Is Sola Scriptura True?

Revealed Apologetics

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All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today

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I have a very special guest that I'm going to introduce in just a moment. But before we do that,

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I just want to give a heads up for folks who may be in the Fredericksburg area in Virginia this

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Friday and Saturday, I'll be speaking at an apologetics conference alongside Anthony Rogers.

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You guys might be familiar with his work in Islam, and Dr. Robert Bowman, who has a couple of books out on the cults.

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So we'll be talking about cult apologetics, presuppositional apologetics, apologetic methodology, those sorts of things.

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And that will be hosted by the Knox Reformed Presbyterian Church in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

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So if you guys are interested and you're in the area, you might want to check out their website, knoxreformedpresbyterianchurch .org,

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and sign up for that. I think signups are still possible. So just wanted to throw that out.

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Today, though, I am super, super excited. I had invited Dr. Matthew Barrett on a while back, and he's super busy, and he was under the weather the second time around, so we had to push things across, push it back.

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But a lot of people were excited that he was going to be on, and so I'm just super excited.

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This is an awesome topic. We're actually going to do two topics mixed together. So we're going to be talking about Sola Scriptura, but we're also going to be talking about the

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Trinity, which is another area of his expertise. So I'm very happy that we're going to be doing that, and I'm sure this is going to be a blessing to those who are listening in.

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I do know that there are folks who listen in who are not adherents to Sola Scriptura and are probably not very into Protestant theology and Reformation theology, but I'm happy that you guys are listening in, too, and I hope that the comments are nice and respectful, even in the midst of disagreement.

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So just kind of a gentle push to keep it nice in the comment section.

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All right, well, let me introduce Matthew Barrett by kind of filling folks in. If you don't know who he is, Matthew Barrett is an associate professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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He's also the founder and executive editor of Credo Magazine, an evangelical publication making theology accessible to those in the church, and he is the host of the

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Credo podcast, which, as just a side note, as before I continue reading on, I highly recommend you go to iTunes right now and subscribe to the

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Credo podcast. It's excellent. It's got awesome interviews and awesome discussions. But he is the host of the

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Credo podcast where he has conversations with the best theologians today to discuss the most important issues of theology.

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Dr. Barrett has been the executive editor of Credo Magazine for over 10 years, publishing over 40 issues, and you could read about why he founded

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Credo Magazine on the website. He's also the author of numerous books, such as Simply Trinity, The Unmanipulated Father, Son, and Spirit, the book

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None Greater, The Undomesticated Attributes of God, God's Word Alone, The Authority of Scripture, which touches on the topic we're going to be talking about today,

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Canon, Covenant, and Christology, Rethinking Jesus and the Scriptures of Israel, and he's also edited a number of other books as well, and he's got a couple of things coming up soon, so maybe he can share a little bit of that with us in just a moment.

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He's originally from California, receiving his BA from Biola University in La Mirada, California, and he received his

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MDiv and PhD in systematic theology from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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So he is a super, super qualified individual to talk about the topics that we're going to be discussing today, and without further ado,

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I would like to introduce Dr. Matthew Barrett. How are you doing, Dr. Barrett? I'm doing great.

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Sorry, I'm so sorry I got sick. It wasn't COVID, I can verify that, but people still actually get sick even if it's not

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COVID, believe it or not. That's very true. I had forgotten that, and as my wife will tell you, when

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I get a cold, you might as well just put me in the grave. So I appreciate you being patient with me, and I'm glad to join you, and I'll try my best to follow that very generous, too generous introduction there.

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Well, I basically just read your info page. I skipped a whole host of information, because there's so much that could be said about you.

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You're very accomplished in what you do, and I do follow you on Facebook, and I love when you post pictures of books or your classroom.

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It makes me want to go off and study something. So I very much appreciate what you do.

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Well, thank you very much. Well, why don't you tell folks a little bit about what you're working on?

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Are you working on a current project now, publishing a book at all, or what's going on on your end? I actually am, believe it or not.

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As you mentioned, I have been writing on the doctrine of God quite a bit, trying to reach those who are pastors or beginner students, maybe the churchgoer who's theologically minded.

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And so I wrote a book years ago called None Greater the Undomesticated Attributes of God, and then recently, yeah, there it is,

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In the Flesh. And I'm halfway through it, and when

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I read theology, it stimulates my mind, and it's kind of intellectually stimulating, so we like to think about these things.

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But reading your book just makes me stand in awe of God all the more. So I like that there is that intellectual strength that you provide, but also it produces a desire to worship.

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So this is an excellent book so far. Well, thank you. That warms my heart.

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It makes me think maybe I'm doing just a little bit right. So yeah, that book really was meant to introduce

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Christians to attributes of God that are considered just basic to Christian orthodoxy across all of history, but in our modern era, we have forgotten and sometimes outright abandoned.

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And so in that book, trying to help us really dump, so to speak, the paradigm that we've inherited that tends to domesticate

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God in a whole number of ways and give us a fresh but actually quite an old picture of God that goes back to the scriptures and the great tradition.

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I followed that book with another one, Simply Trinity, which just released this year.

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The unmanipulated... Yep, there it is. The Unmanipulated Fathers. Yeah, your free advertisement. Sorry.

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And I'm sure we'll talk about this one a little bit. But this one continues that theme and then turns to the

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Trinity. And here I get into really some surprising and a bit...

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Some shocking discoveries as to the ways that we've been suspicious and critical and sometimes have even jettisoned just biblical or Nicene orthodoxy.

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I have another book that will follow, be the third in that trilogy called Secret Providence.

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And that one will be looking at the providence of God. It may be the most practical yet because it's going to...

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Of course, we know this right from the Christian life, God's providence has a lot to do with our comfort and our trust and our dependence, even in times of suffering.

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And then I'm writing a large, more academic volume for all those nerds out there like me.

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And that'll be with Baker Academic. It'll be simply called The Doctrine of God. And there

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I'm trying to present Protestants in particular and show us maybe our way back home, steering away from some of the ways we have absorbed a modern doctrine of God and trying to retrieve and recover a classical

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Christian doctrine of God. So that'll be a beefy volume. It won't be coming for a couple of years.

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So I'm afraid folks will have to be a little bit patient. It takes long to write books. I should know.

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I've written nothing. It is very... I love to write. I really do.

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But you're right. It does take a lot of time and research and it's extremely difficult.

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So the words don't always just fly off the keyboard like people think.

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But you would think when you just open up the book, it's like, oh, this is flowing nicely. But it's a lot of work to get one paragraph the way you want it.

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It takes a lot of work. So that's exactly right. Lots of sweat and blood involved. That's right. Yeah.

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Let's hope not. Not blood. The conversation got dark very quick. Yeah, that's right.

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All right. Well, OK. So I want to tackle this kind of in a logical sense. So we're going to try to address the issue of Sola Scriptura and the

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Trinity, because those are two areas that I think you have a lot of helpful things to say.

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And so I figured, I'm kind of thinking off the top of my head, because it is the scriptures that we learn about the triune nature of God.

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Let's start with Sola Scriptura and then our latter part will move into the

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Trinity. And perhaps you can kind of highlight, and I have actually, this wasn't what I was planning in my mind, but I actually have a question about the

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Trinity that perhaps you address in your book and maybe you can unpack that as well. So all right. So let's begin with definitions.

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Now, folks who follow my show, they most likely will know what the doctrine of Sola Scriptura is. But why don't you lay out, number one, what is

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Sola Scriptura? And number two, what is Sola Scriptura not? Because I know there are a lot of misconceptions as to what that doctrine is.

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Why don't you unpack that for us? Well, answering that question is actually half the battle, isn't it?

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Yes. Because in my experience, at least, and maybe this is yours too, maybe this is the experience of many of those listening or watching, oftentimes we talk past each other because we actually don't understand what

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Sola Scriptura means and maybe more importantly, what it does not mean. Yes. Yeah.

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In my book, God's Word Alone, I start off right at the beginning and try to address it right out of the gate.

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And I basically say there that Sola Scriptura, it means that only

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Scripture, because it is God's inspired word, so that qualification is really important.

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Only Scripture, because it is God's inspired word, is our inerrant, sufficient, and final authority for the church.

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Now, there's a lot we could say there. I think the first thing that maybe pops out is that the reason as Protestants that we are appealing to Scripture as our final court of appeal, just to use that phrase, has everything to do with the doctrine of inspiration.

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In other words, if Scripture is not, as Paul says to Timothy, breathed out by God, then we don't have any basis on which to make this claim.

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So that has to be said first and foremost, because oftentimes people will jump into debates about Sola Scriptura, and especially in the 21st century, they may or may not be assuming that Scripture is breathed out by God in the first place.

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So if we're not on the same page there, then the conversation over Sola Scriptura in one sense never gets off the ground.

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So it's only because God himself has breathed out his word, or as Peter likes to say, that the

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Spirit has carried along these biblical authors so that what they say is what

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God says and what God says is what they have said. Unless that is true, then we actually don't have a basis on which to then say the rest, which is that Scripture is trustworthy and truthful.

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Scripture is sufficient, though again, we will want to explain what that means and doesn't mean, or that Scripture is our final authority.

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If I can elaborate just a tad, I would say when we move to inerrancy, for example, here again,

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Sola Scriptura comes into the picture, because we're not saying that Scripture is only truthful in terms of its big message.

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We're actually saying that because Scripture is breathed out by God, well, it reflects

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God. In other words, this is a God who, as Jesus says, is truth himself.

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And so we can trust, this is very relevant then to the life of the church and the

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Christian life, we can trust that the word of God is also truthful and trustworthy in all that it does say.

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And notice how I'm trying to say that carefully, in all that it asserts, it is trustworthy.

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And from there, we can move into conversations about sufficiency. Well, if it's breathed out by God, and if it is actually trustworthy, because the

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God who breathes out this word is a God of truth, well, then what does that mean then for its sufficiency?

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Did God actually intend, for example, for his word to actually guide and lead his people?

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I think so. And so when we go back to the Old Testament, this isn't just a New Testament doctrine, so to speak, but when we go back to the

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Old Testament, we see that the God who establishes a covenant with his people always makes sure, we see this with Israel as soon as she is taken out of Egypt and redeemed and then brought into this covenant with God.

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We see this almost immediately with Moses. This God of the covenant makes sure that the people of the covenant have a constitution of the covenant.

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In other words, he doesn't just redeem them, but he redeems them and then shows them how to live in the way of this covenant.

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Well, that can only happen if there is a sufficiency to his word.

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Now, I'll throw back to you because I'm sure there's a lot more to say here, but I think what

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I would want to then talk about next is then maybe what soul scripture does not mean.

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Yes, because there seems to be a lot of misconceptions. It's like, oh, it's just you, your

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Bible alone. You are your own pope. You're just left to yourself to interpret scripture.

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And so there are a bunch of terrible things that follow from that. So what are we not saying when we affirm soul scripture?

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Well, I think maybe some history can help us here. Heiko Obermann, he is dead now, but he really was one of the outstanding historians of the last century.

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And Obermann, in so much of his work on medieval and Reformation history, he made a very important distinction, and the distinction is between different types of tradition.

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He distinguished between tradition one and tradition two, and then what he calls tradition zero.

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OK, what does he what does he mean by these? Well, when he is referring to tradition one, he has in mind the reformers and actually those who came before them, the patristic and even certain medieval fathers who believe that scripture alone is the inspired written revelation of God.

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Now, notice it's called tradition one because they very much affirm tradition.

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In other words, they saw tradition as really crucial and instrumental, helping us to understand the scriptures correctly, keeping us accountable.

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We think of, for example, many of the great Orthodox creeds of the Christian faith, the

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Nicene Creed, the Chalcedon definition and many others, which they labored so hard over to make sure that they were using words that actually held the church accountable to the scriptures and clarified the scriptures, especially in the midst of so much confusion and heresy.

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This also was the belief of the reformers. The reformers had a very high view of tradition.

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And so right away, we have to we have to really emphasize this because I think sometimes they get painted as if they're just discarding tradition.

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In fact, when Rome accused them of novelty and innovation and therefore heresy, the reformers whipped back and said, absolutely not.

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We are Augustinians in our soteriology, for example. And Bruce Gordon, in his biography of Calvin, has this great statement where he says, if you would have went back to the 16th century and said that Calvin, that Rome was

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Catholic, Calvin would have been sick to his stomach because by Catholic with a small

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C, meaning universal, Calvin and the other reformers, that was that was the whole purpose of their existence was they were trying to show, no, no, we are actually more

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Catholic. Believe it or not, we are more Catholic than Rome because we are we are actually more consistent with the

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Christian heritage than Rome. And and some of the then the innovations they then said Rome was was putting on the church.

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So this is an important clarification. And sometimes with history, we're not always careful in this regard.

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Now, all that said, all that said, at the end of the day, though, the reformers and many of the fathers before them.

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Clarified that, yes, they have a high view of tradition and see it as really instrumental, but nonetheless, what type of authority is it?

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Well, it's a ministerial authority, so it's it is an authority.

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In other words, we're not saying that scripture is the only source of authority. We're saying that it's the final authority.

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And so the reformers were really careful at that point to say, well, tradition is a ministerial authority and scripture alone is our magisterial, magisterial authority.

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Now, why is that? Well, because scripture alone is is breathed out by God as our definitive, permanent written revelation.

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Well, from there. Yeah. Sure, sure. Yeah. So, OK. So I know a lot of people say, well, the reformers and Protestants, they'll say that the reformers tip their you know, they they say they respect tradition, but it's it's merely just a tipping of the hat.

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Perhaps you can give an example or two as to how tightly and how important tradition was to the reformers, while also making the distinction between the different level of authority, that ministerial, magisterial aspect.

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Yeah, there's a fantastic book. It's an older book, but you can still find it if you're if you look hard.

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It's by Anthony Lane. OK. And I think it's just called John Calvin. So we'll use

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Calvin as an example here. OK. And the book is so it's tremendous because.

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The book very carefully, chapter by chapter, demonstrates that Calvin was a patristic scholar and not just patristic, but but even a medieval, the older he got, the more of an expert he became.

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OK, why why is why why would Anthony Lane write a book like this, which is so, you know, specific?

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Well, he's trying to demonstrate exactly what he's trying to answer that very question you raised.

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In other words, someone like John Calvin, when you read his institutes, you start to discover.

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Goodness, he is simply echoing the patristic witness before him at every turn.

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Now, why would he why would Calvin be so obsessed with doing that? Because it's everywhere and it's echoed in the very phrases he uses.

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It's it's infused throughout the very doctrines he is claiming to to to teach and believe in.

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Why would he be so fixated on on on demonstrating his patristic continuity?

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Sure. Well, it goes back to really what we just what we just said. If you look at when

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Calvin got kicked out of Geneva. That's another story.

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But it was really during that time that Cardinal Sattoletto wrote to the Genevans and said, come back to Rome, come back, come back to to your to mother church.

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And long story short, but eventually Calvin gets an invitation to say, hey, can you respond?

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Can you respond and write a letter that can serve, ironically, the very the very people that just kicked you out?

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And and so he does, which tells you something about his humility. I don't know if I could have done that, but but he does.

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And one of the one of the things he argues in there is is that he talks about really two things, the formal principle and the material principles of the

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Reformation, so so scripture and justification by faith alone. But one of the you can tell almost immediately one of the burdens on his back is he wants to demonstrate to the

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Genevans that. The Reformation, as they know it, is not an innovation and therefore it's not it's not heretical.

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In other words, they haven't as much as Rome was was saying, you know, someone like Sattoletto was saying, you have you've strayed, you've left the church.

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Calvin was was making the argument, no, actually, we are trying to reform and renew the church according to its true identity.

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In other words, what Calvin is saying is you're you, you Genevans are actually more

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Catholic than you realize. Again, Catholic with a small c. Sure, sure. And from there he goes on to make that argument.

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Now, in order to make it scripture, then is going to serve as his magisterial authority.

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But in order to clarify what scripture actually means, because remember, both

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Rome and Protestants are they're both quoting scripture. Right. In order to clarify that, he's going to go to the church fathers and he's going to demonstrate time after again that whether it's justification, whether it's scripture, whether it's the atonement in so many different ways, he's going to demonstrate actually the

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Reformation is in continuity with the church Catholic, the church universal, which did believe in the primacy.

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Sure. The in scripture as as our final court of appeal. Now, now

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I want to rest right there because within the context of providing an apologetic for Sola Scriptura, that is probably the thing

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I've heard the most in terms of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura not being in continuity.

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No one has taught the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. And so and not only are

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Protestants accused of kind of like this is innovative and it's not something that was believed in the early church, they're also accused of mishandling the patristics when they appeal to them to defend that there is continuity.

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So why don't you for for those who are really they want to know how to provide a response to these sorts of objections.

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How would you help folks along who who get this objection? It's innovative.

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And yeah, you can find a church father here or there. That sounds like it's supporting that. But really, you know, that's not really the case.

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How would you how would you help someone out who's struggling with that? Well, I think the first thing you have to do is recognize that what we are.

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What the reformers were saying here about Sola Scriptura really changes the conversation.

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In other words, when we look back at the Reformation, it's not as so oftentimes it's kind of pitched at a popular level.

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It's not a debate between scripture, reformers and tradition, which is

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Rome. Right. You can tell that even from the way we just set things up. Right. That actually an

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Oberman makes this point so well. He says, really, it's a debate between tradition and tradition, though one type of tradition and a different type of tradition.

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OK, and that's really helpful because Oberman goes on to say, well, then what is tradition to tradition to which he associates with certain late medieval individuals as well as what will become the

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Roman Catholic Church with Trent and everything after. He says, well, tradition to it, too, believes in scripture's inspiration and its trustworthiness and authority.

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However, he argues that for these individuals, tradition becomes a second a second source of revelation itself.

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Now, that's different. That's that's actually quite a bit different. That sounds technical.

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That's quite a bit different from tradition one, which we just talked about, because now all of a sudden and you see this in the late medieval period on the eve of the

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Reformation, there is a conflict even within those who go the route of tradition, too, because then you have to answer the question.

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Well. If tradition is a is a second source of divine revelation itself.

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Perhaps one that could be equal to or maybe even greater than scripture, if that's the case, then who decides who gets to decide who is the authority?

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And so you have a split in the late medieval period between those who say it's a council and those who say it's the papacy.

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You can actually go back some ways into the late medieval conflict and you begin to have popes excommunicating each other in part over over this very issue, vying for power to determine who is going to be that pope.

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And each pope saying it's me and another pope saying, no, actually, it's me. And as a result, actually excommunicating one another.

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On the other side of that, you have others saying, well, actually, it should be a council and certain conciliarists and they then are having a conflict with those who are are saying it's the papacy.

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It becomes quite a mess that the church has to try to clear up in the decades and centuries ahead.

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Now, why do I bring all that up? Because when you enter into the 16th century.

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And this is so prevalent today, even in the way that people describe soul scripture or interpret the

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Reformation. Oftentimes, what happens is they confuse sola scriptura, usually critics confuse sola scriptura with what we might call nuda scriptura.

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And this brings us to the third category, tradition three. These were the radicals and there were many of them.

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There are many different types. So we do want to be fair there. But to one degree or another, many of them held to tradition zero.

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OK, as you can as you can tell from the name, they took that quite seriously. In other words, they looked at history and they said, well, the church has more or less been lost.

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It's just been all dark since the apostles. But but thank God we're here now. Very humble position to hold.

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Yeah, right. And what came along with that was not merely appealing to scripture as the final court of appeal, but actually then saying, well, we don't we don't look to anything.

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But scripture, this led to all kinds of problems and quite a bit of chaos because not all but some of these radicals then said, well, we have the spirit and the spirit can even speak through me in a way that supersedes the scriptures.

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And you can see it starts to to unravel because like you hinted at the beginning, all of a sudden it's not so much about scripture as it is about about me and me as an individual.

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So all that to say, I think sometimes when we talk about this debate.

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The reformers get and even Protestantism as a whole gets misunderstood as tradition zero as as the radicals, when when in actuality they labored and they were so frustrated.

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Sure, because they labored so hard to say, no, that that you are confusing us with those radicals.

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Would you, Dr. Barrett, would you equate the radicals with the folks who hold to solo scriptura as opposed to solo scriptura?

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You said no scriptura. Is that the same thing? Can you differentiate that for us? Yeah, no, you're getting at the same thing.

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That's just another another good way to put it. So low scriptura playing with the

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Latin a little bit there. But yeah, no, you're exactly right. So all that to say, you know, to get back to your question,

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I know I'm getting off track a little bit here, but all that to say that when we talk about solo scriptura, first thing first, we we have to really clarify what we mean and don't mean here.

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Right. We're not denying tradition. Actually, tradition is quite instrumental. But what we are denying is that tradition becomes magisterial as a second and equal or even greater source of revelation.

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And yet we're simultaneously denying those radicals who go the direction of solo scriptura or nuda scriptura and start to turn scripture into their own individualistic authority, using it in a way that dispenses with the church rather than preserves the church across history.

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So, all right, so let's take another another look at another popular objection that I that I often hear.

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And it's it's usually associated with the idea that if, you know, solo scriptura has led to so much division.

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So, for example, it's the reason why we have, you know, I don't know what the number is now, but a bajillion, quajillion, quintuple in denominations in existence today, the number keeps changing.

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How would we respond to that sort of objection that this is what happens when you accept solo scriptura, you have all of these denominations that can't agree on anything.

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How would you respond to that? Well, I think I would give two responses, though there's probably many more.

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Sure. The first one has to do with history. OK. And the second one, again, comes back to what what were the reformers after in terms of the gospel when they talked about solo scriptura?

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So so maybe we can take both of those on just briefly. The first one, history.

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Usually this type of objection comes from Roman Catholicism.

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OK. When it's lobbed,

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I'm not sure. Well, one of two things are going on. Either the person is is not being completely transparent about the history of Roman Catholicism, even since the

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Reformation. Or they don't know that history.

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In other words, even even think about the conversation we just had about the late

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Middle Ages, when you have different popes excommunicating each other. It was not uniform by any stretch of the imagination.

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In fact, even when you look at what we mentioned, Calvin and Saddletto. Even when you look at some of these debates, very often the reformers will say to those their opponents, what about the

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East? Where's the East in this? Have you just completely condemned the entire

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Eastern Church for how many centuries? In other words, they're they're not really actually asking about the

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East so much as they are making a point that you're you're claiming you're making this claim as if you alone are the one true church.

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But they're pointing out this is extremely narrow, extremely narrow. You're actually removing the entire

35:45

Eastern Church from the conversation. And then it's not entirely that straightforward is another point they're making, because even when you look at the church of the 15th and 16th centuries, you're starting to notice, well, even within your own ranks, there is very fierce debates between the conciliarists on the one hand and the curious on the other, those who are claiming councils and those who are claiming the papacy.

36:12

Now, that is just that's just that early modern history. Even since then, those who have studied the history of Rome since the since the 16th century will also note it is anything but uniform.

36:28

Just look at the rise of Protestant liberalism in the modern era. That alone has created huge divides within within the church of Rome.

36:39

Just as it has affected Protestant denominations and in serious ways as well.

36:45

So I guess it's the first thing I want to clarify is, OK, we can have this conversation, but we will be honest about the divisions in our camp.

36:54

If you're honest as well about the divisions in your own camp, it's not as uniform and clear, black and white, as sometimes people say.

37:04

The second, though, let's maybe just briefly touch on that second. OK. You know, we've been talking about sola scriptura, but why were the why were the reformers even appealing to the authority of scripture?

37:17

Well, they were doing so because they believe that that the scriptures give to us the gospel of Jesus Christ.

37:23

Luther has this great statement where he says that the scriptures are the swaddling clothes of baby

37:29

Jesus. He's good at stuff like that. He is.

37:34

That's one of the reasons why, you know, even if you don't have to be a Lutheran to just extremely appreciate so much and even disagree with them at points, but so much of what he says.

37:44

But I think his point there is important. In other words, what he's trying what he's trying to point out is that, yes,

37:52

OK, Rome was was telling them you're the innovators, you're the heretics. But one of the points

38:00

Luther is trying to make there is whole reason we are appealing to the scriptures is because when we look at what's happening in the papacy and even at the popular level at the church of his day, their understanding of salvation seems out of sync with what the scriptures are saying.

38:25

Sure. And I think at that point, Luther, and it's not just him, it's many, many others.

38:31

We go to the English Reformation and talk about Tyndale and Cranmer and so many others. But one of the points they're trying to make then is that, well, sola scriptura then means that we are in continuity with the past because we are actually retrieving the gospel of the church

38:51

Catholic, the church universal. Well, that that's a very different perspective then, because all of a sudden it will think of it from from this vantage point.

39:01

Right. We've got Lutherans and we've got Presbyterians and we've got Baptists over my side of the world and we've got and we could go on.

39:10

Right. But when we are talking about our heritage, well, yes, we have disagreements over the form of baptism, for example.

39:24

We might have disagreements over the exact nature of church polity. Sure. And so, yeah, practically, visibly, that means that my brother or sister in Christ is going to go drive down the street to their

39:40

Lutheran church while that same Sunday I drive down the other street to my Baptist church. Right.

39:45

However. Do we have shared fellowship and continuity over the most important things?

39:55

Right. Absolutely. So you would say that there is a unity within the divisions of the multiple denominations.

40:02

There is a unity with respect to the essentials and there is disunity with respect to important but non -essential, non -definitional doctrines.

40:11

Would I be correct there? Absolutely right. Absolutely right. And so that means then that, well, we don't just look at unity in terms of the naked eye.

40:23

Right. If we do that, then we're actually resting our identity on something quite surface level.

40:32

Rather, what kind of unity are we after? We are after a unity that gets at the very heart of Christianity, which has to do with who is

40:40

God and how has he revealed himself and how has he redeemed us through his son,

40:46

Jesus Christ. On those major pillars of Christianity, it's at that point where we say actually we are one with one another on the things that matter.

41:01

And that's where I think when you go back to the Reformation, the reformers actually come in great conflict with their opponents because they're saying, hey, listen, it's not that we are not serious about unity as well, but we're actually saying we are more serious because we are after the type of unity over major things that we think have been muddied.

41:23

Now, that changes the conversation again, because now it's not an issue of who is after unity and who isn't.

41:30

Now, actually, it's what type of unity are we after? And I think at that point,

41:37

Protestantism actually has a pretty strong case to make. Excellent. All right.

41:42

Well, that's super helpful. And I do apologize for people listening. We're actually going to shift gears now.

41:48

OK, we're going to shift gears. It's excellent. I actually want to take a couple of snippets, maybe make some shorter videos that kind of pack down some of the short, quick answers to some of these important questions.

42:01

So you've given us a lot to think there. I want to shift gears to the very easy and simple topic of the

42:06

Trinity. OK, and I mean that, of course, sarcastically. When I'm going to assume everybody knows what the

42:14

Trinity is just for the sake of moving along. But why did you write this book and what is the main what are you trying to accomplish in this specific book?

42:23

And then I want to ask some other questions related to the Trinity that I think your book addresses, but I haven't gotten to yet, which deals with social

42:31

Trinitarianism and simplicity and things like that. But why did you write this book? Why did you wake up one day and said, you know,

42:36

I'm going to write a book called Simply Trinity, and I want to accomplish some task that you're trying to set out to accomplish.

42:43

What what inspired you to write this? Well, I think you probably have to either be insane or a fool to write a book on the

42:52

Trinity. If you just wake up one morning and think that that sounds like that sounds like something

42:58

I should do, you know, as Augustine said so well, when it comes to the

43:07

Trinity, never is is erring, committing errors so so dangerous.

43:15

Sure. At the same time, though, he said the fruit that comes from it, well, never, never is it more enjoyable and so consequential for the church.

43:26

Right. So in that spirit. The reason that I wrote this book, though, it actually comes back to some of my own experience and with an evangelicalism.

43:41

OK. For many, many decades, and this is an experience is not it's not unique to me.

43:50

It's been the experience of many, many others. For many decades, those core doctrines that are so key to a biblical and orthodox understanding of the

44:08

Trinity, well, they've they've they've been lost in many ways or looked at with great suspicion for for the longest time, a doctrine like the eternal generation of the sun, which in for most of history was considered essential to the

44:30

Trinity. You can't you can't have a trinity without it. You certainly don't have a

44:35

Nicene Creed without it. Doctrines like this all of a sudden were questioned or or abandoned.

44:43

Now, interestingly enough, this is not unrelated to our prior conversation, because I think as evangelicals, especially sometimes.

44:53

We can't maybe without realizing it, maybe with realizing it, we can start to slip from solo scriptura into solo scriptura.

45:04

And I think more and more that this comes out not so much with what we say about scripture, but how we read scripture.

45:12

That's oftentimes right where the rubber meets the road. Sure. And so I think evangelicals took just assumed in many ways a certain approach to scripture that said, well, if I can't find a chapter and verse for it, then

45:26

I'm just not going to believe it. Or if I'm not persuaded by a certain word study, then I'm just I'm going to move on and discard that part of my theology.

45:35

It's a really terrible way to to read the Bible. First of all, it doesn't matter if we're talking about the

45:40

Trinity or not. It doesn't really do justice to what the Bible is or to how we should read as a whole.

45:47

But on top of that, it really is the death of theology, if you think about it. Anyway, long story short, this type of I would call it a type of biblicism in the negative sense of that word.

46:00

And so we're not talking about solo scriptura at this point. But this type of biblicism, I think, had major consequences in which the

46:10

Trinity was redefined. So doctrines like eternal generation were jettisoned.

46:16

At the same time, maybe without even knowing it at points, we started to redefine what a person is.

46:27

And we started to define a person much more like we would define human persons. And we start defining the

46:34

Trinity much more like a human society. Yeah. You see where I'm going with this? It's almost like a blurring of the creator -creature distinction.

46:41

And we're kind of bringing God down to our level so we could understand him. That's exactly right.

46:48

And so maybe unwittingly, but still, we start to describe and define the

46:53

Trinity as just a type of cooperative society. Or we start to define persons more in the individual sense that we would think of when we think of you and me as persons, persons having their own roles, or they're even being hierarchy, or perhaps they're even being separation in terms of your will and my will.

47:22

Or notice when we start to think along those lines, if we import that back into God, all of a sudden we start to inch a lot closer to tritheism, in which you have individuals who have their own wills, their own centers of consciousness.

47:40

It can get a bit scary. I mean, I've even heard so many evangelicals start to talk about the persons as if they can work apart from each other or without each other, which was just inconceivable prior to the last century.

47:56

What's happening? Well, what's going on? I think that we've done this without realizing it in many ways.

48:02

We've just assumed. And but if you again, this is where history is so important, right?

48:07

If you go back and look at the 20th century, it's not as surprising because in the 20th century, you have this shift take place.

48:17

Or in my book, I call it a Trinity drift in which so many of the ways that the church has really defined very carefully, according to Scripture, define the

48:29

Trinity in terms of its unity or its simplicity. And then in terms of distinctions, the father is unbegotten, the son is begotten, the spirit is spirit.

48:38

All of these things sort of get rejected or really just kind of redefined or neglected.

48:45

And instead, you have the rise of social Trinitarianism. It's really ironic because there's this party taking place in the 20th century saying, hey, we've revived the

48:57

Trinity. But more recently, there's been all kinds of people you think of, like the historian

49:04

Louis Ayers, who have come along and said, wait a minute, what kind of Trinity, though? It seems like this is more of a of a social

49:11

Trinity. I want to I want to rest there for a second. So so I've heard and you let me know.

49:16

And I one of the areas that I need to work on as an apologist is really my history, knowing the historical dialogue and context of why

49:27

I believe what I believe. And in some areas I've got it, but other areas I need a lot of work. And so in the midst of my own personal study,

49:34

I don't study as much as I'd like because I just don't have the time. But I've adopted language from people that I listen to.

49:43

So as I'm studying, I listen to podcasts and I and, you know, in real life, you're not always thinking, well, what's the historical you're not thinking about that all the time.

49:51

So so the language that I use and I know other people do this is the language that you hear other apologists and other theologians, theologians that you respect.

49:59

And so we could adopt some of that language and actually not necessarily reflect what what what's supposed to be accurate with respect to some of these doctrines.

50:06

So I've heard people define the Trinity, and I think I've defined it this way as well. We can have a theological definition.

50:14

We could have a definition along the lines of using propositions within scripture and conglomerate them together and come up with a doctrine, which

50:21

I think is what is a good way to do it. But there's also a more philosophical way that I've heard it defined.

50:27

And and perhaps you could interact with this definition. Here's what I've heard. Okay. The Trinity is the idea that there is one being who is

50:35

God, who has three centers of consciousness. Each center has the characteristics of personhood.

50:44

So how would you how would you interact with that specific? Is that definition reflecting one of these positions that are controversially debated today?

50:55

Yeah, absolutely. I think you're on to something there. I've defined it that way on when people people ask me, oh, so are you a social

51:04

Trinitarian? I'm like, I don't know what that is. And I haven't really been a discussion there.

51:11

And here's where, you know, to be perfectly honest, and I actually start the book this way.

51:17

I say we're drifting. And honestly, this is not

51:22

I'm not saying this as, you know, sort of pointing the finger. This is something that is coming from within my own training.

51:32

And and just it's in the air that we breathe. And so I even say with even with a little embarrassment, you know what, actually, this is just what we've assumed, kind of like you're talking about.

51:45

So so all that to say, it's not I like to tell people that it's not so much like, oh,

51:51

OK, we've got this view of the Trinity and that view of the Trinity or this view. I think what's happened is actually we have a an an orthodox understanding of the

52:01

Trinity that prevailed. For goodness, sixteen, seventeen hundred years, and then you hit the modern period and things change and they change radically.

52:14

Now, there's a whole history here we don't have to go into, but I would point to fingers like you're going on was very honest.

52:22

I appreciate that, at least about him. And he just comes out and says that he's very critical of, say, the, you know, the

52:29

Nicene heritage. And he just says we need to redefine the Trinity in terms of of a society.

52:35

Now, what's so what I from there, he really puts his foot on the gas because at that point, once he starts defining the persons in terms in terms of of a society, all of a go directly for human society and say, look, we've got we've got the paradigm, we've got the prototype then.

52:58

And for him, it's politics, right? For him, it's politics. The irony, though, is that everyone else follows suit.

53:05

And for others, it's ecclesiology. For others, it's gender debates. For others, it's ecology. And it just goes on homosexuality.

53:12

I mean, it's endless. So what is happening here? Well, I think what's happened is there's been a redefinition of the person that's been at the core of this.

53:21

When you go person in terms of each person, much like us. Right.

53:26

You know, we're here. Here we are talking. You're your own person. I'm my own person. We might have a type of cooperative unity on this podcast.

53:38

But but you have your own will and I have my own will. It's different. And we might even disagree.

53:45

We might even we we we have you have your own center of consciousness. I mean, we could go on and on and list the ways.

53:52

Right. Sure. We have to I think we have to be really careful at this point. Right. That we don't just assume or we could even talk about relationships.

54:00

Right. We have a good relationship with each other. But what we mean we mean by that is not the type of unity we mean when we talk about God.

54:08

Sure. It's actually falls quite short. So notice here, we have to be really careful that we're not just projecting, as I call it, our.

54:20

Just assumptions about how a person should be defined back onto God, because with God, things are very different than that, and the unity we're after is actually quite different.

54:30

So when we talk about God, for example, yes, we distinguish the persons. Right. Let's just take the sun, for example.

54:38

I think a good biblical case can be made that when we talk about the sun, we can refer to what is it that distinguishes the sun?

54:51

Well, I think we have good biblical reasons to say, well, apart from the world.

54:56

So we're not talking here about the incarnation. We're talking about eternity. We're talking about a timeless existence.

55:04

We talk about God. So apart from the world, apart from creation, apart from salvation. This is the sun.

55:10

And we call him sun. Scripture calls him sun. Why? Because he's from the father.

55:15

It's almost too simple to say. Right. That's what it means to be sun. It means to be begotten.

55:22

Of course, this is God we're talking about. Right. So since this is God we're talking about, the church fathers were really adamant at this point.

55:30

You know, be careful here. We don't want to just project all the human things that go along with sonship back on God.

55:35

This is an eternal beginning. Do you think that there's a blurring then between the communicable attributes of God and the incommunicable attributes of God so that sometimes people will take or try to relate to the incommunicable attributes of God by kind of drawing these parallels from a human perspective?

55:55

Is that what is going on or am I off track here? I think perhaps

56:01

I have to hear more, but since you mentioned attributes, I'm not sure if this is what what you're after.

56:07

But when we talk about God, right, whether it's

56:13

God's unchanging nature, his immutability, or maybe it's his holiness, maybe it's his love, no matter what attribute or perfection we're talking about.

56:24

Well, all three persons of the Godhead have these in common, and so this is the reason why.

56:34

Right, that's really different than how we're persons, because I might be more loving and you might be more holy or something like that, or you might be more loving.

56:46

And I'm quite a mean person. I mean, we just as human beings. It just doesn't it just doesn't work that way.

56:53

But with God, it's very different. And so this is why, like when you go back to the fourth century where all these debates were taking place and the fathers were trying to really fight for the survival of Christian orthodoxy as we know it, over against certain heresies, they were very adamant that,

57:12

OK, yes, the son, for example, the son is distinguished as son because he's eternally begotten.

57:19

But then they would very quickly say, remember, remember. This son is eternally begotten from the father's very nature.

57:29

Why did they say this? Well, because in the same breath, they're trying to make sure they are also preserving the son's equality.

57:39

Right. And they would do something similar with the spirit. But in terms of spiration now, that that's very different than the way we talk about the train today.

57:49

And so they both east and west, I think this has been another problem with history is sometimes folks like to say, oh, it's problems with the

57:57

West. And the East is the way to go. Now it's both East and West. Both of them agree to what we might call divine simplicity.

58:06

And you see it there in what I just said, right? He's begotten from the father's divine nature.

58:11

In other words, what they're trying to make sure is, yes, we distinguish the son. But the essence isn't some fourth thing out there that's detached.

58:19

No, this this essence subsists in these persons.

58:25

And so they were really careful to make sure that there's there's no wiggle room there, that that each person has in common the one simple, undivided, indivisible divine essence.

58:39

That's very different from the way that the Trinity is described today. But all you have to do is

58:45

Google the Nicene Creed and you'll start to notice, goodness, it's short. But they seem really concerned to preserve these ideas.

58:54

And they're even echoing the biblical language, true God of true God, light of light.

59:01

These are some of the reasons they're doing so. Excellent. Well, I have one more question.

59:07

We're at the top of the hour and I'm foisting this upon you, but it's OK if you're not up to it.

59:13

Would it be OK to take a couple of questions from the live audience here? Some people have some questions. It's OK.

59:19

I'll do my best. That's right. Listen, when I'm by myself and people have questions,

59:24

I'm just like that. Don't know that one. And I'll just skip through. So there's no shame. But just with regards to the to the title.

59:31

So simply Trinity, the the unmanipulated father, son and Holy Spirit or spirit. What do you mean by the unmanipulated father, son and spirit?

59:41

Why'd you use that title there? And that's really at the heart of the book. We hinted at it just a minute ago.

59:50

Sure. When we were talking about. Really, the the last century, the 20th century, and I said.

01:00:00

The Trinity, once the Trinity is redefined in terms of a of a social paradigm, all of a sudden it becomes very convenient to to really use the

01:00:14

Trinity or maybe even manipulate the Trinity for your social agenda.

01:00:21

One way this has been put is that in the 20th century, the Trinity has become everyone's social program.

01:00:29

Now, I mentioned how with a major figure like Moltmann, he did this with politics.

01:00:36

Well, for him, redefining the Trinity as a society of equality, that meant for him, well, this is the perfect paradigm then for politics.

01:00:47

And for him, that meant socialism. And you can see how he would then try to start making that case.

01:00:56

What's so, well, fascinating or maybe a little disturbing is that that's not the end.

01:01:01

He he's really not unique in that regard. You have some social Trinitarian saying, well,

01:01:07

I want to use a social Trinity for a high church polity, for bishops and those under them being subordinate.

01:01:15

Sure. Others saying, no, no, no, no. If we've got a social Trinity, then that's really our recipe for congregationalism.

01:01:23

Then it moves to gender. And you have egalitarians and complementarians both saying we've got the ace card, the

01:01:30

Trinity, to to justify then our vision of gender roles.

01:01:36

It doesn't end there. In the beginning, at the beginning of my book, I talk about this story, about how

01:01:43

I came home and I was looking at all the books that I had read on the wall, just the bookshelf covered, and it just hit me.

01:01:51

My goodness, we have used the Trinity for just about every social agenda under the sun.

01:01:58

Could it be, hmm? Yeah. Have we maybe redefined the

01:02:03

Trinity? Either for that purpose or we've redefined the

01:02:09

Trinity and it's become all too convenient to make that move. Maybe it's actually time to say, let's go back to the basics and actually ask the ask our some of our fathers who were studied and wrote commentaries on the scripture, ask them, are we actually defining the

01:02:26

Trinity right? Or or maybe we're maybe we're inconsistent with both scripture and what, say, you know, the

01:02:33

Nicene Creed has said. Hmm. Excellent. That's awesome. So I highly encourage folks to pick up Simply Trinity and you have to pick this one up.

01:02:43

And of course, it's part of a trilogy. So you can't you can't have two movies if it's a trilogy.

01:02:49

Come on. You need all three books. There's another one coming out. So you want to keep your keep your attention for that.

01:02:55

All right. Well, we're up at the top of the hour. Let's take a couple of questions. Some of them may be directly related, indirectly related.

01:03:04

And it's OK if if when you because sometimes people will type out a question and it's kind of like written weirdly.

01:03:11

So we'll take it one at a time. OK. All right. Baptized by Jesus says he quote the scripture here.

01:03:18

Then Jesus came to them and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

01:03:24

Then he asks, how can Matthew 28, 18, you know, reflect this idea of the Trinity?

01:03:29

All power and authority in heaven and earth was given to Jesus. So what's going on there?

01:03:34

How would you address a question coming from that angle? Well, this is very related to so much of what we talked about.

01:03:41

We didn't quite get into this. But if you were to ask me, you know, how do you sum up what's gone wrong in the modern period with all of these redefinitions of the

01:03:53

Trinity? I think I would use one word. I would say conflation. In other words, we've conflated who

01:04:00

God is in and of himself with what he does in what's called the economy.

01:04:08

Sometimes it's referred to as the economy of salvation. OK, so when we when we look at this economy of salvation, what do we discover?

01:04:19

One of the things that we discover is that the missions of the

01:04:25

Godhead, well, these are actually meant to reflect and mirror in an important way who this

01:04:38

God is in and of himself. So here's a just an easy one. Why is it that the father sends the son?

01:04:47

Well, it's because this is the son who's begotten from the father from all eternity.

01:04:55

Now, when we sorry about that, my phone is if you if you want to take a few seconds, it won't be rude.

01:05:02

It is half. It happens. It's all right. One second. No worries. Well, while Dr. Barrett is gone,

01:05:07

I'll take a quick stab at this question baptized by Jesus. Also asked, does a person have a brain?

01:05:14

That's actually if don't be annoyed at that question, if it's like, well, who would ask that sort of question? It's actually a good question.

01:05:20

Persons don't require brains, if you understand within a biblical perspective, man is comprised of body and soul.

01:05:28

And some people might want to hash that out, make a distinction between spirit and soul. But there is an immaterial element to to human beings.

01:05:36

And so while human beings have brains, a brain is not a necessary component to being a person.

01:05:44

I would argue that in the presence of the Lord, when I'm apart from my body, I will still be a person, although I won't have a physical brain in that state.

01:05:52

So I thought I'd kind of take a stab at that quick question while you were gone. OK, good.

01:05:57

If you want to finish your thought based upon that previous question there. Yeah, so sorry about that, but my the point

01:06:05

I was trying to make then is when we come to texts like like that one in Matthew's gospel, we have to be we have to be careful.

01:06:13

Right. Because on the one hand, what is the context? Right. That's the whenever we read the

01:06:18

Bible, we need to keep asking that question. What is the context in which this is said or this is taking place? The context is the economy.

01:06:25

The context is the mission that Jesus is trying to accomplish. OK, remember what scripture says?

01:06:31

He humbled himself, which is just so scandalous, right? Yes. The son of God.

01:06:37

And yet he humbles himself. He even to the point of death, the

01:06:42

New Testament said, or he he learns obedience. Now, of course, this is the incarnation.

01:06:49

He assumes a human nature to his person. Well, all that then changes the conversation, because at that point, then we're not we're not talking about, oh, there must be some type of hierarchy in God that's person defining.

01:07:04

Goodness, that would that would be. That would spell major consequences, then, for a doctrine of the

01:07:11

Trinity. I don't know that we could have a doctrine of the Trinity in which the persons are equal. Rather, what is taking place?

01:07:17

Well, we're we're being introduced to the mission of the son in the economy of salvation in which he has humbled himself so low.

01:07:28

And then and then he rises up victorious. And of course, then he.

01:07:35

Risen, he then has right, he he has this authority then to say to his disciples, go, go make disciples in the name of the

01:07:44

Trinity. Well, that's a very different context then. And so we have to be careful we don't read everything that occurs in the incarnation by virtue of, say, the humanity of Christ into God and divinity and all three persons of the covenant.

01:07:59

All right. Excellent. I remember you. Twelve asks, in what ways does the eternal generation differ from Neoplatonic emanation?

01:08:09

I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, that concept. But if you think you want to take a stab at it, go for it.

01:08:15

If not, we can pass it. Well, when we talk about eternal generation, remember what we said is the fathers were really careful.

01:08:23

Right. To say almost immediately, yes, this is generation or beginning.

01:08:29

So this says something true. Right. This is how scripture works. We we are living and breathing within an analogical world.

01:08:39

Why? Because God's infinite. We're finite. Well, that means then that when when we come into contact with certain ideas or language, we have to keep that in mind.

01:08:51

So, yes, generation says something true. It tells us why the son is called son and the father is called father.

01:08:59

And this idea from this and as mysterious as that may be, it does say something true.

01:09:05

But at the same time, right, the same time, immediately we have to say this is God. This is an eternal beginning.

01:09:13

And so all the things that you might assume, right, in this case, maybe with a type of emanation, all things you might assume that take place with a human beginning.

01:09:25

Don't don't start to impose those on God. I have a chapter in my book where I give a biblical case for eternal generation.

01:09:34

But then I also have another chapter because it's just so important to even being a Christian and even being Orthodox. I have another chapter where I actually try to explain it.

01:09:42

And in there, I talk about the nine marks of an unhealthy generation in which

01:09:48

I'm really trying to build off of everyone from, say, the

01:09:54

Cappadocian fathers to a Baptist like John Gill more recently to say, well, when we talk about generation, it doesn't mean that there's a multiplication of the divine essence.

01:10:04

It doesn't mean there's a division of the divine essence. There's there's no change or mutation.

01:10:09

There's no lessening. There's no hierarchy as a result. And I go through and I list each one of those.

01:10:15

Those might be helpful as you try to then distinguish, OK, what does eternal generation mean and how does that differ than from other concepts?

01:10:23

Hmm. Excellent. Guys, again, you want to check out Simply Trinity. None greater, there we go.

01:10:32

And his podcast, I was listening when I go drive down to Virginia or up to New York or something like that.

01:10:39

Your voice travels with me in my car. The podcast, you have so many excellent interviews and discussions there.

01:10:46

I highly recommend people subscribe to the podcast and pick up Dr. Barrett's book. Now, this is a last question.

01:10:52

It's it's a doozy. I'm going to set it up, OK? It's very much related to the sorts of things that we talk about on this show.

01:10:59

As I mentioned before, we went live. This is an apologetics channel. But more specifically, we do apologetics from a more presuppositional,

01:11:06

Vantillian perspective. So I'm not sure how much you're familiar with Vantill, but there's a question here related to the

01:11:11

Trinity and a concept that Vantill thought the Trinity solved.

01:11:17

So let me set up the context for folks. The question is by Brandon Corley. And thank you for your question, Brandon. What does

01:11:22

Dr. Barrett think of Vantill's assertion that the Trinity solves the problem of the one in the many?

01:11:28

Now, for those who don't know what the problem of the one in many is, it is a philosophical problem that deals with the question of what is the ultimate grounding of reality?

01:11:39

Is it an ultimate oneness or an ultimate manyness? Is reality at base one thing or a multiplicity of things?

01:11:47

And so Vantill tried to use the idea of the Trinity, who is equally and ultimately one and and equally and ultimately many.

01:11:57

And so he thought that that solved this problem with unity and diversity in the world. So setting that up,

01:12:03

Dr. Barrett, do you have any thoughts on this or is this kind of out of left field? You're not really familiar with Vantill much.

01:12:09

Not not sure where you are there. Well, I'm bound to step on a few toes here.

01:12:16

And don't worry. And you probably based on your comment, you might step on my toes, which is completely fine.

01:12:23

That stepping on toes comes with the territory. So no worries. OK, I'll make a four hour response video after we're done.

01:12:29

Just kidding. Oh, well, the first the first thing I want to say to Brandon is, you know, just a word of encouragement that, you know,

01:12:40

I'm so I'm so encouraged that you're really diving deep and you're trying to think about these things and their implications.

01:12:48

So so well done there. I will lay my cards on the table here, though.

01:12:53

And I don't think you you I think that even some

01:12:59

Vantillians have have recognized this. And so this isn't necessarily, you know, though some some other

01:13:07

Vantillians might disagree. There's different types of Vantillians out there. But you're my guest.

01:13:13

So I'm going to let you go. You can say whatever you want, man. I don't want to get an email. You are you going to respond?

01:13:19

I'm just you. That's my job. I want to make sure when I get off here that your email, your inbox just explodes.

01:13:26

Right. It's all it's all good. Share your thoughts, man. I'm interested in what you have to say. Well, I'm not let me just put it lightly.

01:13:35

I'm not a fan of the way Vantill describes the Trinity. OK, I think he now there's it's hard to do this in just a few minutes.

01:13:48

But the way that he can be a bit critical of traditional categories like persons.

01:13:58

I two things come to mind, I'm I'm a bit skeptical whether he's understanding person and maybe the the traditional way.

01:14:10

But then also, I do wonder if if maybe he's too quick to release some of the traditional vocabulary or perhaps even try to use it for different purposes.

01:14:26

So so I just want to put that on the table because. And I've even seen

01:14:32

Vantillian sort of, you know, have this conversation and debate with each other. You know, how far do we follow

01:14:38

Vantill in terms of. Right. I would agree. I think I would agree with everything you said.

01:14:44

I don't know. I don't know just yet where you're going with it. We might be dizzy, but I would agree.

01:14:51

He definitely used language to describe the Trinity that can be very confusing and misleading. So even the most ardent

01:14:58

Vantillian would would say that he wasn't always the clearest and use the best choice of words. So I would agree with you there.

01:15:05

I'm just waiting for the conclusion. I'll just add.

01:15:12

So so that makes me a bit nervous then to in answering this question, to go to Vantill on the

01:15:18

Trinity in order to use his specific understanding of the Trinity as then kind of solving the one in the many long historical question.

01:15:32

Sure. That makes sense. I think I'd rather because of some of those misunderstandings or even wrong understandings of the

01:15:39

Trinity from from Vantill, I think I'd rather go back and say, you know what? I think there's a case to be made to to actually stick with the the historic vocabulary.

01:15:50

OK. And and from there. Can we talk about the one in the many?

01:15:57

I think so. But again, in light of our whole conversation about social

01:16:03

Trinitarianism, I wouldn't want to do it on those terms. Sure. That makes sense. And so, yes, in one sense, we can have that conversation about,

01:16:13

OK, well, why why is it that why is it then that that we see this dynamic take place in the world?

01:16:19

But I guess I want to be careful that we don't use the Trinity like we were talking about and impress it so far so that we're trying to look at every example of one of many in the world.

01:16:30

Sure. And then somehow kind of force the Trinity to to explain it. I think if we do that, we might actually well, we can risk actually redefining the

01:16:45

Trinity or using the training in a way that it's just not meant to go there. Now, again, I'm good at stepping on some toes here.

01:16:51

But I think what I would say instead is the question of the one in the many actually, and this is no offense to Van Til, but it's all the great philosophers are trying to wrestle with it.

01:17:04

Right. And so in one sense, we could say, and I would encourage people to really dig in here. You can go back in into history and look at, say, what some have called classical apologetics.

01:17:17

And there's debate here. But I my my opinion is that the reformed tradition actually does retrieve classical apologetics.

01:17:26

OK, when you look at it, the question of the one in many is treated oftentimes, though, it's it's treated from from a much broader perspective, even a philosophical perspective that looks at more traditional categories like God is the first cause, for example, or or just the way that the world is set up in terms of cause and effect.

01:17:50

And and at that point, we might we might be on better ground to then start approaching them.

01:17:57

Some of the categories were given in special. Mr. Mr. I apologize, doctor.

01:18:05

I'm like, see, you got me so upset. I'm just going to get rid of your piece here, Mr. I wonder, are you familiar?

01:18:13

I have it behind me. I'm sorry for being rude, for turning my back. Are you familiar?

01:18:18

OK, I don't want to take too much time. Are you familiar with Brant Bosterman's work on the Trinity? A little bit.

01:18:26

Yeah. OK. OK, because he tries to apply Van Til's use of the

01:18:32

Trinity to solving that problem, and he actually tries to be as ambitious as to as to try to argue why

01:18:38

God must be one in three specifically. Very interesting. You might want to check it out. I think it's called

01:18:43

The Vindication of Nazi. Now I need to know the title. Where is it? Mike, you ever you ever lose a book in your in your collection?

01:18:51

Dr. Barrett? Yes, all the time. It's not even that big of a collection. I don't know. Oh, here it is. Thank you.

01:18:56

There we go. OK, you might be interested in it. It's called

01:19:02

The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox and Interpretation and Refinement of Theological of the

01:19:08

Theological Apologetic of Cornelius Van Til. And there's some interesting discussions.

01:19:14

He goes into evidentialism, classicalism. And let me see if I can show you an interesting page where he goes into exploring the the deficiencies of a concept of bininity or quadrinity and why three is actually a necessity for the

01:19:36

Trinity and preconditions for intelligible experience and how all those things are related. So you might read it and say

01:19:41

I completely disagree with him, but it's definitely an interesting an interesting read. But I'm always open to hearing some some differing positions on that, as I think just as a side note, folks who listen to my channel know this.

01:19:52

I find that topic in particular, the philosophical question and the relation of the Trinity to that question very interesting.

01:19:59

But I actually want to echo what Dr. Barrett has mentioned here. And it really is the heart, really the heart of your book,

01:20:06

I think, is that while we might be interested in applying the Trinity to these other areas, we don't want to be guilty of manipulating the

01:20:16

Trinity and into in bringing it into discussions that really, I think, are outside,

01:20:23

I think, appropriateness. We want to allow the Trinity to be the Trinity and to use it in a way that is biblically faithful and faithful to the historical descriptions of the

01:20:34

Trinity within the context of orthodoxy. So folks might disagree as to how that's applied. But I think just as an overall principle,

01:20:41

I think it's very important to allow the Trinity to be the Trinity. And so I very much appreciate that sentiment, Dr.

01:20:47

Barrett. Well, we are at an hour and 20 minutes. I would like to thank you so much.

01:20:52

I know you are so busy just giving me your time. I can talk about this stuff for hours.

01:20:58

Unfortunately, my kids will be home in a couple of minutes. And I have a six year old, a four year old and a three year old.

01:21:05

It's going to be it's going to be very loud, very, very soon. So would you do you have any closing comments or anything you'd like to share with anyone before we sign off?

01:21:17

You know, thank you so much for having me. It's been wonderful to be on.

01:21:22

Great to see so many people asking questions. And this is why, you know,

01:21:29

I wrote the book, Simply Trinity, and so encouraged by just so much of the interest and the deep things of God.

01:21:39

Well, amen. Well, we definitely appreciate your work. And I'm going to continue to follow your work, your books and your podcast, which, again,

01:21:46

I'm going to say it again before we sign off, guys. Go to iTunes and download the Credo podcast.

01:21:53

Excellent discussions and interviews. Dr. Barrett, thank you so much for your time. We're going to sign off. Thank you, everyone, for listening and thank you for sending in your questions.