27 - Ante-Nicene Trinitarian Doctrine

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, I guess we might as well go ahead and get started here. We'll have a few folks coming in as it's just now quarter till, but that gives us the full 45 minutes to be able to work through the material this morning.

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We were supposed to start into the subject of the nature of God in the

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Anticnicean Fathers, but I guess I just started wandering about the landscape last time and we didn't

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We didn't get very far in that particular That particular subject unfortunately, so I'll try to be a little more

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Disciplined today just reminder of course when I refer to the Anticnicean Fathers, that's

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A -N -T -E That is before Nicaea To have the proper foundation for Honestly understanding what happened at Nicaea which took place in which took place in Thank you.

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Wow, man We really need you know I'm gonna have to talk to the elders about a coffee maker because that was bad.

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That was that was inappropriate It was it was it was yeah That really would have been worse actually

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To have said that Council Nicaea which happened in Nicaea Sort of like asking something

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Whatever yeah, I have no idea what that's about, but we will leave that alone So 325 to understand what happened there you have to understand what led up to it and If anything we're gonna we're gonna make it through this church history series with all of you as As living experts on the subject of the

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Council of Nicaea You'll you'll actually be walking Walking along listening to people talking just hoping that you hear someone say something wrong about the

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Council of Nicaea, and you'll leap Into the middle of the conversation, and they will run away afraid of the strange person that just interrupted their conversation so The doctrine of God in the anti -nicene fathers, and then of course you may recall that last year

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Pretty much around this time. Maybe a little bit after this time last year a

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I think it's like May a controversy exploded it had been bubbling under the surface, but a controversy exploded in Evangelicalism on what's called the eternal functional subordination of the

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Sun the EFS Controversy and that's primarily focused upon the post

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Nicene fathers the writers after the Council of Nicaea and how they interpreted

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Developments since the Council of Nicaea so to be able to engage all that stuff. We need to have a we need to have a foundation and So I do want to take just a little while to make sure

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That we're all Trinitarians Now that may sound like a very odd and strange thing of course.

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We're all Trinitarians well You know honestly if I if I had a pile of paper nearby me

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I'm almost tempted to Have everybody turn to the back of their bulletins or something like that and use the back

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As a as a test sheet and just see how many of us Really are

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Trinitarians because Before the Council of Nicaea the

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Perspective that was responded to by many in the church and identified as a heresy was not and there's there's certain terms

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I'm wondering if these are the Good ones or no these are definitely not the these are definitely not the good ones.

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No There are definitely some terms. It would be good for us to know and I Have been encouraged to put these on the on the board for appropriate spelling by those who take notes

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The when we think of The Aryan controversy

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Arius Was the founder and so it's the Aryan Controversy this is what's going on at the

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Council of Nicaea. This is a form of Subordinationism So in Aryanism the son is subordinated

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To the father so the son is lesser than the father The spirit as well, but though the spirit was not the focus of the of the argumentation at that particular point in time there are

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There's There's really only one primary form of subordination ism.

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I mean I Guess you could divide it up Because you had for example in the early church you had people such as the adoptionists

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And the adoptionists Believed that Jesus became the

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Son of God Well at different points in time that there were some Who would have said it at his birth others at his baptism?

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So there's different ways in which this was this was expressed but you have the adoptionist that Jesus is just basically human being who is a

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Adopted to a special calling or or position type of a type of a thing and But then but this in adoptionism

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Jesus himself is Not divine Jesus just human being so you have other forms of subordination ism where Jesus is

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Well arias believed that Jesus was the greatest created being That God had that God had created now.

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He was still a creation, but he was the greatest created being So he's not just a human and For example

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Who frequently wakes you up on a Saturday morning when you're trying to get a trying to get a little extra sleep in but another form of subordination ism theology and that would be

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Jehovah's Witnesses and They believe Jesus is Michael the

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Archangel Who is the first and greatest of all of God's creations and Then through Michael everything else is created so Michael is the only thing that God directly creates and then through Michael creates everything else, but as long as Jesus or the pre -incarnate son or second person whatever terminology you want to use as long as that person is

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On the other side of the divide between created and not created Then you have a form of subordination ism, and it can take you know there's lots of different flavors in in church history and subordination ism

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So that was the the argument at the Council of Nicaea before then

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The Eastern churches, especially the Western churches hadn't really dealt with this that much, but the

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Eastern churches especially dealt with a different perspective and fought against a different perspective and this would be a form of Various forms of modalism modalism

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Now what in the world is modalism well There are different forms of it even even today, but the idea is that God exists in different modes.

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Oh Good, we can get started now. Yeah, we were starting to the the balance was so completely off dude that That you know

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I was standing over here. Just because the whole rooms leaning this direction But now we now we have balance back, and I can

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I can I can survive here, so modalism Modalism is the idea that God exists in different modes so one of the forms

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Could be that God exists Sometimes in the mode of the father sometimes in the mode of the son sometimes in the mode of the

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Holy Spirit, and so these would be modes of existence of one person and So sometimes this is called dynamic monarchy and ism

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There's there's various words that have been used a name became associated with it because he was teaching this

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But the name is Sebelius So Sebelian ism is also a subspecies of modalism

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And the modalists are still with us Officially The largest modalist denomination is the

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United Pentecostal Church International UPCI based in st.

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Louis, Missouri and They are also known as the Jesus Only movement and so You'll run into these folks they split off From what became the assemblies of God back?

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What was it 1905 or something like that somewhere in the first decade of the?

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20th century and The primary issue was their rejection of the doctrines of Trinity and so in their current official view of Jesus is two persons

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In the current official view of the UPCI Jesus the son is a created being that came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem But he was indwelt by The one person there's they are they are

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Unitarians. They believe there's only one person of God Wasn't dwelt by the person of God who would be the father?

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So Jesus was both the father and the son But remember the sons just to create a being so When Jesus prays this is a schizophrenic activity, it's his

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Human side praying to his divine side, but it's all just one. It's all just an internal conversation because he's two persons

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And now today The father's mode or role is that of the spirit?

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So they are Unitarians. They believe there's only one person of God They deny the existence of divine persons and that one person in the past was the father

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Indwelt the son and Now acts as the Holy Spirit. So it's just one one person

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They struggle a lot to explain What gee what who where?

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Whatever Jesus is now How does how does Jesus intercede before the father for example, this is this is a difficulty

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That's very hard. And of course the passages that teach the pre -existence of Jesus They have to turn

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Jesus into a plan So the Logos of John 1 1 in the beginning was the Word whereas with God Word was

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God that was a plan not a person and so there God had this plan and and that plan eventually became effectuated in in Jesus and so they're all over the place and There are modern representatives of them one of the most famous People around today

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That as I've been identified as the next Billy Graham Bishop TD Jake's Comes from a modalist background and about four years ago

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Got together this thing called the elephant room and was asked questions about whether he was a

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Trinitarian and He tried to say that he was but with if you understand this theology and listen carefully

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He says he was he is uncomfortable With the use the term person and prefers the term

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Manifestation. Well, that's classical United Pentecostal terminology

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Because God manifests himself as father Manifests himself as spirit.

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He was manifest in the Sun. These are just manifestations of the one person and so it's it's pretty clear, especially when you listen to Jake's Sermons whenever he touches on such things

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That he remains in the modalist camp and is by no means an orthodox Trinitarian But you have a number of recording artists in the quote -unquote

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Christian community that are a one to spend a castle and things like that and Most sadly a

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Lot of confessions of faith of various denominations are not specific enough to weed these folks out

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You could not be a modalist faithfully with the 1689 London Confession because it is clear on the existence of the three divine persons but the

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Baptist faith and message of The Southern Baptist Convention, even though it's obvious that you that the intention of the authors

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Would was to be orthodox Trinitarian. The terminology is not clear enough to weed them out and so a

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Non -trinitarian confused group actually signed a statement that they were in agreement with the

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Baptist faith and message they could perform last year at the Southern Baptist Convention, even though it's very plain.

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They don't actually believe the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity Which leads me to something?

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I've said many times before and that is how many? How many of these folks?

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Do we have? sitting in the pews of Evangelical churches a number of years ago before YouTube became a big thing late late late 90s maybe right around 2000

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When I would travel and speak which I didn't do as much then as I do now One of the things

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I love to do would would be to role -play to go into a class and play a heretic

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It doesn't work now, thanks to YouTube But it did back then and I was at a very large

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Southern Baptist Church in Clearwater, Florida and I was asked to speak to the junior high schoolers and so I went in and I he introduced me that the

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Youth minister whatever in the world that is That's just normally the guy that can't get the good gig so he's got to take care of the kids for a while, but the youth minister

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Introduced me to the to the kids as an elder from the Kingdom Hall well

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That's actually highly effective if you want to keep Eighth graders awake and actually may have them listen to you that it's a very very effective way of doing it

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Because not not a one of them fell asleep, or was of course didn't have phones back then to be playing on but That type of thing

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Not even not even Sean's playing on his phone, which is actually unusual for Sean, but anyway I Started I started if we see

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I follow Sean on Facebook's every time he does something during the service my wrist vibrates So I mean it's a dead giveaway.

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I mean, I'm sitting across the way and I look at him Sean Cornell just updated Oh, really?

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Okay, well anyway Yeah New We are we are way too connected actually when my wrist vibrates, so that's a little bit of a strange thing anyway

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So I start dialoguing with the youth minister and Within 30 seconds

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I had him spouting heresy It was real easy. It's real easy.

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I mean I said so so you're true. You're Trinitarian. Yes Yes, so so you believe that when

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Gia said I and the father are one that Jesus would identify himself as the father

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Well, yeah, okay, that was easy We're done now

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It's just a matter of putting the bow on top and finishing You know putting a few little pieces of tape on and we have now wrapped up our brand new modalistic heretic

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And it wasn't that we had agreed to do this. He literally was sort of looking at me like Well, yeah, okay.

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Yeah. Yeah, and Well, because you know Jesus Jesus says if you see me you've seen the father right

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John chapter 14. I'm the father one. So You you believe

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Jesus is is both the father and the son and see and in his mind he's identifying father as deity and so he wants to defend the deity of Christ and it just took it took just a little little bit of Work to get him spouting

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Modalistic heresy which the early church before the Council of Nicaea Under the name of civilianism had identified as a heresy because it's a it is a

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Unitarian Belief it the it denies that there is more than one person that shares the divine being

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And I've often said I think if we did give a quiz out At the vast majority of evangelical churches that even have a statement of faith

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I Mean how many churches there today that there are churches today that literally when it comes to this if they have a statement of faith

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Basically say something along the lines of well, you know, we think it's more humble to just allow

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God to be God and So there's been this theory in the past and this theory in the past, but we just we just worship

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God You know, that sounds good amongst millennial post modernists, right?

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I mean, you don't want to be arrogant You don't want to be exclusivistic. You just want to be very inclusivistic.

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That's the that's that's what you're everyone's supposed to be the problem is that One of the primary things that separates

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Christianity From paganism is the fact that God has revealed himself

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He wants his people to know him and hence to worship him in spirit and in truth.

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We don't worship an unknown God But if you basically say well, you know, we don't we just don't know but you know

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We just if it feels good do it. That's that's that's not a Christian a Christian perspective.

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So It is important for us to have some foundational understanding of What Was being dealt with at the

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Council of Nicaea because a lot of people have the idea that these councils That what happens in these councils and see if you didn't write now, it's all it's all gone

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It's it's you'll never watch you actually can still sort of see it. But These councils didn't get together and You know just make stuff up Generally there was a very focused question that was being laid before the group and since the controversy with Arius had been

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Broiling over for years. It was a pretty clear question and and it had to do with the nature of the

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Sun the nature of the Sun but there were Fundamental foundational things that that go before that most of you have seen

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A triangle used In regards to the doctrines of Trinity and and You put father son and spirit you put

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God in the middle and it says is is is is not is not is not Anybody ever seen that one?

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So, you know, it distinguishes between the father son the spirit, but Basically says that each shares one being in Scott.

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Okay. Well, I I Prefer a different form here and that's a terrible triangle, isn't it?

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Well, it's good enough Yeah, well, that's okay the one

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I have in my my keynote presentations really nice but Rather than going that way what

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I think we should do is look at the foundational doctrines that forced early

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Christians to the doctrine the Trinity they had nothing to do with triads of God's paganism all the rest that kind of stuff is as Common as that is on the

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Internet and unfortunately in the teaching of many a university professor

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I Guarantee you your your young people will get hit with this and if you are a young people you will get hit with this

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Has nothing to do with any of that the reality is that the

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Formulations of the doctrine the Trinity were forced upon the church by the biblical revelation itself and There are three fundamental truths

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That are revealed in Scripture that must be taken together and all of the errors that we've seen down through church history have resulted from a rejection of one or more of these fundamental truths or if you try to exalt one truth above the other truths to where those truths become

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Imbalanced same thing The idea from the

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Christian perspective is God has spoken What he gives to us in Scripture he wants us to have and That it's important for us to have these these divine truths.

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I have to fix the I'm sorry. It's just It's gonna drive me crazy to have

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That's a little better, that's a little better The first of these three divine truths is

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The one doctrine that you know people have asked me you know when you look at the early church fathers

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You see a lot of disagreements you see a lot of agreements too, but you see a lot of disagreements

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What is the one thing you could identify as being a universal belief

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Amongst all the early writers, and I would say monotheism The fact that there is only one true

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God This separates us the the monotheistic faiths are

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Fundamentally Different from any type of polytheism. There's different forms by the way of polytheism

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If you ever thought about it There is in you know polytheism the belief of more than one

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God But there are subcategories and one of the most important of these is called he no theism and He no theism

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Again if you go to The university if you go to almost any seminary anymore

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What you'll be taught is that the majority of the Old Testament is not monotheistic it's he no theistic and What does that mean he no theism is the idea of one?

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primary God but the allowance for the existence of subordinate deities

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Now some might say That the Bible's he no theistic because you have one

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God Jehovah, but then you have the angelic host Who are supernatural creatures?

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But they are still creatures well that's really not what he no theism is referring to because the angelic host are clearly created.

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They're not eternal and Exactly how these lesser deities relate to the major deity is good.

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You know vary from he no theistic faith Do you know theistic faith, but it is very common in?

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Seminaries for you to be taught that the Old Testament because the Old Testament is this mishmash of different sources badly edited together

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Is how it's presented? That it's primarily a he no theistic document with Yahweh as the head of the

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Council of the gods And then there are all these other gods underneath Yahweh. Yes, sir

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Well Well I I Have some serious problems with with Michael Heizer's Views I think it does tend toward that but not in a overly gross fashion

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I'm I would think so I Haven't had any conversations with him my primarily my primary interaction with Heizer has been with his

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I think Misunderstanding of Psalm 82 6 Yeah, that's that's that's the primary thing.

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He's written a book that I have not read That a lot of folks just think is is

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The best thing since sliced bread, but there's a lot of books like that out there, so anyway So you have these things monotheism absolutely one being of God eternal

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Uncreated the source of anything else that exists comes from this one

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God hence The creator of all things and again if you recall last year or the year before last whenever was we did the holiness

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Code series one of the things we did was we talked about how radical an idea true full -on monotheism is in the ancient world

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The the the Imaginings of men Would always move away from this they want a

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God that was small enough. They could control The idea of a God who is the creator of all?

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Things was a was a radical perspective And the idea that he had revealed himself and revealed how he wanted to be worshipped again a radical perspective that Resulted in the

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Jews before Christianity being hated By many in the ancient world because it was considered such an arrogant idea

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It was considered an arrogant idea How dare you say that your

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God is the only God who do you think you are and You hear that today it the we what we're really seeing in secularization is a repaganization of Western culture, it's going back to the old pagan gods

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Except now instead of them being living up on Mount Olympus or Living the thunderclouds stuff.

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It's us we are the new gods because we can determine what if we're a female today or a male today or something in between or You know 45 other different options and blah blah blah.

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It's it's repaganization Is what's taking place around us? and so This idea that just abject arrogance is why the early

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Christians for example were called atheists You know I mentioned this to you before but the early

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Christians were called atheists not because they didn't believe in a god But because they did not believe in the existence of the gods

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They were Monotheists and that was considered to be an incredibly arrogant and from the

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Roman perspective Anti -Roman,

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I mean you weren't a good citizen because you were causing division in the state and this is gonna become important because What happens once?

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Constantine becomes Emperor 313 314 that time period depending on exactly where you figure that out as far as all the wars and everything else goes he's trying to consolidate power in the

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Roman Empire and He does not want a division taking place amongst the largest growing religious group under his under his control and So that's why he steps in is he recognizes that religion has great political power so division in religion can result in division in society and And Even before Constantine came along when the

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Roman Empire was persecuting Christians You know they saw the Christians as being traitorous to the

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Roman cause they were not fostering unity we all need to hold hands and sing kumbaya and get along and and This this idea especially together with the

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Lordship of Jesus Christ Just just didn't fit so I need to get I need to at least finish this today Monotheism I Frequently ask folks

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Just you know if you've been a Christian for many years How many verses?

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without using the last book of the New Testament called concordance or The search parameter in in your olive tree

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Bible software on your phone Could you give right now the teacher is only one true

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God, and you might say doesn't everybody believe that no Obviously you know dealing with the

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Mormons the Mormons do not believe. There's only one true. God. They believe in an Unlimited number an infinite number of true.

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God's now. They only know of three But there are an infinite number of gods out in the universe says

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It's not a Topic we normally have to defend and and define

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But it is fundamental and foundational to the doctrine Trinity. We are monotheists our

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Muslim friends say we are not It's pretty clear the author of the Quran thought that we were not

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But we are it is the central affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity. There is only one

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True God, so what are the other two doctrines? Well we have the existence of three

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Divine persons and Why it's really hard to write like this we have the

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Equality of Persons So This is this one

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The equality of the persons that's that's normally where the arguments at with the Jehovah's Witnesses of the door because they're subordination us and so they believe that there is an order to the persons and there is in the sense that we have to have some way of recognizing who's who and The father does not take the same role in salvation the son does and the son does not take same role as the spirit does

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And so there are certain personal attributes and actions by which we can distinguish between the persons

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But what we affirm is that each one of them? Equally partakes in that one being that is

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God God's being cannot be cut up into into thirds You cannot cut God be God's being up into 1 3rd and the father has 1 3rd and the son has 1 3rd in the spirit has 1 3rd that's that's not a possibility each shares fully in the divine nature each is fully

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God and So normally the argumentation is on that side in regards to the equality of the persons

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And well, why did you say the father is greater than I am and etc. Etc. Etc Where most people are really confused in their thinking is the very existence of three divine persons

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Because the relationship of father son and spirit that's really where the the the hard part is for most

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Christians Who am I praying to? You know I've said it many times you listen to you listen to public prayers, and you find out how many non trinitarians

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Are around you? There's there's many times I will hear and and sometimes it's just because in the person's own mind there they've sort of wandered, but I Can't tell you how many times

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I've heard someone say Oh, God our heavenly father. We thank you so much

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For for the time to come to you in prayer today and and our heavenly father We thank you so much for dying for us on on Calvary Street and loving us so much and coming to dwell within us

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The father didn't die on Calvary Street That was the son so who are you addressing and who's come to dwell within us?

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well, it's a spirit now the father and the son make their abode with us by the spirit, but I I hear people confusing father and son in prayer all the time, which means there's a there's a confusion in worship as well because the existence of three divine persons and what the difference between being the one being of God and Three divine persons is we distinguish between being and person being is what makes something what it is person is what makes someone who they are

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And so there's one divine being cannot be chopped up into lots of different parts

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But that one divine being is shared fully by three Divine persons the

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Father Son and the Holy Spirit, so what this triangle up here allows us to do

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If you deny Monotheism if you deny this end the other two will point to the resulting error that we see in church history, so if did

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I Monotheism you end up with Polytheism So you have three divine persons.

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They're equal, but you get rid of monotheism they end up with three gods if you divine if you if you deny that there are three divine persons you have an equality of persons in monotheism and you end up with modalism various forms of modalism, but Those two then point to the resulting error

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And so it's pretty easy to figure out the last one if you deny the equality of the persons you have monotheism But three divine persons you get subordinate them, so you have subordination subordination

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So Pretty much every

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Doctrinal error That we would be dealing with comes back to this now

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There is a range of doctrinal errors that have to do with the person of Christ Utopianism and Nestorianism we'll get to those later on which really wouldn't be defined by this that that will require us to look into What's called the hypostatic

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Union? but if you really want to be prepared to Discuss defend explain

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The doctrine of the trinity then what you want to be able to do is to go into God's word on these three

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Divine truths and say look. Here's what scripture teaches this is what the early church was struggling with and You have the plain affirmation of the deity of Christ.

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He's called God you have clear Texts on absolute monotheism

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There is only one God Yahweh Jesus identified as Yahweh in the

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New Testament You have places where for example in Isaiah 53

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Yahweh places our sins upon the Messiah So there's a differentiation made yet in the

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New Testament you have Jesus identified as Yahweh So what do you do with that? Well, then you need to realize

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Yahweh is a name for the being of God shared by three persons So the father can be identified as Yahweh the son is

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Yahweh the spirits the spirit of Yahweh That's the only way to put those things together the subordination says no no

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We'll just we'll just reject the passages identified Jesus as Yahweh or the spirit is that that will just reject those

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So we'll mistranslate them or say that's not what it's saying or whatever. That's how they get away with it

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So If you if you want to have the the most solid ground

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For answering questions on this subject. It requires you to have a knowledge of where the

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Bible teaches the three foundational doctrines because then when you start talking with someone

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And you start asking just a few basic questions Fairly quickly you begin to discern

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Where their problem is in those three divine teachings and you can go to the

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Word of God, you know I'm I'm you've never heard me and never will hear me

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Suggesting that what you should do is go to the Nicene Creed Or to the post -nicene fathers and say oh no no you're wrong about that because Basil the

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Great said Now it doesn't mean that there aren't Wonderful things to be learned from Basil the

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Great and that Basil the Great didn't say some great things Which may be why he was called Basil the Great. I don't know but That's not the foundation for why we believe what we believe and In fact this again

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You know like I said last week gets us to be to thinking About the authority of such things as like the

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Nicene Creed Where does that authority come from? Does it have an inherent authority in and of itself or is it only a derivative authority?

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Because at the time the Reformation these were these were vital questions And there are a lot of people saying hey if if if we can overthrow the authority of the fourth

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Lateran Council in regards to Transubstantiation why can't we overthrow the authority of the

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Nicene Council in regards to the doctrine of the Trinity and on the exact same basis? So these are questions that are valid questions yes, sir

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Yes, yes, yes, they did Yeah, in fact what's fascinating is that There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever once we get to the

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Council of Nicaea remember Tattoo this on your brain There was no discussion of the

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Canon of Scripture at the Council of Nicaea There is no evidence from any source whatsoever of any discussion of or dispute about The extent of the

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Canon Scripture, why do I emphasize that because if you go the internet You will find statement after statement after statement.

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That's where they decide. They're only before Gospels they throw all these other Gospels out and all the rest is up there is not a scintilla of Original evidence from any meaningful historical source to substantiate any of them but it is fascinating that Before an official

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Canon list is produced and the first one that would match exactly what we have in the New Testament today about 369 from Athanasius Forty years before that There's no argument amongst even you know even though you've got two different Yeah, actually have three different sides as we'll see it in Nicaea.

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There's three different groups represented there No argumentation over what is and what is not scripture at all which tells you that that was not a big topic

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Which means there was pretty much agreement already that existed at that time It just hadn't been focused upon as far as a controversy yet, so definitely definitely

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Okay You're going to have brother Callahan for the next few weeks because I leave

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Friday. I'll be teaching in Pachastrum and Johannesburg, South Africa and then debates and teaching in London the last week before I get home and So I've got a long trip ahead so prayers appreciated for that.

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Let's close our time order Father we do thank you for this time we thank you for the opportunity of considering your revelation

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As you reveal to us what you would have us to know that we might worship you in spirit and truth

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That's what we desire to do now as we go into the service. May you be honored and glorified. We pray in Christ's name