“In the beginning God created…” seems to divide the Trinity by
function, the Father calling forth Creation while the Son and Spirit wait in
the wings for the Cross and Pentecost. The two creeds we confess liturgically,
the Apostle’s and Nicene, don’t help in that “I believe in God the Father” appears
to give sole credit for creation to the first person of the Trinity. There was
a time when we trotted out the Athanasian Creed on Trinity Sunday but it’s
fallen out of favor due most likely to its length and perhaps the damning to
hell all things Arian. Arius argued that a son by definition must come from a
father and so there is a time when a son (even the Son of God) is not. Athanasius disagreed in no uncertain terms. God
is and always was Father, Son, Spirit all at the same time in every way from
before the beginning. We don’t have a lot of scripture to lean on as the
doctrine of the Trinity was not as important in the beginning of the church as
it came to be a century or so later. But you might have noticed that in the
creation account God creates humankind in the image of “us” and while that is
not proof for the doctrine of the Trinity you could read it that way, in which
case Athanasius would applaud and Arius might understandably roll over in his
grave.
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