In God, Heaven, and Har Magedon, Meredith G. Kline proposed an unconventional account of the relational order between the Son and the Holy Spirit. He argued that, in terms of the eternal generation of the Son, there is an inverted order within the Trinity—the procession of the Spirit precedes the filiation of the Son, and, as the giver of life, the Spirit “fathers” the Son together with the Father. Rather than following the traditional Trinitarian ordering, in which the Son is second and the Spirit third, Kline presented a framework in which the Spirit’s role in the Son’s begetting assigns Him a kind of primacy in relation to the Son, thereby challenging the traditional formulation upheld in Nicene Trinitarianism and suggesting the Spirit’s position as the second person of the Trinity.
Building on this, moreover, Kline presents a twofold proposal: “The fathering of the incarnate Son by the endoxate Spirit warrants inclusion of the Spirit along with the Father as a subject in the eternal divine begetting, in the generating process of which the Son is the object. It is a desideratum, therefore, that a reference to the Holy Spirit corresponding to the filioque phrase in the creedal account of the spiration of the Spirit find a place in our confessional formulation of the eternal filiation of the Son” (p. 16).
These claims raise at least three questions. First, does Kline provide a legitimate basis for inverting the Nicene order of processions between the Son and the Spirit? Second, is his “double origin theory” of the Son congruent with the historic Reformed account of filiation? Third, does this reordering inadvertently subordinate the Son to the Spirit, akin to the ways in which the Son was subjected to the Father within the eternal life of God?
Therefore, although briefly stated, Kline’s propositions warrant careful theological analysis—not only to assess their implications for other areas of theology but also to clarify their relationship to the Nicene tradition. This paper addresses that need by evaluating Kline’s reordering of divine processions, arguing that his proposals undermine Nicene Trinitarianism by reconfiguring not only the principles of relations but also the distinguishing properties of the divine persons. The structure of argument is straightforward. First, Kline’s own assertions concerning divine processions will be examined. Second, in light of more orthodox formulations in the Reformed tradition, an evaluation will be offered on the confusions Kline introduces regarding the nature of analogy between theologia and oikonomia and the personal properties of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, respectively. Once these foundations are established, the paper will conclude by addressing Kline’s second proposal concerning the need for confessional revision, and affirm in closing the necessity of meditating “on” and “through” catholic expressions of God for a truly ecclesial theology.