Review Of The Trinity (part 1)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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October 1, 2023

Simply Trinity Study (part 22)

00:00: Our great God and Savior, we come before you this morning thankful for all the mercies that are ours in Christ Jesus, how you have granted us forgiveness of sin, you've given us eternal life, you have given us many temporal blessings, including just a beautiful day that we're going to have today, and we thank you and praise you.
00:27: Father, as we're here to learn more about you, the Triune God, I pray that you would help us to wrestle with these issues, help us to understand how they are biblically formed, and Lord, help us as we do learn to worship you all the more.
00:48: In Jesus' name we pray.
00:49: Amen.
00:52: Well, having had a few months of rest and relaxation away from this class, which is where all the stress is, no, I'm kidding, I love this.
01:06: A few things, we may get to some terms that you don't know, and if you don't have one of these handy-dandy guides, at some point you'll probably want to get one, and if we need to make more copies we can do that.
01:24: It's from the book, and it's a copy of all the terms that are used that we don't normally talk about.
01:34: For example, if I say what's ad extra, some of you can answer that, but some of you probably can't.
01:41: If I say what's consubstantial, some of you can, some of you won't be able to, and they're all listed right here.
01:49: I also have a diagram of double consubstantiality.
01:52: Who remembers the triangle and the rectangle? I rather like that one.
02:02: So we have some more copies of that as well.
02:06: Let me start with a question that's not on the quiz.
02:08: Why talk about, why study the Trinity? Why would we want to do that? To understand God better.
02:23: Josh? Because it affects everything else, I think that's a great answer.
02:29: Anything else? Excellent.
02:45: Let me just kind of reframe what she said there.
02:48: People make so many errors when they're talking about the Trinity or when they're writing about it.
02:54: They've essentially made God in their own image.
02:58: They've reframed, repackaged, reimagined even the Trinity so that when they talk about him, it's almost as if they're speaking about another God entirely.
03:09: And so we want to learn what God is actually like instead of what people say he's like.
03:16: Okay, so with that as a prelude, let's go to the quiz.
03:21: Let's go to the phone.
03:21: And I rewrote some of these to make them more tricky, but most of them we've heard before.
03:29: But I thought if I hit some highlights, it'll kind of help catch us back up because this is not easy stuff.
03:37: Number one, true or false? We have access to so much more data and teaching than the early church, so we should not be worried if we disagree with the church fathers.
03:52: I hear a false.
03:54: Why is that false? We should not be worried if we disagree with the church fathers.
03:59: I mean, hey, those rooms didn't have all the stuff that we have.
04:03: They couldn't go, you know, Augustine couldn't go on the internet and do Trinity search and come up with a bunch of data.
04:11: So why should we be concerned if we don't agree with Augustine? They had all the scriptures that we do.
04:20: Okay, Josh.
04:24: They were much closer to the apostles, right? So perchance, we could say, they might well have had a better understanding of things because they were closer in time to the apostles.
04:38: Other thoughts? Okay.
04:49: We could disagree with them in some of the details.
04:52: I agree with that.
04:57: Can you think of any biblical reason why we might want to be cautious, let's just put it that way, about disagreeing with, you know, I did say we should not be worried.
05:08: Well, should we be worried? I think we should be cautious, which is to say we should be a little concerned.
05:14: So if that's a little more nuanced for you.
05:17: I think we should be cautious about disagreeing with them and the reasons, I think one of them is what Josh said.
05:24: I mean, the closer we get to the times of the apostles, the more likely it is, you know, that the disciples of the apostles would have understood the apostles' teaching probably as well as anybody.
05:39: But is there a biblical reason for being concerned if we disagree with them? One of my favorite passages at Hammer Home, let's turn to Ephesians chapter 4 for a moment, because I think it helps frame this whole line of argumentation.
06:03: Ephesians chapter 4, verses 10 to 13.
06:11: And the subject of Paul's writing here, unsurprisingly, is Jesus.
06:21: Ephesians 4, verses 10 to 13.
06:23: Would somebody read that? Can I get a volunteer? Seeing none, I'll read it myself.
06:30: He, Jesus, who descended, is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things.
06:39: And he, Jesus, gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.
06:46: Why? To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
07:06: So Jesus gives the church gifts, and Paul writes that those gifts are apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers.
07:17: So he's done this throughout the centuries.
07:20: Throughout the centuries he's given the church these men who preach and teach and equip the saints for the work of ministry.
07:31: Therefore, we can't necessarily just look at what they teach and go, eh, that's his opinion, or, eh, that's his opinion.
07:40: We need to think about it and presume that these men had the Holy Spirit, they had the scriptures, just like we do.
07:51: Let me put it another way, let me ask another question.
07:54: Do you suppose that the Lord allowed his church to be completely overtaken by error? Why not? Because it's his church.
08:16: He told Peter, upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell, Hades, death, whatever your translation says, might prevail against it, will not prevail against it.
08:35: And if we understand that rightly, what's Jesus talking about? Is he talking about a physical battle? Is he talking about the hordes of Satan are attacking the physical church and they will not overcome that? Well, you could make that argument, but what's the most important aspect of it? I mean, Satan doesn't need to invade and defeat the physical church if the physical church doesn't believe sound doctrine.
09:07: So the assault is always on theological terms.
09:11: I mean, even if we looked at 2 Corinthians 10, verses 3 to 5, we'd see that the weapons of our warfare are physical.
09:21: We have weapons.
09:22: Weapons.
09:24: No, they're spiritual weapons.
09:28: These are wrong ideas raised up against the knowledge of God that have to be defeated over and over and over again because they keep raising them up.
09:36: Why? Because there's nothing new under the sun.
09:39: So Satan, his minions, create these false doctrines and they repackage them and they send them against the church and Christ, in the meantime, gives gifts to the church.
09:50: So there's the same men who teach sound doctrine and that's where the battle is.
09:56: It's sound doctrine against bad doctrine.
10:00: And ultimately, the goal, as Paul writes, is until we all attain, every Christian attains to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God.
10:12: That's why it's an ongoing struggle.
10:14: That's why it's an ongoing need to be equipped to learn, to grow.
10:20: When did we have this discussion? I don't know if it was in Sunday school or maybe it was just one of these discussions that Steve has with himself.
10:34: I know I was talking to somebody else, I think.
10:41: But it's this whole idea about when have you learned all that you can learn and there's no more to learn? When does that happen? One of the reasons why we have Sunday school is I'm here to tell you you don't know everything.
10:59: How do I know that? Because Mike doesn't know everything.
11:04: I'll appeal to a higher authority.
11:09: We're learning.
11:10: We're all growing.
11:13: Anybody who stops learning, then what? They've stopped studying.
11:19: They've stopped caring.
11:21: This is an ongoing thing that we all need to be engaged in.
11:28: Number one was false.
11:30: Number two, true or false, most evangelicals can give an accurate summary of the Trinity.
11:41: That's so false it hurts.
11:46: You've seen these surveys.
11:48: You've heard these surveys.
11:49: If you go up to most evangelicals and you say, can you summarize the gospel? Do you get a good answer? What do you suppose the percentage on that is? You'd like to say, well, probably not everybody, but 99.7? Probably not.
12:13: This is what Barrett says.
12:14: He says, I have been an evangelical for decades now and I've never met anyone or heard of anyone outside the evangelical fold who said, those evangelicals may be many things but there's no question they are Trinitarians through and through.
12:32: Oh, they just bleed the Trinity, right? I've heard them call us by many names but Trinitarians, never.
12:42: While Janet and I were on vacation, we have a relative who's Roman Catholic and she had on a table this book about the Eucharist.
12:57: So I picked it up to just look at it because that's what I do.
13:02: I just opened up the introduction and I wrote it down here.
13:11: The author cites a survey.
13:13: I thought it was interesting that Catholics do the same thing.
13:17: Let's find out what are the people who are practicing Roman Catholics believe.
13:23: He said that two-thirds of practicing Roman Catholics, that is to say, people who go to church on a regular basis, did not believe that the bread and wine were transformed into the literal blood and body of Jesus.
13:39: So this is people who actually go and receive communion and listen to what the priest says and believe, supposedly.
13:48: It's interesting only because if two-thirds of them don't understand the basic building blocks of their religion, how many evangelicals can understand the Trinity or can explain it? I think the answer is probably not very many.
14:06: Barrett goes on to say, many evangelical churches and pastors know they are supposed to affirm the Trinity and so they do.
14:13: But if they're being honest, they have no idea why other than to say the Bible says so somewhere, right? Though they're not sure what verse that might be.
14:25: Ask them to articulate that same Trinity according to biblical orthodoxy and they will return a blank stare.
14:32: Then he says, you may be giving me one right now.
14:35: He writes, hold on professor, haven't we experienced a resurgence of theology in recent years? And it's true.
14:47: A lot of people are teaching reform theology, they're teaching about these things, they're going back and rediscovering the church fathers.
14:58: He says, but two decades have passed and we now have the advantage of looking back to recognize gaping holes we did not see before, blind spots.
15:09: Here's one too big to ignore with all our focus on the bigness of God in salvation history.
15:15: Somehow who our Triune God is in eternity was left out.
15:22: The story of salvation is a story that reveals not only what our Triune God has accomplished but who he is in and of himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
15:35: Perhaps our reformed resurgence is not all that reformed after all, at least not as reformed as it should be.
15:40: And then of course I went to Ligonier and found this as of 2022, 56% of evangelicals agree with the statement God accepts the worship of all religions including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
15:57: Now what does that tell you? It tells me that 56% of evangelicals do not understand the Trinity because if they understood that rightly they would say, God accepts, the Triune God, accepts the worship of Christians.
16:18: Jews.
16:20: Does he? So those who reject Jesus Christ, God says, yes, I'll accept your worship.
16:32: What did Jesus say? If you reject me, can you love Jesus or can you love the Father without loving Jesus? I guess a good question.
16:46: Is that possible? No, it's not.
16:50: Why? Because, and now here we are getting back into the Trinity, because the Father sent the Son.
16:57: You reject the Son.
16:58: What does he say about people who reject the Son? That's okay, I'll accept your worship.
17:07: I think there are words said about those who reject the Son but it's not, that's okay, I gotcha.
17:14: And Islam.
17:16: Child, please.
17:22: I don't want to teach an entire class about Islam because it would be repetitious and boring.
17:30: But the God of Islam is not the God of the Bible.
17:34: The God of Islam is capricious.
17:36: That is to say that you can even do everything that you're supposed to do and be a good Muslim and then guess what? You don't get into paradise anyway.
17:45: You're on that treadmill, you're running, you're running the race well and the God of Islam says, you know what? I just don't like you.
17:52: Sorry.
17:53: Hit the road.
17:56: That's not the God of the Bible because he doesn't reject anyone because why? Why doesn't the God of the Bible reject any Christian? Why is it that every Christian will get into heaven? Is it because they're running so well that he says, oh, good job? Because it's all Jesus.
18:18: And of course, Islam rejects Jesus.
18:22: It says he's the best prophet there ever was but he didn't even die on the cross.
18:30: Another survey result.
18:32: 43% of evangelicals say Jesus was a great teacher but he was not God.
18:41: Now, if I said 43% of Muslims said that, I'd go, okay, that kind of fits.
18:48: 43% of evangelicals say Jesus was a great teacher but he was not God.
18:53: I have news for those evangelicals.
18:56: They're not evangelicals.
18:58: Brian, I am the way.
19:08: That seems pretty exclusive, doesn't it? Another result here.
19:15: 96% I said 99.7% earlier.
19:21: 96% of evangelicals said this.
19:23: There is one true God in three persons.
19:26: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
19:29: Now, I think they probably gave them a selection of choices and said, which one of these do you like? And 96% got that right.
19:36: Because I think if you said to them, can you explain the Trinity, I doubt that you'd get that out of 96%.
19:41: At least they could identify it out of a list of choices.
19:46: Okay, number three.
19:48: True or false? Some modern scholars rightly reject the so-called eternal generation of the sun.
20:01: Why is it false, John? Very nice.
20:09: Nicely done.
20:10: By the way, anybody who doesn't have a quiz? I see that hand.
20:18: But that's exactly right because the trick part of the question, and you know, whoever wrote this question, really, really scummy.
20:32: Yeah, rightly is the catch there.
20:37: Barrett says, both in college and in seminary, each textbook I read made a point to reject an old Christian belief I'd never heard of before.
20:47: The eternal generation of the sun from the Father.
20:51: And it wasn't just well-loved textbooks, but some of the most highly recommended books on the doctrine of God by evangelical theologians and philosophers.
21:02: Now listen to these names, because I've got a lot of these men on my shelves.
21:08: John Feinberg, Bruce Ware, Robert Raymond, who by the way, once did a conference here.
21:19: Very nice man, who's now in glory and knows better.
21:23: William Lane Craig, and J.P.
21:28: Moreland, among others.
21:33: What's the eternal generation of the sun? What is that? Since we're going to give a true or false question, what is the eternal generation of the sun? Nobody wants to step into that buzzsaw.
21:54: Okay, Mrs.
21:55: Cooley, teacher's pet.
22:10: Okay, he was always the sun.
22:13: He did not become the sun at the incarnation.
22:16: So that's part of it.
22:36: That's pretty good, Josh.
22:41: Describes their roles without separating their essence.
22:47: So, he's always the father, and the father's always the father, the son's always the son.
22:58: And why do you suppose that phrase, eternal generation, is so mind-boggling to us? When we think about fathers and sons, what do we think? How do we translate that? We put it into birth.
23:15: We put it into a time frame.
23:17: We think there was a time when the son wasn't, then he was generated, and then he was.
23:26: What's the problem with applying that to Jesus? God is immutable, so he does not change.
23:36: And we need to understand one thing that Jesus always being the son, as Janet said, means that he was generated before there was time.
23:47: And it's kind of beyond our imagination to think about something happening in a timeless, if I could say, in a timeless time frame.
24:00: Which, I think, in phrasing it that way, makes it perfectly mind-boggling, which is just fine.
24:12: Other thoughts or questions before I move on? Okay, number four.
24:16: True or false, some aspects of the Trinity are not easily defined by a single verse.
24:28: That's true.
24:32: Barrett writes, some scholars shared this weakness.
24:37: They rejected this ancient doctrine called eternal generation.
24:41: Why did they reject it, do you suppose? Because they couldn't find it in a single verse.
24:46: They're unable to find a text to support it.
24:49: Without a chapter and verse, it couldn't be included in their list, it just didn't fit into their formula.
24:55: Others rejected this churchy belief because it didn't make rational sense and if it wasn't reasonable, it couldn't be sensible.
25:09: There's a term for that.
25:11: If you say, I reject anything that I don't have a verse that I can point to and say this is right.
25:19: Okay? And what is that word? Biblicalism.
25:27: I was listening to a man the other day kind of boast of his biblicalism.
25:33: Biblicalism is good when it's what I'll call a tempered biblicalism.
25:43: If it's a blind biblicalism, here's what it means.
25:46: Bible alone.
25:49: So what does that mean? That means that ultimately I'm going to wind up rejecting what we read earlier in Ephesians 4.
25:57: That there's any kind of teaching or tradition or anything that existed before me that I need to comport with and that I'm free to reinvent the theological wheel every single generation.
26:14: And the problem with that is Well, I'll ask you.
26:18: What do you suppose the problem ultimately with biblicalism is? If you think all I need is me, myself, and the Holy Spirit and scripture, then what happens? You're going to get something wrong, right? Correct.
26:41: You're going to get something wrong, right? You're going to stumble into error.
26:47: And when you do that others are going to go with you.
26:51: We're going to see over the next couple of weeks when people trust themselves and try to dismiss everything that's gone before them it's generally not a good thing.
27:07: So we want to be careful of that, Corey.
27:25: Yeah, I mean there is irony there, right? Corey rightly says they're anti-papist, they're anti-Catholic because they say that's just a man and you can't just follow a man and what are they doing? Following themselves.
27:41: Their own understanding of scripture.
27:44: They reject the authority of a man and then they give themselves the authority to rightly discern the Bible all by themselves.
27:53: So, yeah, there is some irony there.
27:57: True or false? Oh, Josh, go ahead.
27:59: Well, the first thing I'd say to the person what would I say to the promise of Jesus that the Spirit is to lead into all truth? Who did Jesus make that promise to? The apostles, right? This was a promise about the New Testament and about the writing of the New Testament because, I mean, even as we look back on it what they did was certainly daunting because they're writing about things that happen sometimes decades before they write about them.
28:35: So to remember those things they have the promise of Jesus that the Holy Spirit himself would lead them into all truth and that they would be right.
28:47: I mean, it's just another promise of the inspiration of the New Testament.
28:52: So it's not meant, and you can look at the context was it John 14, somewhere in there? You look at that context and then ask yourself well, is he making that promise to every single believer who would ever come along? Because what's the problem with that? Let's just say it is a promise for every believer.
29:11: Then what? Who's to say we could have 3 or 4 just on a given passage? We could have 3 or 4 or 5 different understandings here this morning about a particular passage and guess what? If we all have the Holy Spirit and we all come to a different conclusion we're all right.
29:34: If we take that promise literally.
29:38: And there's a basic problem of logic there you know, the law of non-contradiction something can't be X and not X at the same time or whatever letter the law of non-contradiction uses.
29:51: Yes, Jonathan? Why would Jesus bother to give out these men throughout the centuries if everybody's just his own I'll just say it, his own church or her own church, right? There are so many fallacies contained within this sort of, it really is kind of a neo-gnostic thought that the Holy Spirit speaks in me as I read scripture and my understanding of scripture is infallible and that's going to lead to all manner of stuff I mean, that leads to everything from orthodoxy to Mormonism and anything in between, Charlie.
30:54: Yeah, let me just kind of interpret that into English for the rest of us.
31:01: When the Bereans are commended for their study of scripture what do the Bereans hear? They'd heard teaching about the Old Testament, right? But having that applied to Christ having it show them who Jesus was so then they are commended for doing what? That's listening to this sermon from Paul and presumably others, Barnabas, whomever and then searching the scriptures to say, okay, did he say this? Yes, okay, is that right? Is that a right understanding of things? Yes it is.
31:44: He said this.
31:46: Is that right? Yes it is.
31:47: So they were commended for listening and then for checking, for reviewing it.
31:54: So absolutely.
31:56: Good.
31:59: Alright, number five, true or false that Jesus is called the Son necessarily means there was a time when he did not exist.
32:14: I hear false, but okay, here's the problem you guys have.
32:21: Why do we celebrate Christmas? Corey, you're laughing, but that's, you know we're celebrating the coming of the Son of God.
32:36: Okay, into the world picky, picky, picky, picky.
32:43: He says, the Son is called the Son in scripture because he has a Father.
32:49: Think of it this way, he is from his Father begotten by his Father and listen, here's the important part from all eternity.
33:01: Or we might say the Son is generated the words begotten and generated are synonyms from the Father's divine nature from all eternity.
33:12: That is, after all, what it means to be a Son.
33:15: This is called filiation.
33:17: And here's the point the point is, was there ever a time when the Son did not exist? No.
33:23: Why? Well, because in part that would mean there was a time when the Father was not a Father.
33:31: So the Father is always the Father the Son is always the Son.
33:35: Well, what does that mean? It means in some way that we can't fully grasp the Father generated the Son from all eternity.
33:48: Yes, Jonathan.
33:52: Okay, I'll decide whether it's a question or maybe we should put it to a vote.
33:55: Is it a question? Okay, I'm with you so far.
33:58: He said, from all eternity there was a plan that the Son would become incarnate.
34:05: Okay, I'm with you.
34:06: Okay.
34:06: I think that helps.
34:08: He says it helps to think of Him in terms of the Son because there was always a plan for the Father to send the Son.
34:16: So it's not the one the other and the Holy Spirit.
34:20: It's the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit.
34:23: So there's a difference in roles between the two.
34:27: So I think that is helpful.
34:30: One of the things that helps us to understand a glimpse of it a little bit is indeed the relationship between an earthly Father and an earthly Son.
34:41: It gives us some sense of the relationship without being a perfect analogy, but it gives us a glimpse of that.
34:50: So that's true.
34:53: Number six and probably our last one this morning, maybe.
34:57: We'll see.
34:58: And we'll go faster next week because the first one was so long.
35:06: Number six, true or false? This phrase helps us to define the Trinity quote, eternal relations of origin.
35:19: It's so complicated, it has to be true.
35:23: Right? I mean, come on, you can't look at that and go, well, it's false because then you're going, why is it false? I have absolutely no idea.
35:32: It is true.
35:36: And Barrett says this, he says, I should also mention that there's a phrase that sums up all three of these biblical names, eternal relations of origin.
35:47: That is a phrase to remember.
35:49: Highlight it, underline it, circle it.
35:52: You can do that right now.
35:56: He says, it sounds sophisticated, but its meaning is really quite simple, really.
36:03: The word origin is fitting because we are describing where the three persons come from.
36:09: For example, the son is from the father.
36:12: The word eternal is appropriate since this is God we have in view.
36:19: And the word relation is another way of referring to the persons of the Trinity.
36:24: Specifically, what is so unique about each of them? And then he says, for example, the father is, and you're going to hear these terms repeatedly, the father is unbegotten.
36:37: The son is eternally begotten.
36:43: And the spirit is spirated.
36:53: And eternally spirated.
36:56: And by whom is the Holy Spirit spirated? The father and the son.
37:05: What does that mean? It means he's sent by the father and the son.
37:08: That's all it means.
37:12: We have time for one more if there are no questions.
37:16: Number seven, true or false, the Nicene Creed is certainly not the measure of orthodoxy.
37:30: Yeah, you know, I wish I'd reworded it exactly that way.
37:37: Okay, let's put it another way, which is totally unfair, but let's just do it anyway.
37:45: The Nicene Creed is not the measure of orthodoxy.
37:55: It is the same thing, but I think if I say the Nicene Creed, if I go to a church website and they say we don't subscribe to the Nicene Creed, what do you say? You say next, right? False.
38:10: I mean, it's like, with all apologies, actually I don't need to apologize to anybody.
38:16: We were just looking for churches last week in the area where Janet's from and there aren't a lot of good options.
38:26: We drove half an hour or so for an okay option.
38:33: It wasn't bad.
38:37: But if you go to some of these websites and it looks very orthodox and then you go, you know, meet our pastoral team.
38:45: Pastor Mary has been here for, you know, or you go to listen to the first sermon and it's, you know, Therese, whatever her name is, you think, okay, this might not be the place for me.
39:01: And if I go to a place and they say we don't have any part of the Nicene Creed, we're not those kind of people, then I think, well then you must be like Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses or something else because you're not on the reservation of orthodoxy.
39:18: It is a measure of orthodoxy, it's not the measure of orthodoxy.
39:22: Here's what he says, and when heresy threatened the Trinitarian heart of this gospel summary, this rule of faith, the Church Universal met and wrote another creed, the Nicene Creed.
39:35: You know, you'll hear about the Council of Nicaea.
39:37: If you're talking to an unbeliever for five minutes that knows anything, they're going to try to tell you that the Council of Nicaea basically destroyed Christianity.
39:49: And the reality is it saved Christianity from Arianism, that is to say that Jesus is a created being, and we'll talk more about that.
40:00: The creed was faithful of Scripture, and for that reason was authoritative for Christians everywhere, and listen, here's the important part, and always.
40:09: If it's faithful of Scripture, then it's always a measure of orthodoxy.
40:15: To depart from the Nicene Creed was to depart from biblical teaching itself.
40:19: To abandon the Nicene Creed was to abandon the God of the gospel himself.
40:25: Okay, and with that we need to close, and we'll pick it up next week.
40:35: Father, we thank you for this time that we've had to re-engage with this topic.
40:40: Lord, I pray that we would see this not merely as academics, but even as we read through Scripture, as we study Scripture, as we listen to sermons, we're going to see these ideas coming up again and again and again.
40:56: Help us to grapple with them, to better understand them, and to better understand you, the God of the Bible.
41:02: We pray these things in Jesus' name.
41:04: Amen.