#1012 Could the Members of the Trinity have Switched Places?

Dr. craig’s response

We can only speculate as to the answer to your first intriguing question, Paul. The issue you raise is the degree to which the economic Trinity reflects the ontological Trinity. In the economic Trinity there is subordination of one person to another, as the incarnate Son does the Father’s will and the Spirit speaks, not on his own account, but on behalf of the Son.  The economic Trinity need not reflect ontological derivation relations between the persons but rather may be understood as an expression of God’s loving condescension for the sake of our salvation.  The error of Logos Christology, which understood the Son to be begotten in his divine nature by the Father, lay in conflating the economic Trinity with the ontological Trinity, introducing subordination into the nature of the Godhead itself.

Marcellus of Ancyra, one of the orthodox leaders at Nicea, noticed that in John’s Gospel the Logos is not referred to as “Son” until after the Incarnation.  Indeed, nowhere in the New Testament is Christ unambiguously referred to as “Son” in his pre-incarnate state (I Jn 4.14 is sometimes suggested, but even it may be read naturally in light of the Incarnation). Moreover, he found no biblical grounds for affirming the eternal generation of the Logos from the Father.  These observations led Marcellus to hypothesize that prior to creation, the economic Trinity did not exist.  The Logos becomes the Son only with his Incarnation. On Marcellus’s view distinctions present in the economic Trinity need not always reflect distinctions in the ontological Trinity.

I think that Marcellus erred in thinking that the economic Trinity began to exist only at the moment of creation. The economic Trinity must exist from past eternity, since the persons of the Godhead all know the respective roles they will play in God’s eternal plan of salvation, even if the deployment of that economy does not occur until the fullness of time.

Nonetheless, on my view the persons of the ontological Trinity can be as similar to one another as three distinct persons can be, knowing, willing, and loving the same things (though each from a different personal perspective, so to speak), so that it may be arbitrary which person plays the role of “Father” and which of “Son.” The Son is whichever person becomes incarnate, the Spirit is he who stands in the place of and continues the ministry of the Son, and the Father is the one who sends the Son and Spirit.  In a possible world in which God did not choose to create but remained alone, the economic Trinity would not exist, even though the ontological Trinity would. In some possible world in which people are created, for all we know, the persons of the ontological Trinity may assume different roles in the economic Trinity.

As for your second question, in my way of modeling the Trinity the one spiritual being that is God possesses three distinct sets of cognitive faculties each sufficient for self-consciousness, intentionality, and volition, and so for personhood, wholly apart from the intra-Trinitarian relations.  Indeed, it seems doubtful that mere relations could in any case serve as the basis for the ontological distinctness of the persons.  For one person can relate to himself, for example, as knower to known or lover to beloved.  In order for these relations to exist between two persons, the persons must exist as distinct individuals logically (if not chronologically) prior to their standing in those relations.  In other words, the persons’ distinct existence is explanatorily prior to the relations in which they stand, not vice versa. What distinguishes the persons is each one’s unique first-person perspective.