Sarah A. Coakley’s “God, Sexuality, and the Self” is her account of the doctrine of the Trinity. Coakley relies on Romans 8 as the main scriptural passage for her reflexive model of the Trinity. Although this volume is not Coakley’s theology of the atonement per se, this paper’s interest in the atonement falls downstream from her model.
I will assess the implications of a revised taxis of the Trinitarian persons on Christ’s atonement. I will aim to answer two questions. First, “Why was the divine Son sent in the Incarnation?” Second, “Why is the application of Christ’s salvific work appropriated to the Holy Spirit?” Christians traditionally base their responses on God’s eternal processions. The processions include an eternal ordering of the divine persons.
This paper argues that Coakley’s reliance on Romans 8 to reverse the Trinitarian persons’ taxis loses the ratio for interpreting the Incarnate Son’s atoning work, a necessary framework to understand the purpose and telos of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence—to bring adopted daughters and sons back to the Father. I will seek to demonstrate how God’s salvific acts reveal the Trinitarian relations in four sections: (1) an outline of Coakley’s arguments and concerns from Romans 8 on divine desire; (2) an examination of how Romans 8 grounds rational creatures’ return to God on the Son’s penal substitutionary atonement; (3) a presentation of the processions as the ratio for God’s opera ad extra; and (4) a response to Coakley that underscores Christ is the covenantal Son.