How the Trinity Impacts Everything

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Elias Ayala, and today we have a very special guest,

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Dr. Vern Poitras from Westminster Theological Seminary. He is a distinguished professor of New Testament and Biblical Interpretation at Westminster, where he's taught for,

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I believe, over 44 years. Dr. Poitras, his academic interests include how

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Christianity and the Trinitarian nature of God impact all areas of life, and he's also spent much of his career studying and teaching

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Biblical Interpretation and hermeneutics. So for those who are new to Dr. Poitras' writings and teachings on these specific areas, he recommends on the

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Westminster website, where he has his bio posted there, he recommends several resources as places to start regarding Christianity and relationship to all areas of life.

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Consider his books, Redeeming Science, Redeeming Philosophy, or Chance and Sovereignty of God.

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And a related book is In the Beginning Was the Word, which looks at the Trinitarian foundations for language, which

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I think is very interesting, and hopefully we can get into a little bit of that today. And another recent publication in this area is

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Redeeming Mathematics, and you can also find links to various interviews that he has appeared in online in various places.

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So without further ado, let me bring Dr. Poitras on with us today. And perhaps he can take a moment to say hi to everyone and maybe add a little bit to what

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I've just provided there by way of introduction. There you go. You're on with us, Dr. Poitras.

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Well, thank you for inviting me. Your introduction was fine. I don't think of anything offhand that I'd like to add.

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So I'm eager to participate in the dialogue here. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

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I know that I've really lucked out with lucked out. Come on. Nice old

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Calvinist doesn't believe in luck. But if I can use, you know, if I can use the terminology,

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I've really lucked out in getting a lot of great Reformed theologians and apologists, especially with this quarantine.

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Everybody's home. So everyone's hoping to do these sorts of things. So it's very exciting to have you on now on this show, if I can give you kind of a brief summary.

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We typically cover the topic of apologetics in general and presuppositional apologetics more specifically, and especially in the area in which presuppositional apologetics applies to like a wide variety of areas.

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So, for instance, in past shows, we've covered presuppositional argumentation applied to competing religious perspectives, presuppositionalism applied to canonical studies, how evidence relates to presuppositional methodology and transcendental argumentation.

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We had the pleasure of having Dr. James Anderson on to talk about those issues. And people were texting me and messaging me.

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You need to get Vern Poitras on. I was like, all right, fine. He's probably going to be too busy. And then you responded to the email.

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So I was like, yes. So we're super, super excited to have you on. And I'm hoping that we can get into some really interesting stuff.

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I've tried to construct some interesting questions that perhaps you could unpack for us and we'll take it from there.

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How does that sound? Go ahead. All right. Real just a real quick by way of introductions for people who have been following the

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Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel. If you haven't yet subscribed to the Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel,

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I strongly suggest if I was not doing this, I would suggest it because we've had some great interviews covering a wide variety of topics.

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But since I'm the host, yes, I would love for you to subscribe as well. On July 9th,

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I'm going to be having Dr. Hugh Ross and Jason Lyle, Dr. Jason Lyle, discussing a kind of an open, informal discussion on the young earth, old earth creationist perspectives.

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And so I'm looking forward to a very respectful yet interesting and engaging discussion on that topic.

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And also on July 10th, I'll be having Dr. James Anderson on again to talk about the differences between classical apologetic methodology and presuppositional apologetic methodology.

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So without further ado, I'm super, super excited. I can't wait to ask these questions and have you kind of get into a little more depth.

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So we're going to start from simple to more complex. And so the topic of this episode was the doctrine of the

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Trinity applied to everything. So, you know, that's probably a very intriguing title for many people, but let's see what we can do with that.

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So why don't you define for us the doctrine of the Trinity itself and then briefly explain its theological and apologetic importance.

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Why don't you do that for us? Well, the doctrine of the

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Trinity says God is three persons. That's about as simple a summary as I can do.

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Okay. Each of the three persons is fully God and yet they are distinct from one another.

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And the total package there is incomprehensible. So you would say ultimately the doctrine of the

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Trinity is one of those doctrines that are mysterious, ultimately speaking, when we're trying to completely wrap our heads around it.

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Yes. Okay. Not a lot of people like that. I think a lot of people, we don't like mystery in our theology.

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I think mystery is a very important aspect in understanding that God cannot be fully comprehend, although he can be comprehend in as much as he reveals himself.

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So. All right. So that's what the doctrine of the Trinity is. What do you think the theological and apologetic importance is of that doctrine?

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Why is it important theologically and why is it important apologetically, do you think? Well, let's start with the fact that God has revealed himself in the world and revealed himself clearly in the things he's made.

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That's Romans 1. And also he's revealed himself even in the very constitution of each one of us as a human being so that we inescapably know him.

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That's said in Romans 1, 2. The problem is not lack of knowledge of God of that kind, but suppression of the knowledge.

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We flee from God. So once the Lord called me to himself, he revealed himself to me through Jesus Christ and through the

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Bible. Once I became a follower of Christ, it opened more and more things where I began to see the hand of God.

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And God is the Trinitarian God so that everything you look at has a unity to it because there's a unified purpose of God and a unified plan of God.

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And everything has a subtle diversity to it that is a reflection ultimately of the diversity in the plan of God, which is the plan of the

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Father and of the Son and of the Spirit. I had a friend who grew up in a kind of humanism, didn't believe there was a

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God. He had an experience one day. He went out into a meadow and the meadow was so beautiful that he was overwhelmed.

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And he felt like falling down and worshiping, except he didn't think there was anybody to worship.

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He became a Christian later on. So later on, he was able to reinterpret that experience.

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I've also heard of people who have watched films, not even Christian films necessarily, but films of the more profound kind that ask a lot of questions or that probe deeply into the nature of man or the nature of the world.

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And they come away with an experience of saying, there is something very deep that I long to know and I long to experience.

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Well, that's an area of apologetics that people often don't think of because they're oriented to rational arguments.

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And there's a role of rational argument. You see in the Acts of the Apostles, the record of Christian preaching and people bring up the fact that the

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Old Testament prophesied centuries beforehand what happened when

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Jesus Christ came into the world. Well, that's a strong support for the claims of the

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Christian faith. But people even beyond that, they have kind of intuitive, instinctive reaction of sometimes more intense, right?

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So becoming a Christian believer over the years, I began to take seriously what

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Cornelius Mantill as an apologist said about the centrality of the

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Trinity. And that apologetics shouldn't just defend a generic theism, but should defend specifically the

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God who is the only true God. If you're a deist and you just worship a God who made the world and then walked away, that is not the true

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God. It's a fake God. There are certain parallels, certain similarities with the true

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God. If it's true that we need to present the true God, then it was worthwhile for me, it seemed to me, to think about how the

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Trinitarian structure of who God is, how that's reflected in the world he has made.

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And actually, some of the books then that you've mentioned are books of that kind that maybe they have some apologetic value to a non -Christian.

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But actually, I'm writing a lot to Christians and say, wake up.

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We ought to see a lot more than what is suppressed because of the independence that all of us come into the world.

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We all come into the world wanting to be independent, wanting to be our own God. We all have that in us.

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But if we're Christians, God has rescued us from that in a fundamental way through Christ.

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But that doesn't mean we don't still have remaining remnants of that same tendency. So I wanted to encourage

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Christians, and if the non -Christians are willing to read or listen, then to make them think about the fact that actually you're surrounded by a pervasive testimony to who

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God is, but you're not, you're used to, you've developed a pattern of suppressing it.

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Now, you said something about innate knowledge of God. I get this question all the time. Is the knowledge of God that all men have, is it the knowledge of the triune

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God? In other words, they have the knowledge of the true God, but does the knowledge that they have, that all men have, is it the knowledge of God's triunity or is

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God's triunity an aspect of special revelation? Well, special revelation certainly makes it a lot more explicit, a lot more evident.

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But if you look at the special revelation, of course, for new listeners, is the designation for the

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Bible and other material that is sent to specific groups and individuals at first.

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It's mainly, it's the Bible now, although there are other things that God did that are not all recorded in the

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Bible. So you look at the Bible and it's a book. Well, it's a collection of books as well as a single book.

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It's a collection that's written over a period of at least a thousand years and I would say 1500 years or so, maybe even more.

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There are some very old parts. And the Trinitarian character of God is not revealed fully and explicitly until the

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New Testament. Now there are hints of it, there are shadows of it, there are elements that you can see in the

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Old Testament once you have the New Testament. But we have to understand that you can have a knowledge of God that's subject to development.

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Now that's with respect to special revelation, but it seems to me that there's every reason to believe that general revelation is the same way.

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That what is revealed is the true God, but that because we have sin in us that flees the truth, then we succeeded in twisting that material itself.

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And if we didn't twist it, there would be hints of the Trinitarian character of God. So would you say that the innate knowledge of God is innate knowledge of the true

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God, but our knowledge of the true God and our knowledge of his triune nature comes through a development?

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Yes. All right. But because there is both unity and plurality, even when we don't, within existence and in reality, our thought patterns are, they have to think in terms of those oneness and manyness categories.

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We have to assume a sort of oneness and manyness to even think, but we don't have an account of that until our theology develops through special revelation where God's triunity is revealed.

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Is that on the right track or am I a little off? I think that's right. And, you know, again, apologetics where we have a curiosity and an intellectual desire to understand things.

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And that's given to us by God, though it can be twisted. Yeah. But if you think about how

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God brought us into the world, we came in as babies and we learn a lot without reflecting explicitly on it.

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So our skill in language, for instance, our native tongue is almost all developed before we can rationally analyze it.

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We can look back and rationally analyze it. Well, it's a similar kind of thing with the knowledge of God that it's there before it's rationally explicit.

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All right. When we speak about the Trinity, there are these terms that usually pop up and they're used to differentiate different ways of understanding the nature of God and the functions of the persons within the

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Trinity. Why don't you unpack for people the difference between what we call the ontological Trinity and the economic

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Trinity? Right. There's only one Trinity. That's maybe the first. And then by the ontological

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Trinity, that's the label for who God is, even before he created the world.

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Now, when he created the world, he's still the same God. Right. So the ontological

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Trinity continues to be the ontological Trinity forever and ever. Okay. The economic

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Trinity is a way of labeling the fact that God shows himself in his

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Trinitarian, three persons, one God, in his works in the world, beginning with actually the creation of the world.

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Because if you look at the account in Genesis 1, it's rather remarkable that there's as many hints as there are, not only the one

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God, that we take that for granted sometimes. But in the ancient Near East, it couldn't be taken for granted because they believed in many gods in the surrounding cultures.

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And the Egyptians, for instance, had many gods. So you look at Genesis and the first thing that strikes you is

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God did the whole thing, the one God. But then it also strikes you that the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

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So there's some kind of suggestion of a differentiation between God just described as creating everything and God present as the spirit of God in an immediate way.

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Well, that differentiation actually comes to fuller understanding in the

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New Testament where we see that among the persons, the

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Holy Spirit is most immediately involved in dwelling in us. That's right.

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So he expresses the presence of God. Now, when the Holy Spirit is present in your heart, this

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Father and Son are also present. It's another element of the mystery. But the

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Holy Spirit is preeminently singled out as the one who accomplishes that.

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It's mysterious. Well, similarly with creation. So when I look back and say, well,

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God redeemed me by sending the Holy Spirit to be present in me. Well, he created the world by sending the

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Holy Spirit to be present in the world and exercising the will of God in power and immediate contact with the world.

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But there's another thing that happens in Genesis, namely that God creates things by speaking. And John 1 .1

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picks up on that and says, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, talking about the person that we describe as the second person of the

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Trinity or as Jesus Christ. Once he comes, you know, he takes on human nature and he becomes incarnate.

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And John, as the book of John continues, he expounds how that's so.

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But the background of that is that the one we know is Jesus Christ always existed with the father in the spirit and that he was the instrument, the one through whom the world was created by speaking.

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So, and if you think about it, to have a created order, you have to have a plan that's preeminently the father.

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You have to have an execution of the plan by commandment.

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That's through the son. And you have to have the contact between that commandment and the world that is receiving the commandment.

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And that is through the Holy Spirit. So some people have said,

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I mean, it's not likely to be accepted by anybody that isn't already a Trinitarian, that a purely

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Unitarian God can't do anything, can't create the world, because it takes this differentiation to do the work of creation.

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That's interesting. So this doctrine is, I mean, it's very, very important, I think, not just because it's an aspect of revelation, but it has huge, profound philosophical implications as to how we understand these things.

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And the topic of this episode, how the Trinity applies to everything, I would imagine that this idea of unity, diversity, and the interactions and the tasks that are accomplished between the persons are all related to the working out of God's plan.

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I think it's very, very fascinating. Yeah, they are. For the average person, I think, the way in which it could be immediately illustrated is by human fatherhood.

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Because some people think of, well, we call God Father, and that's kind of an extrapolation from our experience of human fathers and their care and their authority.

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But actually, it's the reverse. God always existed as Father, was always

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Father to the Son, forever and ever, before there ever was a world.

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And then when he created the world, he decided to create human beings who were made in the image of God.

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There's actually, if you look at the verse, I know you, Elias, know it, but I'm saying for our audience, if you look at Genesis 126,

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God says, let us make man in our image. There's been a lot of ink spilled over. What's the us?

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Because there's been one God. Ultimately, I think it's a consultation between the persons, but it takes a lot of work to make sure that that's really the implication.

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I was going to ask you about that verse. Do you think that that is a good verse?

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Because it's so much controversy over what that verse could mean or whatever. And people have spoken about the royal plural, where the royalty would speak of himself in third person.

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Do you think that's a good verse to use as a cumulative scriptural case for the plurality within the one

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God? Or do you think we should stay away from that verse if we're going to use it for a larger case for the

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Trinity? Yeah, that's a good question. It certainly would not be, what should

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I say, a primary verse that I would put most of my weight on. Once you have weighty verses that clearly teach the differentiation between the

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Father and the Son. For instance, in the Gospel of John, the Gospel of John is just full of this. And also an assertion of the full deity of the

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Son. Jesus says at one point before Abraham was, I am. And the I am being a reflection of the name of God revealed in Genesis 3.

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I mean, the Jews knew what was going on. And they said, you're blaspheming. Well, he was blaspheming if he wasn't actually the true

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God. So there's things like that. And then you say, and clearly then the

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Father and Son talk to one another in the Gospel of John. So there's definitely a distinction.

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Once you have those things, which you do by reading many verses to make sure you understand, because we can never comprehend it to the very bottom.

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So you want to make sure that you're doing justice to the entire witness of Scripture. Then you go back to Genesis 1 and you say, oh, wait, you know, isn't this an anticipation?

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So it would be that kind of order. And at least some of the people who deny it's there in Genesis do so because they don't fully understand,

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I think, the way in which God had purposed that there be a whole canon eventually. And that the earlier passages be interpreted in the light of the later ones.

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Yeah. So it's important to read the Old Testament really through Christological lens, in light of what

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Jesus has come, what we know about him with regards to the New Testament and seeing him in the old in light of that.

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Then when those verses like a Genesis 126 begin to make a little more sense. Right. There's two poles, really, or two things you have to do, or I should say we have to do.

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And one is exactly what you say, read the earlier in the light of the later, because God intended it so to be read, right?

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The revelation is progressive over time. But the second thing you do is you understand how wise it was for God not to say everything right away.

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So you can picture yourself standing with Adam and Eve or standing with the

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Israelites and Moses writing down Genesis 1. You picture yourself in that situation and say,

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God didn't actually reveal everything we now know. And there's a profound wisdom in the way in which

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God does it. And so we don't need to say, well, if the Israelites didn't already have an explicitly well worked out

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Doctrine of the Trinity, then it's a terrible failure on their part.

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And now God didn't expect them to have worked it out explicitly. He did expect them to depend on the fact that he was the creator and the providential ruler.

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And as I kind of tried to hint, underneath that is his

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Trinitarian work. And even in the Old Testament, whenever people are saved, you ask, how are people saved in the

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Old Testament? Well, there's only one way of salvation, namely Jesus Christ. That's right. How could people be saved in the

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Old Testament before Christ did come? Well, it's their benefits of the work of Christ are reckoned as it were backward.

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And there are types and shadows. There are pictures beforehand, like animal sacrifice, like the high priests.

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There are pictures beforehand anticipating the work of Christ so that people can latch onto that, can have faith in God and his promises, but not everything is worked out.

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So you have to have it to be saved. You have to have the father who's initiating your salvation. You have to have the son who is your substitute, symbolized by the animal sacrifice.

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And you have to have the Holy Spirit who is applying that to you personally. And without that, then people are just remain in unbelief.

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Okay. Fine. Interesting. Now, the doctrine of the Trinity has often been described as a developmental doctrine that developed over time, especially from critics of the

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Trinitarian position. They'll say, hey, you know, the doctrine of the Trinity was developed over time, and it wasn't really something from Scripture.

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It was kind of added on by later thinkers. So I guess the question here, and I guess this question would have apologetic import for some people, depending on their context.

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Is the doctrine of the Trinity a developmental doctrine? And if so, why isn't that a problem for the

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Trinitarian defending his position against those who think the Trinity was simply kind of a later development with no foundation in Scripture?

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Yes. It's a hard but important question, I think.

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And in one way, we answer one side of it when we observe that people were always dependent on God as a

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Trinitarian God to be saved. Okay. So in the sense of there's no development in who

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God is. He's always the same God. That's right. And whenever you meet him in the

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Old Testament, he is that Trinitarian God. So it's a matter of the rational explicitness with which that is worked out.

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And that takes time. And I believe then that the pattern of special revelation is completed with the completion of the

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New Testament canon. But then it takes the time still beyond that for the church to digest which are the genuine implications of that New Testament and Old Testament word of God.

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To work out the implications, they're still being worked out. Right. And so there can be a tension because people feel, well, there's nothing to work out because it's all been given in the

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Bible. Well, in a sense, that's right. But we have to apply it.

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Right. And the rational explicitness in the doctrine of the Trinity is basically working out explicitly and intellectually digesting what's already there in the

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Bible. If you doubt this there, you can look at, well, I have a short summary in my book,

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The Knowing and the Trinity, a short summary of the biblical teaching and the biblical basis for the doctrine.

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John Owen has a little longer summary in a book that I footnote.

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It's very simple in a way. You say there is only one God. Both the Old Testament and the

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New Testament testify to this. The famous Shema, hear,

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O Israel, the Lord our God is one. That's there and that's not the only passage.

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And what's surprising to some people is that the New Testament is no less vigorous in asserting the unity of God.

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James 2 .19 and there's passages in the Apostle Paul and Jesus' testimony and go on.

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So there is only one God. And then you also have verses in the Bible that show that the

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Father is God, that the Son is God, like John 1 .1, and that the

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Holy Spirit is God. And you also have verses that say the

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Father is not the Son and is not the Spirit because the Spirit is sent by the Father. The Son sends the

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Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father, that verse in John 15, where you have to have a distinction.

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Or you think of the baptism of Jesus where you have a voice from heaven. This is my beloved Son. Well, that's the voice of the

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Father. The Son is there, visible in his human nature, and the Holy Spirit dispenses the dove.

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But all this is incomprehensible. But in a sense, it's simple. You're saying all of those things are in the

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Bible. They're unavoidably in the Bible. But it just took time for the church to realize we have to confuse all kinds of mistaken ideas by people who try to get on top and master the whole thing.

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If you've mastered the doctrine of the Trinity, and so there's no more mystery, then you are a heretic.

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You haven't got the actual doctrine of the Trinity, but you've got something else.

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And that's what happened in the first few centuries. So you could see that, in a sense, what's worked out there is what we have to say in order to guard against all these deviant views.

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But the true view was already there in the Bible. It's set there, and it's not that hard to see that there are verses that assert all the things that I've mentioned.

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So two points of summary. So basically, if someone thinks that they have comprehended the incomprehensible

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God, there's an issue. Okay? Exactly. That's right. But at the same time, saying that God is incomprehensible does not mean that he's unknowable, because there are aspects of him that he has revealed such that we can know those aspects of who he is.

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Number two, let me see if I can summarize. So basically, the doctrine of the Trinity is a developmental doctrine only in the sense that while it is taught in Scripture, the church throughout time developed the language with which to talk about the

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Trinity in a meaningful way and within the context of responding to many of those other views out there that were not grounded in Scripture.

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Would I be correct there? Right. But one of the things that happens when the church develops some, it's not very much, but it's some new vocabulary.

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Sure. Of essence and person, for example. One of the things that happens is that the people who don't refuse to accept this doctrine say, well, those words are not in the

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Bible. Right. So that's why John Owen comes along and it's this small discourse on the doctrine of the

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Trinity. And he does the doctrine without any of the vocabulary, just Bible vocabulary.

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He puts it all out there. It's simply the extra vocabulary is what you use to summarize the thing, to compress it.

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Right. But I think Owen was wise because in his day, the Trinity was being attacked and it was being attacked and saying it's got this extra vocabulary that we don't find in the

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Bible. And so Owen didn't object to that vocabulary as a summary. But he said, look, that isn't the issue.

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The issue is the Bible's teaching. It just goes directly to the Bible. That's right.

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It does. It does no good to say that. Well, the word Trinity doesn't appear in the Bible. You've got a point. The word monotheism doesn't appear in the

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Bible yet. It's whether the concept itself is taught in there. I think that's very important. Now, my next question is, just give me one second.

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My next question. Let me just fix this real quick. I'll explain what

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I'm doing when I get that done. I put the air conditioning on in my office.

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It's hot in here. Well, Elias, you made me think of one more thing to stress the difference between incomprehensibility and knowability.

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Right. Because you can go off the edge in terms of thinking you have mastered God. You deny his incomprehensibility.

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You put yourself, in effect, on the level of the creator instead of the level of the creature. But the other problem, which is just as bad in its own way, is you deny that God can be known.

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And it's actually very central to the proclamation of the

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Bible that you can know God and know him truly. John 17 .3

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is really important where Jesus says, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true

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God. See, there's the oneness of God. And Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

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So he hangs the issue of eternal life on whether you can know

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God. You can know the Father in particular. Right. But you know him through Jesus Christ, whom he has sent.

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So you can see you've got the beginnings of the doctrine of the Trinity right there in that proclamation.

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But it's a proclamation about you can know, you actually know the true

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God. That's a very strong affirmation as over against some of the errors that have actually been made in the course of church history, where people get into a thing where they think they're honoring

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God by saying, well, he's so far away that nobody can really make a true statement about him.

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That's just not true. It's God himself, of course, who has communicated to us in the

36:13

Bible. And he assures us you can know me, know me through Jesus Christ, whom

36:20

I have sent. I've heard a lot of people say something to that effect that, you know, God is so beyond us that even if he did exist, you couldn't know anything about him.

36:30

And so you'll even have agnostic, some form of agnostic say something like that. And I think I don't know if it was

36:36

Greg Bonson or someone I was listening to had a nice, interesting response to that. That if God existed, we couldn't know anything about him.

36:45

How do you know that about him? Namely, that if this God existed, he's the kind of God that either is not known or cannot reveal himself such that he can be known.

36:55

So even to say that we can't know anything about God is to actually say something about him, which I think is important.

37:01

So there's that apologetic application. But at the same time, that existential personal thing from a

37:07

Christian perspective, we never want to hold the position which will cut the thread, so to speak, of our communication with a personal

37:13

God whom we're supposed to be in relationship with. I think it's a very important element there. My next question is a little more philosophical, but then we're going to back it.

37:23

We're going to do a U -turn and get back into the doctrine of the Trinity as to how it relates to some of these other areas that you've written on.

37:31

So we're going to try to tie in a philosophical question and then tie it into how it relates to other areas that you are hopefully, hopefully, will be very familiar with, which

37:42

I'm sure you will be. All right. Can you explain for us what is, in summary, what is the philosophical one and the many problem in philosophy?

37:54

And how does the doctrine of the Trinity solve this philosophical conundrum?

38:00

And then you can break the question. And then the next part is going to be, what is the apologetic value in solving this philosophical puzzle?

38:11

Okay, so what is the problem of the one and the many? How does the Trinity solve it? And what is the apologetical value in that the

38:18

Trinity solves it? Yes, well, Elias, you know that what

38:27

I'm going to say here I owe to Cornelius Van Til, who was the one who worked this out, who was zealous for an apologetics that took into account who

38:39

God is as Trinity. Sure. But let me try to put it. So in a sense,

38:45

I can say Van Til did it better than I can do it. But I can do it my own words by saying that the

38:53

Greek philosophers and actually Chinese philosophical culture as well.

39:01

And you can see it in Indian culture. But the Greek philosophers struggled with how you brought together the fact of individual dogs like Fido, let's say.

39:16

And the species of dog. Or we might say dogginess, right?

39:25

The abstract idea of a dog. Okay. But the Greek philosophers got off on the wrong foot because they were skeptical of the many gods of the

39:38

Greek pantheon, and rightly so. But they didn't turn to the one true

39:43

God. They turned to human rationality as if it were virtually divine.

39:49

So they tried to work out without God, how can you explain the unity and the diversity of the world?

39:56

If you start only with an ultimate diversity, like the atomists, the

40:03

Greeks, some of the Greeks said everything is made up of atoms. Right.

40:09

So you have all these atoms and they're all diverse from one another. But how do you build anything with any unity?

40:16

And how come it is that we can see the unity of the species of dog?

40:22

Is it just an accident? Right. Is it just a perception that is in the end an illusion?

40:29

So you can see you can't, if you start with ultimate diversity, you can't give an explanation for why there should ever be, in addition, some kind of unity.

40:41

Right. Atomism is an extreme form of it. And then there's nominalism in medieval form. You can trace it into modern times.

40:50

And then the opposite view was to start with a unity. Now, Plato was very much in favor of that.

40:56

He started with the form of the good. That was the most ultimate form.

41:02

It was an abstract concept, but it could be accessed by human reason, supposedly.

41:07

So if you had a proper concept and then there were other forms, but each of them was a general thing, was a universal form.

41:16

Right. So every instance of goodness was an instance of this more ultimate form.

41:22

And every instance of a dog like Fido was an embodiment, a kind of materialization of the form of the dog.

41:33

But if you have the ultimacy of the one, how do you ever get diversity? And the way

41:39

Plato got it was to say that every dog is only imperfectly an embodiment of the form.

41:46

But there's the awkwardness in that. Well, where do the imperfections come from? Right. That's another diversity.

41:53

You're just labeling diversity by saying it's due to another diversity. So the

41:58

Greek philosophers wrestled with this. And even modern philosophical materialism wrestles with it because they start with the ultimacy of matter.

42:08

And that's really diverse. They have no way of drawing it together except by having the generality of law.

42:17

Well, law actually comes from God, I believe. I tried to work that out in the Redeeming Science book.

42:23

If you don't have that, you don't really have any explanation for why there's any unity.

42:29

And some of the people saw that as a problem, but they never reached out to the true

42:37

God. So Cornelius Van Til said, God must be the ultimate origin of everything, not only of the unity of the one world.

42:47

And it is a marvelous unity when you think about how things function together and things function in regular ways.

42:54

And the diversity. And it affects politics, too, because politics tends to oscillate between making the group the ultimate.

43:04

The will of the people in the French Revolution became a terrible, tyrannical thing. And it's working out, although it was sincere at the starting point.

43:14

So the corporate will is the main thing, and you have to conform. And we can see things in the

43:20

United States that are, you know, in current politics that are that way.

43:25

And the opposite extreme is the stream of the individual. Only the individual counts. Only individual rights come.

43:31

But it tends to anarchy. Yeah, this book here, you made me think when you talk about politics, the one in the many by Rush Dooney.

43:40

I think he goes into that. I think it's very, very. I mean, I would encourage people to get this book, but I'm not sure if you could find it anywhere.

43:47

I kind of was blessed to have a friend who's an old OPC pastor, was getting rid of books.

43:54

And I was like, I'll take that one, you know. But this one's a really good one that talks about the one in the many. If you can get your hands on it, it goes into what you were just talking about with the one in the many.

44:05

In practical terms, God created us all as members of the one race, the human race.

44:14

That gives us a deep, deep commonality that ought to be the source of cooperation, of loving one another, and so on.

44:23

At the same time, he made us diverse. There's no two individuals, even identical twins are ultimately not identical.

44:34

And so there needs to be respect for people who don't fit in.

44:40

And you can see how politics, the temptation is to oscillate between the two extremes.

44:46

Either force everybody into conformity with somebody's ideal in order to have unity, in order to have harmony.

44:55

Or else let the whole thing disintegrate into fighting groups. But, you know, the thing can be put apologetically at an even more basic level.

45:06

I mean, because the United States is in some turmoil currently, you think of it politically.

45:12

But I think there are issues that are more ultimate even than politics. Namely, what is your relationship to God?

45:20

And there, I think you can point to the fact that when you say

45:25

Fido is a dog. Or when you say this food is good.

45:33

You're dealing with the one in the many. Saying something with meaning like that is only possible because you have particular things.

45:42

This dog, Fido, and this food. And you also have general categories.

45:48

Good. This food is good, right? There's other foods. There's other examples of things that are good.

45:55

And likewise, this Fido is a dog. There's other dogs. Dog is a universal category.

46:00

That's the one. And Fido is, of course, one of many particular dogs.

46:07

So how does that work? How does language work? And I believe predication, which is essentially what we're doing there.

46:15

This food is good. We're ascribing some property to the food, some universal property. It depends on the

46:21

Trinity. You can't get to first base with meaning except by dependence on the

46:29

Trinity. That's a presupposition kind of thing. It's saying you must presuppose not only that there's unity and diversity, but those fit together in a harmonious way in order to do the most elementary predication.

46:45

And that's one thing that Van Til, I think, saw. But it also affects the view we take of logic.

46:53

Because the logic already starts out with the assumption, before you get involved in your very first argument, you have to have this unity and diversity in order to talk, in order to think.

47:07

So talking or even predicating, like the barn is red, you're predicating redness of the barn.

47:14

That already presupposes oneness and manyness categories of which the

47:20

Trinity provides for us within a worldview perspective, a kind of metaphysical context in which that unity and diversity are grounded without one engulfing the other.

47:30

Like you either come on the atomistic, particularistic, individual things being primary or the unifying things being primary.

47:39

Unity and plurality are equally ultimate in God. And so he provides that context out of which something like even language has to presuppose to even be coherent.

47:50

That's so profound. And I think for those who are into presuppositional apologetics, it's probably not best to argue along one and the many categories right away because most people won't know what you're talking about.

48:03

But at a deeper level, sometimes you'll be surprised, Dr. Poitras, how often these issues come up within online interactions, people who are engaged in debate and things like that where they're getting to the foundations of worldviews.

48:18

This issue of the one and the many, when it comes up, I think a lot of Christians don't really see the connection. And so when they'll say something, the skeptic will say, well, why does it have to be the

48:27

Christian God? That's the precondition for intelligibility. And I think that would be to know a little bit about the one and the many and how it's solved by the

48:34

Trinity, I think is another kind of tool in the apologist's belt, so to speak, to kind of speak into that situation.

48:41

So I think it's a very important issue. Yeah, I agree. But one of the things about Van Til is that he wouldn't let go of the emphasis that everybody you meet is a real person, not just a syllogism machine.

49:01

Sure. And that real people live in God's world. And so they're guilty and they're constantly depending on God, but they're not giving him thanks.

49:13

Van Til has this little pamphlet, Why I Believe in God, which for many people, if they read it, they may find it disappointing because they're expecting something profound.

49:22

And Van Til goes into his own personal story, but he has an illustration in there of saying we can debate back and forth.

49:32

He's setting up with a debate partner with a non -Christian. We can debate back and forth whether air exists.

49:43

But he says all the time we're using air. But it's making,

49:49

I think, a personal point of saying you're actually continuously relying on God.

49:56

That's right. And you ought to be giving him thanks. I met a pastor who'd stumbled on presuppositional apologetics of the

50:05

Van Tilian kind. It's so pastoral. And I thought he got it.

50:11

He understood he could approach people in terms of their sinfulness, in terms of their rebellion, almost right away, because they're manifesting it day by day.

50:23

I have another friend who used to get in discussions. It was a woman who was moved in intellectual circles, in philosophical circles.

50:35

And she would be talking to one of these high -powered intellectuals about, you know, what are you doing in philosophy or in biology, whatever.

50:43

She would listen. Then she'd say, that's so exciting. It's so wonderful that God has given you the ability and the training to do all.

50:53

That sort of blows people away because they thought, no, he didn't. I'm just doing it myself. But she's praising them.

51:00

And at the same time, she's saying, look, you know, this is amazing. It's so amazing. It traces back to God.

51:08

So it's a way of calling people to remember, look, we're not just in a debate.

51:16

Actually, underneath, we're people. And we're relying on God continuously, but we don't want to admit it.

51:25

Yeah, and I think it's important for my listeners to understand, a lot of people who are involved in online interactions, the average online atheist, for example, is not going to be the average person you meet on the street.

51:39

And so a lot of the stuff that we – I kind of think of apologetics as like kind of an iceberg submerged into water where just the tip is pointing out.

51:46

Most people you're going to meet are at that tip level. And when you dip your head underwater, there's this larger foundation that you're able to avail yourself of.

51:55

But for the most part, in your normal interactions, you're not going to go that deep. But as 1 Peter 3 .15 says, we need to always be ready.

52:02

I think one good verse in the Bible that summarizes presuppositional apologetics, for me, a lot of people like to use 1

52:08

Peter 3 .15. But I actually like Psalm 36 .9, where it says, in his light we see light.

52:15

For me, I think that's presuppositionalism in a nutshell. It's only in the light of God's revelation do we even have light at all.

52:23

And to see the Trinity in everything, to see how everything relies upon God, I think is an awesome thing, number one, relationally, because it brings worship out of us when we see these awesome connections.

52:35

And at the same time, it gives us a powerful apologetic when we start pointing these out to the unbeliever.

52:40

I think it was Scott Oliphant who defined apologetics in a way I really appreciated. He said, apologetics is

52:47

Christian theology applied to unbelief. And I just love that. I don't know if he came up with that definition, but I thought it was really cool that we take

52:54

Christian truth, Christian revelation, and we apply it. Just as we apply it to everything else, we apply it to that specific area.

53:01

And we see the power and the glory of God in everything that we apply. And I think it's cool to see those connections.

53:08

All right. My next question is, well, I'm going to skip one question because you kind of explained this issue of language.

53:16

I was going to ask, how does language relate to the Trinity? But you kind of moved into that beforehand. And so I'm going to let that stand on its own and move on to the area of science.

53:25

Okay. Science is typically understood as a method of investigating the natural world, and it sometimes is pitted against a

53:32

Christian understanding of the world. And so here's my question. Why is it not the case that science and the

53:39

Christian worldview are at odds? And how does the Trinity relate to science so folks can see not only that there is no conflict, but that the

53:48

Trinitarian worldview undergirds the very scientific enterprise itself? Right.

53:54

And I could repeat the question if that was a lot. That's okay. Sure. Psalm 33, verse 6, says,

54:06

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.

54:16

It's God's word that's the real law governing the world.

54:23

And that really helped me to reconfigure my vision for science because the scientist is doing the best he can to explore that word of God that's governing the world.

54:39

Even if he doesn't overtly acknowledge certain God, that's what he's after.

54:45

And I worked that out a little more in the book, Redeeming Science. But it means that there's a very close relationship between science and God and also science and worship.

54:59

Right. And if our eyes are opened by the

55:04

Holy Spirit, we begin to see marvel after marvel of how

55:09

God made the world. Eugene Wigner was a Nobel Prize winner in physics because of his work on quantum mechanics.

55:19

It was really good work. I've seen a bit of it. And he wrote an article on what he called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in science, but particularly in physics in his area.

55:36

And sometimes you use mathematics, you create a model that you adjust and you adjust until you get it to match the data.

55:45

That didn't happen in the development of quantum mechanics. There was just this beautiful mathematics that matched perfectly what was going on in the physical world.

55:56

And Eugene Wigner said, why? Why is this so? And why is there regularity at all?

56:04

Right. Rather than pure chaos. And he said, I don't have an answer. It's a mystery.

56:10

Well, I have the answer. It wasn't invented by me, but it's

56:15

Psalm 33, verse 6. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made. It is the Lord who put the world together with all this beauty and all this regularity and all this harmony between, let's say, the mathematics.

56:28

There's a lot of advanced pure mathematics that goes into quantum mechanics. And you might say also the special general theory of relativity.

56:42

There's this wonder of the world of pure mathematics. And there's the wonder of the physical world.

56:48

And there's harmony between them. And it's an uncanny harmony. It's just very, very deep, especially in fundamental physics.

56:57

So I understand a little bit now. Fundamental physics is challenging science for many people.

57:05

You're not a specialist in it. But I understand the feeling of Eugene Wigner. And at the same time,

57:11

I said, it's because of God. And so there is this deep harmony between God as he's revealed in the

57:20

Bible in a personal way and the way God creates harmony between the world itself and the word governing the world.

57:29

Now, if you want the Trinity specifically, of course, the word that governs the world is a reflection of the second person, the

57:36

Trinity, as the word. So we've already got two persons. But actually, all science needs not two but three things.

57:46

One, it needs a law. It needs the regularity. It needs the norm, to use

57:53

John Frame's term, the controlling factor governing the world.

57:59

Second, it needs a world that the law controls. You've just got mathematics, abstract mathematics.

58:08

It doesn't do anything. John Lennox said two plus two is equal to four, but that doesn't put money in my bank account.

58:15

So the mathematics doesn't of itself create the world. You have to have a world. That's the second thing.

58:22

And that's what John Frame would call situational. There's a world out there and there's facts about the world.

58:31

And the third factor is there have to be people. There have to be scientists.

58:38

There have to be people whose minds are crafted in such a way that they are intrinsically in tune, both with the world.

58:51

Now, the evolutionists would say that's not so hard. Well, it's hard to have a mind at all if you're materialist.

58:58

Minds are not material. But not only must be in tune there, but in tune with the law.

59:06

And that's, again, what floored Eugene Wigner. The fact that he, as a human being, was able to do this advanced mathematics, which has nothing to do with survival, minimal, right?

59:22

He was able to do this in a way that was in tune with the actual laws of the world.

59:28

Why? Because we're made in the image of God. And the early scientists in the scientific revolution from roughly the 15th century on, they all had a

59:42

Christian worldview. Even if some of them are maybe not deeply practicing

59:47

Christians. But they all assumed that there was hope for understanding how

59:54

God ruled the world because the mind of man was made in tune, intrinsically in tune with the mind of God.

01:00:02

So you have to have all three of those. The first of them, the norm, is more closely an expression of the father because it's the father's plan.

01:00:10

The second one, the situation, is more preeminently an expression of the son who comes then as the word and governs the world.

01:00:21

And the third is us. And that's the Holy Spirit who is the one who indwells

01:00:29

Christian believers to enable them to understand the purposes of God.

01:00:35

So actually, you've got the Trinitarian character of God that has to be at work in order to do science.

01:00:42

Right. Now, would that apply also to mathematics? I mean, I'm thinking in terms of mathematics presupposes logic.

01:00:51

Logic must presuppose one in the many categories, even to predicate. Is that kind of the same way that math relies on the

01:01:00

Trinity? And is the Christian committed to a sort of mathematical realism position of which the

01:01:09

Trinity is the foundation? I mean, how does that work? What is mathematics? Number one. Number two, how do you relate to that?

01:01:15

If I could just summarize it. Well, one of the philosophical positions for mathematics and logic both is

01:01:21

Platonism, which starts with abstract concepts. Augustine changed that.

01:01:29

He was a Platonist before he was a Christian, but he changed it. He realized that there had to be concepts in the mind of God rather than independent abstracts.

01:01:38

Right. But I think he needed to go a little further in the direction of Trinitarian.

01:01:45

OK. And that means that actually in the world, mathematics is not purely an abstract, but is related to two apples plus two apples equals four apples.

01:01:58

In other words, there's a world to which it applies. Right. And there's us with our minds.

01:02:04

So you get the three, right? You get the norm, which is what we think of as mathematics. But the norm means nothing unless that is to us, unless we can process it with our minds.

01:02:15

And unless we as creatures of the earth can see it at work illustrative in the two apples and two apples.

01:02:24

And the same goes for logic. Logic was codified by Aristotle.

01:02:30

It was codified from arguments that took place in language. Right. Arguments about politics, arguments about the nature of things.

01:02:39

Right. So. So actually, that involved interaction with the world and trying to understand how the world had a logical order to it.

01:02:48

So, again, you get those three. And and the tendency of non -Christians is to say we somehow have to reduce it to one.

01:03:00

Because otherwise we can't explain how it ever got going. So Platonism is a way of starting with the one, the abstract as the more ultimate.

01:03:12

And then somehow it gets applied to the world, although that's not that's a problem.

01:03:18

And somehow it gets applied to the mind of of human beings. So but but you see, if you're if you're a

01:03:26

Christian, you don't need to do that. You say God made the world. It's God's word that governs the world.

01:03:32

And God made us in his image. All three are, as it were, equally ultimate in terms of of where you start.

01:03:41

Now, would you say what Plato lacked among many things? Well, Plato was onto something very interesting, positing an ideal realm and giving meaning to the particulars and stuff.

01:03:52

Would you say that one of the problems with Plato is that he lacked a revelatory medium by which man could know about the universal realm, the realm of ideals, that there's kind of that gap of revelation to give us access to that realm?

01:04:08

Yes, in a sense. In a sense, of course, he had it because he couldn't escape general revelation.

01:04:14

That's right. But he twisted it. And he did have a substitute for what we think of as a revelation, namely the pre -existence of the soul.

01:04:23

So he thought that when you found out new truths in this world, it was because you remembered them from your pre -existent self.

01:04:32

Well, what that does is put man in the place of God. So you have to be eternal yourself in order to have knowledge.

01:04:40

So that shows up the problem. And it's related, I think, to the deeper issue of is knowledge a one -level system or a two -level system?

01:04:52

By that I mean, is God the ultimate knower? And that's a different level, more ultimate level.

01:05:00

You might say the level of the archetype, the original. And then there is the knowledge which we have as finite human beings.

01:05:09

If you have those two levels, you can explain how knowledge can be true without being infinite.

01:05:17

But Plato, you had to know everything from the beginning, right?

01:05:25

Eternally, you had to know everything. You had to be God in order to get the thing going.

01:05:33

And I laugh a little, and it's not as if Plato wasn't very smart and very sophisticated.

01:05:40

But in spite of that, he did not submit to the one true

01:05:46

God, and so he had to make himself divine. That's interesting.

01:05:54

So, in other words, man had knowledge on Plato's view of the ideals, but they had to carry that.

01:06:02

They had to remember that knowledge from past lives. And does this go on forever on Plato?

01:06:09

Yeah, because the soul is immortal. The soul existed infinitely in the past.

01:06:14

And so knowledge is not a problem. You just have it, right? You have it as your infinitely existing self.

01:06:21

And then you can see how this, though Plato didn't believe in the soul as identical with God, yet there are certain features of this pre -existent soul, that it's immortal and eternal existing, that really could be properly ascribed only to God.

01:06:41

You can see with New Age theology a different form of the same thing, where now it's from Eastern mysticism, your inmost self is

01:06:49

God if you only knew it. But it's very different on the surface, but in the end, it's still what

01:06:56

Peter Jones calls one -ism. Peter Jones invented the terms two -ism and one -ism.

01:07:02

Two -ism is there's two levels of knowledge, and there's two levels of existence, namely God and you. And one -ism is

01:07:10

Plato. You start with the forms. Although once you've got that, how do you get the diversity?

01:07:16

In the New Age, you start with your own divine self. It all is one. Very, very interesting.

01:07:25

Now, I have one more question for you. And if it's all right, it's completely up to you. I always open up to the guest to decide.

01:07:32

But there are some questions coming in from the live audience. And so if that's

01:07:37

OK with you, maybe we can take a few of them. And if you don't like a question or you're not sure, just be like,

01:07:43

I don't know, and we'll just move on quickly. If that's OK with you, we'll do it. If not, we'll wrap it up. It is

01:07:48

OK, but I hope our audience has understood that I am finite.

01:07:56

Oh, yes. So I may say I don't know.

01:08:02

That's fine. No worries. We've had many people come on who were just like, hey, if I don't know it, we'll just I'll just say

01:08:10

I don't know that. By the way, I always highlight because we focus a lot on apologetics. I think one of one of one of the most useful apologetic tools is having humility and saying,

01:08:21

I don't know the answer to that question. So, you know, consider that just a reinforcement of that apologetical usefulness of admitting our own ignorance.

01:08:29

So no worries there. But here's my last question. Upon historical reflection,

01:08:36

I think it's interesting that universities developed in the Christian West. And we have a very interesting idea within the very concept of university, this idea of unity and diversity and the bringing of these things together in a unified worldview.

01:08:50

All of the different unique fields of learning, all of these things have developed in the

01:08:56

Christian West. Now, when universities were developed and perhaps maybe you can speak to this, maybe maybe you can't.

01:09:03

Was the Christian understanding of the Trinity a factor when developing the concept of universities in Western civilization?

01:09:14

Was there a conscious effort to see the importance of unity and diversity because of the kind of God that Christians worship?

01:09:22

Was there a necessary connection there, you think? I don't know. OK, no worries.

01:09:30

We all say, however, you know, it's this whole thing of there's always a background of what

01:09:37

Michael Polanyi calls tacit knowledge. There's always things that you intuitively know about that you haven't rationally brought to full consciousness.

01:09:49

And the development of the university faced the fact that there was medical knowledge and astronomical knowledge and knowledge of grammar and knowledge of theology and that they were diverse.

01:10:08

Well, they were diverse because the mind of God has an intrinsic diversity in it that reflects the persons of the

01:10:16

Trinity. And that has been reflected at the level of human knowledge. So that's why, you know, without explicitly appealing to the

01:10:27

Trinity, there was a logic in the way that the curriculum was developed.

01:10:34

I do think, however, when you attempt to do things by a two -sphere approach, the medieval world was partly affected by the idea there is the sphere of reason and there's a sphere of revelation, as if reason weren't itself a manifestation of revelation.

01:10:54

So you try to work out certain things by reason independent of revelation. Then you try to work out other things, namely in theology, by attention to special revelation.

01:11:05

When you do that, the temptation enters in to try to make each discipline a self -standing discipline.

01:11:15

Right. That is independent so that you can master it. And what happens then is that in the long run, it disintegrates into specializations and the unity tends to get lost.

01:11:32

But in fact, I think, you know, the disciplines, despite the way they're taught, they're interdependent.

01:11:40

Okay. All right. That's it. It's a good answer. And no worries.

01:11:46

You know, that's just even the questions that will pop up here. We'll do just a few of them. You may or may not be familiar.

01:11:51

Sometimes people ask questions to, you know, what we discussed, but I'm sure you'll be fine with that.

01:11:57

And here's a here's a comment. Daniel says, you have to stop doing these great live streams just before my

01:12:02

Hebrew lesson. Sorry, Daniel. I don't know your schedule. Okay. Let's let's get to the questions here.

01:12:10

Someone's asking a theological question here. I don't understand how the doctrine of divine simplicity and the Trinity work.

01:12:17

Are you familiar with the doctrine of simplicity and of course, how the Trinity relates to that?

01:12:25

Well, I'm tempted to say, read my book, which is coming out.

01:12:30

It's called The Mystery of the Trinity. Okay. Trinitarian approach to the attributes of God, Presbyterian reform.

01:12:37

But because I do discuss this very thing. And the doctrine of simplicity.

01:12:46

The trouble is that it's been understood in more than one way. It can be understood if you approach it from a purely philosophical start.

01:12:55

Starting point. We try to reason out what a must a most perfect being looks like.

01:13:01

There's a danger that you come up with something that is a monad, that it's pure unity and no diversity because that you can master.

01:13:10

You see, it's this whole same issue, isn't it? But there's a passage in Augustine in his book on the

01:13:21

Trinity. And I believe it's in book six.

01:13:28

Boy, maybe it's four, four, six. Where he talks about the simplicity of God in the very context of the

01:13:37

Trinity. And what he says is basically that the son is fully

01:13:45

God. Because if the simplicity of God implies that there's any attribute of God, it goes together with all of them.

01:13:55

So that you can't have a son who is omnipotent and who is the creator of the world.

01:14:01

And who isn't fully God, who lacks some of the other attributes of God. So the interesting thing about that argument.

01:14:07

Now, it's a rather philosophical argument in a sense. But it appeals to the doctrine of simplicity.

01:14:14

And simplicity meaning that the attributes of God are not separable. Simple is the opposite of composite, right?

01:14:20

Of separability. You cut an apple in two and you got two parts. Can't cut God in two. Can't cut his attributes in two.

01:14:27

So that one person would be omnipotent and the other person would be omniscient. And there would be no overlap.

01:14:35

That's a false view of God. So Augustine actually used his version of simplicity to affirm the deity of the son and of the spirit.

01:14:48

But that's in the context where he talks about a simple multiplicity and a multiple simplicity.

01:14:55

So he sees that you've got to make room for the fact that there's a mysterious diversity as well as the unity in God.

01:15:04

All right. Thank you for that. This next question is more of an apologetics mixed with a

01:15:10

Calvinism question. What should be the role of philosophical arguments in Christian debate?

01:15:16

Seeming that people only come to God through his irresistible grace. And so as to keep focus on the scriptures.

01:15:23

Yes. Well, it may help you to think about the book of Acts.

01:15:32

Because Acts is a demonstration. The preaching in Acts is a demonstration of that.

01:15:38

And people believed that the Lord had to open people's hearts. Lydia was a worshiper of God.

01:15:46

And the Lord, it says in Acts 16, I believe it is. The Lord opened her heart to give heed to what was said by Paul.

01:15:55

So that I would affirm what Mr. Hull is observing about.

01:16:03

God has to work in his grace to open people's hearts. But what did she hear when

01:16:09

God opened her heart? She heard the apostle Paul. And if you look at his sermons, there's plenty of argumentation in them.

01:16:19

So the Holy Spirit is the author of logic along with the father and the son.

01:16:26

He's the author of rationality. He created our minds. So it's the

01:16:32

Holy Spirit that works internally in the apparatus of our minds. And actually the fact of the gospel is to make you more rational than you ever were.

01:16:43

Because it leads you into communion with the rationality of God. So you can say, yeah, use all the arguments you can.

01:16:54

Don't compromise by pretending that there is no suppression of the truth.

01:17:02

On the part of the unbeliever is somebody neutral. Don't compromise by pretending you're neutral.

01:17:09

You're not. If you're a Christian believer, you're all in. People who are toying with Christianity are not yet Christians.

01:17:16

They may be, as I say, toying with it. They may be thinking about it. They may be trying to negotiate with God.

01:17:23

But unless you're all in, you sacrifice everything Jesus invites people. That you can be a disciple of Jesus only if you've given up everything.

01:17:37

That's not because it's giving up the thing that saves you. It's because you have to rely on Jesus.

01:17:45

And so you're all in. And you might as well admit it because people have to, they should realize, they should reckon the cost.

01:17:52

I'm thinking of Luke 14 where Jesus says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, it's that passage.

01:17:59

And even in his own life, he says, if you don't hate those things, you can't be my disciple.

01:18:06

So if you're talking to a non -Christian, it's not only arguments. It's also, it's the issue of personal commitment.

01:18:15

So you have to be clear that you're an example of a

01:18:24

Christian that you're all in to following Jesus. There is no reserve left.

01:18:32

There is no secret compartment in your soul where you're going to explore other intellectual paths.

01:18:45

Now you may have to read some bad things, but your reason why you read them is in order to redeem from them any fragment of truth.

01:18:55

And also then to be further equipped to talk with people who are trapped in counterfeits and in lies.

01:19:05

You don't do it because you're secretly toying with going away. And if you have genuine doubts, then you don't conceal those from God either.

01:19:14

I'm not saying you just sort of bury them, but you cry out to God as some of the psalmists do.

01:19:19

And you express your doubts to God and maybe try to find somebody else to talk to who can give you counsel and can pray with you.

01:19:28

But it's a spiritual battle where your own loyalty to Christ is part of the equation.

01:19:34

And unbelievers need to know that. They need to know this is not just a fun debate where we can go on forever doing pro and con and seeing who wins the arguments and so on.

01:19:48

No, your eternal soul is at stake. And the only way to be saved is if you humble yourself.

01:19:56

And you're all, as I put it, all in, that you acknowledge your follower of Christ.

01:20:04

So actually that's near to the heart of what Van Til's version of presuppositionalism is about.

01:20:11

It's about that there is no real neutrality. There are people who are for Christ and there are people who are against him.

01:20:17

And there's no middle ground. They all live in God's world. So you can talk to them.

01:20:23

You can love them. You can pray for them. And you'll be decent and give them rational arguments.

01:20:32

And those arguments, there are many, many of them. So in a sense, you can start anywhere.

01:20:39

You can choose anything. You can start with the resurrection of Christ. That's what happens at Acts. You're going to sound like an evidentialist.

01:20:47

But the resurrection makes sense because it's according to the Scriptures. There's a framework.

01:20:53

The resurrection doesn't make sense if there is no God who has sent Christ to redeem us. So it's in a context.

01:21:00

It's in a framework. But it's a very powerful evidence. And so, you know, you start there.

01:21:09

And if people are persuaded by the Holy Spirit, you're praying for them, right? Then well and good.

01:21:14

If they raise objections like they did at Athens, remember the Areopagus speech, right?

01:21:22

Well, then maybe they're done with you and they don't want to talk anymore, right?

01:21:29

But if they do, are willing to talk anymore, then you can raise basic assumptions of, you know, how much are you just floating along with the rest of your culture?

01:21:40

And the Bible says that basically we all enter the world in darkness and the cultures are in darkness until God's light dawns.

01:21:47

You can't assume. That's one of Vantel's points. We don't believe that the mind of man is normal right now.

01:21:54

We don't believe that the cultures of the world are normal. And so that's one of the questions to raise.

01:22:03

And one of the easiest things I'm taking maybe, Elias, you probably talked about this a number of times.

01:22:10

One of the easiest areas is morality. It's very hard to have a source of transcendent morality if you don't have a personal

01:22:16

God. That's right. And many people are deeply concerned, right? So now we have these political tensions in the

01:22:25

United States. They're deeply concerned for justice. They're deeply concerned for the rights of human beings.

01:22:33

If you're a philosophical materialist, it's all nonsense. I had

01:22:39

Adams in motion. Yeah. The reigning philosophy in the West is philosophical materialism.

01:22:45

It can't support any of that. And I think I think that's very interesting, too, especially in light of a lot of the protests.

01:22:54

And, you know, take, for example, the Black Lives Matter protest. It's very interesting that on the one hand, people will say, you know,

01:23:02

Black Lives Matter, all lives matter. But from a worldview perspective, they hold to a worldview in which no lives matter.

01:23:08

It's just we're just evolutionary accidents. And I think those are good examples of people kind of being contradictory.

01:23:15

They want to hold to these values, which we would agree. Like, yes, let's fight for those things. But at the same time, their broader worldview, they don't want to look at those foundational issues.

01:23:25

They want to fight for the here and the now. These are my principles and not actually look at the foundations that are under that so as to be consistent.

01:23:32

And so I think that's a very important thing to point out when we're doing apologetics or we're having discussions with people, is to bring people back to those foundations and show, hey, there's an inconsistency there.

01:23:42

Why is that the case? Why do you see value in human life, yet your broader worldview says there is no objective value?

01:23:49

Why do you appeal to issues of morality when your broader worldview says there are no objective morals?

01:23:55

I think that's a very important thing to keep in mind when we think within a worldview context. Here's the next question someone's asking.

01:24:02

I think it's a good one here. Did ancient Hebrew use a royal we as in, you know, let us make man in our image?

01:24:10

This kind of third person plural. What do you think? Well, in Jonah, I think it's chapter three.

01:24:21

Okay. Where Jonah is preaching and the king puts on sackcloth.

01:24:30

And then he says, by the decree of the king and his nobles, etc.

01:24:38

Okay. So he calls for a general fast. I don't know whether he consulted the nobles.

01:24:47

But that seems to me to be a kind of royal. Not that he literally used we. But I think that the use of we is a gesture in favor of, you know,

01:25:01

I'm representative of a power larger than a mere isolated individual.

01:25:07

So I doubt whether at the level of nuance and subtlety that that's just a form of speech with no nuances to it.

01:25:20

In other words, there is concealed in it a hint of genuine plurality, even if the king is a tyrant, right?

01:25:32

Then he pretends to rule by the will of the people. If you use the French Revolution thing or by the will of the nobles.

01:25:40

Right. So we have so decided when, in fact, it's been him alone.

01:25:51

But that's an example from the Bible. And I do think that if you have a we that is really a substitute for an

01:26:01

I with no difference of meaning, that you have to have some evidence in favor of it.

01:26:07

And, you know, if you go to the ancient Near East, the trouble is you will find this kind of thing. But is it really what it looks?

01:26:15

Is it really a variation in words with no variation in meaning? Probably not.

01:26:23

And then even if it is, one of the things, one of the contexts in the

01:26:28

Old Testament is the court of angels. Right. So you find the first Kings 22, you find

01:26:36

Job 1 and 2, where you have a temporary vision of a scene. Well, in Ezekiel 1, where God appears in the midst of angelic servants.

01:26:47

Right. So some people suggested that the us is a consultation with the heavenly court, which involves the angels.

01:26:56

But the thing is, before there's any heavenly court, there's God consulting himself in Isaiah 40.

01:27:04

It says, who did he consult for his enlightenment and who taught him knowledge and taught him the path of justice?

01:27:13

And the answer is, it's his own spirit. That's the only need, the kind of consultation that he needs.

01:27:21

But then again, what is that saying? It's saying there's a self consultation that is then reflected at the level of the created angels, where God invites them to sometimes consult with him.

01:27:40

In Job 1, he actually, no, in first Kings 22, he actually consults these spirits around the throne as to how to overthrow

01:27:53

Ahab and lead him to destruction. And there's several different suggestions. This is like a,

01:27:58

I mean, it's a condescended picture. God doesn't need to consult anybody. He's perfectly wise.

01:28:05

But I think that angelic consultation is a reflection of the final consultation, which is a consultation with his own wisdom.

01:28:14

Well, of course, wisdom is Christ. Christ is wisdom personified. So you go back to the

01:28:20

Trinity, however you start, you're going to get back there. That's right. Very good. Well, let's let's try to move through some of these quickly.

01:28:26

I do apologize for listeners if we might not get to your question because there are a lot more questions that are adding.

01:28:32

And I want to let Dr. Poitras maybe grab some water and call it a day in a few minutes.

01:28:38

So I don't want to overwhelm them. But here are a couple of questions. They eventually get a little more technical.

01:28:44

So here's a fun one. How would you view the Trinity in relationship to time? That's a simple one.

01:28:50

Would you see the Godhead being outside of time after creation or inside of time? And you could just give a simple answer without going into the details if you unless you want to.

01:29:00

And that's perfectly fine. That's in my book that should be out in November.

01:29:06

Mystery of Trinity. But I think our participants want some at least short answer.

01:29:16

God is eternal. That's mysterious. We have no perfect analogy within the created world by the nature of the case.

01:29:27

But he's eternally active. He's eternally speaking his word. And the

01:29:33

Holy Spirit eternally hears that word. That's reflected in John 16, 13,

01:29:40

I believe is the verse. And so there's eternal activity. The father eternally begets the son is the way that the early church tried to wrestle with these things.

01:29:52

And when God speaks in time, that's a reflection of the eternal speaking in the word. It's all mysterious.

01:29:59

But the reality is we see the true God in his acts in time.

01:30:07

But God is not captured by time. Interesting. I think that's an interesting topic too,

01:30:13

God's relationship to time. There are different views out there as well. But definitely an interesting and fascinating topic.

01:30:18

Here's another question. In Jude 1, verse 5, some early manuscripts say that the Lord brought the

01:30:24

Jews out of Egypt while others say Jesus did. Metzger notes the anti -Trinitarian bias scholars have when deciding the original.

01:30:32

Do you have any brief thoughts on that? I'm tempted to look up what the

01:30:39

ESV does. Okay. Because, and I haven't got it right here with me, because I can remember discussing that very thing.

01:30:50

The trouble is that when the manuscripts differ, you know that what was written originally is authoritative.

01:31:01

Right. And you want to get that right. But it's impossible to be 100 % certain when the manuscripts differ.

01:31:11

But in this case, it doesn't matter very much because of another aspect of the doctrine of the

01:31:18

Trinity, namely the indwelling, the co -inherence of persons, mutual indwelling.

01:31:24

The Father's in me and I'm the Father is the language in John. Holy Spirit searches the depths of God in 1

01:31:34

Corinthians 2 .10. And because of that, anytime the Lord is active, such as in bringing the

01:31:42

Jews out of Egypt, and then it's all three persons. And that can be then expressed in scripture in a variety of ways.

01:31:51

Now to say Jesus brought the people out of Israel is rather provocative way of saying it.

01:31:58

If that's the original. Why? Because Jesus is the name that we associate with the

01:32:06

Son of God in his incarnation. It's a name given by the angel to Mary before he was conceived in the womb.

01:32:15

Right. So to say that Jesus brought the people of Israel out of Egypt, does that say

01:32:21

Jesus in his incarnation did it? No, that can't be right. He didn't become incarnate until the

01:32:28

New Testament. Right. But to say the person that we know is Jesus brought the people out of Israel, the people of Israel, that is true.

01:32:38

Namely, the person of the Son. Right. Along with the Father and the Spirit. Right. Someone was messaging in that the

01:32:44

ESV says Jesus. Yeah, I thought. I thought maybe so.

01:32:51

But yeah. And I think I supported that, though I can't remember. We voted as a committee, a central committee.

01:32:59

So that's your answer. But it's not with disrespect to the people who came out another way.

01:33:07

Sure. Right. And you can see the potential problems if you say Jesus, that people misunderstood that as incarnate

01:33:14

Jesus. Right. But on the other hand, it's a more difficult reading. And the more difficult one is likely to be changed away by scribes who are saying that can't be right.

01:33:26

He must have meant X. So scribes in copying try to make what they think is a correction of an error and they end up not always doing the right thing.

01:33:39

It becomes complicated. But what I want to underline there is either way you read it, it's basically the same thing.

01:33:48

Right. And that's why a good many of these textual discrepancies are less vital than what you might think.

01:33:56

We have another question here. Is it OK to say that Christianity couldn't have been just another man -made religion because of the doctrine of the

01:34:02

Trinity? I suppose this person is saying that perhaps the uniqueness of the Trinity is evidence to the fact that it's not simply a man -made doctrine.

01:34:12

I absolutely agree with that. Right. Nobody would come up with this. In fact, false religions, even religions that claim to be dependent on the

01:34:21

Bible, are constantly trying to corrupt it because it's so hard. And that I think is a signal that, no, it's not man -made.

01:34:31

A Tertullian, one of the church fathers, is supposed to have said, I believe it because it's absurd.

01:34:37

OK. I don't think he meant I believe it because it's irrational, but because nobody would come up with this.

01:34:45

Right. It's just too unbelievable to have. I mean, it's bad enough to have the

01:34:52

Trinity. But then you have one of the persons in the Trinity who takes on human nature and is actually allows himself to be crucified.

01:35:04

And that's going to save the world. You've got to be kidding. It's going to be the average person's reaction to that.

01:35:12

That's the height of absurdity. And the Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 1, that's what he says.

01:35:18

It says this is foolishness to the world. But it shows the wisdom of God. That's a great passage,

01:35:24

I think, to see the apologetic implications of nobody would come up with this.

01:35:31

It's just too unbelievable for people to come up with it.

01:35:37

Sure. It definitely, yeah, definitely one of the unique aspects of the Christian faith.

01:35:42

Someone's saying here, Caleb's saying I'm reading through knowing in the Trinity right now, and it's fantastic. Thank you for your work.

01:35:48

And so I'm sure you would appreciate there are people enjoying what you have to say. And I would encourage people to pick up some more books, whether on Kindle or paperback.

01:35:58

How many books have you written? Do you know off the top of your head? It's something on the area of 27, 28 in there.

01:36:05

It's not that much. I'm just kidding. All right. Here's a question. Dr. Poitras, can you give your thoughts on eternal subordinationism, eternal generation, and how

01:36:14

Vantil might influence that discussion of intra -Trinitarian relations?

01:36:20

I mean, you've got quite a group of listeners.

01:36:29

They're quite educated, even the ones who aren't even Christian who listen, and they ask some pretty deep questions.

01:36:35

Well, let me begin with eternal generation. I referred to it just a little earlier where the father begets the son eternally, and the

01:36:46

Nicene Creed says begotten, not made. Because the temptation when you hear the term begotten is, well, it's got to be exactly like a human father fathering a child, right, in time and space.

01:37:01

Right? In which case, and there's a heresy that in effect does it that way.

01:37:06

But the Nicene Creed understands that the son is eternal.

01:37:13

And there are people nowadays who are renegotiating that whole thing, the Protestants especially, the traditional churches who hold to tradition as an extra source of authority are going to stay by the

01:37:30

Nicene Creed. And they're going to continue to confess the eternal generation of the son because it's in the creed.

01:37:37

Protestants, and I'm one of them, say it's scripture alone that is our ultimate authority.

01:37:43

We can't take it for granted that the Nicene Creed got it right. If you want to know, I think they did.

01:37:52

You can see this by the fact that when

01:37:58

Jesus is conceived in the womb of Mary, the angel says that the

01:38:07

Holy Spirit will come upon you in the power of the most high will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the son of God.

01:38:20

So Jesus' sonship has two levels. One is a level of the eternal son.

01:38:25

He's sent by the father. He's already a son and he's sent by the father. But there's a second level in which he's actually born according to his human nature.

01:38:37

All right. And he's a son of God because the Holy Spirit mysteriously has empowered this miraculous conception.

01:38:46

And he's a son for that reason as well. Now, there are two dangers.

01:38:56

One is that we would collapse the Trinity into time and space and say what we're seeing with the birth of Jesus is all there is.

01:39:08

The son is begotten in that sense alone. So he becomes the son.

01:39:16

He never was a son until then. And I'm saying he was already as an eternal son. The other danger is we'd say what happens in time and space doesn't actually reflect the nature of the true

01:39:28

God. Well, if that's true, then everything is lost because you can't know the only true

01:39:36

God as Jesus promises we can. So somehow that act in time and space has to reflect how

01:39:43

God always is. And that's why the Nicene Creed, I think, it's a fundamental reason.

01:39:50

There are other reasons that they had why the Nicene Creed says confesses an eternal generation.

01:39:57

There's an eternal father -son relation. And there's a dynamic that goes from the father to the son.

01:40:03

Now, it's all mysterious. Now, you can see the same thing in John 1 .1. In the beginning was the

01:40:09

Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Well, what word are we talking about? We're talking about the Word of God.

01:40:14

Right? So Jesus is spoken by God. Or I should say the eternal son because it's not only his incarnation, right?

01:40:24

He's spoken by God eternally. Well, that's another kind of picture of generation, say, from the speaker to the speech which he utters.

01:40:34

And similarly in Colossians 1, he is the image of the invisible God. I worked this out in Knowing and the

01:40:41

Trinity, by the way. There's a short chapter on eternal generation where I say that you can do it from three perspectives.

01:40:51

In fact, not just one, which is the customary way to think in terms of father and son and the beginning.

01:40:58

But you can think of it in terms of the God and the Word, in terms of the son as the image.

01:41:06

So that's why I believe in eternal generation. But with the cautions of saying, oh, in Van Till, how many influence?

01:41:14

Yeah, that we respect mystery. At the same time, we believe that the

01:41:20

Bible is true, that it makes known the only true God. Subordinationism is another question.

01:41:28

It's another discussion, maybe for another time.

01:41:34

Now, Dr. Poitras, you and Dr. Frame, I believe, who actually tried to get on the show, but I believe he's retired and enjoying the palm trees in Florida, which is awesome.

01:41:47

But if I'm not mistaking, both of you hold to kind of a tri -perspectival view and understanding of these issues.

01:41:57

I guess someone is asking, but I guess it came to mind. Is your view on tri -perspectivalism related to the

01:42:04

Trinity? Is that why you call it tri -perspectivalism? Like you're trying to connect these three things with the

01:42:10

Trinity as kind of the background context for everything? Is that an intentional move or am I completely missing the boat?

01:42:17

Yes, it is intentional. Okay, good, good. That is, by the way, a question that someone asked, but I didn't get on the screen there.

01:42:25

So good, very good. Now, here's my last question for you. This is coming from Simon, and I do apologize.

01:42:31

There are just so many questions that have come in. You'd be here until you retire, and we don't want that to happen.

01:42:37

I'm sure you have other responsibilities. But here's a question I thought was a good one to end because these things could get very complicated.

01:42:45

Obviously, some of the questions people are asking are very deep theological and philosophical in nature.

01:42:50

I love this question, and I think it'd be helpful to hear what you have to say about it. What is the easiest way to explain the

01:42:57

Trinity to a child? Well, part of me wants to say there is no easy way.

01:43:04

I don't know. Right. I've seen a number of illustrations used.

01:43:12

Okay. My wife teaches fifth and sixth grade. Sunday school, and she's used the figure of a hand with three fingers to show the joint operations of the persons.

01:43:25

But that won't do to explain Trinity itself. You can use a triangle.

01:43:32

Trouble with that is the triangle consists of three sides. The sides are parts of the triangle. The persons are not parts of God.

01:43:39

That's a heresy. That's right. But if you use the triangle, you say, well, there's one triangle, there's three sides, and then you say, that's not an accurate picture.

01:43:52

So you take away what you've already given. But a more practical way might be to say, depending on the age of the child, right?

01:44:03

But you say, we're trying to pray as God taught us to pray.

01:44:11

And we pray our father who is in heaven.

01:44:17

We pray that because Jesus taught us to pray. But also in the

01:44:22

Bible, we would be unworthy of coming to God if it weren't for Jesus and his perfection.

01:44:29

Jesus is our great high priest who stands and intercedes for us. And we have the

01:44:35

Holy Spirit whom God has sent to us that forms our prayers so that they are in conformity with the word, with the will of God.

01:44:46

So God is doing the whole thing. But it's the father who is we are addressing, and it's the son who is interceding as the

01:44:55

Holy Spirit who is shaping our prayers by dwelling in us. And then you say, we don't understand.

01:45:04

We don't comprehend. We don't understand to the bottom. Or you look at the baptism of Jesus, right?

01:45:11

The voice from heaven, you are my beloved son, right? So it's clearly the father speaking, right?

01:45:19

The son is there. You can see him with respect to his human nature. And the Holy Spirit descends as a dove.

01:45:26

But that doesn't do, if that's the only thing you say, doesn't do adequate justice to the unity, right, of the one

01:45:34

God. So you're always leaving something in the background because the

01:45:42

Trinity is deeper and richer than what you can do in a single illustration. Or you'd use the baptismal formula, right?

01:45:51

Baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and the Holy Spirit, one name. Very good.

01:45:58

And again, a lot of people might not like the aspect of mystery and theology. And that's not to discourage you from deeper study.

01:46:05

But I mean, ultimately, when you're going to try to think about the things of the eternal God, there are going to be roadblocks that we cannot pass because of our creatureliness.

01:46:14

And this is, and for those who are really, you know, into the presuppositional methodology and outlook on life,

01:46:21

Van Til often highlighted just the key fundamental distinction between the creator and the creature.

01:46:29

The very moment you blur those distinctions, you're on dangerous ground. And we want to make sure we keep those things distinct.

01:46:35

There is a way in which we're similar to our creator, but there are ways in which he is profoundly different than us.

01:46:40

And those mysteries should produce worship as opposed to contempt and anger that we can't get all of our questions answered.

01:46:48

So I think that's a very important thing to keep in mind. Well, that was the final question.

01:46:54

There are more, but I do want to respect your time. You've already graciously given me one hour and 47 minutes of your time.

01:47:01

And I greatly, greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much, Dr. Poitras. Well, you're welcome.

01:47:07

I've enjoyed being on this platform. Well, it's an honor.

01:47:14

And the only thing I ask is every guest that I have on, that you just shoot me an email of a sentence or two as to your experience on the show.

01:47:21

And I collect those and we'll put them on a website that will be later produced and put up on the

01:47:27

Internet. So I would appreciate if you can do that. For folks who are interested for upcoming interviews coming up,

01:47:33

I do have Dr. James Anderson on again on June. I'm sorry, July 10th, to talk about the difference between classical apologetics and presuppositional apologetics.

01:47:42

And, of course, a doozy episode with Dr. Hugh Ross and Dr. Jason Lyle to discuss the differences between Old Earth and Young Earth creationism.

01:47:51

And I will keep you posted, but I was invited by Rocio Christie to defend the presuppositional perspective to a bunch of classicalists.

01:48:01

So we'll see how that works. We'll be fielding questions. It should be interesting and engaging. I'll keep you guys updated on all those things.

01:48:09

Well, that's it for this episode. Once again, thank you very much, Dr. Poitras, for joining us. Until next time, guys, take care and God bless.