Simply Trinity Study (part 22)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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So, when we last met, when

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I was last here, we left off... Anybody doesn't have a quiz, by the way? The review quiz, very good.

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I have several of these here. More than several, actually. What is several?

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How many is that? More than three. Well, I have way more than three. Sure. And, you know, in case you lose your way, they're on the front and back.

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For whatever reason, I did that. And I do have more. I have an infinite...

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I guess I have several more than several. So... Okay, I see that hand.

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Yeah. No, she has one. All right.

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Several more than several. Yes, I do. All right, and...

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You know, this is kind of a... We're at number eight. Number eight is true or false.

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Arianism is Orthodox Christianity. Okay? The correct answer is false, but why is it false?

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Because Aries was confused, John says. What is

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Arianism? I guess we have to define that, don't we? He was the guy...

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I mean, you know... I like how he does this in Jeopardy format. He does it in the form of a question.

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Was he the guy... Alex Trebek is going to say...

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Let's go to the judges. All right. And that is correct. He was the guy who said that Jesus was created.

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And, you know, you can make a scriptural argument for that. And how would you make a biblical argument for the idea that Jesus was a created being?

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He was born as a human, yes. There you go.

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When the Bible says he's the firstborn of all creation. So then we have a debate about what firstborn means.

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But let's see what Barrett says. He says, when the text says God begat wisdom, which is

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Old Testament, Arius concluded that the sun was begotten as created.

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Arius treated these two words as synonyms. In other words, that he was begotten means that he was created.

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The sun may be begotten, created before time, or the creation of the cosmos, but he has a beginning, a point at which he came into existence.

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And I've used this example many times. You know, when you're talking to a

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Mormon, they will try to tell you that there are what? Christians.

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And so one of the key questions that you can ask them that kind of separates them from Orthodox Christianity is because they'll try to agree with you as long as they possibly can.

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But if you say to them, was there ever a time when Jesus did not exist? They will have to say yes.

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And they will have to say yes for the same reason that they would say there was a time when you and I did not exist.

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Because they believe that we're all souls that existed before the world began.

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And they think that all these souls were created together. And so they have this idea that Jesus, you've probably heard this, where they say

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Jesus is the brother of Lucifer or Satan, the spirit brother.

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And I'm going, well, it's even worse than that because he's my spirit brother according to Mormonism.

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In other words, he's no different than me except for he obeyed and I didn't obey. So, I mean, they're very confused.

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But yes, they would say there's a point when Jesus did not exist. Jehovah Witnesses also teach that he is a created being.

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So, you know, is that a test of Orthodoxy? Absolutely. If you say to me that Jesus is a created being,

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I'm going to say to you, you have departed from Orthodoxy. You don't hold what the church believes.

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You don't... Actually, if you really believe that, then you may not be a Christian at all. You're not a

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Christian at all. Is that a shocking statement? You know, if you say

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Jesus is a created being, then why aren't you a Christian? You can't really say he's created and say he's

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God. And if you don't believe Jesus is God, then you are not, by definition, a Christian.

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The question was, did Arius believe that Jesus was created first and everything else was created through him?

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And that's kind of a Mormon belief. But the answer is, maybe. I don't really know.

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But it still would cause this problem.

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That if Jesus, you know, because the Bible would clearly teach us, if we look at Colossians 1 or John 1, that Jesus created everything.

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So if the idea is that God created Jesus and then Jesus created everything, we'd still run into the same problem.

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He can't be created and be God because there's not...

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The divine isn't divided into different parts so that we can have Jesus being a separate part and creating everything.

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Number nine. True or false? Arius went to great lengths to keep the nature of God separate from the

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Father. That is true.

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Barrett says, For Arius, the Son is not begotten from eternity either. In other words, not eternally begotten.

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That's what separates Jesus from the other members of the

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Trinity. He's eternally begotten. There was never a time when the Son did not have a father or the

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Father did not have a son. He's eternally begotten. For Arius, the

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Son is not begotten from eternity. He has a beginning. That way, change and suffering may be characteristic of the

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Son but not necessarily of the Father. The two, Father and Son, must remain separate.

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They cannot be from the same divine nature. Otherwise, the divine nature would be vulnerable to change and suffering.

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So, instead of keeping the divine nature and the human nature of Jesus separate, he keeps the divine nature of the

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Son and the divine nature of the Father separate. Colossians 1 .15,

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we mentioned this briefly. Firstborn, the word firstborn, which is the

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Greek word, I heard it, prototikos, and it pertains to having special status associated with a firstborn as the firstborn of a new humanity which is to be glorified as its

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Lord is glorified. In other words, he's the first to be exalted and we will be exalted like him.

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It doesn't mean he's the firstborn. I mean, if he was the firstborn of all creation, we've got another problem because we have to figure out what to do with Adam and everything else.

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Number 10. I want to move quickly through these review questions.

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True or false, it is insufficient to merely say that the Father and the Son are one in will.

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That is true, and again, some of these questions I formulate as I'm reading this, and I apologize for this, but again, this puts a stake through the heart of Mormonism because they will say, yes, the

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Father and the Son are one. They're one in will. They have the same purpose. Barrett says, with Arius's emphasis on the subordination of the

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Son, what is it then that unites the Father and the

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Son? Arius would answer, the unity cannot be a unity of being but can only be a unity of will.

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At best, the Son shares a unity of will, the Son cooperating with the will of His Father.

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The unity is merely functional. The Son, then, is not in a different category of the rest or from the rest of creation.

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He is merely the best and first of creation. Let's turn to John chapter 10, and this is a verse or a passage that the

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Mormons would use to try to show the oneness in purpose of God the

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Father and Jesus. And they'll say, yes, they're one, but they're one in purpose. They're not united in terms of godhood.

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By the way, how many gods do Mormons have? A lot.

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And they're hoping to become a god, too. The only thing that makes them kind of unique is that they believe

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Jesus became God. They believe you can become God if you're a male, if you're a woman.

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Sorry. The best you can hope for is to be one of a man's many wives and have spirit children.

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So, sorry about that. Okay, would somebody read

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John 10, verses 27 to 33? Yeah, go ahead, Mark.

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Yeah, that's it. So, sorry, thank you. If a person from the

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LDS church were to say to you, see, this shows that Jesus and the Father are one in purpose, one in will.

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And that's what it shows. What would you say to them? What kind of arguments could you make against that based on this passage?

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Then why were the Jews about to stone him? And the answer is, because you, being a man, make yourself

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God. That's not being one in purpose, that's being one in essence.

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Is there anything else here that makes you think there's more to it than just, you know, yes,

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Daniel. Okay, that Jesus holds him. That would, you know, purport, that would say that he has the power essentially to keep them from falling away.

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Anything else? Gives them eternal life.

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What kind of a man could do that? What kind of a created being could say, you have eternal life.

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So, yeah, this is all about the deity of Christ. Okay, number 11.

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There is a difference between being begotten and being made. True, I mean, we're just looking at this, this diamond, as it were, from different angles, different perspectives.

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True. Barrett says, Notice in the Nicene Creed the emphasis on the eternal generation of the

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Son. He is begotten from the Father. But by begotten, the Nicene Fathers did not mean what the

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Arians mean, that the Son is created. No, the Son is begotten, not made.

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There's a difference. For us, to be begotten is to become, or to come into existence for the first time.

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Arius was so literal in his thinking that he could not understand that the biblical metaphor, when applied to God, defies any limitations.

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And then he says, Yes, the Son is begotten. That is the very definition of a Son. But since this is the eternal, infinite, immutable, and impassible

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God, impassible meaning he cannot change, we are talking about, so he says, the

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Son's generation is eternal, infinite, immutable, and impassible, meaning he can have no beginning as creation does.

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Now, if we just think about that for a moment, how is it possible that the Son is eternally begotten?

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That there's never a moment when he didn't exist. How is that possible? Because when we think about something, and here's the point, when we think about something being, about a

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Son being born, about a Son being begotten, we think, okay, there's a point in time where the

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Son did not exist, and now he exists. So for us to think about the eternal

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Son, and to say, okay, there was no point where he ever did not exist. How can that be?

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Because he's outside of time. Daniel. Yes, it is language of accommodation.

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It's meant to help us understand the relationship between the

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Father and the Son. Absolutely. But, you know, again,

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I think the important thing, were you going to say something, Jonathan? Yeah, there's nothing analogous in creation to, so it kind of, it staggers the mind.

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It makes us take a step back and go, okay, again, God is not like us.

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He's different. He's other. Number 12. Which of these, rightly, multiple choice.

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Which of these rightly applies to Jesus, the second person of the Trinity? A. He is of a different essence than the

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Father. B. He is of a similar essence to the Father. C.

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He is of the same essence as the Father. Or D. What in the world?

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Okay, no, you guys just have A, B, and C, right? Okay. And what's the correct answer?

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I was going to say. Because what I did in my notes is I should have indented it. I was like, D, and then there's like a giant paragraph and I'm going,

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I wouldn't have given you guys D, this whole huge thing. C is the correct answer.

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He's of the same essence of the Father. The second is coessential, meaning he shares the same divine essence.

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He is consubstantial, meaning he shares the same divine substance. Begotten from the

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Father's essence from all eternity, the Son's existence originates from the same eternal divine essence as the

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Father, which means he is coequal, true God of true God. Okay, number 13.

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For there to be three persons in the Godhead, there must be three wills. I hear a false.

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I hear a true. I hear a tulse. I hear a fru.

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It's false. Why would you be tempted, and you don't have to speak out if you did say true.

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Why would you be tempted to say true that there must be three wills? Jonathan.

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Okay, we would think three persons means three wills, right? Anitra. Yeah, we see that all the time, right?

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There's no shared will. In spite of the fact that Janet and I are married, we still have two wills, which means sometimes she disagrees with me.

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It also means sometimes she does better in world than I do, so, you know, it's okay. I hate those days.

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But how do we sort this out? How do we understand that each of the three persons of the

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Trinity does not have his own individual will? What makes that false?

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Okay, if they each had a will, they could be in disagreement at some point, and you might have experienced this if you're married, you know, with your spouse, where you each have a will, you each have a singular purpose most of the time, but because of your individual wills, you disagree from time to time.

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It's impossible for God to disagree. There's never any two -to -one votes among the

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Trinity, right? It's never like the Holy Spirit going, I've got to outvote it again.

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Why? They have to agree because they're of the same essence.

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There's one will of God that started from before creation existed and continues on.

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The decree of God, we could call it. And then, what's the most obvious example, the most obvious problem to this?

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Not my will, but thy will be done. People say, well, what about in the

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Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is praying, and he just is wanting something other than the

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Father. What about that, Mark? Okay, he has two wills, his divine will and his human will.

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Okay, his human will, he has to subordinate to the eternal will of God.

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So, you know, is Jesus, people will say, well, is Jesus sinning when he says, not my will, but thy will be done, or if it's possible, let this cup pass from me.

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Is he sinning? Is he wanting to do something other than what

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God commands? Jonathan? Yeah, I think what the

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Garden of Gethsemane does, and I'll get to Andrew here in a second, what it does is really kind of underscore for us the fact that he is truly human.

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He's truly going through a trial. He's being tested, and it is not easy.

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That's why he's pouring the, you know, he's, what's the word I'm looking for?

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Sweating, you know, as if he's bleeding out blood kind of thing from his pores. Andrew?

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Yeah, I like that, you know, which was harder, the time in the wilderness or the time in the garden, and I think the time in the garden probably was harder because he's that much closer.

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He knows the cross is coming. He knows what that's going to be like, and it made him tremble.

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He was not, you know, I mean, there was a resolute nature to him in that he was determined to go through with it, but boy, there was also like,

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I really don't want to do this. Okay. Barrett says, consubstantial with one another, one will empower.

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Okay, we already discussed all this. Number 14, true or false? In the

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Father, Son, and Spirit, God presents himself in three different ways. Come on, you've got to say the rest of it.

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Okay, thank you. Sounds like mortalism, Patrick. Yeah, that is correct.

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That is correct. Barrett, to some it seemed that Nicaea was saying that the person of the

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Son is the same person as the Father. Some thought that the creed had succumbed to Sibelianism, which is mortalism, named after Sibelius.

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May he rest in pieces. Sorry. An early church heresy that said there is only one divine person, not three, who merely reveals himself in three different ways, or three different modes.

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Nicaea, however, was not advocating Sibelianism, and in the years ahead it became crucial to overcome such an accusation.

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Nicaea distinguished between the persons when it said the Son is begotten from the Father. By contrast,

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Sibelianism viewed the persons as mere functions, as if what makes

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God Father, Son, and Spirit are the diverse forms he takes when he creates or saves humanity.

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I mean, if you listen to a mortalist long enough, they will tell you that the age of the

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Spirit began at Pentecost, and so now God mostly functions as the Holy Spirit.

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That's wrong. Number 15, true or false, the Nicene Creed was composed by the

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Roman Catholic Church. You know,

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I find if you talk to Roman Catholic apologists, what will they take credit for?

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Oh, not everything, only the Bible, salvation, truth.

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So yeah, pretty much everything. And probably the Nicene Creed as well.

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But... I mean, you might get an argument about that, because I think most people would say, most scholars would say, that the

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Roman Catholic Church as such did not exist until much later on, probably around 600

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AD. And the reason for that is because early on, most of the

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Church was kind of in the East. So it's really only as Islam kind of starts and then starts expanding and pushes against Constantinople and whatnot, that really the power of the

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Church kind of moves to Rome. Although Rome was important early on.

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But he says, we should not overlook that second -to -last line of the Nicene Creed, which causes some people to trip.

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He doesn't say that, I say it. It causes some people to trip, and you can either mean that as, like, wow, that's a trip, or you can mean it like it causes them to stumble.

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This word here, we believe, and then dot, dot, dot, in one holy,

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Catholic, and apostolic Church. Barrett says this is no throwaway line.

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This is not a reference to the Roman Catholic Church. That would be, he says, anachronistic, meaning out of its time, because, in his view,

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Roman Catholic Church doesn't exist yet. Rather, it is a reference to the

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Church universal. That's why it's small c. It is universal because it is holy and apostolic, meaning it follows the teachings of the

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Apostles, not that there are Apostles all over the place, because the Apostles are dead by the time of the

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Nicene Creed. The Fathers are claiming, in other words, that this Trinity they confess is none other than the

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Trinity of Scriptures, the same Scriptures penned by the Apostles. For that reason, the

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Creed carries authority in the Church, and not just the Church of the fourth century, but the Church universal across all lands and spanning all eras.

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And then he says, that said, the Nicene Creed is not a dead letter. Rather, it carries authority to this day.

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No, it is not on par with Scripture. It is not a source of divine revelation, but since it conforms to Scripture, it is to be adhered to, confessed, and celebrated in the

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Church to this day. In other words, when we read the Nicene Creed, we don't read anything that's outside of the

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Bible, and we also should think to ourselves, well, is there anything wrong? You know, is it okay to examine the

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Nicene Creed and go, I don't know if that's biblical or not? Okay, it's okay to do that, and if you find something that's unbiblical in it, then you should not follow it.

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The problem is that you won't find anything in it that's not biblical. What was

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I going to say? because it makes me think, I mean, we ought to have, it's interesting to me,

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I was reading, there's something, last night I almost posted this on Facebook, I thought, can anything good come out of Bakersfield?

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There's a statement, a Bakersfield statement, and it actually is a good statement, and they're against these people called the influencers.

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Anybody ever heard of the influencers? This is all pretty new to me. I guess it's like a little bit of a growing phenomenon, but it's not new, it's been going on for like 20 some odd years.

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But what these people say, and it oddly starts with a revelation from God, and they've got this thing that they're teaching,

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I won't go through all that, but I just thought, it's odd to me that people will take something like, you know,

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Jesus Calling, you're familiar with how that was, what that was all about? Anybody have a

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Jesus Calling study Bible? Tell the truth and shame the devil. Jesus Calling, anybody know about it?

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Okay, Daniel, you want to... What's that? Well, yeah, that's what it was, right?

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Channeling this woman who now knows better, Sarah Young, I think it was.

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She said that Jesus would talk to her and she would write these things down, and they were meant to comfort people and make them feel better and loved and all these kind of things.

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What is that, by the way? You said channeling, what would you say? If God's talking to you, then what is that?

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Prophecy or revelation, right? If God is saying something to someone now, then basically it's a whole addition to Scripture.

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Why would it be less important than what was said 2 ,000 years ago? The problem is, what do you think a problem with that is, or are there multiple problems with it?

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What's the problem with somebody saying, you know what, I've received these things from God and I want you to know them.

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The cannon is closed. Yeah, it should be in the Bible. You're giving yourself authority.

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How do you know it's from God? These are all valid questions. Yeah, if they ever say anything that's wrong, they should be stoned.

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Can you think of a biblical reason that there shouldn't be anything else to say?

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Revelation, at the end of the book, it says anybody who adds anything, right? That's close to the end of the book.

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Anything else? Okay, the

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Bible is perfect. I think there's, on top of the fact that we would have to sort of marvel, just think about this.

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The New Testament was written by the apostles and their associates, and so now we're to take this new revelation as being authoritative, to some extent.

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For what? When God sends a new message or new messengers, what else does he do?

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Signs of confirmation, signs and wonders. Where are the miracles? Where's Sarah Young?

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Why wasn't she going to the hospital and emptying it out? What's going on here? But biblically,

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I would point to Hebrews chapter 1 and say, long ago, at many times and in many ways,

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God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his

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Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the world.

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What would be the point of adding now? If a new revelation isn't going to teach us something new about Jesus Christ, then why would we get it?

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Even things like the Book of Mormon claims to tell us more about Jesus Christ.

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In fact, it's subtitled now, Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

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Well, what does it tell us about Jesus? It has one thing.

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It's false, but it has one thing that's not contained in the Bible. And that one thing is that Jesus came to North America.

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That's it. So, anyway, to get back on schedule here,

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Nicene Creed is not a dead letter. We can compare it, we can look at it, etc., etc., etc.

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John? Does it or not?

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Okay, no it does not. That's the Apostles Creed. No. Okay, yeah,

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I mean, yeah, there's a there's a, I mean, there are a lot of theories about that, but yeah, we don't have time for that right now.

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Email me. Number 16, true or false? The more recent understandings of the

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Trinity are the result of a growing depth of biblical knowledge. Well, we are learning more.

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We do have more systemization. That's almost a word that I made up. I came close to making up a word, but it is false.

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This is from Stephen Holmes in a book called The Quest for the Trinity. He says, I see the 20th century renewal of Trinitarian theology as depending in large part on concepts and ideas that cannot be found in patristic, medieval or Reformation accounts of the doctrine of the

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Trinity. In other words, he's talking about the wrong views of the

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Trinity, this eternal submission of Jesus, for example. And he says, in some cases indeed there are points explicitly and energetically repudiated as erroneous, even occasionally as formally heretical.

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Lewis Ayres, another biblical scholar, says that there is a great divide between the biblical orthodox doctrine of the

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Trinity, which can be traced back to the Nicene Creed, and the modern understanding of the Trinity over the last hundred years.

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However, this modern Trinity has snuffed out the biblical orthodox

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Trinity, even pretended to be orthodox, until there is little of orthodoxy that remains.

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It is not merely that modern Trinitarianism has engaged with pro -Nicene theology badly.

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He says the situation was way worse. As a result, the legacy of Nicaea remains paradoxically the unnoticed ghost at the modern

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Trinitarian feast. In other words, they've killed it off when they talk about, for example, the fact that before Jesus was even born, he was submitted to the

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Father. There is a hierarchy in the Trinity that the Father is supreme, that the

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Son is like second in command, and the Holy Spirit is third in command.

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These things are wrong. Number 17, true or false, the terms

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Economic Trinity and Imminent Trinity only differ in their spelling. This is false.

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So what does that mean? What's the difference between the Economic and the Imminent Trinity? Okay. That is absolutely 100 % false.

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Okay. What's the difference between the Economic Trinity? The Economic Trinity is the easiest one for me to remember, and I don't know why.

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What's the Economic Trinity? What does that mean? Okay.

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For whatever reason, I just remember that's how they function, so what they do.

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And the Imminent Trinity is who they are in their essence, in their being.

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Imminent Trinity refers to who the Triune God is in himself, apart from creation or the economy of salvation.

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Economic Trinity refers to how the Triune God acts in relation to creation and the economy of salvation.

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Questions, concerns, comments? Okay. Number 18, true or false, the

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Trinity is good news for the oppressed peoples of the world. Well, it's false in the sense that the author of this question meant it.

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So, may he rest in peace. This is from a communist who acts like he's a

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Trinitarian scholar. Society is not ultimately set in its unjust and unequal relationships, but summoned to transform itself in the light of the open and egalitarian relationships that obtain in the community of the

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Trinity. In other words, society is to change itself and to be more like the

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Trinity, equal, freely exchanging whatever.

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This is like, so when you see the Trinity is good news for oppressed people, basically it's liberation theology is what this is.

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So, the Trinity is not good news. What is the good news? It's the Gospel. It's Jesus.

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Number 19, true or false, some evangelicals have fallen prey to, did

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I just put ST in there? Okay, social Trinitarianism.

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Because I just kept it in my notes as ST. Some evangelicals have fallen prey to social

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Trinitarianism. And again, that's the idea that the Trinity exists primarily as a model to emulate, to bring equality to everybody.

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If we could just live our lives out so that we would reach the heights of equality and thinking the same, thinking good things about each other that the

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Trinity does, then we'd live in a perfect world. It's kind of Gene Roddenberry theology of the

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Trinity. How many know who Gene Roddenberry is? Okay, there's two of you.

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That's Star Trek, right? I look at Star Trek, there are a lot of problems with Star Trek.

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One is the idea that space travel and all these other things, I like it when they start having problems with the transporters and people only get halfway transported or something like that.

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That would be a problem. Who wants to be the first person to try out a transporter? I don't.

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I'll give that to Taylor. But the idea being that there's this utopia, that's the main thing.

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Some evangelicals, William Lane Craig, when you hear these names you think these guys are supposed to be apologists.

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William Lane Craig and J .P. Morland argue that the central commitment of social

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Trinitarianism is this. In God there are three distinct centers of self -consciousness, each with its own proper intellect and will.

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Three wills, three centers of self -consciousness. This is the very DNA of social

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Trinitarianism. No Trinity otherwise. So they reject the classic affirmation of divine simplicity, that God is one, cannot be divided.

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They conclude God is an immaterial substance or soul endowed with three sets of cognitive faculties.

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Three minds, as it were. Each of which are sufficient for personhood so that God has three centers of self -consciousness, intentionality, and will.

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And you listen to that and you go, how do you not have three gods? And what's the answer?

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How do you not have three gods, Mr. J .P. Morland or Mr. William Lane Craig, and what do they say? Because we don't.

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There's no rational reason for it other than we don't. So those are men to mark and avoid.

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Number 20, and we'll close here, true or false, the Father has absolute authority within the

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Trinity. Just like a father has absolute authority in the home.

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There's too much laughing going on. False. False. The New Calvinist movement is not immune to social

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Trinitarianism either, as much as it thinks it is. Now listen to these names. As we will see in chapter 8, evangelicals like Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware have also redefined the

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Trinity as a society of persons defined by societal roles and relationships cooperating with each other as distinct agents.

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Just think about that. That the Trinity cooperates. Now how is that different than the idea that there is one will of God?

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How is that different? Doesn't that sound, even as I'm saying it, it sounds ridiculous to even say.

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Those are opposing views, right? You can't have one will of God and then say that there's a society of cooperating persons.

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One will can't equal three. Grudem and Ware believe this society of relationships in the

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Trinity is defined by functional hierarchy. The Son is subordinate to the supreme absolute authority of the

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Father within the eminent Trinity. And this is a view known as eternal functional subordination.

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And sometimes they'll say it's eternal relational. There's a longer term for it, but the idea is always that Jesus is second in command.

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Their social agenda comes through just as strong, if not stronger, than social Trinitarians before them. When they argue that the authority submission inside the

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Trinity is the paradigm and the prototype for hierarchy in society, especially wives submitting to their husbands in the home.

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So they say, you know, wives it's easier to submit to your husbands, but don't worry about it because it's just like Jesus has always submitted to the

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Father. It doesn't make Jesus less important. It just means that he understands his role, and he submits because he's the

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Son. And the problem with that is, what's that?

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Christ in the church, so the church submits to Christ. But with regard to the Father, how does

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Jesus submit to the Father? How does Jesus submit to the Father?

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It is human nature. It gets back to this. We talked about it before in your mind.

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If you don't have the diagram, I think I still have a couple of those. With double consubstantiality, a very important term, but what it means is this, is that Jesus has two natures.

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And in his divine nature, he's part of the Trinity, this triangle, right? But in his human nature, he's this little rectangle or square or whatever attached to the bottom of the triangle.

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Yeah, the hanging chad. In his humanity, he is different.

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He has a different nature. He has a different will. So we have Jesus, the

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God -man, who has two natures, two wills, and that human will submits to the divine will.

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And that's the key. There is no, though, eternal subordination in the

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Son versus the Father. We have to close, and so we'll take any questions after we shut off the microphone, because those are the best kind of questions.

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All right. Father, this is difficult sometimes.

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It's hard to sort of wrap our head around, but would you help us to understand this?

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That anything new has to be compared with Scripture and what's been taught before, and if it's new, we would have to wrestle with this question.

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Why have you not seen fit to give it to your church for 2 ,000 years? Why would you keep some truth hidden that we need to understand?

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And with regard to you, Lord, with regard to your nature as Father, Son, and Spirit, why would you not reveal these things to us?

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And the answer is, you have. These men that you've gifted the church throughout the centuries have rightly understood you.

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They've wrestled with these issues. They've condemned their heresies. They've written down what is true and right and handed them down, even as 2

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Timothy chapter 2 would tell us. They gave them, they entrusted these truths to faithful men who then passed them on again.

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And we thank you for this, and we stand in awe of the fact that centuries later, you have preserved these truths, and you've given them to us, that we might know you, that we might love you, that we might understand you all the better.

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Father, help us to grapple and to wrestle with these things, and to even see them as we're reading through Scripture.