The Trinity and salvation

One of the currently popular substitutes for the name of the Trinity, “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer,” cannot serve this function because God does not create, redeem, or sustain himself. These terms describe God in relation to us but not within himself, so God’s being (ousia) is not affirmed. When we say “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” however, we are saying that what God is in himself, he also is toward us. The doctrine of the Trinity is therefore a working out of what it means to say that God is love. It tells us that God is love within his own three-personed self, and he is love toward us as we see his action in the Son’s incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 12 n. 24