanasian Creed correctly instructs us that we need to do it “not confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.” In order to speak correctly, we must understand where the Holy Scriptures are speaking about the unity of God and where they are speaking about the Trinity of persons.
There are two rules to help us. 1. The external works of God are undivided. “When God outside His essence works something among His creatures, then the three persons are together and work together, because there is one doer and maker.” 2. The internal works of God are divided. “The works which God does outside of all created things, within Himself, are not common to the three persons, but are peculiar to only one person, so this it is characteristic of the Father to beget, of the Son to be begotten, and of the Holy Spirit to proceed from both.” (Loci Theologici, p.74)
Handout: opera ad extra and opera ad intra
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