So a couple of things I guess. I never said Boettner was a Tritheist, he explicitly says on pg. 105 that he is not one. I said his words could be taken to mean that. That is obviously true or no one would have a problem with it and Twitter wouldn't have cared when Reece used Boettner's understanding.
I would say that the correct way to use the words when speaking about the Trinity is the historical way the church has used them. When you use words like being, essence, person, mind, and consciousness differently than the Fathers, Scholastics, Reformers, and Post-Reformers have used them, then claim to be using them the same way they did, that gets you into trouble. I never said that we don't stumble over the language, I said we are like a 2 year old trying to describe a combustion engine. But the guardrail is to use the ancient language because it has been used, understood, agreed upon and vetted. It is only in the last 150 years that we have decided that the way that language was used was inadequate. I'm not seeking to be a jerk or uncharitable. I'm seeking to speak the way our fathers did.
Also, men like Boettner and Reece are bound by the Standards they hold. They are obligated to speak the way Westminster does. to understand Westminster on the Trinity you have to read the men that wrote it, like Francis Cheynell and Thomas Goodwin. Both men would've said that three wills in the Trinity is heresy. For reverence see Francis Cheynell, the Divine Trinunity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, pg. 29, 60, 83, 108 and following. These pages are referenced from the 2024 reprint by Berith Press. Therefore, it is proper to call out teachers of the Word, bound to a Confessional standard, whenever they speak against the historic understanding of the Confessional Standard they are obligated to hold and articulate because they vowed before God that they share that understanding.
