Trinity After Pentecost

A creative exercise in trinitarian theology that takes Pentecost as the basis for developing a relational, multiple-model understanding of the triune God.

Trinity After Pentecost considers the triune God from a Pentecostal viewpoint. In so doing, it offers a fresh articulation of the theology of the Trinity, taking the Holy Spirit as its starting point. It concludes that the Trinity cannot be adequately appreciated using any single model - whether social, modal, or psychological. Instead, it presents three models - relational, instrumental, and substantial - that must be held in paradoxical tension with one another to gain insight into the Trinity. Of these, the relational model is the foremost. Pentecost offers rich potential for seeing the relations between the Father, the Son and the Spirit as a dynamic reciprocal 'dance', in which each Person empties their 'self ' in order to exalt the others.

William P. Atkinson is Senior Lecturer in Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies at the London School of Theology. He is the author of The “Spiritual Death” of Jesus (2009), Baptism in the Spirit (2011), and Trinity after Pentecost (2013).