Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 28:1 (Spring 2024)
Article: The Holy Spirit’s Procession In God’s Triune Life: An Application Of Amandus Polanus’ Eighteen Axioms On The Trinity
Author: S. M. S. Cheng

The Holy Spirit’s Procession In God’s Triune Life: An Application Of Amandus Polanus’ Eighteen Axioms On The Trinity

S. M. S. Cheng

S. M. S. Cheng is a PhD student in Systematic Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, where she also earned her ThM. She is a member of Sojourn Church Midtown in Louisville.

Early Reformed theologian, Amandus Polanus,1 produced eighteen axioms,2 Axioms About the Most Holy Trinity, or the Three Persons of the One Deity, which can be found in book three, chapter eight of his larger corpus, Syntagma Theologiae Christianae. As important as Polanus is—a theological “consolidator and synthesizer” of the period of Reformed Scholasticism in the early Reformation, who delineated doctrinal distinctions between the Roman Catholic and Reformed theologies3—only small portions of his work have been recently translated into English.4 Both the Post-Reformation period and contemporary theological discourse may look to Polanus’ dogmatic writing as a representative voice of the Christian tradition “to define what is our theology.’”5

The axioms on the Trinity generally focus on the eternal relation between the Father and the Son. This essay seeks to move through Polanus’ eighteen axioms6 and reflect on them with a focus on developing the classical doctrine of the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit. The axioms will function as a

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framework as I aim to rehearse the manner in which the third divine person is constituted by relations and is distinguished by his unique personal property, passive spiration. I will consider the eighteen axioms in the following pattern:

(1) summarize the axiom; (2) provide commentary on the axiom in view of the Holy Spirit’s procession; and (3) include secondary literature written from a classical Trinitarian perspective to substantiate my commentary.

Axiom One

In axiom one, Polanus foregrounds God’s unity of being in his definition of the term Trinity: “The sacred Trinity is God—indeed, the single, only God.” In speaking of threeness in God, Polanus employs redoublement, or doubled-speech, in which “the [Church] Fathers set ‘unity’ opposite ‘Trinity’ and say that one considers the unity in essence and Trinity in persons.”7 Polanus follows the traditional practi...