Bavinck Help

[Semper Fidelis]

Bavinck writes the following in his Reformed Dogmatics concerning the image of God in Creation:

The doctrine of the covenant of works, finally, contains a third idea, an idea of the richest religious and ethical significance. Adam was not created alone. As a man and by himself he was incomplete. He lacked something that no lower creature could make up (Gen. 2:20). As a man by himself, accordingly, neither was he yet the fully unfolded image of God. The creation of humankind in God’s image was only completed on the sixth day, when God created both man and woman in union with each other (Gen. 1:27), in his image. Still, even this creation in God’s image of man and woman in conjunction is not the end but the beginning of God’s journey with mankind. It is not good that the man should be alone (Gen. 2:18); nor is it good that the man and woman should be alone. Upon the two of them God immediately pronounced the blessing of multiplication (Gen. 1:28). Not the man alone, nor the man and woman together, but only the whole of humanity is the fully developed image of God, his children, his offspring. The image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human being may be. It can only be somewhat unfolded in its depth and riches in a humanity counting billions of members. Just as the traces of God (vestigia Dei) are spread over many, many works, in both space and time, so also the image of God can only be displayed in all its dimensions and characteristic features in a humanity whose members exist both successively one after the other and contemporaneously side by side. But just as the cosmos is a unity and receives its head and master in humankind; so also that humanity in turn is to be conceived as an organism that, precisely as such, is finally the only fully developed image of God. Not as a heap of souls on a tract of land, not as a loose aggregate of individuals, but as having been created out of one blood; as one household and one family, humanity is the image and likeness of God. Belonging to that humanity is also its development, its history, its ever-expanding dominion over the earth, its progress in science and art, its subjugation of all creatures. All these things as well constitute the unfolding image and likeness of God in keeping with which humanity was created. Just as God did not reveal himself all at once at the creation, but continues and expands that revelation from day to day and from age to age, so also the image of God is not a static entity but extends and unfolds itself in the forms of space and time. It is both a gift (Gabe) and a mandate (Aufgabe). It is an undeserved gift of grace that was given to the first human being immediately at the creation but at the same time is the grounding principle and germ of an altogether rich and glorious development. Only humanity in its entirety--as one complete organism, summed up under a single head, spread out over the whole earth, as prophet proclaiming the truth of God, as priest dedicating itself to God, as ruler controlling the earth and the whole of creation--only it is the fully finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God.

Scripture clearly teaches all this when it says that the church is the bride of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the dwelling of God, the new Jerusalem to which all the glory of the nations will be brought. This is the picture, to be sure, of the state of glory that will now be attained through the thickets of sin; but religion, the moral law, and man’s final destiny are essentially the same in both the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. In both the goal and end is a kingdom of God, a holy humanity, in which God is all in all.” - Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2, Chapter 13 (pp. 576-578)

Does anyone know if Bavinck anywhere also cautions against the improper use of analogy between the Persons of the Trinity and the diversity of humanity?

I ask because Bavinck's ideas are popular for a theology of diversity and connecting it to the image of God. I've seem some get confused and think that the Church is to reflect the "diversity" in the Trinity.

Bavinck, however, related diversity in the image of God as a reflection of God and not of the Trinity's diversity. The latter idea would be problematic due to the unique way in which the hypostases subsist.

Does Bavinck acknowledge the unique nature of the Trinity and guard against human analogy of the ad intra relations?

 

[Elias_Amare]

Does Bavinck acknowledge the unique nature of the Trinity and guard against human analogy of the ad intra relations?

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2 (pp. 413)

The Trinity reveals God to us as the fullness of being, the true life, eternal beauty. In God, too, there is unity in diversity, diversity in unity. Indeed, this order and this harmony is present in him absolutely. In the case of creatures we see only a faint analogy of it. Either the unity or the diversity does not come into its own. Creatures exist in time and space, exist side by side, and do not interpenetrate each other [like the persons in the Trinity]. Among us unity exists only by attraction, by the will and the disposition of the will; it is a moral unity that is fragile and unstable. And where there is a more profound physical unity as, say, between the capacities of a single substance, there is no independence, and the unity swallows up the diversity. But in God both are present: absolute unity as well as absolute diversity. It is one selfsame being sustained by three hypostases. This results in the most perfect kind of community, a community of the same beings; at the same time it results in the most perfect diversity, a diversity of divine persons. Therefore, if God is triune, the three persons can only be conceived as being “consubstantial” (ὁμοουσιοι).

Would this be useful?

 

[MW]

Bavinck states that the image of God is too rich to be fully expressed in a single individual (even Adam) and requires the entire human race across space and time to manifest its fulness. As I read the excerpt it is simply saying that the Trinity provides a structural basis for the one (unity) and the many (plurality, diversity) in creation. Hence creation reflects the nature of the Creator. This is basically where transcendental arguments come from -- God Himself is the precondition of certain realities within creation, including human rationality. I don't think there is anything here to suggest that specific "orders" of creation argue specific "orders" in the Trinity. It is non-hierarchical.

 

[Ed Walsh]

Bavinck's dates are 1854-1921.
Is it not true that ST became a big deal only years after his death. Am I right? If so, then the issue perhaps never occurred to Bavinck, or was so obscure that he didn't think he needed to comment. These are just guesses. I am not a learned theologian like many on this site.

Has ST won the day among today's broad evangelicalism?

Being neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, I strongly suspect that upholding the truths of the Classical Trinity, as summarized in the Nicene Creed may be the hill to die on.

Nicene Creed was approved in 325 which is 1,700 years till 2025.

I'm sick and broke, but I'm going to try my best to get to Credo's Trinity conference one way or another. It just might be the issue that God and the devil have presently lowered their sights on.

Show me how wrong I am if I am wrong.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Would this be useful?

Thanks. It's similar language to what he wrote in his book on the Trinity, which I have. I do appreciate it, however.

Bavinck states that the image of God is too rich to be fully expressed in a single individual (even Adam) and requires the entire human race across space and time to manifest its fulness. As I read the excerpt it is simply saying that the Trinity provides a structural basis for the one (unity) and the many (plurality, diversity) in creation. Hence creation reflects the nature of the Creator. This is basically where transcendental arguments come from -- God Himself is the precondition of certain realities within creation, including human rationality. I don't think there is anything here to suggest that specific "orders" of creation argue specific "orders" in the Trinity. It is non-hierarchical.

Thanks, Matthew. I'm tracking with this. My issue is not Bavinck's developments per se.

My problem was that a particular Elder claimed that the Church is called upon to model the diversity in the Trinity. He did so in the context of an argument about diversity in the Church (specifically racial diversity).

The error I'm trying to show him is that what Bavinck wrote was that the diversity of humanity imaged God as a simple essence. There is a difference between seeing mankind as God, but there is a big difference when one claims that the Church is called to reflect the diversity in the Trinity. that is a massive confusion of categories.

In fact, in his book on the Trinity, Bavinck denies a kind of "diversity" when he expresses orthodox distinctions between persons. In other places, however, he writes about "absolute diversity" and distinguishes it from the kind of diversity in humanity itself.

I suppose my ask here was a place where Bavinck might have cautioned against the implications that some people draw from his use of "diversity" language when referring to the Trinity.

It's the same problem that the CBMW crowd ran into when they were using Grudem and Ware to teach that the husband and wife relationship is to be a reflection of the way the Son eternally submits to the Father.

It seems increasingly common for many to be very sloppy in their language about the nature of the Trinity in order to bolster some idea that they have about how the Church itself ought to be.

 

[MW]

I suppose my ask here was a place where Bavinck might have cautioned against the implications that some people draw from his use of "diversity" language when referring to the Trinity.

Rich, Thanks for clarifying. I can't put my finger on the exact point you are dealing with. Is it a justification of cultural diversity in the church? as if the church should not be bound by a single form? At the risk of speaking to the wrong issue, it might be worth pointing out what Bavinck was very careful to emphasise. It is to be found at the close of the paragraph quoted in the OP:

"Only humanity in its entirety--as one complete organism, summed up under a single head, spread out over the whole earth, as prophet proclaiming the truth of God, as priest dedicating itself to God, as ruler controlling the earth and the whole of creation--only it is the fully finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God."

He then devotes a whole paragraph to explaining this point:

"Only one point in this presentation requires further discussion. Humanity cannot be conceived as a completed organism unless it is united and epitomized in one head. In the covenant of grace Christ has that position, and he is the head of the church; in the covenant of works that position is occupied by Adam. Eve was created from Adam so that he could be the first principle of the whole race (principium totius speciei), and so that the unity of the human race would be rooted in the unity of its origin."

The covenant of works had one head. The covenant of grace has one Head. It is not God in Himself, but God in Christ, who is the model for the church. All the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Him, and the church is His body. This establishes the fundamental unity of the church.

 

[83r17h]

Bavinck uses the analogy in The Christian Family.

The two-in-oneness of husband and wife expands with a child into a three-in-oneness. Father, mother, and child are one soul and one flesh, expanding and unfolding the one image of God, united within threefold diversity and diverse within harmonic unity.
This three-in-oneness of relationships and functions, of qualities and gifts, constitutes the foundation of all of civilized society. The authority of the father, the love of the mother, and the obedience of the child form in their unity the threefold cord that binds together and sustains all relationships within human society. Within the psychological life of every integrated personality this triple cord forms the motif and melody. No man is complete without some feminine qualities, no woman is complete without some masculine qualities, and to both man and woman, the child is held up as an example (Matt. 18:3). These three characteristics and gifts are always needed in every society and in every civilization, in the church and in the state. Authority, love, and obedience are the pillars of all human society.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Rich, Thanks for clarifying. I can't put my finger on the exact point you are dealing with. Is it a justification of cultural diversity in the church? as if the church should not be bound by a single form? At the risk of speaking to the wrong issue, it might be worth pointing out what Bavinck was very careful to emphasise. It is to be found at the close of the paragraph quoted in the OP:

"Only humanity in its entirety--as one complete organism, summed up under a single head, spread out over the whole earth, as prophet proclaiming the truth of God, as priest dedicating itself to God, as ruler controlling the earth and the whole of creation--only it is the fully finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God."

He then devotes a whole paragraph to explaining this point:

"Only one point in this presentation requires further discussion. Humanity cannot be conceived as a completed organism unless it is united and epitomized in one head. In the covenant of grace Christ has that position, and he is the head of the church; in the covenant of works that position is occupied by Adam. Eve was created from Adam so that he could be the first principle of the whole race (principium totius speciei), and so that the unity of the human race would be rooted in the unity of its origin."

The covenant of works had one head. The covenant of grace has one Head. It is not God in Himself, but God in Christ, who is the model for the church. All the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Him, and the church is His body. This establishes the fundamental unity of the church.

These are helpful quotes, but it's not diversity in humanity that I'm correcting him.

He wrote that God is unity in diversity and diversity in unity, the Church is called to reflect God as Trinity.

He is referring to cultural diversity and that there is a mandate for the Church's cultural diversity grounded in God's "diversity."

Now, I'm not disputing that there is a broadness to the Church in Christ and that every tribe, tongue, and nation will be preached to and gathered in.

The issue is the Trinitarian error of "diversity" supposing that there is a kind of "diversity" in the Trinity that is a mandate for cultural diversity.

It muddies the distinctions of the Persons of the Trinity. He writes clearly about how unique the hypostases subsisting in one simple essence are not the same as human diversity and even refuses to call it diversity in one place but then calls it absolute diversity in another. This hasn't prevented some from being confused when Bavinck refers to the Trinity as unity in diversity.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Bavinck uses the analogy in The Christian Family.

I'd like to see how he teases that out more. I might get the work. Given his qualifications in his work on the Trinity, I would imagine he makes some in the work.

 

[83r17h]

I'd like to see how he teases that out more. I might get the work. Given his qualifications in his work on the Trinity, I would imagine he makes some in the work.

I think there's a subtle limitation in that he is commending a particular arrangement of diversity, not "diversity as such." It is good not merely because it is diverse, but because its diversity is a coordinated harmony (since the different members work naturally together).

 

[MW]

The issue is the Trinitarian error of "diversity" supposing that there is a kind of "diversity" in the Trinity that is a mandate for cultural diversity.

I'm not sure I would see that as an issue per se. It is more of an undeveloped idea. It could be taken in various directions.

Bavinck was a broad theologian who addressed contemporary expositions of doctrine. Rather than dismiss Schleiermacher and co., he answered them. This is what makes his work beneficial to the Reformed world today. He remained grounded in traditional dogmatics and was able to pivot from there so as to take in whatever was insightful among the liberal varieties of his day. A liberal could claim back the insights and take Bavinck with him, but it's a dishonest appropriation.

I think we have to maintain a strong divide between Creator and creature in terms of WCF 7.1. At the same time, there must be a grounding of some kind which recognises the ontological and economical Trinity are not two different things. Within the reformed tradition there has been a tendency to explain the economical in light of the ontological. Creation reflects the Creator. I was amazed to see this articulated in some depth in Dr. Dilday's translation of De Moor on creation.

In short, I am not closed to the idea of "diversity" being grounded in the Trinity. This is simply the question of "the one and the many." But it will require close supervision. Bavinck's emphasis of the headship of Christ will set a necessary guard around it. Without this "diversity" could lead to "gods many and lords many." Each culture could have its own "Christ," which is obviously a perversion.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I think we have to maintain a strong divide between Creator and creature in terms of WCF 7.1. At the same time, there must be a grounding of some kind which recognises the ontological and economical Trinity are not two different things. Within the reformed tradition there has been a tendency to explain the economical in light of the ontological. Creation reflects the Creator. I was amazed to see this articulated in some depth in Dr. Dilday's translation of De Moor on creation.

I think we're saying the same thing.

The fact that God is not unitarian bears on how we are to understand the Trinity's economy.

The issue is when one reads "backward" our creaturely understanding of diversity into the ontological Trinity and then reads forward that notion as a way to say: "See, the Son submits to the Father, and this is the reason wives submit to their husbands...." In other words, we don't need the notion of Eternal Subordination to support ideas of headship because it's clearly not grounded in that way in what is revealed. It undermines important Trinitarian truths in the process.

The context of the statement was that the Bible teaches that DEI is a Scriptural idea and that Church diversity is a "mandate" of the Church because the Trinity itself is diverse. This is a dangerously unqualified statement.


Bavinck qualifies things in a way that guards against making the Creator just like the creature. There are revealed ideas in Scripture about how the Creation's diversity glorifies God, and we don't need to impose ideas of diversity back onto God's essence.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Here is what Bavinck writes in The Holy Trinity:

From this, it can be inferred in what sense the third aforementioned question regarding the relationship of Essence and Person, and of the Persons among themselves, must be answered. With Tertullian, the three Persons are of one substance, one status, one power, but one God; they are three—not in status but in degree—one, not identical, but united; they are one God, from which these degrees, forms, and species are designated by the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is distinction, distribution, but no diversity and division. Athanasius and the Cappadocians described the hypostases as modes of existence, thereby indicating that, although one in Essence, they each had their own existence and differed in mode of existence. Thus, the distinction between Essence and Person and among the Persons lay in the reciprocal relation, in the Father, Son, and Spirit-being, in the properties of paternity (unbegottenness), filiation (generation), and procession (emanation). Augustine further elaborated on this. He did not derive the Trinity from the Father but from the Unity, from the deity, and did not consider it accidental, but essential to God. It belongs to His Essence to be triune. In this sense, being a Person is identical with the Essence itself. For there is no difference between God's being and being a person, but they are entirely the same, of the Trinity VII 6. Indeed, if being belonged to God in an absolute sense and being a Person in a relative sense, then the three Persons could not be one Essence. Therefore, each Person is equal to the whole Essence and as much as the other two or all three together. This is not so with creatures. A human is not as much as three humans. But in God it is not so; for neither is the essence of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit together greater than that of the Father alone or the Son alone, but those three substances or persons, if they may be so called, are equal to each one individually, of the Trinity VII 6. In the summary of the Trinity, there is as much unity as there are three together, and two are not more than one, and within themselves, they are infinite. Thus, each one is in each one, and all are in each one, and each one is in all, and all are in all, and all are one, ib. VI 10. The Trinity itself is as great as each individual person there, ib. VIII 1. Therefore, the distinction between essence and person and among the persons themselves cannot lie in any substance but only in the mutual relations. Whatever is said of God Himself, and is said individually of each Person, that is, of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, and at the same time is said of the Trinity itself not in a plural but in a singular sense, of the Trinity V 8. But whatever is properly said of each individual in the same Trinity is by no means said of themselves but of each other, or of the creature, and therefore it is evident that they are said relatively, not substantially, ib. ch. 11. And accordingly, later theology said that essence and person differed not re but ratione, however not by a reasoning reason, i.e., rationally, nominally, as Sabellius thought, but reasoned by reason. The distinction did not consist in any substance but only in relation, yet this distinction was nevertheless real, objective, grounded in God's revelation. Essence and Person do not differ re but still really; the difference consists in a mode of subsistence, yet it is a real difference. The person is a mode of existence of the Essence; and therefore, the Persons differ from each other, just as one mode of existence differs from another, or according to the common example, just as the open hand differs from the closed hand.

The Arians particularly objected to it, arguing that all generation necessarily entails separation, division, parturition, and now also, suffering, exhaustion. That would be so if it were bodily, sensual, creaturely. But it is spiritual and Divine, and therefore simple, without division or separation; it occurs indivisibly and immutably. It brings distinction and distribution, but no diversity and division in the Divine Essence. "For God, being without parts, is also without suffering or exhaustion of the Son; nor is there any wounding of His body, nor any breaking up into parts, as occurs with men." Therefore, the generation in God has its most striking analogy in thinking and speaking; and Scripture itself points to this when it calls the Son the Logos. Just as the human spirit objectifies itself in the word, so God in the Logos communicates His entire Essence. But even here, there is distinction. Man needs many words to express his thought; those words are sounds and therefore sensual and material; they are unsubstantial and have no permanence in themselves. But when God speaks, He speaks in the one Logos, expressing His entire Essence and giving Him life in Himself. Secondly, therefore, generation implies that the Father begets the Son ek thēs ousias tou patros, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, as established at Nicaea. The Arians taught that the Son was brought forth from nothing by the will of the Father. But this was not generation but creation. Creating is making something exist and exist in the way that the creator and maker make it, dissimilar to them in every way and in essence; but generation is the one who is begotten being brought forth by the essence of the one who begets, like in essence. The Son is not a creature but is to be praised as God forever, Rom. 9:5. And therefore, He was not brought forth by the will of the Father, from nothing and in time. But He is begotten from the essence of the Father, in eternity. Generation, therefore, is not an actual work, an energy of the Father, but to the Father belongs a generative nature. This naturally does not mean that generation is an unconscious, involuntary emanation, that it occurs outside the will and power of the Father. It is not an act of a preceding, deciding will, of a preconceived plan, like creation; but it is so naturally to the Father that His will, as a concomitant will, is entirely pleased with it. It is a revelation of His essential nature and therefore also of His knowledge, will, and power and of all His virtues. Thirdly, therefore, generation is also confessed by the Christian church as eternal. The Arians said that the Son was once not, hn pote ote ouk ēn, they appealed mainly to the creation, ektisis, of Proverbs 8:22, and pointed to the antinomy that exists between the concepts of eternal, aiōnios, and generation, gennēsis. But if Father and Son bear these names in a metaphysical sense, as the Scripture undeniably teaches, then thereby generation is also proven to be eternal. If the Son is not eternal, then God is not eternal either; He was then God before He was Father and only later became Father in time. Denying eternal generation not only diminishes the deity of the Son but also that of the Father; it makes Him changeable, deprives Him of His divine nature, robs Him of the eternity of Fatherhood, and leaves unexplained how God can truly and rightly be called Father in time if the basis for this is not eternal in His nature. But that generation is therefore to be understood truly as eternal. It did not end and was completed in eternity, but it is an eternal, unchanging, and therefore simultaneously eternally completed and eternally ongoing act of God. Just as the sun radiates light, and the fountain flows water, so generation is inherent in the nature of the Father. The Father was never and is never without generation. He always begets. "The Father did not beget the Son and then disown Him, nor did the Father, after begetting Him, reject Him from His own substance, but He always begets Him." God's begetting is speaking, and His speaking is eternal, "God's begetting is eternal."

For the time being, the Trinity reveals to us God as the truly Living One. Already by the church fathers it was observed that the error of deism and pantheism, of monism and polytheism, was avoided by the Trinity, and the truth hidden in all those ideas about God was included in the Trinity. Deism digs a gulf between God and His creature, abolishes their relationship, and holds for God nothing but an abstract Unity, a pure being, a monotonous and uniform existence, it satisfies neither the head nor the heart, it is the death of religion. Pantheism brings us closer to God but makes Him equal to the creature, erases the boundary line between Creator and creature, deprives Him of His own Being and life, and undermines religion. But the Christian doctrine of the Trinity reveals God as essentially distinct from the world and yet as partaking in its own blessed life. God is a plenitude of being, πληρωματος ουσιαν. He is not barren, άγονον. He is the absolute Being, the Eternal, Who is and was and is to come, but in that Being, the Ever-Living, the eternally generating. Attempts have been made to derive the Trinity from the thought and will of God from His love, goodness, perfection, etc. Intended as philosophical constructions of the doctrine of the Trinity, they all leave much to be desired. The construction from thought does not lead to a distinction of Persons, does not clarify the procession of the third Person, and must, with a view to this, pass over to and supplement itself with the construction from the will of God. The derivation of the Trinity from love encounters the same objections and fails to highlight the procession of the Holy Spirit. But it is true that these and all other attributes acquire life and reality through the Trinity. Outside and without it, they are mere names, sounds, empty concepts. As attributes of a Triune God, they begin to live for the head and the heart. It is through understanding them that we learn that God in Himself, even apart from the world, is the independent, the Eternal, the All-Knowing, the All-Good, Love, Holiness, and Glory. The Trinity reveals to us God as the Fullness of His, the true Life, the eternal beauty. In God, too, there is Unity in diversity, diversity in Unity. Yes, this order and harmony are present in Him in an absolute way. In creatures, there is only a weak analogy to this. Either unity or diversity does not come into its own. Creatures exist in space and time, stand beside each other, and do not penetrate each other. There is unity only through attraction, through will and affection, a moral unity that is breakable and shaky. And where there is deeper, physical unity, for example, between the faculties of one substance, there is lack of independence, and unity takes distinction back into itself. But in God, both are present; absolute Unity and absolute diversity. It is the same Being, borne by Three supposita. Here is the highest communion, the communion of the same Beings, and at the same time the highest diversity, the diversity of Persons. Therefore, if God is Triune, the three Persons cannot be thought of as anything other than homoousioi. Arianism in its various forms does not think of the Being of God and therefore does not satisfy thought. If there are distinctions, not outside but in and within the Divine Being, then these distinctions, that is, these Persons, must all be of the same Being. Nothing can exist in God that is anything else or less than God Himself. There is no transition between Creator and creature. Father, Son, and Spirit all partake of the same Being and are truly God, or they sink down to the creature. There is no third possibility from a Christian standpoint. But in the same way, Sabellianism in its various modes is condemned. For the homoousia of the three Persons has meaning and significance only if they are truly and really distinct from each other, as distinct bearers of the same substance. The diversity of subjects that appear alongside each other in the revelation of God, in creation and recreation, arises from the diversity that exists within the Being of God between the three Persons. There could be no distinction in the Unity externally if it did not exist internally, ad intra.

 

[MW]

The issue is when one reads "backward" our creaturely understanding of diversity into the ontological Trinity and then reads forward that notion as a way to say: "See, the Son submits to the Father, and this is the reason wives submit to their husbands...." In other words, we don't need the notion of Eternal Subordination to support ideas of headship because it's clearly not grounded in that way in what is revealed. It undermines important Trinitarian truths in the process.

That would be the opposite of explaining the economical in light of the ontological. It tries to read things back into the ontological, which would remove the Creator-creature distinction. To quote from the portion of Bavinck you provided, for the divine Person, "being a Person is identical with the Essence itself." OTOH, for the human person, "A human is not as much as three humans." And this was Bavinck's point in the OP -- it requires all humanity to reflect the image of God. Hence the necessity of one man to head up the whole of humanity. Hence the covenant of works.

The male/female comparison with the Persons of the Trinity doesn't square with the revelation God has given. If we take male and female as complementary it means one has something that the other does not possess, whereas each Person in the Trinity is perfect God.

DEI could be biblical if it included the biblical principles of justice and goodness and reflected the holiness of God. It is really a devilish creation because it denies the rights of God and attempts the the deification of man. Human justice does not work unless the man administering it is called by God and equipped with a right to rule according to His law. Then God calls him a "god," reflecting the dominion that God has given to man.

Here, again, I would not be opposed to seeing humanity reflect the Trinity's own diversity, equity, and inclusion. It would be worth considering the biblical points of comparison to see how much our blessedness is grounded in God's own nature. This would only make us feel more indebted to the law of God as a rule and guide to us. Only in obedience to God's law, by God's grace, will man enjoy communion with Him in diversity, equity, and inclusion.