Father, Son and Spirit: are they 'co-eternal'?

This post is to show that Father, Son and Spirit are 'co-eternal.' As it says in the Athanasian Creed.

But some confusion arises from what 'eternal' even means in English, so I'm laying the ground below. And I have to start with two Bible words: aionion; and aidios.

 

What's in a word? - aionion

Below, we will see that Father, Son and Spirit are each described as 'aionion' in Scripture. So what does that Greek word mean?

It is an adjective based on a noun that means a period of time; often a defined period as in 'an age', but sometimes an undefined time. It's sometimes translated as 'everlasting.' (And in the YLT as 'age-during'.) So that's more or less what that word meant in those ancient times.

So that's a Greek word.

Long ago, Jerome translated the Bible from Greek into Latin (i.e. the Latin Vulgate Bible). Stay with me here. When he came to the word aionion, he rendered it by the Latin word aeternas. So Father, Son and Spirit are 'aeternas' in the Vulgate.

The Latin word aeternae gives us the English word eternity. And this English word does still carry the original meaning related to aevum ('age'), and that's usually when the indefinite article ('an eternity') is used with it. For example, when we say something like 'I spent AN eternity in that queue', meaning 'I spent an age in that queue.' We also see it in idioms such as calling romantic love 'eternal love' meaning 'everlasting love.' So you can see there is still a connection from the biblical meaning of the word to modern usage.

But since those early days, a lot of interest has developed in other concepts connected to the word 'eternal', especially from philosophy. For example, some English-speaking people read 'eternal' as meaning something philosophical. Going beyond the words of the creed, they take 'eternal' to mean something like 'outside of time.' This has a sound basis and I talk about it in another post. (By the way, some philosophers use 'eternal' to mean 'out of time,' while others use 'eternal' to mean limitless time.)

 

What's in a word? - aidios

Whether the philosophers' concept of eternity has any correlative in Scripture is another question. It is difficult to find it in the Hebrew Bible to be sure. Some say that God is eternal in the 'non-time' sense because of the word 'aidios' in Romans chapter 1, but only if it has much to do with what philosophers think of as 'eternal'.

One important thing about 'sidios' is that in Romans 1:20 this word is not used to directly describe God as eternal, but to describe God's power as eternal. According to the Bible this power is Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:24) - Jesus is the eternal power of God. This power is also associated with the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8, Acts 10:38) because it is the power of the Holy Spirit too (Romans 15:13). 'Power' is also used as a substitute for the name of God directly (Mark 14:62). So the link with power and eternal power runs right through a Bible understanding of Father, Son and Spirit.

Let's look for example at what is said about Jesus,

 

 

Jesus

Jesus is 'everlasting' if you compare how the Greek of 1 John 1:1-2 deliberately parallels the description of Jesus in the gospel of John 1:1-2. Here's the parallel:

 

The epistle 1 John 1:1-2

... from the beginning.....the Word of life.......the life everlasting......was with the Father....

... ap arkes....................tou logou tes zoes.....ten zoen ten ainion......en pros ton patera ....

 

Gospel of John 1:1-2

....in the beginning.........was the Word..................and the Word.........was with God ...

....en arke........................en ho logos......................kai ho logos...........en pros ton theon ...

 

It is evident from the parallel that from the one called 'life everlasting' is in fact the same person called 'the Word'. The Word is know to be the person Jesus.

So, it is evident that the everlasting Word is Jesus. Note that the phrase 'in the beginning' was the available expression meaning the furthest back imaginable moment. From the beginning, the Word was everlasting.

So now let's look at Father, Son and Spirit together, to see how they could be co-eternal.

 

 

Father, Son and Spirit - eternal

So let's build up the picture of who is eternal from Scripture. On Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and God the Father:

-               As seen, Jesus is described with the Greek word 'aionion' (1 John 1:2) - he was eternal 'from the beginning' (v.1). And Hebrews 1:2 adds that God 'made the ages through him.' Yes, 'the ages' ('tous aionas')! There was no such thing as ages until the 'ages' were made through Jesus. So Jesus did not come into being in any age. He made the ages. He is 'aionion', eternal.

 

-               The Holy Spirit is described using the word 'aionion' (Hebrews 9:14).

 

-               God: 'aioniou theou' (Romans 16:26), and we all recognise the Father as God.

 

It would be to ignore Scripture to deny that Father, Son and Spirit are 'aionion', i.e. the three are aionion.

They are co-eternal, which is saying something more. As the Trinity, they have a shared existence. It's a shared eternal existence. That's why the creed says they are co-eternal.

 

 

Co-eternal: where the word comes from

I mentioned that Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, and when he came to the Greek word aionion, he rendered it by the Latin word aeternas. So Father, Son and Spirit are aeternas in the Vulgate. Well, the Athanasian creed was written after Jerome, also in Latin:

'...tres personae coaeternae...'

In the light of the above, we can understand it meaning 'three co-everlasting persons'.

Back-translate it into Greek and - instead of three who are 'co-aeternae' - you get three who are effectively co... aionion. That's three co-everlasting persons. That is nicely in harmony with 1 John 1:2, Hebrews 9:14 and Romans 16:26.

By the way, more or less the same arguments apply to any discussion of the Latin 'aequalis' (and coaequalis) which is prone to be misunderstood if read simply as the word 'equal' of modern English.

 

 

Further reading:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/finaltorah.html

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/quicumque.html

 

My book God in 3D: Finding the Trinity in the Bible and the Church Fathers discusses how the term co-eternal fits in the story of God's temple presence. See pages 196-97 for example.