The Trinitarian Vision of Jonathan Edwards and David Coffey By S ...

the economic activities correspond to the immanent processions and vice versa.

The missions of the Son and the Spirit, especially as they are portrayed in the Gospel of John (e.g., John 14:15, 15:26, and 20:22), reveal that the Father sends the Son and the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit. Economically, the Father sends and the Son is sent in the Incarnation. Immanently and eternally, the Father begets and the Son is begotten.⁵⁹ The logic is that to be sent is to be from. Because the Son’s economic activity consists in being sent from the Father to reveal the Father, his immanent status is the one begotten as the perfect image of God the Father. Augustine continued the relationship between being sent and being from with his discussion of the Holy Spirit. According to Augustine, the epistemological basis for knowing that the Spirit is from or proceeds from the Father and the Son (i.e., the doctrine of the filioque) is that both send the Spirit.⁶⁰ Ultimately, the sending of the Son and the Spirit reveals that the Father is “the source of all godhead, or if you prefer it, of all deity.”⁶¹ The Father sends but is not sent. Because the sendings—economic activities—reveal the eternal processions and the Father is not sent, it belongs exclusively to the Father to be unoriginate or unbegotten within the immanent Trinity. Moreover, the pattern of economic sending yields the immanent generation of the Son from the Father and the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son.

Finally, the procession of the Holy Spirit as the mutual love of the Father and the Son is the foundation of the Spirit’s activity in grace. Within the immanent Trinity, the Father loves the Son and the Son returns love to the Father. The Holy Spirit proceeds as their immanent act of mutual love. In terms of the economy of redemption, the Spirit’s activity matches his immanent manner of procession. As the Father and the Son love each other in the Holy Spirit, so they shed their love into the hearts of the saints by the Holy Spirit, which in turn unites believers with the immanent fellowship between the Father and the Son and fires their love for each other.

Augustine grounded his identification of the Holy Spirit as the love of God in 1 John 4:7–19. 1 John 4:7–8 makes two affirmations; it states