“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” (Deut. 6:4). Stephen Charnock wrote, “Where there is the greatest unity, there must be greatest simplicity; but God is one. As he is free from any change, so he is void of any multitude.”[1] Being pure spirit (Jn. 4:24), God is not composed of body or parts. Being outside of time, (Gen. 1:1; 1 Tim. 1:17), unchangeable (Js. 1:17) and the fulness of joy (Ps. 16:11), God has no changing will or emotions (Num 23:19; Mal. 3:6). God is not composed of anything—all that is in God is God. In this way we understand that “There is in the Divine Being but one indivisible essence (ousia, essentia).”^[2] Calvins succinctly said, “in God’s essence reside three persons in whom one God is known.”^[3]

            Paul went on to explain, “for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for him” (1 Cor. 8:6) and in to the Ephesians he confessed “One God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:6). While God is not three persons, we must affirm there are three persons in God (three persons sharing the same divine nature). Jesus said, “believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me” (Jn. 14:11). John described Jesus as “the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father” (Jn. 1:18). Likewise, the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father” (Jn. 15:26). There is nothing of God which the Spirit does not know because the Spirit is the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:11).

            The Son is eternally in the close proximity of the Father (Jn. 1:18). Greater still is the mystery of John 14:11 where Christ affirms the Father is in him and he is in the Father. The “in” found in the inspired grammar must be taken seriously here. Scripture affirms the Son is “in the Father” (Jn. 14:11). Here Jesus claimed his miraculous works in “support of His great claim of unity with the Father.”^[4] The son speaks the Father’s words (Jn. 7:16-17; 8:26-28; 12:49-50) and does the Father’s works (Jn. 5:17-20, 36; 9:4; 10:37-38).

This most interesting affirmation of being “in the Father” receives little to no comment by most commentators. Ryle said, “Sayings like these are full of deep mystery. We have no eyes to see their meaning fully,—no line to fathom it,—no language to express it,—no mind to take it in.” He did glean from the passage that “We must be content to believe when we cannot explain, and to admire and revere when we cannot interpret. Let it suffice us to know and hold that the Father is God and the Son is God, and yet that they are one in essence though two distinct Persons,—ineffably one, and yet ineffably distinct. These are high things, and we cannot attain to a full comprehension of them.”^[5]

Perhaps John records for us an expansion of Jesus’ statement in John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.” Lincoln noted, “Indeed, once the text is read in the context of the whole Gospel and particularly its prologue’s assertions about the relation of the incarnate Logos to God, it invites further reflection on its implications for Jesus’ ontological status of equality with God. Father and Son are united in the work of salvation because they are united in their being.”^[6] The Jews understood Jesus to be claiming equality with God—a share in the divine essence—as is seen in their attempt to stone him after his claim (Jn. 10:31-33).

            For us to affirm the oneness of God, we must affirm the three persons of God are inseparable and intertwined. Berkhof helpfully said, “the divine essence is not divided among the three persons but is wholly with all its perfection in each one of the persons, so that they have a numerical unity of essence.”[7] Likewise, Torrance affirmed the Father, Son, and Spirit each enjoy the fulness of the divine nature and that “they all coinhere consubstantially and inseparably in the one Being of God.”[8] God exists as three persons, but there is yet one God. God is the I AM not the We Are. This oneness is due to the inseparable interpenetrating perichoretic nature of God.

            Perichoresis is a “way of addressing how the substance could be one, while at the same time involving three Persons within it.”^[9] Torrance explained, “Perichoresis derives from chora (χώρα), the Greek word for ‘space’ or ‘room’, or from chorein (χώρειυ), meaning ‘to contain’, ‘to make room’, or ‘to go forward’. It indicates a sort of mutual containing or enveloping of realities, which we also speak of as coinherence or coindwelling.”^[10] Hillary explained this perichoresis between the Father and Son:

What is in the Father is in the Son also; what is in the Unbegotten is in the Only-begotten also. The One is from the Other, and they Two are a Unity; not Two made One, yet One in the Other, for that which is in Both is the same. The Father is in the Son, for the Son is from Him; the Son is in the Father, because the Father is His sole Origin; the Only-begotten is in the Unbegotten, because He is the Only-begotten from the Unbegotten. Thus mutually Each is in the Other, for as all is perfect in the Unbegotten Father, so all is perfect in the Only-begotten Son.^[11]

While Hilary did not mention the Spirit, the Same could be said of the Spirit as was said of the Son. The Spirit, after all, “proceeds from the Father” (Jn. 15:26; cf. Joel 2:28) and is poured out by the Son (Acts 2:33; Rom. 5:5).

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[1] Stephen Charnock, The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock, 1:265.

^[2] L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 87.

^[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Institutes I, xiii, 16

^[4] J. H. Bernard, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, ed. Alan Hugh McNeile, International Critical Commentary (New York: C. Scribner’ Sons, 1929), 542.

^[5] J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on John (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1880), 61.

^[6] Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel according to Saint John, Black’s New Testament Commentary (London: Continuum, 2005), 306.

[7] Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 88.

[8] T. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, 224.

^[9] Douglas F. Kelly, Systematic Theology: Grounded in Holy Scripture and Understood in the Light of the Church (Ross-shire, Scotland: Mentor, 2008), 489.

^[10] Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (Edinburgh, Scotland: T&T Clark, 1996), 102.

^[11] Hilary of Poitiers, “On the Trinity,” in St. Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. E. W. Watson et al., vol. 9a of A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1899), 62–63.