Trinity Chart with Identifying Particularities: the Father unbegotten, the Son as begotten, the Holy Spirit proceeding

I am very cautious, as were a substantial number of my Baptist forefathers and also many teachers in Protestant orthodoxy, about analogies in this world for the Trinity:

[I]n the inward work of the Trinity is the Father said to spirate or process the Spirit in the active sense—spiratio activa—and, in view of the filioque, to do so with the Son, as indicated by John 15:26 and to a lesser extent by Galatians 4:6. Thus, active spiration is not a sole property or operation of the Father, but belongs also to the Son. Like the role of the Son in the begetting or generation of the second person, the Spirit’s role in his own emanation or spiration is, by definition, passive: he does not spirate himself, but is spirated by the Father and the Son. The Reformed orthodox note this traditionary point but typically do not elaborate it either dogmatically or exegetically apart from their discussions of the filioque, nor will they dwell on the question of a difference between the active generation of the Son and the spiration of the Spirit. Since the inward divine actions or emanations have no analogy in the created order, they cannot be adequately conceived by human beings: all that can be inferred is that they neither divide the divine essence into parts or multiply it into different beings—rather these actions result in the multiplicity of persons in the undivided essence. . . . [I]llustrations . . .  cannot be considered any more than very limited aids to understanding: here the epistemological side of the Reformed non capax comes to the fore. (Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy;  Volume 4: The Triunity of God [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003], 262, 154.)

Comparing the three Persons of the Godhead to three parts in an egg, or to water as solid, liquid, and gas, or to a person who is a father, a child, and a brother, and other similar analogies lend themselves to modalism, not to Trinitarianism.  Other analogies can lend themselves to tritheism, such as comparing the Trinity to three people who are all equally human.  The fact is that there is nothing in the created world that is one and three in the sense that the uncreated and eternal God is one and three, so all analogies fall short.  God's threeness is below the level of distinct being, at which level God is only one, and above the level of distinction of attributes, for God is Father, Son, and Spirit in a way that is different from His being holy, righteous, omnipotent, and so on.

When teaching on the subject relatively recently, I wanted to find a chart like the one pictured below:

I could find ones with the "is" and "is not" portions--very good, but not what I wanted.  I could not find one that also reflected the eternal identifying particularities of the three Persons, namely, that the Father is neither begotten nor proceeding, that the Son is eternally begotten by the Father, and that the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son as from a single principle.  I thus had someone kindly take the time to create the chart above.  I hope it finds its way into Google pictures so that people who want a chart on the Trinitarian Persons can have one that accurately represents Biblical truth.  The chart is also found in the second evangelistic Bible study at FaithSaves, "Who is God?" and likewise appears in the YouTube video of "Who is God?"

Please feel free to use the chart above when you are teaching on the glorious Triune God.

You can learn more about the Trinity from the college class online here or on YouTube here.

-TDR