The Biblical Trinity Vs. The Adventist "Heavenly Trio" w/ @answeringadventism PT. 2

Creator and Creation: The Distinction That Shapes Trinitarian Theology

When I was studying John Frame, I mean, he really drove home the point, the distinction between creator and creation. You have to understand we do not exist in the same way. We are created. We are contingent.

We are derivative. God is eternally existent. And I love the verse at the Areopagus in Acts 17, it talks about in him, in God, we live and move and have our being. In his light, we see light. So that's why we are image bearers.

We reflect many of the communicable attributes of our creator.

Another quote, Spirit of Prophecy, Volume 1, page 17, the great creator assembled the heavenly host that he might, in the presence of all the angels, confer special honor upon.

His son.

This is before the creation of the earth, by the way. The son was seated on the throne with the father and the heavenly throng of holy angels was gathered around them. The father then made known that it was ordained by himself that Christ, his son, should be equal with himself so that wherever was the presence of his son, it was as his own presence.

Close quote. Jesus was not made equal with the father and given omnipresence, right? If Jesus does not possess all of the divine attribution, he is not God, right? You can't, in what you're going to find with this heavenly trio is that, well, it's like, well, it's really more like tritheistic monarchianism.

And I know those are kind of big words, but like, for those that don't know, monarchianism is the idea that, well, the father is the almighty. The son is the next and then the spirit. There's a hierarchy with the father being the almighty alone.

It's kind of like that, but tritheistic as well. It's a weird amalgamation here. So those are just a couple of things that Ellen White herself said, which is where they're getting this idea of the Trinity or their concept of what they call the Trinity from.

She must have had a lot of free time to dream up a lot of this stuff.

That and she was a pretty good plagiarizer. She plagiarized a lot and didn't, she had no business claiming to speak for God and claiming to be able to tell us what God was describing about himself, et cetera, let alone saying that she needed to correct everyone else that was wrong and they were the ones that were correct in restoring things.

Marriage, Echad, and the Error of Applying Human Analogies to God

So he continues, he says, furthermore, their unity is not a mathematical paradox, but a relational unity analogous to the unity seen in a good marriage. So that's where Judd is getting this from. Where husband and wife are united in an ever-growing oneness, but without negating their individuality.

Are you seeing how they're interchangeably using person and being?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A hundred percent. And how did he word it? Mathematical impossibility. What'd you say?

Yeah.

He said, furthermore, their unity is not a mathematical paradox, but a relational unity analogous to the unity seen in a good marriage. Where husband and wife are united in an ever-growing oneness, but without negating their individuality.

Right.

There's not a mathematical paradox or problem or contradiction when you understand the two distinct categories that we are talking about now, being in personhood. But like you're saying, the Seventh-day Adventists are just conflating those two, interchangeable with one another.

And then they are the ones with the problems on their hands.

Yes.

Now we're going to see the Shema, like we mentioned earlier.

Yes.

So he says, thus, her concept is in harmony with the biblical witness of both the Old and New Testaments. So remember, what he was just talking about was this relational unity of being one like a marriage.

Sure.

After God said, let us make man in our image, Genesis 1, 26 -27, God proceeded to create humans in a plurality of forms that were capable of becoming one. Did you catch that?

Wow, yeah.

In Genesis 2, 24, God explained his purpose in this so that these diverse creatures bearing his image, there's a reason he puts that in quotes, could become one. The Hebrew word translated one in Genesis 2, 24 is echad, which you mentioned earlier, not a monolithic singleness for which Moses could have used yachid, one or only, but a unity formed from multiple components.

The same word occurs in Deuteronomy 6, 4. Is Deuteronomy 6, 4 saying that what makes God one is there is a plurality of beings who are one in a mission?

No.

So earlier where we read that these diverse creatures bearing his image could become one. So this is where you have to always retain the distinction between creator and creation because God is not becoming.

He is not in flux. God is ase. He is self-existent. He is eternally existent, so he doesn't change is my point. And so that to me is the biggest problem when you're trying to look at a marriage to one to one, univocally with the creator of saying, oh, well, this is how the divine trio or heavenly trio works.

It's like, no, I do agree that a husband and wife come together, one in purpose, in a very wonderful way to glorify God together. But you can't take that principle of where two human beings are becoming one in a profound sense to then try to talk about how God is becoming one in purpose.

No.

God is eternally one in his existence and in his essence, interchangeable terms. But they are three distinct persons. So does that make sense that God is not becoming anything? He simply is.

Yes.

And it's wrong to take an analogy like this where something is being said, it's conflation. Well, we have an example here of them becoming one. So we can now apply that to God's ontos.

Mm.

Exactly.

And because it's it's it's there in the Bible that we're biblical in doing that. Well, no, you're just wrongfully using the scriptures to now apply that wrongfully to a category. You're making a category error, right?

The way that two human beings come together and become one in marriage is not how God.

Is.

Yeah.

And when I was studying John Frame, I mean, he really drove home the point, the distinction between creator and creation. You have to understand, we do not exist in the same way we are created. We are contingent.

We are derivative. God is eternally existent. And I love the verse at the Areopagus in Acts 17 and talks about in him, in God, we live and move and have our being in his light. We see light. So that's why we are image bearers.

We reflect many of the communicable attributes of our creator, right? It gets through. That's why we're actually able to relate to him. Analogically, that's a that's a big word. But God, God meets us where we're at.

Right.

He speaks to us in baby talk, so to speak.

Yes.

But the thing is, you can't take human categories and univocally one to one place that on the eternal creator. And so that's why we stay away from created analogies in total, saying that that's how the heavenly trio is.

You got these three beings working together, one in purpose. And that's that's how God is one miles.

Yeah.

So he continues here and he says that was good, by the way. Sorry, I wasn't just trying to dismiss what you were saying. He says the concept of plurality of persons and unity of relationship becomes more explicit in the New Testament.

So now we get another analogy that's being wrongfully applied to who God is. For example, Christ prayed that believers in him may all be one. As he and the father are one. John 17, 20 through 22. Ellen White quotes this passage as proof of the, quote, personality of the father and the son.

Again, we're going to get into this term person and the way they define it. And an explanation of the unity that exists between them. She wrote, the unity that exists between Christ and his disciples does not destroy the personality of either.

They are one in purpose, in mind, in character, but not in person. It is thus that God and Christ are one. In the same year, 1905, she wrote elsewhere, there are three living persons of the heavenly trio, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit.

Her concept of the heavenly trio differs from the traditional Trinity and that it's based on simple biblical reasoning and biblical presuppositions. Then we've got the footnote here. The fact that scripture has much more to say about the relational unity of God does not preclude God's ontological unity, but the ontological unity is certainly less explicit.

In scripture. That's the opposite.

So yeah.

So did you notice he admitted their view is not historic Orthodox Christian Trinitarianism? That's supposedly Greek paganism built on Greek presuppositions and their concept is truly the biblical one, right?

So why are they using the term Trinity?

Well, I think it's kind of the whole point of your ministry is they're trying to pretend to be Christian, but in a deeper sense, really to get Christians to join them, right? They're the remnant. They're the ones with the secret knowledge that you need to be made right with God through keeping the Sabbath and the rest of the commandments and so forth.

Yep.

So he could...

Oh, go ahead.

I was going to make one point, I won't get super deep into this, but like in John 17, this is a profound prayer. Jesus is a high priestly prayer and there is a sense where we get to share in the unity of God.

And I would say in his purpose, in his eternal will, we get to share in that relationship with God. But even when we reach glory, we will still be creatures who are glorified, right? And I'm just saying like, without going super deep into it, but John 17, highly, truly Trinitarian language where Jesus talks about being restored to the glory that he had with the father before the foundation of the world.

And when you go back to the prophet Isaiah, he explains in chapter 42, the one God, the creator God who shares his glory with no other, Jesus talking about that glory that he shares with the father. He was an eternal relationship, face-to-face relationship with father in perfect glory.

And when I was talking to Brant Bosserman, when we say, where were they in the context of the spirit, the spirit eternally was there with them in perfect glory. But that is the one true creator Yahweh God who shares his glory, this triune God with.

No other. Amen.

God, Spirit, and the Problem of Physicalism

So, he continues in this by saying, in maintaining that the father and the son are two, now notice the air quotes, two distinct, literal, tangible persons, James White certainly did not doubt that God is spirit, John 4, 24, but he insisted that though spiritual beings, Christ and the father are nevertheless divine persons who have a quote, literal, tangible existence.

They are neither unreal nor imaginary. You'll notice that oftentimes what they mock the idea that Christians believe in spiritual realities and spiritual beings as being unreal and imaginary, because this gets into their physicalism, their monism, that really what is true and what is real is that which has organic physical matter, different stream for different time, actually just did a stream on this.

For those that are curious, you can look on the channel, it's within the last couple weeks or so, but the Trinitarian creeds he knew of, James White, made God so abstract, theoretical and impersonal that God was no longer perceived as a real, caring, loving being.

For example, one Trinitarian creed that the early Adventist quoted fairly often was that of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Their creed is actually based off of those of the likes of the Westminster Confession,.

Etc.

Ellen White's Church of Origin. That creed says in part, there is but one living and true God everlasting without body or parts. This, the early Adventists vigorously refuted, citing several biblical passages that portrayed God as having both body and parts.

So before we get into that aspect, does the Father possess a physical, tangible form?

No.

I mean, the verse references up there, John 4, 24, God is spirit. So, I mean, with the Trinity concept, we can understand that God, being tripersonal, has been eternally spirit, not physical, but it's God the Son that took on flesh, stepped into creation.

So to kind of blur those lines and to make God into having parts is literally cutting up the being, right? That's why we classically talk about God being simple. He is. God is not comprised of parts like man, like created man, physical man.

Yeah.

And what the church means by that is that, well, a couple things, like you mentioned, God does not have like two ears and a mouth and a nose, these different parts that can be broken up. He is not a complex being.

He is a simple being. But furthermore, you also have being stated in this claim is that God is not like 20 love, 10 vengeance, 5 this. His attribution is not parted out either. He is like, he is love.

He is merciful. He is wrathful. He is all these different attributes. And it's not like there's a caricature. And by that, I mean, one is just overshadowing the rest of them. That's what's being said by that.

Yet these pioneers disagreed with this because in their minds, they thought, well, if God doesn't have a physical body like I have, how can he be relatable? That's not what this creed was getting at. Even though obviously they would say that, no, God does not have a physical being.

But the Adventist pioneers took this to mean, well, then he's not personal. And that's not what was being said at all, at all. So, yeah, they didn't understand what was being said, but really it shows us that the Adventist heavenly trio is a complex set of beings that are made up of parts that can apparently be divided.

They were vehemently against the Christian belief about divine simplicity. So he continues here. He says, twice in early visions of Jesus, she asked him, this is Ellen White now, questions related to the form and person of God.

So this is what's informing their definitions of terms. When they tell you, oh, it's, we're just deriving it from the Bible. He even admits in this paper that no, they actually, it's another paper on this.

He admits that they derived their final understandings of things. They'll claim through scripture, but then Ellen White is also listed. That's where it's ultimately coming from. Twice in early visions of Jesus, she asked him questions related to the form and person of God.

In one early vision, she reported seeing a throne and on it sat the father and the son. I gazed on Jesus's countenance, she said, and admired his lovely person. The father's person, I could not behold.

For a cloud of glorious light covered him. I asked Jesus if his father had a form like himself. He said he had, but I could not behold it. For said he, if you should once behold the glory of his person, you would cease to exist.

I've often, oh, and then in 1850, she reported, I've often seen the lovely Jesus, that he is a person. I asked him if his father was a person and had a form like himself, said Jesus. I'm in the express image of my father's person.

Thus her visions confirmed what her husband had written in 1846, that the father and the son are two distinct, literal, tangible persons. The visions also disproved to her mind, the claim of the Methodist creed that God is without parts or body or parts.

Thus these early visions steered her developing view of God away from creedal Trinitarianism, though they offered nothing directly contradictory to her later statements of what I have called biblical Trinitarianism.

Ellen White, the Heavenly Trio, and the Charge of Tritheism

So what does that statement tell you about that, that first part real quick?

Yeah.

The, the, the tangible persons like to me, they're conflating categories because we're.

Big time.

Persons. Um, you, you can't put persons in a jar and examine it. Um, this is the immaterial aspect of humanity, right? Our soul, right?

Well, they don't, they don't believe in that.

Oh, well you got me there. Um, I'd have to call you if, if they, if I was like, I can't help you.

Yeah.

This is their monism. Um, they think that your, your soul is basically just a combination of breath and a body. And when the breath leaves the body, the soul no longer exists.

Do they?

So what do they do with mind? What do they think mind is?

Well, it depends who you talk to. Um, it's kind of getting into a side discussion. Maybe we'll get into that at some other time, but I want to focus in on this, this beginning part because there's one big thing here, the key thing.

What does the statement at the beginning tell you about the Adventist Jesus in relation to the father? She could behold Jesus and see him, but the father was too majestic and glorious.

They're, they're distinct, right? Radically, um, from one another, it sounds like, uh, just different beings. And so kind of proving our, our point all night long.

Well, and not just that, but the demotion of Jesus, like he's not as glorious as the.

Father.

I could behold him, but not the father, which if you read her writings in Tota, um, at great length on this specific topic, you're going to constantly see this sort of Monarchianism. The father is better.

The father is more powerful. He's the almighty. He's the Lord God almighty, that sort of stuff. So that's a huge blunder right there. Plus on top of that, it's BS. She did not talk to Jesus. But then he's, but then he rightly recognizes that they rejected again, creedal Trinitarianism showcasing that they are borrowing Christian terminology, but redefining it through what Ellen White has supposedly claimed regarding scripture.

That's what's going on here. And there's a conflation of the term one going on by using the disciples as an example of actually, of, of being in the nature of God, like applying to that. But then I want to look at the footnote here really quick again, footnote, you got to pay attention to footnotes, man, 100 Jesus prayed that his disciples might be one as he is one with his father.

This prayer did not contemplate. Yeah, this prayer did not contemplate one disciple with 12 heads, but 12 disciples made one in object and effort in the cause of their master. Neither are the father and the son parts of the three one God.

They are two distinct beings, yet one in the design of accomplishment of redemption. Right. That's from James White, Ellen White's husband.

So unfortunate his name's James White.

Yeah. So again, is that compatible with James White said with Trinitarianism?

No, it's right. Confirming what you've pointed out, they are using person and being interchangeably. And then we're emphasizing when you divide the beings, you have multiple gods and the heavenly trio is not monotheistic, right?

It's polytheistic.

Yes. So he continues here in her first volume titled Spiritual Gifts, which we've looked at on the channel before her belief in the Holy Spirit is not in question, for she refers to the father, the son and the Holy Spirit in Christ's baptismal narrative.

But she does not mention the Holy Spirit in connection with the divine councils about creation and salvation. But because of their ambiguity, get this, they could be read without conflict by Adventists, regardless of both Trinitarian and anti-Trinitarian leanings.

Did you catch that? I mentioned that earlier. No mention of the Holy Spirit being able to be let into these councils. He says, though, that is the case, there's enough ambiguity where both sides of our people in this movement can support their views with the claim.

So that's what makes it OK. You can be an anti-Trinitarian heretic in this movement, man. It is crazy. It's absolutely crazy. But you can't be anything other than a premillennialist historicist.

So you can't be saved if you deny premillennialism wholesale?

Well, no, no, you have to believe premillennial historicism because their whole system is predicated on eschatology. So if you disagree with their eschatology, their whole system collapses. So unlike the Christian faith, where it's like you can be an amillennial preterist or partial preterist, futurist, there's room for these within orthodoxy because at the end of the day, for example, if I'm wrong on my view of the mark of the beast, my whole system doesn't collapse, right?

My whole system isn't predicated upon every aspect of my eschatology being correct. That's not the case for this movement. All of their eschatology has to be correct at every step of the way or the whole thing falls apart, which is another red flag of the system being super, super weak.

And this just goes back to what you've been saying. They're trying to appeal to Christians that are Trinitarian, Unitarian. It's like, hey, you can come join us. No big deal. And yet I'm saying to misunderstand who Jesus is and who God is, is the difference of heaven and hell, salvation and being lost.

According to Jesus, according to the Apostle Paul, who warns us about false Jesus's right. Yes.

And in second Corinthians, we mentioned that earlier, second Corinthians 11, one through four. So we skip down a little bit here, a few pages. And then we got to get into now what she says here, defining.

The truth about the Godhead, as they call it, folks, I'll link to this paper, by the way, in the description box, this is a PDF that I've downloaded and had on my computer for quite some time now. So I'm not able to share the link in the description or in the live chat.

But I will add this for those that want to read the whole thing. It's not too terribly long. But these are the main things we wanted to look at specifically tonight. So here he says, then she defines what she understands to be the truth about the Godhead.

The father is all this is him quoting now, of course. The father is all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And is invisible to mortal sight. So he has a physical, tangible form. But he's invisible to mortal sight.

And he's the fullness of the Godhead bodily. How is physical, tangible matter invisible?

And she's misquoting Colossians 2, 9, right, saying that is the father.

Yeah, but what she means by that is that she's talking about how they all have a physical, tangible form. So they're all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. It goes back to being three beings, three persons.

The son is all the fullness of the Godhead manifested. The word of God declares him to be the express image of his person. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believed with him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Here in Christ is shown the personality of the father. Remember how they're using the term personality?

She just broke their own standard, right? I thought they were radically and tangibly different persons. And now she's saying that Jesus is the personality of the father.

Like that. So this is what he's saying about how this woman evolved on this. Yet all of her words are barricaded by a thus saith the Lord. Her writings are authored by the same author of the scriptures, she said, which is the Holy Spirit.

Yet they have to deal with this evolution of God's supposed messenger. Evolving on her position of like the most cardinal foundational established doctrine of the Christian faith. The comforter that Christ promised to send after his ascension to Godhead, making manifest the power of divine grace to all who receive and believe in Christ as a personal savior.

There are three living persons of the heavenly trio in the name of these three great powers, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. Those who receive Christ by living faith are baptized, and these powers will cooperate with the obedient subjects of heaven in their efforts to live the new life in Christ.

Is the Godhead three powers? No, no, for I'm just leaving, leaving emphasis there. Yeah, the silence for emphasis and then want to throw in our good friend Isaac Olatunji.

Did he say that?

There you go. Yes, he did say that because he's quoting from Ellen White. No, God is not three powers, folks. There is one almighty. This is not the right language to be using. This is the language of somebody who has no business claiming that they never wrote a single sentence of heresy.

That the words in their books are barricaded by a thus saith the Lord. Yes, we're going to be super critical on a person like this Adventist. When you comment on my videos and try and downplay or act like I'm going overboard.

No, I'm not. This person claimed to speak for God, claimed to have over 2000 visions, claims to be the last human being that talked with Jesus face to face. And the first thing she thought to ask Almighty God when talking with him, even though she doesn't believe he's the almighty, is does your father have a form like you do?

Yes, we're going to draw on this hard. The standard is set very high. She had zero business talking about this and claiming that this is now correcting the Christian church who supposedly has been apostate and is being restored by them.

Yeah, nothing. Yet they didn't understand that the Holy Spirit was even a person until. Well, as you're going to see here, she clearly rejected any view of the Trinity that makes God impersonal and unreal.

So our view is making him unreal. That's what they mean by this, but embraced a literal biblical view of one God and three eternal persons who are relationally united in character, purpose and love again.

Same thing. So now in the summary of this section, he kind of recap some of the things we just talked about. He says. This change from Adventist rejection of the of the traditional doctrine of the Trinity to acceptance of a biblical Trinitarian doctrine was not a simple reversal.

When James White denounced creedal Trinitarianism in 1846, Alan White agreed with both his positive point that the father and the son are two distinct literal, tangible persons and his negative point that the philosophical Trinitarianism held by many did spiritualize away the personal reality of the father and the son, a .k .a. it says they don't have physical, tangible forms.

Soon after this, she added the conviction based on visions that both Christ and the father have bodily form, rejecting the teaching of one of one Trinitarian creed that God is without body or parts. In 1890, in the 1890s, when she became convinced of the individuality and personhood of the Holy Spirit.

So the Holy Spirit has a physical, tangible form, too. She referred to the Holy Spirit in literal and tangible terms, much like those she had used in 1850 to describe the father and the son.

Remind me something real quick, because I know it was earlier in the article, but what is their explanation that God is spirit?

Yeah, so they just essentially state that I covered this in a stream about their physicalism about a week and a half or so ago. So people can check that out if they want. It's called Physicalism, The Adventist Pioneers and the Image of God in the Trinity.

And we looked at James White, Ellen White's husband, his book called The Personality of God, where he talks about this and quotes this. And he mentioned it in passing earlier, but he didn't go into great detail.

They essentially dismiss spirit as being unreal and fake. So they'll say, well, we believe that God is spirit. But at the same time, spirit is truly partaking of some sort of physical, tangible.

Form.

Like us, like man. Yeah, because that's the folly they're doing. This is just like Greek mythology. This sounds so much like Mormonism.

It's not even funny.

Yeah, so that's why they will say man being made in the image of God means that it's what we physically look like. And it's three of those. That's why if you look at the Adventist art and stuff like that, angels, for example, are depicted as human beings with wings, because it's the stereotypical angel that Ellen White claimed to see when she went to heaven, supposedly.

She didn't say Moronah?

Yeah, I know, just like Joseph Smith. So then he says again, in the same year she defined their unity. This is 1905, so 10 years before her death. She was still saying this is how they are united in relational rather than philosophical terms.

The unit quote, the unity that exists between Christ and his disciples does not destroy the personality of either. They are one in purpose, in mind and in character, but not in person. It is thus that God and Christ are one.

Since Ellen White clearly held the basic, the basic formula of one God and three persons, it can hardly be denied that her view is essentially Trinitarian. However, her views differ from traditional Trinitarianism in the following important aspects or respects.

The Claim to Be Essentially Trinitarian and the Drift Into Tritheism

I love this line and I laugh every time I come across it because I love how he's like basically just trying to sweeten the well before he now just opens the floodgates of how it's literally nothing like, like it's nothing like Trinitarianism.

But he has to start off by saying it's essentially the same thing. However, here's how it disagrees. And then we're going to look at all of these differences. But notice something here, Jeremiah, I caught this earlier and I hadn't caught this before.

And I went, wow, of course, because this is always the case. Did you notice a word that he used in that final paragraph there? Essentially. Why don't they like to talk about the being of God? Well, they'll tell you that's Greek presuppositions to talk about the essence or the substance.

Yet here he's OK with using Greek language and says, well, their position is essentially Trinitarian. Ah, OK, so it's OK to use these terms when you want to use the terms. And not call everyone else a pagan presuppositionalist.

It's good. Just a little recognition there, folks. That's what we're saying when we're talking about the being. We're talking about the essence, but he won't allow us to apply that in the context of God's being.

But it's OK for them to say, in essence, we're basically Trinitarians.

It's good.

Thoughts on that before we get into the ways that she completely actually rejects, as you've already seen.

No, I mean, I've kind of I feel like a broken record a little bit. I mean, they're just they're abusing the categories of what we mean, accusing us of being pagan, being Greek, which is blowing my mind because I hope everybody sees they're just taking man and then just putting it on a higher divine plane.

That's what Greek mythology does. That's what Mormonism does. They are the ones that are pagan, getting literally these ideas are not original with LNG. Why? And these people know.

So now he's going to go into the ways that it is different. So now we're going to pivot and it won't be as much of a broken record. But I think it's good that we're hammering these same things over and over and showing that it's over and over and over again.

So here he says. So one, and he's going to state multiple things in here. She rejected at least three of the philosophical presuppositions undergirding traditional Trinitarianism. A, the radical dualism, this will answer your question earlier about John 424, the radical dualism of spirit and matter, which concluded that God could not have a visible form.

B, the notion of impassibility, which held that God has no passions, feelings or emotions, hence could not have or could have no interest in or sympathy with humans. And C, the dualism of time and timelessness, which led to the notions of eternal generation and eternal procession.

Her rejection of all of these concepts constitutes a radical departure from the medieval dogma of the Trinity. So in essence, they're Trinitarian, but it's a radical departure from Trinitarianism.

It's essentially not.

Yeah. So there's a number of things I want to look at here because he mentions a number of things. I want to let you say whatever you want to say before I get into these things, because then we're going to look at another source because we have to read the footnote here.

And I'm going to defend our Christian brothers from times past because it bothers me the way that they slander them. So thoughts on all of that. And then I'll have some stuff.

I just I want to echo what we've been saying about we have to have the distinction, the creator creation distinction. So we're saying the way that father, son and spirit relates to one another. This is in a divine, eternal category.

So how we relate to one another, it's not going to be one to one the way that God is eternally relational, because I can understand how some people with the impassibility get confused on that. We look at many scriptures about God grieving.