{"id":37672,"date":"2016-05-17T14:42:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T18:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=37672"},"modified":"2016-05-17T14:42:50","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T18:42:50","slug":"eternal-dance-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/eternal-dance-three\/","title":{"rendered":"An eternal dance of Three?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a guest post by our friend John Bainbridge<\/strong>, soon to begin work on a Masters in Systematic and Philosophical Theology. An earlier draft was a post in the trinities podcast Facebook group<\/a>. – Dale\"holy<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Perhaps the greatest issue for Social Trinitarians with respect to the Holy Spirit is “his” personhood<\/strong>. Generally, in defense of this personhood, they point to passages that do indeed seem to imply a certain someone, capable of emotion and saying things, for example. These occasional references to which these Trinitarians point are – initially – suggestive of personhood, for sure. To my mind, however, there are two significant “buts”, and I think Pastor Finnegan touches on the first<\/a>:<\/p>\n

1. The rarity of the suggestive occurrences relative to the more impersonal and dissuasive ones.
\n2. The absence of love evidenced between the Father or Son and the (or their) Spirit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is on this second point that I have not yet found significant concern within the Trinitarian literature – but perhaps with good reason. Social Trinitarians in particular should have an issue here. They claim that these three literal persons are bound together in a profound and infinite love that permits a oneness appropriate to singular pronouns. But there is a problem here, well and truly shoved under the carpet \u2013 where is the love<\/strong> of the Father or of the Son for his (or their) Spirit in the Bible?<\/p>\n

\"three<\/a>Thus for Social Trinitarians, this should amount to a serious problem<\/strong>. They claim that Trinity is a most beautiful and delicate “dance”<\/strong> of humble love and collaboration. But it is not enough to point to a few potential occurrences of Holy Spirit personhood to justify the love dance. In order to fill a seemingly gaping hole in Social Trinitarian theology, solid evidence needs to be provided for love of the Father and Son for the Spirit. Where is that evidence?<\/p>\n

Since the initial discussion generated by this post on the trinities Facebook page, it has been argued defensively, and perhaps predictably, that the Spirit must be a distinct person because of the personal language<\/strong> with which this Spirit is sometimes associated. There are assumptions<\/strong> underlying this sort of approach that I think can be outlined as follows:<\/p>\n