Matthew Barrett’s Simply Trinity is his attempt to correct what he sees as perilous misunderstandings of the Trinity present in evangelicalism (p. 21). In particular, there has been a loss or rejection of the “eternal relationships of origin,” the ideas that the Son was eternally begotten and the Spirit eternally spirated (pp. 24–25). What is more, Barrett believes that evangelicalism has gone astray through accommodating the Trinity to social projects (pp. 28–31). Barrett’s solution is a return to the Nicene Creed and the “Great Tradition” as he calls it, and, in particular, a return to the doctrine of simplicity.

In part 1, Barrett details how we drifted away. Chapter 2 charts the ancient trinitarian debates and how they were solved. Chapter 3, then, explores modern trinitarian issues—liberalism, social trinitarianism, and what he describes as the historicizing tradition. But evangelicals, too, assert Barrett, have distorted the Trinity, making persons “distinct centers of consciousness,” sometimes with distinct wills, cooperating as distinct agents (pp. 90–91).

In part 2, Barrett seeks to chart a “way home.” Chapter 4 details the classic idea that “the temporal missions reveal the eternal relations” (p. 106). Chapter 5 moves onto the doctrine of simplicity. Chapter 6 helpfully gives nine marks of a defective view of generation: division of nature, multiplication of essence, priority and posterity, motion, mutation, alteration, corruption, diminution, and cessation from operation. Chapter 7 makes a compelling biblical case for eternal generation.

Chapter 8 investigates what seems to be Barrett’s most pressing concern, whether the Son is “subordinate” to the Father. It would be fair to say that Barrett unleashes a barrage of criticism in this chapter, targeted mainly against Bruce Ware, but also against others who hold to the eternal functional subordination of the Son (EFS). Some of the criticism, it seems to me, is not unwarranted. Many of the quotations or summaries of views that Barrett gives, especially from Ware, are deeply disturbing. For example, “For, although the Father is supreme, though he has in the trinitarian order the place of highest authority, the place of highest honor, yet he chooses to do his work in many cases through the Son and through the Spirit rather than unilaterally” (p. 219).

Chapter 9, then, reflects on the Holy Spirit and argues that what distinguishes the Spirit from the Father and the Son is spiration. That is his unique property. Finally, chapter 10 considers inseparable operations—when the Trinity acts, all persons act together; not by cooperating, but because they are, in fact, one.

In a sense, Barrett provides in Simply Trinity an introduction to the classical, orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. By and large, he has succeeded. He covers the main topics and does so skillfully. Nevertheless, one is left with the distinct feeling that the persons are not really persons at all, in any meaningful sense, but merely “modes of subsistence,” “eternal relations of origin,” and “personal properties” (p. 60). All of which do not sound particularly personal, except perhaps for the last, which turns out to be simply another way of saying the other two. In other words, the personal Father, Son, and Spirit that we meet in the pages of the Scriptures end up sounding rather more like static philosophical concepts. Barrett claims that simplicity here rescues us since the modes of subsistence are not impersonal, as in Sabellianism, but personal. But he does not explain how “paternity,” “filiation,” and “spiration” are personal (p. 146).

To put flesh on the bones, Jesus tells us that the Father loves the Son (John 5:20). But how does that work out in Barrett’s schema, since the only personal property that the Father possesses is paternity? Moreover, love, presumably along with will, glory, power, and authority, are attributes of the essence. Barrett may have an answer. But if he does, he does not say what it is. That is not to suggest that personal means three separate wills or a Social Trinity. Barrett is right in his critique of Social Trinitarianism. Rather, it is to suggest that in his efforts to maintain an orthodox definition of the Trinity, he flattens the persons that we meet in the pages of the Scriptures.

In a similar vein, one of Barrett’s central contentions is that EFS has distorted the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity by abandoning or distorting key orthodox doctrines: simplicity, eternal generation, and inseparable operations. By and large, he makes his case that at least some have done so. But one cannot help but feel that Barrett is blind to some implications of his statements. He rightly affirms, for example, that there is no hierarchy and priority among the persons. He also affirms that “they are not sundered in will or divided in power” (p. 172). But he also affirms that the Son is from the Father and the Spirit is from the Father and the Son. In fact, he affirms, quoting Augustine, that the Father “bestow[s] being on the Son [albeit] without any beginning in time, without any changeableness of nature” (p. 61).

Later, regarding inseparable operations, Barrett rightly affirms, following Gregory of Nyssa, “Every operation which extends from God to the Creation … has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit” (p. 299). He then continues, “As the unbegotten one, the principle without a principle in the Godhead, the Father is the ‘beginning’ and ‘fountain’ of all operations” (p. 299). Of course, Barrett is here referring to operations of God in creation, not God within himself. Nevertheless, the reason that we can make distinctions in the works of God, he says, is that the modes of working reflect the modes of subsistence. Barrett then affirms, “How God acts toward the world (ad extra) mirrors who he is in himself (ad intra), and that rule of thumb applies not only to his united essence but his distinct ordering in personhood” (p. 299).

That is to say, God’s external operations in the world are from the Father and through the Son since within the Godhead the essence is from the Father and through the Son. But if the will is a property of the essence, not the person, as Barrett maintains (p. 149), then it is not clear why the will (and love) cannot then be said to be from the Father and through the Son. And if so, one cannot help but suspect that such a dynamic will look suspiciously like how Jesus describes his relationship with the Father: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19 NIV). While the language of “subordination” and “obedience” applied to the eternal Son may be profoundly unhelpful (not to mention the abandonment of inseparable operations), nevertheless, an understanding of the “from-ness” of the Son helpfully clarifies how the persons can be said to relate meaningfully, without abandoning classical Nicaean trinitarianism and ending up with social trinitarianism.

Barrett’s book is a helpful introduction to some of the key ideas of classical trinitarianism. He also highlights some profoundly unhelpful statements by some evangelicals about the Trinity. But one cannot help but wonder if, in his attempt to correct some distortions, he has introduced some distortions of his own.

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