June 20, 2022 Show with Kelly Carter on “A Plan for the Advancement of Biblical Trinitarian Doctrine in the Church of Christ”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carwile, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 20th day of June 2022.

I would appreciate our listeners, if you could, say an extra prayer, a special prayer for me today.

Today would have been my 31st wedding anniversary with my late wife,

Julie, my precious late wife who is now in glory with Christ for eternity for the last 10 or so years, and I know that at some point today it's going to hit me like a ton of bricks, but I would appreciate your prayers for me that I may continue to find peace with God, and I really do appreciate that.

Today is a very special program. A lot of people listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, even those that have listened to it for many years going back to 2005 when we first started, may not be aware of my personal story of how the very first church outside of Roman Catholicism where I was raised, the very first church that God used to spark a deep interest in the scriptures in me, and began in my life a journey of deeper study, deeper love, and deeper admiration of the scriptures.

The very first church that the Lord used to begin that journey with me after leaving Roman Catholicism was the

Church of Christ. Those that are known for no instrumentation in their music, acapella, and along with that, actually, a lot of people may be unaware there's a lot of similarities that the

Church of Christ actually has with Reformed Baptists. They are an autonomous group.

They believe in the autonomy and independence of each local congregation, and that there is no higher authority outside of that local congregation other than the

Word of God and Jesus Christ himself. The only authority that exists within the local congregations of the

Church of Christ, just like Reformed Baptists, are the elders, and they do believe in the plurality of elders, just like Reformed Baptists do.

But we're going to be discussing something interesting. In fact, because of that history of mine,

I feel an indebtedness to the Church of Christ and especially those specific individuals in my life that the

Lord used to draw me into deeper study of the Scriptures. Because of that,

I always delight when I hear of, I think, wonderful things happening in that movement, things that are positive advancements and progressions.

And that's exactly what we're going to be discussing today, especially in regard to the

Trinity. My guest today is Kelly Carter. He's a first -time guest with us. He is lead minister of the

Calgary Church of Christ in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is the author of The Trinity in the

Stone Campbell Movement, a book that I am about halfway through reading and finding quite fascinating.

And today we are going to be addressing a plan for the advancement of biblical

Trinitarian doctrine in the Church of Christ. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Our Interpretation of Zion Radio, Kelly Carter.

Well, thanks, Chris, very much. I appreciate that. I'm happy to be on the program today. I hope this is a blessing of those who are listening, and I certainly hope it's a blessing to Churches of Christ and those who have either understood or misunderstood who we are in our theology.

There are some good things happening, and I hope my book's part of that. Yes, I think the two groups of people that might be most angered by our discussion today, unfortunately, are

Reformed Baptists and people in the Church of Christ. I hope that is not the case, but I just have a suspicion that that will likely be the story, or not even

Reformed Baptists, but Calvinists in general, my fellow brethren who are Calvinists. But first of all, let's start off with hearing something about the

Calgary Church of Christ in Alberta, Canada, and what might be unique about this congregation where you serve as the lead minister.

Okay. Well, you know, for those who are in Churches of Christ, probably the thing that would stand out most from the outset is that we are non -traditional in the sense of being both a cappella and instrumental in our particular fellowship.

And so about eight or nine years ago, we decided that we wanted to do something that would advance our cause in terms of our worship and praise, and what we thought could also be a move toward unity, and that would be to actually entertain the idea of instrumental worship in our church.

And so we did actually institute or bring about an instrumental service as part of what we do, at the same time maintaining our a cappella service.

So we're currently, and especially before COVID, we were about two -thirds a cappella in terms of, we had two services, and about two -thirds of our church was a cappella, which interestingly enough in Canada still made us about the largest a cappella congregation in Canada.

And then about one -third of our people attend our instrumental service, or at least that's the way it was before COVID.

We've changed our format a bit some. We still do have both instruments and a cappella. The main portion of our services on Sunday morning are a cappella, but we have a half an hour of instrumental praise prior to that, and COVID kind of forced some things on us which were different.

So we only have one service, but we do have still those two portions. That's probably the thing that immediately would strike persons, especially coming from Churches of Christ, who would look at our website or somewhere and realize that we have both a cappella and instrumental, and they would say, oh, that's different.

Not that that's now unusual, because there are lots of Churches of Christ, traditionally a cappella churches, that have actually included instrumental portions to their worship.

It's becoming, I think, a more prevalent thing than it once was, and we'll see what the

Lord does with all of that in terms of how He continues to bless Churches of Christ who make that decision, and then those, of course, who don't.

And I want the best for all, and I'm encouraged by the positive responses that we often get to the decisions that we've made.

I think that's been healthy for us. Well, I'm completely fine with, as you put it, that you entertained the idea of using musical instruments in your worship service.

I'd be very opposed to you entertaining entertainment in your worship service. Well, you know, that's always been a concern in Churches of Christ.

It's one of our arguments, that we didn't want anything that resembled simply entertainment, but I think anyone who would come on and participate in our worship on a

Sunday morning would find it to be perhaps entertaining, but not intentionally so. The goal is to honor the

Lord and not to simply entertain people. And of course, even a cappella can be very entertaining.

Absolutely. I mean, one of my favorite groups to this day is the group a cappella, and I continue to follow

Keith Lancaster, the founder of that very, very talented group, in his new work where he goes to different churches, basically helping them to learn to sing.

And it is always conducted a cappella. And another thing that some of my listeners might not realize is that I actually prefer a cappella in worship.

In fact, I even prefer exclusive a cappella worship. And I have to be very quick to insert here that this is not the view of the church where I'm a member,

Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which is a Reformed Baptist church, a confessional

Reformed Baptist church. They do not share that view, but Charles Spurgeon did.

Charles Spurgeon was a strict adherent to exclusive a cappella worship, and he was not, as many

Reformed churches who share that view are, he was not an exclusive psalmist.

He believed in hymn singing because he believed that the psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs in the

New Testament were not different ways of describing the psalms. He believed in the extra -biblical, non -canonical hymns to be included in worship, but he was a strict adherent of a cappella worship.

And by the way, I've also, might interest a lot of people, especially perhaps even those in the a cappella

Church of Christ, it might interest you to go to my website, ironsharpensironradio .com,

and if you go to podcast past shows, you click on that and you type in the search engine,

John Price, just like the Price is right, John Price. I interviewed

John three times on the theme exclusive a cappella worship defended, part one, part two, and part three.

And John is the author, he's a Reformed Baptist, keep in mind, pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Rochester, New York.

He is the author of Old Light on New Worship, Musical Instruments in the

Worship of God, a Theological, Historical, and Psychological Study, which is, even though the word or the phrase musical instruments is in the title, it is actually a defense of exclusive a cappella worship.

So I wholeheartedly recommend that anybody interested in that subject look up those three interviews with John Price of Grace Baptist Church of Rochester, New York.

One of the things that I want to do to clear the air immediately, because I do want most of our listener questions, and in fact,

I would hope that all of our listener questions would be involving the Trinity, which is our discussion today, the main theme of our discussion, a plan for the advancement of biblical

Trinitarian doctrine in the Church of Christ, but to avoid a flood of questions that may come in on baptism, since that usually sets off the alarm bells in the minds of those outside of the

Church of Christ, and I'm speaking, of course, the Restoration Movement, also known as the

Stone -Campbell Movement, because every Christian believes that there is a

Church of Christ that they are a member of if they are a truly regenerate person. But I'm speaking, of course, of the

Restoration Movement. People immediately may become aggressive, may become angry when they hear any mention of the

Church of Christ in a positive fashion, because they immediately may remember a friend, a loved one, an acquaintance, a minister who is from a church with the name

Church of Christ on the shingle, typically a small C for church, capital

C for Christ. They may have very negative memories of being told, no matter who they are, that they are not saved because they have not been baptized by immersion in the

Church of Christ, by a Church of Christ member, with the same exact mindset that has become most typically associated with the

Church of Christ. I wanted the air to be cleared so we can focus our attention primarily on the

Trinity, and I do want to read a part of the Calgary Church of Christ website, where this is actually under the non -negotiable beliefs, and here it is, we believe salvation is

God's free gift to us. There is an inability on our parts to save ourselves.

We can never make up for our sin by self -improvement or good works. As a result, we need

God's saving grace to end our alienation from God. Salvation from sin and eternal life comes only through God's grace as it is personally received by faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.

And then the statement goes on to say, we believe every person believing in Jesus Christ is to repent of his or her sins, confess

Jesus Christ as Lord, be baptized by immersion in water, and live a life committed to Jesus Christ as outlined in the

New Testament. And when I read that on the Calgary Church of Christ website,

I simply responded to myself, amen, because I would be very pleased if it was worded exactly in the same way in my own church's constitution.

Now, there are other differences that would separate myself from this congregation as you go further and to explore the website.

They are not theologically Reformed or Calvinistic, a .k .a. they are not

TULIP followers, but I also was very encouraged that although it is not your position as a church to identify as a group believing in unconditional election and the whole controversy over the freedom of the will and the fact that the will is bound and so on, those are part of debatable issues that you believe are proper amongst true, regenerate believers, that you recognize there are true believers who are nicknamed

Calvinists, Reformed Christians, doctrines of sovereign grace, but that is not the position that your church holds, but you do recognize the freedom that Christians have to believe in these things and to be involved in loving disagreement with one another.

Am I correct on that? Yeah, I'd say that's correct. We may have disagreements, my friend, but it doesn't mean that we can't both be brothers and sisters in Christ, which as you know for churches of Christ is,

I'm not going to say that it's completely out of line for me to say that, but it does run a little bit against our tradition and our history for me to so freely say that.

For me to accept you as a brother and to acknowledge the difference at the same time and for you to do the same,

I think is what Jesus would want from us. I think his love, the unity that he asked for among his believers like in John 17, which of course is a pretty

Trinitarian passage, I think that's what Jesus calls for more than anything else.

The whole notion that one has to be saved based on their intellectual understanding of every point exactly alike,

I think it's a view that we sometimes have upheld and I'm grateful that we're moving in a direction where that's not as important to us as it once was.

Praise God. Well, we have a tradition here. Yes, Christians do have traditions as long as they don't make them authoritative.

We have a tradition here where whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere they were raised in, if any, and the kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them, and I would love to hear a summary of your story.

Okay, yeah. Well, I grew up in Oregon, although I've been in Canada since 1986 for the most part.

I'm from the United States and grew up in Oregon. Churches of Christ are not particularly strong there in comparison to some places in the

South, but after being raised a nominal Catholic, I had a family in which my mother died when

I was nine years old, and then my father died when I was 19, and there had been some struggles in our family, and I had negotiated my way through that in various ways, but when

I was just about 15, I had a good friend from the Church of Christ who invited me to attend a

Bible camp in the coastal mountains of Oregon, Camp Yamhill, and it's interesting.

I have to admit to you, my goal of going to Bible camp when I first was invited, I thought, the way he's describing this, it's as if there is a girl waiting for me behind every tree in the mountains of Oregon, and I just can't wait to get to Bible camp.

So I went to camp, and the first three or four days, I just couldn't stand it.

I was doing a lot of things I'd never done before. I was singing hymns, never done that before, didn't know any of those songs.

I was going to Bible classes twice a day. I thought we would be canoeing and hiking in the mountains and archery and all kinds of things, and instead

I'm going to Bible classes twice a day, and I didn't know anything about the Bible, so all of that was really strange for me, and so we had about six of us who had all gone together to camp.

I think it cost me $25 to go to camp for a week at that point, and halfway through, I was thinking to myself, how could

I possibly have wasted $25 hard -earned dollars to go to this Bible camp? It was just not my character at all.

So I remember walking up the hill toward the boys' cabins as I was with my buddies in the middle of the day and saying to them, what are we doing here?

This is not at all what I was expecting. I thought we would be doing all kinds of different things, and instead we're in Bible classes.

We're singing these hymns. We're going and listening to sermons in the evening. I've got church every night.

Like, this just seemed so strange to me. That was Wednesday. I remember this very clearly. It was Wednesday afternoon that I was talking that way, and by Thursday night,

Chris, I had completely given my heart to Christ. Amen. And it all had to do with Jesus being revealed to me through the gospel.

And as the preachers were preaching, I couldn't fail but listen. And you know, it's interesting.

In Churches of Christ, there are an awful lot of people who have come to the Churches of Christ because they're convinced by someone that the

Churches of Christ have a handle on truth that other people don't have. I'm sure you're aware of that.

Other people might be aware of that. That's been our reputation. And it simply wasn't that way with me at all.

And I'm sure part of that was just because of the environment that I was in, the history that I've had, the age that I was.

I didn't come to Christ because I was convinced that the Church that I was now going to be attending had some handle on truth other than the truth that I had learned about the love of Jesus for me.

And so by the end of that Thursday night, I was convinced that God loved me, that Jesus loved me.

You know, the preacher had made his point that the Holy Spirit had worked wonderfully on my heart. And through the gospel message,

I had become convinced that Jesus was Lord and that he loved me, and that I needed to give my life completely to him.

And I did. I wasn't baptized that night. I didn't even understand. Like, I didn't know anything really about what baptism was all about.

As I said, I'd been a nominal Catholic. I was baptized as a baby. I didn't understand any of those kinds of things.

So I went back home for a couple of weeks, and after two weeks of going to church, I realized there's something here that I'm hearing about that I'm missing.

And so I went to one of the elders of the Church, and I said, I'd like you to take me back up to camp, if you would please. And it was about 60 miles.

If you take me back up to camp, I would love to be baptized. And so I missed a reunion.

We were having a big family reunion for the Carter family, and I had to go to my dad. I went to him after church at this park where everybody was meeting.

And I just took him aside, and I said, Dad, I need to talk to you. And I told him what I wanted to do. And thank

God, my father, who was very much a nominal Catholic, just said to me, you know, I guess you're old enough to make your own choice here.

And so he let me go. I left the family reunion. The elder drove me up to camp, and I was baptized that night.

And you know, one of the beautiful things that happened was, I had noticed during those two weeks that I was going to church between the time

I got back from camp and the time that I went up to be baptized. For a couple of weeks, I've been going to church, and I noticed that there was this girl.

You know, I kind of went back to that in the beginning as far as camp, but here I am still thinking about this girl.

And I said to my buddy at church, I said, so who's that girl? And he kind of said, oh, you know, she's not for you or whatever.

And we got up to camp on the night of my baptism. I'm sitting around the campfire with all these other campers.

There's probably a hundred of us campers on, you know, great big logs, fir trees from Oregon, you know, probably four feet in diameter sitting on the logs.

And I looked across the fire and saw that girl. And I said, you know, here I am.

I'm about to be baptized, but I still have some of that on my mind. So I kind of elbowed my buddy, and I said,

I'm going to go meet that girl. So I walked over and I sat down on the log next to her, and I said to her, my pickup line was, so I'm going to be baptized tonight.

And she looked at me, and she literally patted me on the leg and said, well, isn't that nice?

And it was totally her way of very kindly brushing me off and telling me to get lost.

I'm sure she was interested in somebody else. At least you didn't tell her, what's a girl like you doing on a log like this?

Well, there's more to the story, because she and I had been married for 43 years.

Praise God. And so I met my wife on the night that I was baptized, and under those circumstances, it was absolutely wonderful.

So God blessed me richly. And from then on, you know, I just continued to serve in the church.

I was blessed with a fantastic youth group in the beginning. There was the minister there,

Preacher James Fry did a fantastic job with us. A volunteer named Bob Adrian did a great job with us.

And we had a really strong youth group that was just wonderful and nurtured me in wonderful ways, discipled me, and I felt so loved and embraced both by God and by that church, the

Hill Street Church of Christ in Albany, Oregon. And it was just an incredible blessing. And from there, just one thing led to another.

I continued to serve, had many opportunities to serve in the church at a young age, which I think was really crucial for my discipleship.

Because the Churches of Christ were so committed to the Word, I had a chance to continue to read the Bible, and I was going to Bible classes every

Sunday and learning, and Wednesday nights, and just learning and growing. And so by the time

I got to university, I did a couple of years of a math major, and then eventually decided that I, you know,

I had someone actually who was asking me some serious questions about faith, who were kind of challenging me, and I thought,

I need to answer these questions both for myself and kind of for him too. And so I ended up transferring from a school

I was at in Oregon down to Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, and studied there for the next few years, eventually took a master's degree in Bible because I just fell in love with Scripture and learning

Scripture, and continued to serve in the church teaching in the local church I was in when

I was in university, and then, you know, made the decision to go into ministry.

And I'm just so grateful that I did. There's a lot of guys I made that decision with who are no longer in ministry.

That's a pretty oft -told story, but for me, it's worked, and I've stayed in ministry.

And in 86, I had the blessing of being able to come to Canada and work with a church in Victoria, British Columbia. Did that for 15 years, and then after some time in Dallas working on a

PhD, I was able to come back and work again with a church here in Calgary, and I've been here 16 years, and it's been absolutely wonderful.

I've got nothing but good things to say about my story in the Lord. By the way, here's a bit of trivia that you may not even be aware of, but I don't know if you're familiar with the heavyweight boxer who was the cause of Howard Cosell, the renowned sportscaster on ABC, the boxer that caused

Howard Cosell to resign from covering the sport of professional boxing.

Randall Craig Cobb was a graduate of Abilene Christian University. He was also well known as the crazed biker in the movie

Raising Arizona, and he was taking a pummeling from Larry Holmes and never was knocked down.

And because of the fact that he really didn't, after a while, he was not returning any blows to Holmes and was really standing there like a human punching bag,

Howard Cosell was disgusted that they didn't call the fight, and he was so angry because Randy Cobb was a bloody sack of meat at that point.

He was just so furious that something serious and permanent could happen to Randall Cobb that he resigned from or refused to cover fighting again, boxing.

But I just thought I'd throw that little bit of trivia in. Well, in response to that, I'll tell you that when

I was in Abilene, I was working at a restaurant, and it was not uncommon for Randall Tex Cobb to come into the restaurant.

And so I actually have served Randall Tex Cobb a number of takes, stakes, and I can tell you that he's a good tipper.

He also was a champion kickboxer before he entered into the traditional boxing ring.

And I can remember when he was asked, after Holmes beat him, he was asked by a reporter, Randy, will you fight

Larry Holmes again? And his reply instantly was, only if I can kick him.

Well, we have to go to our first break right now. If you have questions for Kelly Carter, please try to ask about the

Trinity, which will be the primary theme through the remainder of our program. Send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

There's two things I'm hoping will be accomplished by today's interview, that churches of Christ will see more of a need to delve into, discover, fall in love with, and worship the

Trinity according to the biblical Trinitarian doctrine. And also, churches everywhere that claim to be

Christian and even Trinitarian, who, as my friend James White has said in a book that he wrote on the subject, there is a forgotten

Trinity, even by Trinitarians, that seem to put that glorious doctrine on a bottom shelf somewhere, rarely to be discussed other than in some kind of formal creedal pronunciations, but it is not a part of the life and worship of many

Christians. In fact, there are many, according to Dr. White, over the years he has interviewed,

I don't mean in formal interviews, but in conversation, he has had many discussions with professed

Trinitarian Christians who give a unbiblical and ahistorical response to his asking for a definition of the

Trinity. Modalism is typically what he has heard from professingly

Trinitarian Christians, which is a heretical understanding of the Trinity, and I'm not saying that they would consciously describe the

Trinity in a modalist fashion, but they would unconsciously do so. So, I think that's one of the reasons that I want to come as a result of this interview, is for the

Trinity to be exalted and discovered and worshipped. And also,

I hope that today's program will teach a lesson to many of my listeners outside of the

Church of Christ who pigeonhole, or who attempt to pigeonhole every member and every congregation that identifies itself as being a part of the

Church of Christ, because they're very difficult to pigeonhole today, especially in the 21st century, even though they've always had in -house debates, collegiate friendly disagreements, and even heated animosity and divisions.

They've always had that throughout their history, but there have been many who have tried to pigeonhole them, and that is nearly impossible in the 21st century.

And our guest is one reason that he's making evident that you cannot just lump the

Calvary Church of Christ in a category along with others, because as I said before, they do agree with Baptists on the independence and autonomy of each local congregation.

There's no headquarters, there's no hierarchy outside the local congregation that lays down doctrine and teaching as essentials to be believed that every minister and every congregation must follow in lockstep with some hierarchical structure.

So you will find differences among them, and I hope that this program will reveal that to our listeners today.

If you have a question, as I said, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

We'll be right back, so don't go away. So join me and Chris Arnson, September 15th through the 17th in Washington DC for the

G3 Ministries Regional Conference. Register now before they run out of seats at g3min .org.

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Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio,

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Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cunningham is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards and Dr.

Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the

Hanover Presbytery built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief pastor and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great

Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,

Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the triune God that continues in eternity.

For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cunningham, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com.

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through the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign

Lord, God, Savior, and King, Jesus Christ, today and always.

Welcome back, this is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program is

Kelly Carter, lead minister of the Calgary Church of Christ in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

We are discussing a plan for the advancement of biblical Trinitarian doctrine in the

Church of Christ, and our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

And before I take any listener questions that have already come in, I'd like to hear from you, when did this craving on your part to learn more about the

Trinity as it has been accurately believed historically and biblically, and perhaps at the same time you may have been experiencing an acknowledgment that there was something amiss in what you saw and heard in your average

Church of Christ congregation in regard to this precious doctrine of the Trinity? Yeah, you know, when

I was an undergrad at Abilene Christian, I was taking Bible.

Bible was required part of the curriculum, that was wonderful, and it was mainly oriented toward Bible.

We took a few things related to history or something, and I had some Greek and things like that, but really it was oriented toward the

Scriptures themselves specifically, which was wonderful, but when

I started reading, especially in the area of theology, there were just an awful lot of people, many of whom were

Reformed, who were talking about the Trinity in a way that made it far more central to what they were thinking in terms of their own personal doctrine or even their church's doctrine or denominational doctrine than what

I was familiar with at all. In Churches of Christ, after I had been in Churches of Christ probably for six or seven years,

I realized in reading these others that I just wasn't hearing anything, especially from pulpits on Sunday mornings, but even in Bible classes or things on a

Sunday morning, I wasn't hearing anything that was really oriented toward the Trinity. And although I was a kid when

I was going to the Catholic Church, we certainly talked about the Trinity some there. Even the word

Trinity was a word that would get communicated an awful lot in the things that I was reading if I was reading somebody from outside Churches of Christ, but it just received no attention at all within Churches of Christ and within the churches that I was attending.

I just thought that was kind of strange. This is something I need to look into. Do you think that that phenomenon exists because of an actual conscious anti -Trinitarian viewpoint or ignorance of it because one of the hallmarks of the

Church of Christ, and I think that it is really an indefensible view, if you believe that a minister should get up from the pulpit and actually exegete the

Bible, he's using his own words. Therefore, to say that you can never use words that are not in the

Bible without being an error, I don't think that's a defensible point of view unless a church, and I don't know of any that does, has their minister or a person ascend into the pulpit and just read the

Bible and then sit down and then the service is over. But is it because more of the fact that the very strict, it seems, approach, not by all, as we already said, we can't pigeonhole the

Church of Christ and the congregations in it, but is it because of an ignorance, because of a disconnect with church history due to a refusal to use a non -biblical term like Trinity?

Not that the concept is unbiblical, obviously, since you and I both love the

Trinity, but because of the fact that the Churches of Christ have an intentional avoidance of using unbiblical terms or terms not found in the

Bible, they may have gradually become more and more disconnected from historical orthodoxy.

Yeah, I think the way you describe that is probably what I would say as well. Like, I don't think it began as ignorance.

You know, I think, like those, like an Alexander Campbell or even a Barton Stone who was decidedly non -Trinitarian, where I think

Thomas and Alexander Campbell were decidedly Trinitarian, they didn't want to talk with languages that was speculative in any way, they didn't see the word

Trinity in the Bible, they didn't see what they saw as explicit Trinitarian doctrine expressed in the

Bible, they would say that it was more implicit than explicit, and they also had seen that Trinitarianism had so often led to disunity among believers, and so they said, you know, we've got to get away from the speculation and the speculative language that's going to take us in the direction of disunity, and so there was an intentional move made in the beginning, not to say we don't believe in the

Trinity, but to just not make it a central Christian doctrine, something that received a great deal of publicity.

And unfortunately, that's going to leave your people ignorant, and so I think our people over time did become a bit ignorant in terms of Trinitarian doctrine, and it's interesting because those early fathers in the

Churches of Christ were not at all ignorant about Trinitarian doctrine. In fact, you say in your book that Thomas Campbell, Alexander's father, who was at some point, for a significant portion of his

Christian life and training, was a theologically reformed

Christian, a Calvinist and a Presbyterian, who held tenaciously at one point to the

Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechism, and clearly revealed that he believed in the

Trinity even after his participation in the Restoration Movement that sought to remove man -made creeds.

And by the way, I'd just like to interject here that I don't think anybody is truly non -creedal.

Even the statement, I believe in no creed but the Scriptures, is a creedal statement. Once you begin writing things down about what you believe, like what you would find in every

Church of Christ bulletin or pamphlet that you would find in the foyer or the narthex of the

Church, that would be a creedal statement because it lists bullet points of things that you must believe to be a

Christian. But if you could, explain this strong adherence and belief and love of the doctrine of the

Trinity that Thomas revealed, Thomas Campbell, and how this progressed into being such a non -essential teaching in the minds of many in the

Church of Christ. Yeah, well, again, I don't think it was an intentional move to depart from the

Trinity. It was an intentional move to depart from some of the things that they felt as though Thomas and Alexander Campbell, and I think

Alexander even more than Thomas, felt were detrimental to the faith that had arisen out of Trinitarian doctrine.

And that had to do with disunity, as we know throughout Church history from the very beginning, whether we're talking about even earlier than the

Arians, but certainly by the time we get to the 4th century and the Arian controversy, there were massive splits within Christianity over the

Trinitarian doctrine. And the Campbells looked at that and said, you know, any kind of disunity, especially along these kinds of speculative lines in terms of language outside the

Bible being used to define the doctrinal positions, it just goes against the kind of loving unity that God wanted the

Church to possess from the outset. And so they wanted to specifically void themselves of that kind of language, even though, like I'm clear in my book, and I would certainly defend the position today, that both

Campbells Thomas and Alexander Campbell were ardent Trinitarians. And in fact, as you pointed out,

I mean, Thomas Campbell, whenever he had to defend it publicly, and when he did so in writing, he used language that was, in fact, creedal.

Like it came right out of the creeds in many cases, it was typical theological language of the time in which he was studying in Ireland and in Scotland when he was there for a bit.

In no way did he deny the significance of or the importance of the

Trinity. He didn't deny the biblical foundations that were there for Trinity, he just was concerned that Trinity was causing people to speculate and use language that caused them, therefore, to be disunified.

And that was the concern from the beginning. Now, I will say, though, that,

I mean, Alexander Campbell, too, and he took a similar position to his dad, the thing that probably was more true of him even than his father was that he really did long to stay away from the kind of theological languages that you would find in not just the creeds, but even in classical theology.

He wanted to use specifically biblical language, he wanted to use specific biblical argumentation, if there was logic to be used, he wanted it to be coming right from Scripture itself, so that they were biblical concepts, which

I appreciate all of that. Unfortunately, what it meant was that for him and for his followers, the doctrine of the

Trinity itself then just wasn't talked about. Because to even use the word Trinity, which isn't in Scripture, if you're going to use a word like that, then you're using unbiblical language, and they didn't want to use unbiblical language to describe

God, they didn't want to use unbiblical argumentation, they didn't want to use foundational points for their arguments that would be unbiblical or that didn't come directly from the

Bible itself, which leaves your populace ignorant in terms of what all of this is about if you're not going to really discuss it.

Now, can you mark a point in Thomas's life when, much to my dismay, perhaps not to yours, he ceased to be a

Calvinist? You mentioned in the book that he strongly adhered to the Westminster standards and really strongly proclaimed the

Trinitarian doctrines found in those standards, but obviously there was a point, at least to my understanding, perhaps not, where the actual teachings of Calvinism began to fade, if not abruptly end, in his thinking.

Yeah, I don't know if I would name a specific historical point. I would say that in the last 10 years or so before he came to the

New World, before he came to the United States, so I would say from 1790 until 1801 or so, that he was gradually not so much moving away from all of the doctrines of the

Westminster Confession of Faith or anything like that, but just away from the language that would endorse creeds that would cause people to separate.

And so if there's creedal Christianity and you're going to judge people in terms of their faithfulness or their salvation on the basis of a creed, then he would say, we need to move away from that.

But it's interesting, if you read the chapter on Thomas Campbell and his

Trinitarian thought, one of the things that his son says in the memoirs of Thomas Campbell, talking about the end of his life, he actually says,

Alexander Campbell says, my father was as ardent a believer in and one committed to the

Westminster Confession of Faith as anybody I've ever known. Yeah, I did read that. In fact, I want you to pick up right where you left off there, because we have to go to our midway break, so don't forget where you left off there about the

Westminster Confession. This is the longer the normal break, folks, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires a longer break from us because the FCC requires them to localize geographically this program and all of their programming to Lake City, Florida, and they do so with their own public service announcements.

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Before I return to my guest today, Kelly Carter, lead minister of the Calgary Church of Christ in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, author of The Trinity in the

Stone -Campbell Movement, and our discussion on a plan for the advancement of biblical

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If you have a question for my guest today, Kelly Carter on the Trinity, send it to chrisorenson at gmail .com,

chrisorenson at gmail .com. And Kelly, before the break, you were talking about how Alexander Campbell was stating that his father

Thomas was one of the most ardent supporters and believers in the

Westminster standards that he knew. So if you want to pick up where you left off there. Yeah, I mean, that's what

Alexander Campbell says about his own dad. I mean, he specifically says that he was an ardent Calvinist and committed

Calvinist as he knew, which was interesting because there were things that others who were

Calvinists would challenge Thomas Campbell on and say, well, you know, you're not quite the Calvinist that you purport to be.

And there were things that I would say as time went on, he did move away from strict

Calvinism in some ways, for sure. And his son even more so. And so Alexander just kind of picked up from where his dad had already started to head, perhaps.

And then really, though, he's the one who I would say makes the definite turn away from Calvinism, not so much as his father.

I'm sure there's some expert on Thomas Campbell who's going to say to me, well, you know, he wasn't as strict to the end of his life as a

Calvinist is what maybe even his son is sounding like. That's on page 32 of my book where he makes that kind of comment.

But right after that, in the book, I point out there are some ways in which Thomas Campbell himself did move away a bit from ardent

Calvinism. But really, it's his son who makes that big move and not so much Thomas. Now, before we go to any listener questions,

I would like you to define the Trinity and include in your definition everything that you think an orthodox definition of the

Trinity must feature. There have been churches not only in the Church of Christ, but even outside of the

Church of Christ in broad, mainstream evangelicalism. From time to time, when

I look at different church websites, it will be clear that those who developed the website, especially in the area of what the church believes, they are describing a non -historical, unbiblical understanding of the

Trinity. It very often reveals that they think that a modalist description of the

Trinity is accurate, and they may not even be conscious of this, the belief that there's only one person of the

Godhead who changes from father to son, son to Holy Spirit, or even more prevalent than I've seen in Church of Christ websites, a view of the

Holy Spirit as an it, not as a person of the Godhead that, when described, it is clear they're describing a force and a power, but not a person of the

Godhead. So, if you could please, what do you think is a historically and biblically orthodox understanding of the

Trinity? Well, you know, if I try and put that into my own words right now,

I'm not looking at anything that would allow me to do so. So, if I was to put that in my own words right now, I'm sure

I would state something that I may not even agree with, if I think about it some more.

And so I probably would rather just say that I actually think that the Nicene Constantinoplean Creed from 381 defines the

Trinity in a way that I can accept. And so it talks about, for example, the one nature that Father and Son and Spirit all experience.

They're all one of the same essence, the same nature. And so it uses the word there, as it did in 325 with the first version of the

Creed, the word homoousios, and I actually agree with that word. I think they are of the same nature or the same essence.

At the same time, I think that they are three persons, and I almost said distinct, but I want to be careful there, because as soon as you say distinct persons, then people think that you're saying more than what you're saying.

But I think there are three persons, three personalities, three different roles, one could say, within the one nature or essence.

And so when the ancient Church uses the language of three persons and one nature,

I actually agree with that. And that's a little hard, not hard for me to say so much, but it's unusual for someone in Churches of Christ to admit or want to say.

We typically would want to stay completely away from that kind of language, and completely away from something like an acceptance of the

Nicene Creed. But I actually would say the Nicene Creed does a good job of defining what the

Trinity is and the relationship between the three persons in the Godhead. And you believe, according to your own

Church website, that these three persons are co -equal and co -eternal. Yeah, I would say so.

Yeah, I have no trouble with the language of co -equal and co -eternal, which is interesting, because even

Alexander Campbell wrestled with that a little bit, and certainly Barton Stone did. But for me personally, and I think actually,

I would say for Churches of Christ, even though we don't voice this, we don't use this language, we don't want to talk about the

Trinity in these terms. Not in these theologically weighted, creedal terms.

I would say that most people in Churches of Christ, if you were to ask the same question of them, that they would give the same answer.

They may not know it at the beginning when the question is asked, that that's what they're going to say, but I think that that's where they would be.

It's something that has just become part of us, I think largely because of the development of evangelicalism over time.

I think we've adopted that kind of perspective and language, which is typical evangelical Trinitarianism.

We're probably the worst when it comes to—well, I won't say the worst, but very close to being the worst in terms of being unwilling to express that and talk about it.

But it's not because we don't believe it. In fact, it's interesting.

I was a minister in California for a while back in the early 80s, and you'll remember Hank Hanegraaff, who was on the

Bible Masterman. Hanegraaff used to talk about us, and this is—you asked me earlier what got me into Trinitarian studies, and this is certainly one of the things.

I was in California just a few miles away from where Hanegraaff was broadcasting, and he would occasionally talk about the weakness of the doctrine of the

Trinity within Churches of Christ. One of my former professors from Abilene Christian had, in the meantime, moved out to Pepperdine University on the coast.

He went to visit Hanegraaff and just said to him, look, it may be that we're not explicit about this.

It may be that our tradition is that we don't even want to talk about it. But when it comes to our people and their belief, they actually do believe in Orthodox Trinitarianism.

And I think that's essentially true. And so our people wouldn't want to state it in the language that I did, in terms of using homoousios and state it in terms of agreement with the

Nicene, Constantinople, and Creed from 381. I actually think that our people would be there, even if they don't know the language to use to say that.

And that's where I'm at, for sure. That's interesting, because it seems to be the reverse of what James White said about your average evangelical church.

They would say they're Trinitarian, and yet define themselves using modalist language. And it may be that we would do that, but I don't know that we would be inherently modalist in the way that we think about that.

Now, go ahead. I'm sorry. I interrupted you. Go ahead. I was just going to say, when I reflect on our prayers, the language of our prayers certainly sounds modalist at times.

But it certainly wouldn't be an intentional modalist position that people would take.

And so what White says about evangelicalism, or what Fred Sanders says about evangelicalism, which is something similar, would probably be true of us.

But it doesn't mean... Like, if you were to ask the average Church of Christ person about their definition of the

Trinity, they would not come out at the end saying, I don't believe in the Trinity. They may not be able to define it with any kinds of theological specificity, but they would still,

I would say, in general, be orthodox when it comes to the Trinity. Yeah, as I told you before,

I love acapella music. And sometimes when I'm just working around the house or the studio,

I like to put it on, and then sometimes I'll just do a search on YouTube for a Church of Christ congregation singing hymns.

And I get that kick in the stomach when I hear sometimes, not all the times, a specific

Church of Christ congregation singing holy, holy, holy, where instead of God in three persons, blessed

Trinity, you'll hear God over all and blessed eternally.

But there are some Churches of Christ that sing the original lyrics. Sure. And joyfully praise the

Trinity using that term, God in three persons, blessed Trinity. As far as who

I would consider the bad boy of the restoration movement, how much foothold and how much sway and how much long -lasting adherence do the aberrant views of Barton Stone carry on today?

He was a conscious anti -Trinitarian, and I'm always amazed when I hear about Alexander Campbell's anti -Trinitarian beliefs personally, how he let that slide as something that I might find important but not important enough to divide and break fellowship with someone.

It's kind of interesting how the Churches of Christ began as wanting to find harmony and unity over some bare essentials and wound up splitting over things that even you,

I believe, would consider insane. Like there is a church a half hour from where I'm sitting that disfellowshipped the church in Carlisle here,

Church of Christ, because Carlisle Church of Christ has a kitchen in the building, and there's nothing about a kitchen in the

Bible. I wonder if that church has bathrooms in their building. But Barton Stone, and you even call him a quasi -Aryan.

If you could explain that and how much influence he's had that lasts to today. Yeah. Well, if any,

I would say simply in the fact that he was, like there's no influence in terms of saying people have followed

Barton Stone in his non -Trinitarianism. I would say very little. I won't say that there's been absolutely none, but I would say that that influence has been relatively minor.

You know, Alexander Campbell really became the major foundation for our theology. If we're going to pick a person as opposed to Scripture or something, if we're going to talk about somebody who had the biggest influence, it was definitely

Campbell over time who had more influence. And Campbell, of course, was Trinitarian. Not explicitly so, but as I argue in my book,

I think definitely Trinitarian. I think his father was as well. Stone, a completely different picture. And there are segments of our movement where people have read

Stone, been attracted to what Stone had to say on the Trinity, thought, well, you know, we have this background partially in Churches of Christ of adhering to Stone as well.

He is a major figure in our past. And so they therefore have been maybe influenced by what

Stone had to say. But overall, I'd say that that influence has been relatively minor.

And so our people may not talk much about the Trinity, but that means also that they're not talking negatively about the

Trinity, and they're not overtly non -Trinitarian. If anything, that non -Trinitarian part of our movement that was in Barton Stone, I think, has just contributed to our silence on it, and maybe in some sense even our disinterest in it, as opposed to leading to some kind of explicit non -Trinitarianism.

Now, would there be an invested interest and joy and celebration of the doctrine of the deity of Christ?

I mean, how much is Arianism involved in the Churches of Christ today? I would say not really at all.

Again, it's not that we go around, as you just said, celebrating the deity of Christ, although I would say that our people do believe in the full deity of Christ.

I would say we want to honor Jesus in that way. But that's not because there's been so much explicit doctrine or teaching on it, as much as just this kind of vague trickling down of evangelical

Trinitarianism that has also entered into our movement. But when you're going to be silent on the Trinity and not talk about it, then people, if they are going to get some thoughts about it, if they're going to have some picture of what the

Trinity means to them, where are they going to get that? And a lot of times our people have gotten it from reading others. And so there is this kind of vague evangelical

Trinitarianism that's been part of our movement as well. But definitely no specific non -Trinitarianism, even at the same time that there's no specific

Trinitarianism that's overtly stated. Now according to, in fact I even subtitled, or should

I say I titled this theme today, A Plan for the Advancement of Biblical Trinitarian Doctrine in the

Church of Christ, or as you've put it in, I believe, the Stone Campbell Movement. I preferred to use the term

Church of Christ just because those outside of the Restoration Movement have no clue most of the time what the

Stone Campbell Movement is. But obviously, since those are your words, you believe that it is wrong to have apathy and intentional vagueness about the

Trinity, about the deity of Christ. Obviously you believe it is incorrect and dangerous to remove that from a role of vital importance.

In fact, your historically accurate and biblically accurate definition of the

Trinity in your church's website is under the heading of non -negotiables.

So tell us about this rather than, so no one gets the misunderstanding that you're okay with the apathy and vagueness in your sister churches in regard to this.

Yeah, you're exactly right. I'm not at all okay with the apathy and the vagueness.

I think that's been a real problem for us. And while there's something that I appreciate about wanting to use

Bible words for Bible things and sticking to Scripture and all of that, personally,

I am convinced that there's plenty in Scripture itself to argue for a Trinitarian position that that needs to be,

I would say, front and center of our theology. And so when Karl Barth, first in 1932 in German and then in 1936 in English, wrote his first volume to his

Church Dogmatics and made the Trinity the center of Christian theology and the starting point for it,

I think that's a move that the Churches of Christ need to make. And so, you know, you talk about my proposed plan,

I don't know about the specific, I mean, I do have some specific ideas about that, and in my book

I do talk about what I think should happen, but the first thing that needs to happen is the

Churches of Christ need to talk about theological centeredness and those items that are core and right at the heart of the biblical theology.

And what that'll do is it'll end up shaping us hermeneutically, so that we end up reading Scripture and doing theology from what

I would say is a biblically central position from the outset, and I think the Trinity is the place to start there.

So I don't, not only do I not apologize for being Trinitarian in the midst of a movement that is a bit afraid sometimes to talk about it, but yeah,

I would say we need to be intentional, we need to be explicit, we need to be overt about stating the centrality, the doctrine, the

Trinity, and see what that does to us theologically. Because I would say the Churches of Christ have been impoverished in some sense, certainly inhibited, by not making the

Trinity the center of our biblical theology and our theological centeredness, and when we do that, we're going to get to a much better place theologically than I think we've been, if we start with God and who he is, and how

Scripture makes him the center of everything, and even, I think, his Trinitarian nature at the center of everything.

By the way, I'm going to take this opportunity to strongly urge our listeners, if you want to see a superb biblical defense of the

Trinity, if you get on my friend Dr. James R. White's website, A -O -M -I -N dot org, that's for Alpha Omega Ministries, he has debated anti -Trinitarian or Unitarian theologians, one of which

I personally organized with probably one of the most renowned defenders of Unitarianism in the

United Pentecostal Church, and he later actually left that denomination or cult and began associating with a different group of Unitarian organizations, but if you go to A -O -M -I -N dot org and you type in Unitarianism or Trinity, you should find a list of debates that he masterfully participated in, using the

Scriptures as his defense for the existence of the Trinity. We have some listeners that I've got to start getting to who have questions before we run out of time.

I want to make sure that our listeners have their voices heard. We have Joseph from Gardner, Massachusetts.

Kelly Carter, as a former Oneness Pentecostal, why do you think so many Christians show little interest to learning or growing in their knowledge and understanding about the biblical doctrine of the

Trinity? What can we do as laypeople to help and encourage others in this area?

And that's interesting, a question from Joseph as a former Oneness Pentecostal. They are far from just being vague and apathetic.

They are militantly anti -Trinitarian. In fact, you are damned in their minds if you believe in the

Trinity because you're worshiping a false god. So, what do you have to say to Joseph's question?

Well, I would say that there's ample, in my way of thinking, biblical evidence for the Trinity, and I haven't read specifically

James White on that, but I've read countless others, especially from—you go back and read from the 18th century in England, when there was quite a significant

Socinian movement that had started, Socinians being non -Trinitarian. And because of that, there were a number of works written in the 18th century, moving into the 19th century, talking about Trinitarianism.

And they were very oriented in the kind of inductive Bible study, listing the arguments the way that that style of rationalism was so prevalent then.

And so, I think that there's tons in Scripture that can be inductively categorized, cataloged, that is going to indicate

Trinity to us. The problem is, like you asked the question, why is it that it hasn't been more prevalent?

Well, I would say it's because, unfortunately, the Trinity is not as explicit as some people,

I think, probably would need or appreciate in order to really find this an easy, carefully—not carefully, but easily—and a way of stating things so clearly that there's just no questions.

And I find Scripture to be—I tell my classes this all the time at Alberta Bible College—I find

Scripture to be implicit with the doctrine of the Trinity, not explicit, but nonetheless clear.

Like, you can find, I think, the kind of reasoning from Scripture itself, the kind of explicit statements in Scripture itself, that are going to lead to the doctrine of the

Trinity. But people are afraid because it does take some thought. You're not going to find a passage in Paul where Paul says, there are three persons in a

Trinitarian God—Father, Son, and Spirit—and this is the relationship between the three.

You're not going to find that. And so, because it's not explicitly stated like that and maybe as easily seen as that, people tend to shy away from it.

And so, I would say it's definitely there, but it's a little bit implicit. It takes some work to achieve an understanding, but it's nonetheless there.

And I think people tend to want things maybe a little bit easy and not have to think so much about it, like maybe to have it handed to them on a plate.

Scripture doesn't really hand the Trinity to you on a plate. And so, I would say that's why there's some hesitancy about it.

And my personal experience as a former Roman Catholic, I know that there are those who came to realize the heretical teachings of the

Catholic Church that have left that church, and they, as the old saying goes, they throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And they want to throw out anything involving ancient creeds and councils and having any kind of teachers from history other than perhaps their own minister or their own mind.

And they wind up becoming heretics themselves because they think more highly of themselves than they ought.

And they even violate the Scripture's commands that teachers actually have qualifications in the

Scriptures. There are requirements to be a teacher. You're not supposed to just have anybody as your teacher. So, if you exalt yourself as a teacher, as your only teacher, and I'm not talking about Bereanism, that we all should be

Bereans when we are hearing anything said by an extra biblical source and we are to search the

Scriptures to prove that they are saying things accurately. But an overreaction to a rightful protest against Rome, I think, sometimes leads people into that error as well.

Joseph in Gardner, Massachusetts, please give us your full mailing address because you have won a free copy of the book that we have been discussing by our guest

Kelly Carter, The Trinity in the Stone -Campbell Movement, Restoring the Heart of the

Christian Faith. And I believe you're a first -time questioner, if I'm not mistaken. You have also won a free

New American Standard Bible, if that is the case, because all first -time questioners get a free New American Standard Bible.

So, make sure that you send us your full address and that will be shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

cvbbs .com. And we also want to thank our friends at ACU Press, the publishing arm of Abilene Christian University, for providing a limited copy of these books that we're giving away.

We have, let's see here, well, you know what I'm going to do before I begin to read any more of our listener questions.

I'm going to go to our final and much more brief commercial break, so I don't have to interrupt you in mid -sentence.

And if anybody wants to get in line and ask any questions of Kelly Carter, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we're going to be right back after these messages. Attention all men in ministry leadership, you're all invited to my friend

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Welcome back. Kelly Carter. We have RJ in White Plains, New York, and he wants to know, since baptism is such a focal point, an area of importance in most

Church of Christ congregations, I was wondering if they follow the Trinitarian formula of baptism found in Matthew 28, 16 through 20, which is clearly in the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Well, I would say that almost all do.

I can tell you that when I baptize somebody here, that those are exactly the words that I use right out of Matthew 28.

I don't know if I want to say that that has to be the formula for doing baptisms as if it's the only one.

If you were to look at Acts chapter 19, Paul was interested in knowing whether or not people knew there was a

Holy Spirit, and then once he found out that they did understand about the Holy Spirit, he was ready to baptize them specifically in the name of Jesus and not in the baptism of John.

In Acts 2, 38, the same thing is happening, being baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, every one of you, for the remission of your sins.

And so, although I do baptize, as I said, using the formula from Matthew 28, 18,

I don't know that I would say, if you stray from that and used other wording in the midst of a baptism, that somehow that baptism becomes illegitimate or unbiblical.

To baptize someone in the name of Jesus is to do so in the name of the Father, Son, and the

Spirit, again, maybe implicitly, but I think that's happening when you baptize somebody in the name of Jesus.

Well, thank you, R .J., and you have also won a free copy of the book that we have been addressing,

The Trinity and the Stone -Campbell Movement, Restoring the Heart of the Christian Faith. We have

Christopher in western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, years ago,

I remember seeing a book advertised in the Christian Chronicle, and the author was trying to set forth more of a concept of a duality than a trinity.

He recognized the personhood of the Father and the Son, and it seemed in the ad that the

Son was quite subordinate to the Father in this concept of duality, and the

Spirit was purely a force of both of them. How prevalent, if at all, is this concept in the

Churches of Christ that you are aware? It's pretty minor. I don't know exactly the book he's referring to, but I'm guessing that it was a book written by a fellow named

Lonzo Pribble, and Pribble held a view that sounds similar to what you're talking about.

But I, like again, Trinitarianism is so underplayed in Churches of Christ to begin with, that most of our people don't really have a clear concept of what they think about the

Trinity as it is. Certainly they don't have some idea that's developed along the lines of a duality, and we could say this is prevalent among Churches of Christ, or the average person in Churches of Christ understands who

God is along those kind of dualistic lines. That's just not the case at all. In fact,

I'm not sure that I even was aware of that particular perspective until after I was deep into some

Trinitarian studies after years of graduate school. It may be regional a bit, you know, it could be that where that book was published and where that author was, he could have been teaching in that area, and maybe it was prevalent in that particular area, but it certainly wouldn't be a widespread thought within Churches of Christ.

And even before I wrote my book, which is one of the few really that's been written on the

Trinity in Churches of Christ, there were a few things that had been written that I would say were not along those dualistic lines.

And again, if you were to look at Campbell, the Campbells certainly were not in thinking in terms of those dualistic lines at all.

Neither was Walter Scott, who did significant work on the Holy Spirit. You know, it's the stone line, maybe, that would be there more than anyone else, but in terms of its overall impact on Churches of Christ, I would say it's...I

won't say it's nil, but it's pretty small in comparison to what I would say is a genuine

Trinitarian faith, even though, again, that's not explicit among us.

It tends to be implicit, which I mean, again, I think it's a little bit understated in the

Scripture as well, in terms of it being really explicitly stated. You have to do some work to get there.

But having said that, you believe, as your subtitle of your book is, that it is the heart of the

Christian faith. Absolutely. Yeah, even though I just said it's a little bit implicit, I'm not in any way downplaying its significance.

I do think it's right at the heart. In fact, I think it's kind of interesting that there aren't even stronger statements of Trinitarianism within the

Scriptures than there are. I'll ask God about that one one of these days, about why that's the case, because Scripture, I think, is in one sense clear, but not necessarily explicit in terms of a

Trinitarian doctrine. We have an anonymous listener who wants to know, has there been any significant negative feedback and pushback after listeners, actually,

I think he meant to say, or she meant to say, readers, have read your book?

No, none. You know, again, because I think most of our people are there, it's been really well -received.

I would say it's been very much appreciated because it's made something explicit that needs to be explicit among us.

And by and large, Churches of Christ, and I say this in the book, by and large, Churches of Christ are

Trinitarian, even if they don't know it. And they've kind of endorsed and taken over for themselves, maybe a bit of a vague evangelical

Trinitarianism, which I think is a problem both within evangelicalism in general and among us, but it doesn't mean that the

Trinitarian belief isn't there. I would say it definitely is. You'd be hard -pressed,

I think, to find non -Trinitarianism among Churches of Christ regularly stated as non -Trinitarianism.

People might be hesitant to state a Trinitarianism, they're very hesitant about using the word

Trinity, but by and large, I would say that we're Trinitarian. Let's see here.

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and she is wondering, what exactly are the practical ways in which you envision churches in your brotherhood from making the

Trinity a focal point in the life of the congregations and do an end to the ambiguity and vagueness that you were discussing earlier?

Yeah, well, if I understood the question correctly, I think you're asking, what impact should all of this have on us?

And I think there's a bunch. In fact, if you were to look in my book in chapter 6, you'd find me basically list these.

And so things like, we're going to start at a much better theological centering point and a starting point if we put the

Trinity first and do so explicitly, which we just haven't done. Almost always we start with something like the

Church, or we'll start specifically with our hermeneutic. We'll talk about how there needs to be specific commands and examples and inferences for everything that we do doctrinally.

Almost never do we explicitly and forcefully talk about God from the beginning.

And that needs to be corrected. We certainly talk about Jesus in the Gospel, but even the Gospel ends up getting distorted a bit because it doesn't end up sounding like a

Trinitarian Gospel when we preach it necessarily. And so we need a better starting point, and I think the

Trinity is it. It's also going to allow us to have some clarity and I think some coherence in our doctrine.

If we set the Trinity right at the center and out front, and I think that's important for us, it's going to allow us to engage with other groups on issues and matters different than what we traditionally have done.

Like typically when we talk about theology and do so with others, we're usually debating, talking about all the differences.

To turn to the Trinity and start talking about that brings about immediately a unity and coherence among believers that I think was the goal of the

Campbells to begin with. Get away from some of those issues that would divide us and cause us instead to be unified on something so central.

It puts us in better line with the apostolic tradition, I think. We talked about the creeds earlier and the

Nicene Creed, my own personal belief in it. I think it puts us in line with that better. Puts us better in line,

I think, with an identity ecclesiologically, ecclesiastically, which is more biblically centered.

So who are Churches of Christ? Well, they're not then the ones who stand against a cappella music, or I mean against the instrumental music in favor of a cappella music.

We're not the ones who just speak against everyone else's view on baptism. We don't just speak against everyone else's polity in terms of congregational autonomy, those kind of things.

But instead, we're ones who, like others, believe in something that's right in the center of the biblical faith, like Trinity.

That just makes for conversation and unity within the body of Christ that needs to be there. And I could go on.

There's a number of other things in the chapter where I talk explicitly about what that means for us to be

Trinitarian. It's going to impact our worship. It'd be wonderful if all of a sudden our

Lord's Supper was something that focused on Trinity, when we talk about the gospel in the Lord's Supper, or talk about the cross, the cross of significance.

It'd be wonderful if that was all Trinitarianly focused, so that our soteriology was a little bit more

Trinitarian and not just Christological. That would allow us to have more emphasis on the

Holy Spirit and his presence in our lives and our churches, which we have been reticent about talking about, and I think that's a mistake for us as well.

There's a number of things. Yeah, well, we're out of time, and I really thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with you, brother, and I wanted to make sure our listeners have a couple of important websites.

First of all, if you'd like to purchase the book, The Trinity in the Stone Campbell Movement, Recovering the Heart of the

Christian Faith, go to store .acupressbooks .com.

That's store .acupressbooks .com. If you want more information about Calgary Church of Christ in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, go to calgarycofc .com.

That's calgary, C -A -L -G -A -R -Y -C -O -F -C -D -O -T -C -O -M.

I want to thank you so much for being a fascinating and well -informed guest, Kelly. I want to thank all of our listeners who listened, especially those who took the time to write, and by the way, all of you who wrote in a question will receive a free copy of the book if, indeed, you send in your full mailing address.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.

Chris, thank you very much for having me on. Oh, it's been my pleasure, brother. Mine, too. Thank you. God bless.