Simply Trinity (part 25)

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Simply Trinity (part 26)

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Our great God, the author of our salvation, we come before you this morning thankful for all that you have done for us, especially thankful for the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, for his life, for his death, for his resurrection.
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Father, we thank you for granting us faith in time that we might trust in Christ, that we might believe in him.
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Father, as we look to this difficult subject of the
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Trinity and specifically the Holy Spirit, Father, I pray that you would bless us this morning with ears to hear, eyes to see.
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Father, open our minds to the truth of your word, the truth that faithful men have passed down through the ages.
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We pray for these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, wouldn't you know it, we have a new quiz this morning because we finished the old one last week.
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So let me employ
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Vadim here. I'm going to double his salary, which will be good news for him.
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He's gone from zero to twice zero. Okay, let's start with number one.
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Since you guys were up late last night studying, true or false, many evangelicals today have little knowledge of the
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Holy Spirit. I heard it's true.
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I think it's true. We see, you know, the Holy Spirit either portrayed as a force.
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You know, there's a video where a guy, I won't do this because I'd rip the microphone off, but where he famously waves his jacket and what happens when he waves his jacket?
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People fall over. Which, you know, could be the bad cologne on his jacket, I don't know.
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But if you just think about the way people typically even pray in evangelical circles, they'll invite the
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Holy Spirit to come. Which, in some ways, it's fine, right? On the other hand, the
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Holy Spirit's there. We hear things like people talking about, we know wherever two or three have gathered, your spirit is there, things like that.
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I mean, people have a lot of confusing ideas about the Holy Spirit. I wrote just a few notes here, you know, that during meetings people will get prophecies.
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Those are words allegedly from the Spirit of God. And what's interesting these days, of course, is if you get a prophecy, does it have to be true?
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Today, according to some, you can get a prophecy from God and it need not even come to pass.
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In the Old Testament, of course, if you got a prophecy and it didn't come to pass, you were stoned to death.
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So you can understand why people today wouldn't want to be held to the same standard. How about this idea that the
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Holy Spirit can be commanded to do something? You ever heard that one,
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Mal? I mean, the cosmic bellhop who just does whatever you want.
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And then, you know, in this book, he kind of alludes to the idea that some of you studying about the
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Holy Spirit or trying to learn about the Holy Spirit as a waste of time. Ultimately, who cares?
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We have the Holy Spirit, so what does it matter? And I started thinking about this because I saw this online the other day in this little group
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I belong to, Facebook group I belong to. Somebody wrote this. He said,
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I've been mentally exhausted for over a year and a half. It all started because I attended, how many of you have heard of deliverance ministries?
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Somebody want to briefly explain what a deliverance ministry is? And by the way, it has nothing to do with banjos.
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Deliverance, never saw the movie. Deliverance ministry, what is it? Okay, God solve your issues, you get prayed over.
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They deliver you from the demon, whatever demon it is that is causing your problems.
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So this guy goes to this deliverance conference and he says, it really shook me up and scared me.
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I became fearful that I was going to be demonized if I sinned against God. This led me away from following God because I loved
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Him and felt safe with Him. In other words, he changed his view from, I love
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God and I feel safe with Him to, don't do this, don't fall into this sin or else this will happen to me.
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You'll be demonically possessed. Now I've hid this for a while but opened up about a year ago.
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This whole time I've been begging, pleading with Jesus to help me and I'm still in this rut. It's led to a lot of scary intrusive thoughts against God and others.
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But one that hurts the most is feelings of frustration and anger towards God. I hate those emotions so much, it makes me cry because I hate them so much.
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And I feel extremely frustrated that there's been no change. I fear myself,
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I'm just so tired and I don't know what to do. I'm scared of sinning against Him or making my heart turn away and I don't know what to do.
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I'm His, I belong to God, where is He? Where is His rescue? I plead and plead and plead but I'm still here.
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I'm scared and I don't want to be lost. What would you tell this man?
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You're afraid of, what's that? Come to Sunday school. Well, I didn't mention that.
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Okay, I wrote it. No, no, no. Brian. Okay, point him to the doctrine of the sovereignty of God and then point him to Jesus Christ.
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Good. Other thoughts? I mean, what about the idea of demonic possession?
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Okay, so Brian would tell his wife, You think you're demonically possessed,
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Kari. I have good news for you, God is sovereign. Okay, is God allowing me to be demonically possessed?
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You know, God is sovereign over the demons. Okay, I seem to be confused about works versus grace.
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If I sin, this is going to happen to me. Ultimately, what's the real issue, Janet? Okay, if they're a believer, they can't be possessed by the
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Holy Spirit and a demon. You know, the way I like to look at it is, if the
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Holy Spirit has taken up residence in you, which, if you're a believer, He has, does
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He, you know, bump over when the demon shows up and go, Okay, well, I guess I've got to make room for the demon.
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I mean, we often talk about, in Ephesians 1, the idea that the Holy Spirit is a seal, right?
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In what sense is He a seal? Well, He seals us for the day of redemption. Does He offer any protection?
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Or are you just like a vacant house that anybody can come up and take up residence in? I think the answer is, well, if we consider the idea, and I don't want to go too much further down this rabbit hole, but if we just think about this, does
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Paul, when he's writing in the Corinthians, say that we are the temple of God? Does he say that?
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And what does he mean by that? That the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in us. And again,
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I ask, what would make us think, and do we have any indication in Scripture that believers can be demonically possessed?
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And I think the answer is no. Every single time we see a demonic possession, it's not a believer. It's somebody,
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I mean, they may get saved later, but it's somebody who is ultimately under the sway of Satan.
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So what I would say to this person is, first of all, if you're a
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Christian, you can't be demonically possessed. Secondly, you need to rest.
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You need to rest in Christ. If you're in Christ, you are His. Christ doesn't share.
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You belong to Him, period. Stop worrying. Brian was right when he said, talking about the sovereignty of God, I'm like, absolutely.
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But if you trust Jesus for your salvation, you can trust Him, as Brian was alluding, in the trials.
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Whatever comes your way. I think often I hear, even from believers, the idea that Satan is attacking me.
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Is that true? How do you know it's not true, Brian? Satan could be attacking you.
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Well, he could be. But sometimes, if things are going wrong in my life, do
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I think Satan is attacking me? No. Here's what I think. There are how many billions of people in the world?
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Eight billion? Thanks for saying that. Makes me feel better.
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Why would Satan... Satan is not omnipresent. Sometimes we get our categories confused here.
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God is omnipresent. Satan is not omnipresent. He's a creature. He can only be in one place at one time.
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So out of the eight billion people in the world, Satan today decided, you know what? Steve's my guy. I doubt it.
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That's why I like to keep a low profile. I'm not worth his time.
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Okay. So, I think there's a lot of confusion about Satan, and I think people...
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There's almost like a mythology about him, about demons, about what they can do.
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Well, is there almost a mythology, or is there a mythology? There is a mythology. I mean, it's in our movies.
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It's... I don't know why people watch those movies. Sorry. I don't. I don't get it. If I want to learn about demons,
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I'm not going to the movies. So... And I don't really like demons very much.
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I don't know about you guys. Anyway, let's go back to the book.
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And in it, he does this thing where he talks about these two young women who are discussing theology.
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And one says to the other, or she says,
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I told her, this other girl, about my theology course, and said to impress her with the questions that tormented me that I didn't know what to think about the
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Holy Spirit. And how can you tell that she doesn't know what to think about the
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Holy Spirit? Because the next thing she says is, its function wasn't clear to me.
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Now, what's the problem? Yeah.
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Yeah. It is not an it.
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He is a he. His preferred pronoun is he. I argued aloud, a subordinate entity in the service of both
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God and Jesus, is he like a messenger? Or an emanation of the first two, of the
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Father and the Son, their miraculous essence? With no response from this other girl, she answers her own questions.
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But in the first case, how can an entity who acts as a messenger possibly be one with God and his
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Son? Wouldn't it be like saying that my father, who is a porter at the city hall, is the same as the mayor?
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And if you look at the second case, well, essence, sweat, voice, are part of the person from whom they emanate.
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How can it make sense, then, to consider the Holy Spirit separate from God and Jesus, or is the Holy Spirit the most important person, and the other two his mode of being?
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I don't understand what his function is. And people are often confused about the
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Holy Spirit. He is the third person of the Trinity. He is of the same essence as the
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Father and the Son. What is the personal property of the Holy Spirit? Let's see who's really dialed in.
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If I say the personal property of the Father is that he is unbegotten, and the personal property of Jesus Christ, in terms of the
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Trinity, is that he is eternally begotten. So we have unbegotten, eternally begotten, and the personal property of the
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Holy Spirit is that he is eternally spirated. So, number one is true.
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There's a lot of confusion about the Holy Spirit. People are amazingly confused about him.
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Number two, the question, who were the spirit fighters? Sounds like something right out of one of those bad
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Chinese movies. Yeah, Christian Ghostbusters, sure.
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Talks about subordinationism a little bit. These two girls, one of them is flirting with subordinationism, the idea that the
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Holy Spirit is under, that there's a hierarchy in the Trinity.
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Then he says, Barrett does, back in the fourth century, some shared this evaluation.
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They were called spirit fighters because they did not believe the Spirit was co -equal with the
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Father and the Son. They did not believe the Spirit proceeded from the same essence.
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So because they saw him as inferior, they were called spirit fighters. That seems like a bad move.
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But anyway, number three, that's just a little asterisk in the book.
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Number three, true or false, the Holy Spirit is an emanation of the miraculous essence of the Father and Son. We kind of already answered that.
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The answer is false. If he is an emanation of the
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Father and the Son, then there is a real difference between the
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Father and the Son. He's not equal with them. This is the error of Sabellianism.
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Modalism. She's saying, I guess, this is a little wacky.
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If she is a copy, or if the Holy Spirit is a copy, if he's a copy of the other two, then that would be
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Sabellianism. Which is? Who remembers what Sabellianism is? Of course, it is a theology that follows the teachings of Sabellius.
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Thank you very much. What's Sabellianism? That's very close.
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One that leads to modalism, or? It's another word for modalism, Patrick.
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Okay. We believe in the
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Holy Spirit. That's what the Nicene Creed says. But the
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Nicene Creed has a good reason for saying we believe in the Holy Spirit. In Scripture, the Spirit is not presented as subordinate to the
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Father and the Son, as a lesser deity, third in the line of succession, as it were.
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Nor is the Spirit to be confused with the Father and the Son, and indistinguishable as a person, which would be
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Sabellianism or modalism. Modalism, again, is the idea that God is either the
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Father, or he's the Son, or he's the Holy Spirit. And what a lot of people, what a lot of modalists have done, is they've defined it this way.
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In the Old Testament, God is typically in Father mode.
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In the New Testament, beginning, of course, in the
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Gospels, unless it specifies, unless Scripture specifies the
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Holy Spirit, they would say God is in Son mode. And now, from the
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Resurrection forward, they would say, for the most part, God is in the Holy Spirit mode.
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So it's one mode or another, that's modalism. Okay. Number four.
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True or false? It helps us to determine who the Spirit is by looking at what he does.
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It helps us to understand or to determine who the Spirit is by looking at what he does.
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And sometimes you'll notice that I, I really got into the habit while writing quizzes this weekend of trying to shorten sentences.
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So I don't always say the Holy Spirit, sometimes I just say the Spirit, capital S. That's short for the
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Holy Spirit, because I was trying to avoid going to a second line. Sorry. True or false?
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True. The Spirit is, first and foremost, co -eternal and co -equal with the
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Father and the Son. Because the Spirit is the Lord, the giver of life.
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Notice the Creed turns to the works of the Spirit, observing these that are none other than divine works to identify the
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Spirit as the Lord himself. That is a move Scripture makes, always attributing to the
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Spirit the work of not only creation, but also salvation. It's interesting because we were yesterday morning talking about John 5 a lot.
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And one of the things that Jesus does in John 5 is identify a couple things that he does. Anybody remember what those were?
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Anybody who was here yesterday morning? He gives life, and he will perform judgment.
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I just thought that was interesting in the light of this one, where he says that he is the giver of life.
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And here, yesterday it said Jesus said he was the giver of life. But in that context, it was talking about how he does the works of the
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Father. So the Father is also the giver of life. Jesus is the giver of life. The Holy Spirit is the giver of life.
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So who's the giver of life? The triune God. Okay, number five.
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True or false? Scripture teaches the Spirit causes us to be sanctified.
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Now, I was thinking this question could be a little controversial. Why would
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I think it would be controversial? If I say, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, is that true or false?
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It's true. Why is it true? Because that's what the Bible says.
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So number five says, true or false? Scripture teaches the Spirit causes us to be sanctified.
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Yeah, but we're supposed to work out our own salvation. Okay, the answer is true.
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And he gives some reasons for it, some biblical reasons. From regeneration, the
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Spirit, true or false? I mean, bonus questions. True or false? The Spirit causes you to be regenerated.
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What does it mean to be regenerated? Born again. So does the
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Spirit cause you to be born again? That's what Jesus said. Let's turn to John chapter 3 for a moment, because we're going to see this in a multitude of questions here today.
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I mean, there's probably no passage of Scripture that is really more fun to contemplate than John chapter 3.
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First, you have Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, coming to Jesus at night, and he doesn't even really ask
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Him a question. He just makes that statement in verse 2.
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See, the numbers are just so small in this thing. It looks like two. He says,
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Rabbi talking to Jesus, he says, We know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.
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Now, he doesn't ask Him a question. He just makes a statement. We know you can do these things.
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We know that this is from God. So it's just a statement of fact.
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But in verse 3, Jesus answered him, Truly, truly,
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I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him,
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How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?
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Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the
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Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
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Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
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So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. And it will become evident why
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I want to read that here in a few minutes, but if we just think about it, Jesus says, you must be born again, and then he says, you must be born of the
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Spirit. So it's the same idea. The Holy Spirit has to cause you to be born again. We can go to other places where 1
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Peter, where God causes us to be born again. Also to conversion, the
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Holy Spirit brings us to Christ, 1 Corinthians 12 .3, to adoption,
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Galatians 4 .6, he's the spirit of adoption, to sanctification, to glorification,
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Romans 8, 9 -11. It is the Spirit who is at work in us from start to finish.
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He takes up residence, he doesn't leave us, and he's working at us.
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And we can even put it this way, and we will see this, what does it mean that we have, or we're to produce the fruits of the
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Spirit? What does that mean? How do we do that? 1
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Thessalonians 5. How do we produce the fruits of the Spirit? Somebody say we don't?
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Okay, we. What do you mean, we? It's the
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Holy Spirit at work in us. We see the fruits, right? As we look back, I mean, if you look back to when, how many of you have been saved more than two years?
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Most of you. I mean, as you look back over the years, can you see, do you see a spiritual difference in yourself?
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And for most of us, the answer is yes. Well, why is that? Because the
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Holy Spirit, in spite of our sinful inclinations, is at work, chiseling away, removing our sinful tendencies, our sinful habits, and pushing us closer and closer to the image of Christ.
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Barrett also says, nor should we forget the Spirit's work of revelation in terms of the
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Word of God and inspiration of Scripture. Why can we trust the
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Bible? I had somebody ask me a couple days ago, is
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God really omniscient? There was nobody here, by the way. It's an unbeliever from California. He says, if God's really omniscient, then why this whole deal with Abraham if he could find
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X number of righteous people in the city that God won't destroy?
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Doesn't he already know how many there are and why this whole thing? What about Lot?
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And yada, yada, yada. I'm just like, oh, please. The real problem is you don't believe the
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Bible. That's your real problem. I didn't say it that way. Number six.
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What sets the Holy Spirit apart from the Father and the Son? We've already given one answer.
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He's eternally spirated. His eternal relations of origin is the technical term for that.
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One essence. Three. He is a subsistence of the one essence. The Holy Spirit eternally proceeds or spirates from the
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Father and the Son. That's fine. And number seven. Never type a word that you don't know how to say and I really don't know how to say this.
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I should have, you know, I probably should have gone online and looked up how to say it, but I didn't.
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What is the... Somebody help me. Filiquy.
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That's probably close enough. I want it to be Filio -Q, but whatever that is.
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What is it? Okay.
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It is a phrase that is not in the original Nicene Clause. It was added to the
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Nicene Clause and it was controversial. And here's the idea.
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As we've been saying, does the Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son? The answer is yes.
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But that last phrase in Greek is what Brian said. In the
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West, so the Church centered essentially on Rome and the whole
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Western side of the world, the Church insisted the word, inserted the word into the
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Nicene Creed at the Council of Toledo. Toledo, Ohio. No, not
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Toledo, Ohio. In AD 589, but the East objected, the Eastern Orthodox Church objected.
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In a messy cascade of politics that lasted centuries, East and West eventually split during the
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Great Schism and much of it centered over this. They did not like the idea that the
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Spirit came from the Father and the Son. They suggested the Spirit only came from the
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Father. So Barrett says, should we affirm that phrase?
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The East said no, because they believed it created two sources or principles in the Trinity. If we think of the
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Father as the principle of the Trinity, which he is, then they're saying you're creating a second principle rather than just one, the
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Father. But the response of the West is more convincing. Anselm wrote on the procession of the
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Holy Spirit and gave several reasons why. The Filioque preserves unity and equality between all three persons.
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Without the Filioque, Filio... Yeah, that thing.
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The Spirit would not be given by the Son, but the Son would be given by the
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Spirit because the Spirit creates the Son in the womb of Mary, creates the physical
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Son incarnation. But what about the idea that the
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Holy Spirit is sent by Jesus? Is that a biblical one? And if so, where would we see that?
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In John? And I heard in Acts? What part of Acts? I'm more inclined toward John, but I could be convinced of Acts, like Pentecost.
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In John 14, Jesus, and this is where we would understand the
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Father. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. This is verse 15. Verse 16, And I will ask the
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Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive.
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But I think also in... Well, in verse 26,
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But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
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But then in chapter 15, in verse 26,
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But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the
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Father, he will bear witness about it. So you can see where it can be controversial because it's kind of like, it seems like Jesus is promising to send him, but he's going to send him through the
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Father. So they're saying, Nope, the Eastern Orthodox said, No, it's only from the
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Father, not from the Son as well.
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Acts 1 .4 Okay. Yeah.
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But to wait for the promise of the Father. Yeah, that is the Father, though. So you can see where,
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I mean, I'm sure there are other passages that deal with it, but you can see where the Eastern Orthodox is like,
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Nah. But the Western Church said, Well, he did promise to send him.
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Jesus said, I will send. So I don't think he misspoke there.
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So it is assumed that Spirit proceeds from the Son as well from the Father. Oh, they also list John 16, verses six and seven.
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And you see that I was winging it and I didn't have to. John 16, six and seven.
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But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth.
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It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you.
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But if I go, I will send him to you. Well, that seems pretty clear, right? So the
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Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one single source or principle, not two, since the
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Father and Son are both subsistence of the same simple essence.
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So others pointed out that the Phileo, yeah, that not only guarantees that the
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Spirit proceeds with the same divine nature as the Father and the Son, but ensures we can be united to Christ, a union impossible if the
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Son does not proceed from the Son. Okay, so I like that.
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Number eight, true or false, because he is sent, the Spirit is more like the
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Son than the Father. That's false.
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It's a very clever question. I really like whoever wrote it. All these mentions of the
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Holy Spirit in John's gospel should warn us against segregating or separating the
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Spirit from the Father and the Son. The Spirit is just as much the Spirit of the Son as he is the
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Spirit of the Father. Together, the three of them hold the one divine essence in common, each a subsistence of the divine essence.
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The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, yet he does not do separately, but from both as from one source.
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From all eternity, the Father and the Son communicate the one simple undivided essence to the
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Spirit. Likewise, when the Spirit descends at Pentecost and indwells God's people, he is not sent by the
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Father alone, but as we heard Jesus say, by the Father and the Son. But again, he is sent not from two separate sources, but from one source.
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Anselm paraphrases Jesus to mean, I shall send as if the Father should send, so that my sending of the
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Spirit and the Father's sending of the Spirit are one and the same. In summary, the gift of the
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Spirit in history reflects and reveals, but by no means... Never mind. Here's his point.
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Even when Jesus says, I will send you the Spirit by the name of the
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Father. What does that mean? In the person or by the person of the
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Father. Then he says, I will send it. Well, does that mean they're the same person? No.
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He's saying that we will, from all eternity, the Holy Spirit was spirated or breathed out by the
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Father and by the Son from the same essence. So, when the Son is eternally generated, part of that eternal generation is the power to breathe out, to spirate the
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Holy Spirit. I spend too much time while I'm sleeping, or when
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I'm trying to sleep, either one, trying to contemplate the relationship of the Trinity within itself.
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And what happens when you do that? You don't fall asleep.
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And you don't really get much of anywhere because there are a lot of things that we can't really get, we can't understand.
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But what we can understand is what's revealed in Scripture and what's clearly revealed in Scripture is the Father sends the
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Spirit and the Son sends the Spirit. Yes, Jonathan. Yeah, almost like a pass -through.
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And it almost creates the eastern kind of bypass of the
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Son, almost creates a hierarchy within the Trinity too, right?
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Where the Father has more rank, more authority, more power. So, I'm going to interrupt you just so I can sort of summarize what you're saying and if you want to continue, go ahead.
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He said, and the reason why I kind of snickered is because he said, you know, throughout history, these men, when they contemplated the
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Holy Spirit, they were talking like advanced calculus and when he was growing up in the church, it was like baby talk, you know?
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The Holy Spirit was a dove and the Holy Spirit was this and he was that, but it was kind of like really objectified, you know, the
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Holy Spirit and made into a thing, right? Right, we don't think about him enough and when we do think about him, generally speaking, it's wrongly done, yeah, because we have a lot of baggage and wrong thinking.
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Okay, number nine, true or false, the power of spirating the Spirit is included in the power of eternal generation.
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I just said that a minute ago, so it is true. The reason the
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Spirit is spirated from the Father and the Son is because it is in eternal generation when the
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Father generates the Son. I mean, it was hard for me to say that.
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Why? Because I said when and what's the problem with that? There's no when.
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I mean, our language is not sufficient to communicate the
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Trinity. It is in the eternal generation that the
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Son is empowered to spirate the Spirit. One theologian says this, he says, the
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Father in beginning his Son gives to his Son the power to breathe forth or to spirate the
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Holy Spirit. What does this look like for each person of the Trinity? The Father, as Father, gives to the
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Son the power to spirate with him the Holy Spirit and the Son, as Son, receives from the
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Father the power, the active power, of spirating with him the Holy Spirit. Or think of it this way, and I mean, it's really now amazing because we think, okay, the
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Father and the Son spirate again outside of time or breathe out the
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Holy Spirit and then the Holy Spirit attends to the man Christ Jesus within time and so there's this whole circular kind of empowerment and operation going on.
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The power of spirating the Holy Spirit is included with the generation of the Son. By his generation, the
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Son receives from the Father to be with him the principle of the Holy Spirit. What does that entail for the spirits?
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The procession of the Holy Spirit is inscribed in the mutual relation of the Father and the
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Son. This means that the process of the Holy Spirit is connected, I'm sure
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I, yes, that the process of the Holy Spirit is connected in itself to the generation of the
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Son by the Father. I mean, there's that whole, you know,
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I mean, in our little feeble minds we think this way, I mean, if this happened in time, it would be the
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Father begetting the Son and then the Son and the Father spirating the spirits.
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That's not how it happens, but that's about the only way we can really get it because time, you know.
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So, thoughts, questions, concerns, heresies, Brian? He didn't raise his hand until I said heresies, by the way.
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Go ahead. Okay, well, let's start with number one. Is it a proper way to think of spiration?
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It's not a horrible illustration, but I mean, I'm not sure that we, because here's the problem, is the first three words in the beginning, which does what?
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That constitutes time. So, if you want to say that's the spiration of the Spirit, well, now he's spirated in time, so that's problematic.
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What we see, though, in Genesis 1, is the operation of the
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Trinity, right? God speaking, the Holy Spirit hovering, and we know anytime we see
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God's Word or the Word of God or God speaking, that's almost like a metaphor for the
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Lord Jesus Christ because if we turn to John 1, we see in the beginning, you know, the
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Word was with God and the Word was God, right? So, that Word is there. We also know from Colossians 1 that Jesus Christ is the creator and he's upholding everything.
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So, there is a sense in which all the Trinity is present there in Genesis 1 and active in the creation.
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I think in Job, it talks about the Spirit of God and creation, too. So, we have all those illustrations, but in terms of the spiration,
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I think this is something we were talking about yesterday morning, and this is something that scares some people because, you know, do we have everything?
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It's the difference between, and I don't really want to open this can of worms too wide here at 9 .50 in the morning, but the difference between biblical theology and systematic theology, biblical theology being what you're trying to do, which is we're looking for everything in the
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Bible and to draw out, to exegete from Scripture all these truths, and we can do that, and that's biblical theology, that's good and right and wonderful.
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The next step, though, is systematic theology, which systematic theology is we have all these truths that we've learned from biblical theology and now we have to make sense out of them.
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We have to organize them in ways that are not necessarily directly related to what we read in Scripture, but they can be contrary to what we read in Scripture.
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So we put them together in a way, and this is where a word comes in where people get kind of scared, and that's philosophy.
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We have to organize things in a certain philosophical way. We have to construct things in a way that makes sense to us so that we can grasp them.
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And so, you know, which is more prone to error, I guess I could say, systematic theology or biblical theology, and the answer would be systematic theology because we're using our brains more than we otherwise would.
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But systematic theology is this idea, you know, like how would you really fully understand the
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Trinity, I mean, as best as we can, and that would be through systematic theology, not just through biblical theology because we have to draw things out and then try to make sense out of them.
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So, in any case, we have to close in prayer, and if there are any more questions, I'll talk to you afterwards. Father, thank you for this time that we've had to look at what your word says about the
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Holy Spirit. Lord, we know that this key is a topic that is often misunderstood, abused.
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The Holy Spirit is even used for financial gain by some false teachers.
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Father, as we look over the next few weeks, would you help us to better understand
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Him, to better understand His role within the Trinity, and better understand