Is Sola Scriptura True?

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today I have a very special guest that I'm going to introduce in just a moment. But before we do that, I just want to give a heads up for folks who may be in the Fredericksburg area in Virginia this Friday and Saturday, I'll be speaking at an apologetics conference alongside Anthony Rogers.

You guys might be familiar with his work in Islam, and Dr. Robert Bowman, who has a couple of books out on the cults. So we'll be talking about cult apologetics, presuppositional apologetics, apologetic methodology, those sorts of things.

And that will be hosted by the Knox Reformed Presbyterian Church in Fredericksburg, Virginia. So if you guys are interested and you're in the area, you might want to check out their website, knoxreformedpresbyterianchurch .org, and sign up for that.

I think signups are still possible. So just wanted to throw that out. 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.

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

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

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 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 Credo podcast.

It's excellent. It's got awesome interviews and awesome discussions. But he is the host of the Credo podcast where he has conversations with the best theologians today to discuss the most important issues of theology.

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 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 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, 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.

He's originally from California, receiving his BA from Biola University in La Mirada, California, and he received his MDiv and PhD in systematic theology from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

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

I'm doing great. 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 COVID, believe it or not. I had forgotten that, and as my wife will tell you, when I get a cold, you might as well just put me in the grave.

So I appreciate you being patient with me and glad to join you, and I'll try my best to follow that very generous, too generous introduction there.

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. 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.

It makes me want to go off and study something. So I very much appreciate what you do. Well, thank you very much. Well, why don't you tell folks a little bit about what you're working on? 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. I, 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, and so I wrote a book years ago called None Greater the Undomesticated Attributes of God, and then recently, yeah, there it is, In the Flesh.

And I'm halfway through it, and when I read theology, it stimulates my mind, and it's kind of intellectually stimulating, so we like to think about these things, but reading your book just makes me stand in awe of God all the more.

So I like that there's that intellectual strength that you provide, but also it produces a desire to worship. So this is an excellent book so far. Well, thank you.

That warms my heart. It makes me think maybe I'm doing just a little bit right. So yeah, that book really was meant to introduce 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, and so I'm, in that book, trying to help us really dump, so to speak, the paradigm that we've inherited that tends to domesticate 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.

I followed that book with another one, Simply Trinity, which just released this year, The Unmanipulated, yep, there it is, The Unmanipulated Fathers. Your free advertisement. And I'm sure we'll talk about this one a little bit.

This one continues that theme and then turns to the Trinity, and here I get into really some surprising and a bit, some shocking discoveries as to the ways that we've been suspicious and critical and sometimes have even jettisoned just biblical or Nicene orthodoxy.

I have another book that will follow, be the third in that trilogy called Secret Providence, and that one will be looking at the providence of God. It may be the most practical yet because it's going to, 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.

And then I'm writing a large, more academic volume for all those nerds out there like me, and that'll be with Baker Academic. It'll be simply called The Doctrine of God, and there 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 Christian doctrine of God.

So that'll be a beefy volume. It won't be coming for a couple of years, so I'm afraid folks will have to be a little bit patient.

It takes long to write books. I should know, I've written nothing.

It is very, I love to write, I really do, but you're right, it does take a lot of time and research and it's extremely difficult. So, but the words don't always just fly off the keyboard like people think.

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. It takes a lot of work, so.

That's exactly right. Lots of sweat and blood involved. That's right.

Let's hope not blood. The conversation got dark very quick. Yeah, that's right. 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 Trinity, because those are two areas that I think you have a lot of helpful things to say.

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. Let's start with Sola Scriptura, and then our latter part will move into the 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 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. 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 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. Why don't you unpack that for us?

Well, answering that question is actually half the battle, isn't it? 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 Sola Scriptura means, and maybe more importantly, what it does not mean.

Yes. Yet in my book, God's Word Alone, I start off right at the beginning and try to address it right out of the gate. And I basically say there that Sola Scriptura, it means that only Scripture, because it is God's inspired word, so that qualification is really important.

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

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. 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.

So if we're not on the same page there, then the conversation over Sola Scriptura, in one sense, never gets off the ground. So it's only because God himself has breathed out his word, or as Peter likes to say, that the Spirit has carried along these biblical authors, so that what they say is what 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, Scripture is sufficient, though again, we will want to explain what that means and doesn't mean, or that Scripture is our final authority.

If I can elaborate just a tad, I would say when we move to inerrancy, for example, here again, Sola Scriptura comes into the picture, because we're not saying that Scripture is only truthful in terms of its big message.

We're actually saying that because Scripture is breathed out by God, well, it reflects God. In other words, this is a God who, as Jesus says, is truth himself, and so we can trust, this is very relevant then to the life of the church and the Christian life, we can trust that the word of God is also truthful and trustworthy in all that it does say, and notice how I'm trying to say that carefully, in all that it asserts, it is trustworthy.

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

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

Well, that can only happen if there is a sufficiency to his word. Now, I'll throw back to you, because I'm sure there's a lot more to say here, but I think what I would want to then talk about next is then maybe what soul scripture does not mean.

Yes, because there seems to be a lot of misconceptions. It's like, oh, it's just you, your Bible alone, you are your own pope. You're just left to yourself to interpret scripture. And so, you know, there are a bunch of terrible things that follow from that.

So what are we not saying when we affirm sola scriptura?

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

Now, notice it's called tradition one, because they very much affirm tradition. In other words, they saw tradition as really crucial and instrumental, helping us to understand the scriptures correctly, keeping us accountable.

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

This also was the belief of the reformers. The reformers had a very high view of tradition. And so right away, we have to really emphasize this because I think sometimes they get painted as if they're discarding tradition.

In fact, when Rome accused them of novelty and innovation and therefore heresy, the reformers quipped back and said, absolutely not. 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 to Calvin that Rome was Catholic, Calvin would have been sick to his stomach.

Because by Catholic with a small c, meaning universal, Calvin and the other reformers, that was the whole purpose of their existence, was they were trying to show, no, we are actually more Catholic. Believe it or not, we are more Catholic than Rome because we are actually more consistent with the Christian heritage than Rome.

And some of the innovations they then said Rome was putting on the church. So this is an important clarification. And sometimes with history, we're not always careful in this regard. Now, all that said, at the end of the day, though, the reformers and many of the fathers before them clarified that, yes, they have a high view of tradition and see it as really instrumental.

But nonetheless, what type of authority is it? Well, it's a ministerial authority. So it is an authority. In other words, we're not saying that scripture is the only source of authority. We're saying that it's the final authority.

And so the reformers were really careful at that point to say, well, tradition is a ministerial authority and scripture alone is our magisterial authority. Now, why is that? Well, because scripture alone is breathed out by God as our definitive, permanent, written revelation.

Yeah, do you want to jump in? Sure, sure. Yeah. So, okay. So I know a lot of people will say, well, the reformers and Protestants, they'll say that the reformers tip their, you know, they say they respect tradition, but it's merely just a tipping of the hat.

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.

Yeah, there's a fantastic book. It's an older book, but you can still find it if you look hard. It's by Anthony Lane. Okay. And I think it's just called John Calvin. So we'll use Calvin as an example here.

Okay. And the book is so, it's tremendous because the book very carefully, chapter by chapter, demonstrates that Calvin was a patristic scholar and not just patristic, but even a medieval. The older he got, the more of an expert he became.

Why is, why would Anthony Lane write a book like this? Which is so, you know, specific. Well, he's trying to demonstrate exactly what he's trying to answer that very question you raised. In other words, someone like John Calvin, when you read his institutes, you start to discover goodness.

He is simply echoing the patristic witness before him at every turn. Now, why would he, why would Calvin be so obsessed with doing that? Because it's everywhere. It's echoed in the very phrases he uses.

It's infused throughout the very doctrines he is claiming to teach and believe in. Why would he be so fixated on demonstrating his patristic continuity? Well, it goes back to really what we just said.

If you look at when Calvin got kicked out of Geneva, that's another story, but it was really during that time that Cardinal Salileto wrote to the Genevans and said, come back to Rome, come back, come back to your, to mother church.

And long story short, but eventually Calvin gets an invitation to say, hey, can you respond? Can you respond and write a letter that can serve, ironically, the very people that just kicked you out? And so he does, which tells you something about his humility.

I don't know if I could have done that, but he does. And one of the things he argues in there is that he talks about really two things, the formal principle and the material principles of the Reformation, soul 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 Genevans that the Reformation as they know it is not an innovation. And therefore it's not, it's not heretical.

In other words, they haven't, as much as Rome was saying, you know, someone like Salileto was saying, you have strayed, you've left the church. Calvin was making the argument, no, actually we are trying to reform and renew the church according to its true identity.

In other words, what Calvin is saying is you Genevans are actually more Catholic than you realize. Again, Catholic with a small c. Sure, sure. And from there he goes on to make that argument. Now, in order to make it, scripture then is going to serve as his magisterial authority.

Um, but in order to clarify, um, what scripture actually means, because remember both Rome and Protestants are, they're both quoting scripture, right? Um, in order to clarify that he's going to go to the church fathers and he's going to demonstrate, uh, time after again, that, uh, whether it's justification, uh, whether it's, uh, scripture, uh, whether it's the atonement in, in, in so many different ways, he's going to demonstrate actually the reformation is in continuity, uh, with the church Catholic, the church universal, which did believe, uh, in the primacy.

Sure. The, um, uh, in scripture as, as our final court of appeal.

Now, now I want to rest right there because, uh, within the context of providing an apologetic for sola scriptura, that is probably the thing I've heard the most in terms of, uh, the doctrine of sola scriptura, not being in continuity.

No one has taught the doctrine, uh, and, and so, and, and not only are Protestants accused of kind of like, this is innovative and it's not something that was believed in the early church. Um, they're also accused of mishandling the patristics when they appeal to them to defend that there is continuity.

So why don't you, uh, for, for those who are really, they want to know how to provide a response to these sorts of objections. How would you, um, help folks along who, who get this objection? It's innovative 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.

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, uh, what the reformers were saying here about sola scriptura really changes the conversation. In other words, when we, uh, look back at the reformation, it's not as, uh, so oftentimes it's kind of pitched at a popular level.

It's not a debate between scripture, the reformers and tradition, which is Rome. Right. You can tell that even from the way we just set things up, right. That, uh, actually, and Oberman makes this point, this, uh, 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.

Okay. And, and that's really helpful because, uh, Oberman goes on to say, well, then what is tradition to, um, tradition to which he associates with a certain, um, late medieval, uh, individuals as well as what will become the Roman Catholic church with Trent and everything after, uh, he says, well, tradition to, um, it too believes in scriptures inspiration and it's trustworthiness and authority.

However, uh, he argues that for these individuals, uh, tradition becomes a second, uh, a second source of revelation itself. Now, uh, that's different. Uh, that's, that's actually quite a bit different.

That sounds technical. That's quite a bit different from tradition one, which we just talked about because now all of a sudden, um, and you see this in the late medieval period on the eve of the reformation, there is a conflict even within those who go the route of tradition too, because then you have to answer the question.

Well, if tradition is a, is a second source of divine revelation itself, perhaps one that could be equal to, or maybe even greater than, uh, scripture. Uh, if that's the case, then who decides who gets to decide, uh, who is the authority.

And so you have a split in the late medieval period between those, uh, who say it's, it's a council and those who say it's the papacy. Uh, uh, you can actually go back some ways into, uh, the, the late medieval, um, conflict and you begin to have popes excommunicating each other, uh, in part over, over this very issue, uh, vying for power to determine who, who is going to be that Pope.

Right. And each Pope saying it's me and another Pope saying, no, actually it's me. And as a result, actually excommunicating one another. Um, on the other side of that, you have, uh, uh, others saying, well, actually it should be a council, um, and certain, uh, conciliarists.

And, uh, they then are having a conflict with those who are, are saying it's the papacy. It becomes quite, it becomes quite a mess that, um, the church has to try to clear up in the decades and centuries ahead.

Now, why do I bring all that up? Because when you enter into the 16th century, um, and, and this is so prevalent today, even in the way that, uh, people describe sola scriptura or interpret the Reformation.

Um, oftentimes what happens is, uh, they confuse sola scriptura. Usually critics, uh, confuse sola scriptura with what we might call nuda scriptura. Uh, and this brings us to the third category, tradition three.

Um, these were the radicals. Um, and there were many of them. There are many different types. Um, so we do want to be fair there, but to one degree or another, uh, many of them held to tradition zero, as you can, as you can tell from the name, um, they took that quite seriously.

In other words, they looked at history and they said, well, uh, the, the church has more or less been lost. Uh, it's just been all dark, uh, since the apostles, but, but thank God we're here now. Very humble position to hold.

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

Now this led to all kinds of problems and quite a bit of chaos because not all, but some of these radicals then said, well, uh, we have the spirit. And, uh, the spirit can even speak through me in a way that, uh, supersedes the scriptures and you can see, uh, it starts to, to unravel because like you, you hinted at the beginning, all of a sudden, it's not so much about scripture as it is about, about me and, and me as an individual.

So, um, all that to say, I think sometimes, uh, when we talk about this debate, 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 because they labored so hard to say, no, that, that you are confusing us with those radicals.

Would you, Dr. Barrett, would you equate, uh, the radicals with the folks who hold to solo scriptura as opposed to sola scriptura? You said scriptura. Is that the same thing?

Can you differentiate that for us? Yeah, no, you're getting at the same thing. That's just another, another good way to put it. So low scriptura, uh, playing with the Latin a little bit there, but yeah, no, you're exactly right.

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

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

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

So, um, all right. So let's take another, another look at another popular objection that I, that I often hear. And it's, um, it's usually associated with the idea that, um, if, uh, you know, solo scriptura has led to so much division.

So for example, it's the reason why we have, you know, I don't know what the number is now, but a bajillion, quadrillion quintupling denominations in existence today, the number keeps changing. Um, how would we respond to, uh, that sort of objection that, you know, this is what happens when you accept solo scriptura, you have all of the, these denominations that can't agree on anything.

How would you respond to that? Well, I think I would give two responses. So there's probably many more. Sure. The first one has to do with history. Okay. Um, and the second one again, comes back to, uh, what, what were the reformers after?

In terms of the gospel, uh, when they talked about solo scriptura. So, so maybe we can take both of those on just briefly. Um, the first one, history. Um, usually this type of objection comes from, uh, Roman Catholicism.

Okay. Um, when it's lobbed, um, I'm not sure, uh, 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 reformation, um, or, or they don't know that history.

Okay. Uh, in other words, um, even, even think about the conversation we just had about the late middle ages, uh, when you have different popes excommunicating each other, uh, it was not uniform by any stretch of the imagination.

Um, in fact, even when you look at, when we mentioned Calvin and Salileto, um, even when you look at, uh, some of these debates, uh, very often the reformers will say to, uh, those, uh, their, their opponents.

What about the East? Where's the East in this? Have you just completely condemned all the entire Eastern church for, for how many centuries? In other words, they're, they're, they're not really actually asking about the East so much as they are making a point, um, that you're, you're claiming, um, you're, you're making this claim as if, you know, you alone are the one true church, but they're pointing out, this is extremely narrow, extremely narrow.

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

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

Um, just look at the rise of Protestant liberalism, um, in the modern era, that alone has created huge divides within, within the church of Rome, uh, just as it has affected, uh, Protestant denominations and in serious ways as well.

So I guess that's the first thing I want to clarify is to say, okay, we can have this conversation, but we will be honest about the divisions in our camp. If you're honest as well about the divisions in your own camp, it's not as uniform, uh, and clear black and white as sometimes people say.

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

Uh, well, they were doing so because they believe that, that the scriptures give to us the gospel of Jesus Christ. Luther has this great statement where he says that, um, the scriptures are the swaddling clothes of baby Jesus.

He's good at stuff like that. Oh, he is. That's one of the reasons why, you know, even if you don't have to be a Lutheran to, to just extremely appreciate, uh, so much of, and even disagree with them at points, but so much of what he says, but I think his point there is important.

Um, in other words, what he's trying, what he's trying to point out is that, uh, yes. Okay. Rome was, was telling them you're the innovators, you're the heretics. Um, but one of the points Luther is trying to make there is whole reason we are appealing to the scriptures is because when we look at, uh, what's happening in the papacy and even at the popular level at the church of his day, um, their understanding of salvation, uh, seems out of sync, uh, with what the scriptures are saying.

Sure. And, um, I think at that point, uh, Luther, and it's not just him, it's many, many others. We've go to the English reformation and talk about Tyndale and Kramer and so many others. But one of the points they're trying to make then is that, well, sola scriptura then means that, uh, we are in continuity with the past because we are actually retrieving the gospel of the church 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, right? We've got Lutherans and we've got Presbyterians and we've got Baptist over my side of the world.

And, um, we've got, uh, and we could go on. Right. Um, but when we are talking about our heritage, well, yes, we have disagreements over the form of baptism, for example, we might have disagreements over the exact nature of church polity.

Sure. Um, and, and so, yeah, practically visibly, that means that my brother or sister in Christ is going to go drive down the street to their Lutheran church while that same Sunday I drive down the other street to my Baptist church.

Right. However, do we have shared fellowship and continuity over the most important things? Right.

Absolutely. So, so you would say that there's a unity within the divisions of the multiple denominations. There is a unity with respect to the essentials and there is disunity with respect to important, but non-essential, non-definitional doctrines.

Would I, would I be correct there?

Absolutely right. Absolutely right. And so, uh, that, that means then that, well, we don't just look at unity in terms of the naked eye, right? If we do that, then, then we're actually putting, we're actually resting our, our identity on something quite surface level.

Rather, what, what kind of unity are we after? We're after a unity that gets at the very heart of Christianity, which has to do with who is God and how has he revealed himself and how has he redeemed us through his son, Jesus Christ on, on those major pillars of Christianity.

It's at that point where we say, actually, we are one with one another on, on the things that matter. And that's where I think when you go back to the reformation, the reformers actually take great, um, well, they, they come in great conflict with their opponents because they're saying, Hey, listen, it's not that we, 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, that we think have been muddied.

Now that's a, that changes the conversation again, because now it's not an issue of who, who is after unity and who isn't. Now, actually it's what type of unity are we after? And I think at that point, um, Protestantism actually has, has a pretty strong case to make.

Excellent.

All right. Well, that, that's super helpful. And, um, I do apologize for people listening. We're, we're actually going to shift gears now. Okay. We're going to shift gears. Um, it's excellent. I actually want to take a couple of snippets, maybe make some shorter videos that kind of, um, pack down some of the short, quick answers to some of these important questions.

So you've given us a lot to think there. I want to shift gears to the very easy and simple topic of the Trinity. Okay. And I mean that of course, uh, sarcastically, um, when I'm going to assume everybody knows what the Trinity is just for the sake of, uh, moving along.

But, um, why did you write this book and what is the main, what are you trying to accomplish in this specific book? And then I want to ask us some other questions related to the Trinity that I think your book addresses, but I haven't gotten to yet.

Um, what deals with social Trinitarianism and simplicity and things like that. Uh, but, but why did you write this book? Why did you wake up one day and said, you know, I'm going to write a book called simply Trinity.

Uh, and I want to accomplish, uh, some task, uh, that you're trying to set out to accomplish. What, what inspired you to write this?

Well, I think you, you probably have to either be insane or a fool to write a book on the Trinity. Uh, if you just wake up one morning and think that that sounds like, uh, that sounds like something I should do, um, you know, as Augustine said, uh, so well, uh, when it comes to the Trinity, uh, never is, is erring, committing errors.