July 24, 2018 Show with Dr. Stephen J. Wellum on “God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ” (Part 2)

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 24th day of July 2018 and I'm so delighted that we have back as a returning guest, Dr. Stephen J. Wellam who earned his PhD at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and he is currently the professor of Christian theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and editor of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology.

Today we are going to be entering into part two of a topic we began last Tuesday on the 17th of July and that is God the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ which is also the title of a new book by Dr. Wellam and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron.

Radio, Dr. Stephen J. Wellam. Chris, wonderful to be back with you again. Oh, it is my pleasure.

Entirely and I want to give our listeners our email address right away. It's chrisarnzen at gmail .com. If you have a question for Dr. Wellam that's chrisarnzenn at gmail .com and please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

That's chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Well first of all let us give some kind of a recap on the overall view of the book God the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ. If you could start off by letting our listeners know or remind them if they heard this part two of this discussion last week but what it was that drew you to write this book even though there are many books both from centuries past and contemporary that deal with Jesus Christ the Son of God Incarnate but you believe that this volume that you have created here which is quite a lengthy book, quite a thorough approach and quite a remarkably in-depth book, not remarkable because it was unexpected of you, but just a very remarkable book to definitely spread the word about to the body of Christ but if you could tell us about this book and your overall reason for wanting it to be added to the volumes that we already have.

Well yeah sure, as you said a lot of good books have been written over the years on the person of the Lord Jesus, the nature of the incarnation, I mean that's what this book is dealing with so why another book and the reason simply is that in every generation there has to be a re-articulation, a defense of looking again at the foundational doctrines and there's no more foundational doctrine than the person and work of the Lord Jesus at the heart of the entire Bible and the entire Gospel that that has to be done over and over again, not making new doctrine but restating the truth of who the Lord Jesus is to the issues of our day and to a new generation and laying out for the church in a succinct manner biblical foundations and what the church has said and building on that and thinking through the matters and some of the theological wrestlings that we do today in light of the past and also taking on some of the challenges within the evangelical world so this book is part of the foundations of evangelical theology and it's trying to articulate doctrinal truths, in this case the person of Christ, for our generation in light of various issues that we face as the church today in proclaiming Christ and proclaiming the Gospel so that was the goal involved and obviously in writing a book like this you depend upon those in the past but hopefully faithfully articulate the truth for today in our context in our generation.

Well you have four major.

Sections in the book, we start with part one the epistemological warrant for Christology today, part two the biblical warrant for Christology today, and part three is the ecclesiological warrant for Christology today, and part four is a warranted Christology for today.

If you could give us a summary of what those four major sections of the book are really all about.

The Epistemological, Biblical, Ecclesiological, and Practical Warrant for Christology

Yeah really the book as a whole is trying to illustrate how one actually goes about doing theology, drawing theological conclusions for the church today and in part one what I was wrestling with there, there's many ways that you could tackle this doctrine, you can look at various theologians and just go meet.

What I wanted to convey in this epistemological warrant for Christology is that what we say about the Lord Jesus is grounded in God's revelation of himself, it's grounded in scripture so that the debate today that we see in our society, and it's not a new debate, but as you go through the history of the church there's always been challenges to the faith and there's been those outside of Christian conviction, but for the most part as you go through all the middle ages and the reformation and the post-reformation era there's been an agreement that scripture is the basis by which we do theology, and in this case what we say about the Lord Jesus is driven from scripture, and in the 1600s starting then in what we call the Enlightenment period and then morphing into the modern world, even within the church there was a massive criticism of scripture and a move away from scripture, and in that whole part one I'm trying to show where our society has gone, where even in the church people have tried to not receive the full authority of the Bible, so the grounding that we have to speak anything about the Lord Jesus, and this would be true of any area of Christians, who the Lord Jesus is, is grounded in scripture itself.

The knowledge warrant, that's what we mean by epistemological warrant, the knowledge warrant for saying anything true about Christ is the triune God who is there, so in that section I'm laying the foundation to Christian theology, Christian doctrine, the person of Christ, founded in scripture, and the proper then putting the whole canon of scripture together from Genesis to Revelation, that's our basis, that's the grounding by which we then say anything about Jesus, and then in part two we then lay out, all right, what does the scripture actually say?

If we're going to read scripture from Genesis to Revelation, the whole Bible gives us who Jesus is, and the whole Bible is necessary to understand the Lord Jesus that shows up in the New Testament, he's built on the Old Testament, he's the son from eternity, and then the church has reflected on this in part three, so that we lay out the biblical material, but what the church has said in the confessions and the statements of faith are consistent with the scriptural teaching, so there's not a dichotomy or a difference between the Chalcedonian creed that says the Lord Jesus is the eternal son, who's fully God, now fully man because of the incarnation, one person, two natures, no, that's consistent with the biblical teaching, and so the church has reflected on these matters, and we are to learn from the church as the church gets scripture right, and then part four just applies these matters to within evangelicalism and the incarnation, and how we are to think about that, so that's sort of how the book is laid out, trying to show we should no doubt scripture in light of the history.

Why Christology Is Not a Trivial Issue

Now, unlike what many people might.

Think, there might be many modern evangelicals or Roman Catholics or others who will tune in for a few minutes of a program like this, and they will say, oh this is just a bunch of egghead talk, I don't even know if they use that expression anymore, but you know, this is a bunch of stuff that is equivalent to counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, but this is completely wrong.

I mean, if you are going to worship something or someone, you have to be right about who this deity is that you're worshiping. This is not a trivial issue, and these are not trivial issues plural, this is very important things that we're going to be discussing and that you have in your book here that people really have to get right.

I mean, I'm not saying that people have to be geniuses or brilliant scholars or theologians in order to be saved or get to heaven, but there are things that people get wrong about who God is that might seem on the surface of secondary or tertiary importance, but they can really derail someone into an even worse understanding, a more heretical understanding of who God is, and basically you could wind up worshiping a false god, couldn't you not?

Well, that's exactly right. I mean, any assumption that, you know, what we're talking about is, you know, non-important issues or angels dancing on the head of the pin, and even those questions, right, usually are much deeper and more profound than people realize.

There is larger, very, very important debates even behind those, but on this issue here, anyone who thinks this is already starting with the assumption that God's word isn't really that important to study, that what God has said about himself and particularly about the Son of God is not of eternal consequence, and of course that's very contrary to Scripture itself.

God has given us his word to know him. We are made as his image-bearers and creatures to be in relationship to him and to know him, and the most important thing in our life is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then secondarily our neighbor as ourself, and we do that by attending to his revelation, his word, and all that he has said, and when it comes to the Lord Jesus Christ, we have to get him right from the Scriptures.

All of these matters we're discussing in terms of the theology of the incarnation and who Christ is is true to the Scriptures, and if you don't think through these areas, which the Church has carefully done through the ages, we end up with false Jesuses.

We end up with Jesuses that aren't the Jesus of the Bible, and why is that serious? If you do not have the Jesus of the Bible, you have no Savior. You have no Redeemer. It's very interesting in the history of the Church that in every point of false teaching of Jesus, the concern of the Church was for the Lord Jesus right from Scripture and to leave us with the only Redeemer for God's people, and all other aberrations or other false views that veer off eventually rob us of the Jesus of the Bible, the glory of Christ, and the kind of salvation the Bible describes.

So these are life and death matters, and there's no more significant person in the entire world we can talk about than the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, given that he is, as the book title tried to capture, he is the Son of God.

He's God the Son from eternity, who has become incarnate. So all these matters have to be carefully, carefully thought through. Salvation depends on them. False views of Jesus lead to contrary views of salvation and contrary views of ultimately...

False Christology in Evangelicalism, Oneness Pentecostalism, and Roman Catholicism

Now, if you leave or set aside the cults, as far as mainstream evangelicalism is concerned, are there any major speakers, authors, or televangelists that you believe, or movements, or even denominations that you believe are actually teaching a false Christ?

I mean, there are many people, including the soundest of Christians who may have errors in their teaching about Christ, but are there people that you know of or movements that you know of that are within the pale or considered within the pale of modern evangelicalism that actually have a false.

Jesus? Yeah, there's, I mean, we're looking at, when we think of evangelicalism, I mean, it can be so, so broad. So you throw in televangelists and this type of thing. Well, some of those televangelists, you know, are so far out of any kind of historic, you know, evangelical belief that you have to be very, very careful, right?

So you have, you know, some of the oneness Pentecostals, for instance, deny the Trinity, of course, with the denial of the Trinity. You have a denial of distinct Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There's what's called modalism.

Right. So you have, you know, falsies there, and we wouldn't even consider that part of the evangelical world, or at least I wouldn't, and some unfortunately would, within the evangelical world. And by evangelical, we're defining those who, you know, have its history back to the Reformation world that, obviously, there's different denominations that have come out of that.

But the evangelical world, for the most part, to be an evangelical, the full authority of Scripture, and some of the early great confessions of the Church, particularly the Trinitarian confessions of Nicaea, and the Christological, the person of Christ confession of Chalcedon, or sometimes called Chalcedon, in 451.

And what happens here is that evangelicals, to be evangelicals, all give lip service to those great confessions, and that to not do that would put one either outside of the evangelical world, or a liberal theology, or a cult, or something else.

But still, within the evangelical world, even though one confesses, say, in terms of Chalcedon, or the person of Christ, the confession summarized would be, who is Jesus? Well, he's God the Son incarnate.

He is one person, the second person of the Godhead, who is fully God, who is fully man, one person, two natures. That confession is what evangelicals would affirm. But the problem is, as you probe deeper, that confession gets worked out in areas that can get us into trouble, right?

So there's where you have to look at the outworking of that. So, for instance, some will, in the evangelical world, so emphasize, they'll say, yes, yes, yes, yes, the Son of God is fully God, yet when the incarnation took place, and what I'm describing here is what's called canonic views, or canotic views.

This comes from Philippians 2. Some will say, well, the Son of God is fully God, yet in the incarnation, in adding a human nature, he emptied himself of, and you have some evangelicals will say, well, he emptied himself of, certify with evangelicalism, that's really, we have more popularly others who will say, well, no, the Son of God, in becoming human, he doesn't know that, as he said, a incarnation.

In my view, the Bible, but it's a trilogy that runs into some serious problems, and then we would have to spell a concept, even in the cross, the main redeemer is, certain things in the evangelical world that move in false directions, that are being, people would say, we hold to the full deity, the full humanity of the Son of God.

And not to leave our Catholic friends out of this, I believe that, of course, there are many things about the triune Godhead that our Catholic friends and our Eastern Orthodox friends share with us that are true, historically, but at the same time, because of the false gospel as defined by Trent, that the Roman Catholic Church has, for instance, I believe that they teach, proclaim, and embrace an insufficient Christ.

Is that too harsh, in your opinion? Well, certainly, the outworking of the work of Christ, tied to who the Lord Jesus is, in terms of his person, is insufficient, there's no doubt about that. So that, this is a strange occurrence here, and there's a lot of factors that have led to this, but you're right on paper, right?

I mean, Catholics, you know, what we mean by the Roman Catholic Church would be those who would hold to, you know, consistent Catholic doctrines, there's always liberals within the Catholic Church that depart as well.

But those who have held to the confessions would say the Trinitarian confession, the person of Christ in terms of fully God, fully man, one person, two natures, we would all have that in common. But when it comes to the work of Christianity, that work gets undermined, and what they insert here is the application of the cross, then is done through the mediatorial work of Church, and they would then have a whole view where Christ establishes the extension of the Incarnation on Earth, the leaders of the Church represent Christ on Earth, and they are the ones who are able to disly the work of Christ, and what they do is they insert between Christ and the believer, the Church, and this is a serious, serious error, this is why the Reformation took place, is that, no, by grace through faith, in Christ alone, his work is enough, and we are directly, by grace through faith, brought into faith union with Christ, and we receive the benefits of his work not through the means of the Church.

The Church is the people of God, God's grace directly in relationship to the Redeemer. And so that's a major, major mistake, and behind that, often in Roman Catholic teaching, is that there's a strong emphasis that even though they affirm the full deity of the Son, and in the Incarnation they would say the Son of God is, you know, the Lord Jesus is fully God, they would say that his work is done uniquely through his humanity, and so there's no sense, or sometimes within Catholic formulation, the strong emphasis that the divine Redeemer is the proper formulation of Christology is that the one who dies on the cross is God the Son incarnate, it's the Son of God.

The reason why his death is so valuable and he can pay for all of our sins is because it's the divine Son of God who acts in our humanity, but it's the divine Son, and that empathy, they would never deny it, but it doesn't show up always.

Human Nature, the Hypostatic Union, and the Virgin Conception

We have a first-time listener, Jordan from Wake Forest, North Carolina, and Jordan's question is, which model of anthropology best makes sense of the hypostatic union? Substance dualism, hylomorphism, materialism, or something else?

Now, do you want me to answer this,.

Or would you like to get this one? Well, if you want to take a... No, I do not, I was just joking. It's a great question, and, you know, there is a whole discussion as to how we are best to understand a human nature, and, of course, that is very important when we speak about the Incarnation, because the Son of God, from all eternity, added to himself the Word, the Son became flesh, and flesh we take in John 1, 14, not just simply to refer to taking on a human body, but he took on a full human nature, and, of course, that raises a question as to what is a human nature, and when we look at scripture to answer that question, we broadly would say that a human nature involves a material element.

Describe the material element in a number of ways, but the best way I would say is body-soul duality, right? So that we know that these two... We know that because at death, the body is put in the grave, and we continue to exist consciously, and Christians then will be in the presence of the Lord.

We don't just cease to exist. So that we are a body-soul duality, and then there's various ways of trying to make sense of that substance, or just ways of trying to make sense of the... We won't get into all that discussion, but we have to affirm that we are truly a body-soul human nature is, and that is what makes sense of the incarnation and what the Son takes to himself.

He takes to himself a human nature, a body-soul duality, and even at his death, that body, like our death, the hypostatic union, the person never, never is in this, but the human nature, and he has now taken that to that human nature.

He has brought about our salvation. He has glorified that human nature, and our glorified human nature will be patterned after. Well, thank you, Jordan, and Wes Wake.

Forest, North Carolina. In fact, you reminded me that I have to send in my membership fee this month for the Hylomorphist Society. I'm like, can I? But thank you very much, Jordan, and guess what? You have won a free copy of the book that we are addressing today, God, the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ, thanks to our friends at Crossway Publishing, and just make sure that we get your full mailing address there in Wake Forest, North Carolina, so that you can receive the book, cvbbs .com.

One of our sponsors is going to be shipping that out to you once we get your full mailing address, and by the way, since you're a first-time questioner, you're also going to get a free New American Standard Bible, along with the book that we are shipping out to you, God, the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ, by Dr. Stephen J. Wellam.

We are going to our first break, and if anybody else would like to join us on the air, you're going to have to get in line, because we already have quite a number of people waiting to have their questions asked and answered by Dr. Wellam, but if you'd like to get in line, send us an email at chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away, God willing, we will be right back, right after these messages, with Dr. Stephen J. Wellam. My name is Steve Lawson, founder and.

President of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries. I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor. It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in Midtown Manhattan.

You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc .nyc. They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel. If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit New Covenant Church, NYC.

Again, their information can be found at www .ncc .nyc. Have a great day.

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with about 90 minutes to go, is Dr. Stephen J. Wellam, Professor of Christian Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and editor of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology.

We are discussing part two of a discussion that we began last Tuesday, that is God, the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ, which is also the title of a new book by Dr. Wellam, and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Please always give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA, and only remain anonymous if your question is personal and private. We have, I usually don't give full names on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, but since this is a pastor that I know and respect, and I heartily recommend his congregation, Redeeming Grace Fellowship in Massapequa, Long Island, New York, but Pastor Caleb Bunch has two questions for you, actually, Dr. Wellam.

He says, I am very excited to read your Christology. I have recently encountered many young people who have been required to read Bart Ehrman's books in college. Do you have a recommendation for someone who is not able or willing to read something as scholarly or extensive as your book?

I am interested in something accessible and accurate to point them to.

Yeah, so I do think they could work through the book, and it's necessary for them to ultimately do so. Some popular works that are out there, I mean, there's a number of apologetic books that deal with some of Bart Ehrman's materials.

I know one of my colleagues, Timothy Paul Jones, has written on some of this and deals with some of Ehrman's material. It would all depend on the issue that you're looking at, right? So there's different aspects that have to be dealt with, so I'm trying to think of a book off the top of my head that would be most useful.

Eventually, they have to get into the issues of apologetics, taking on Ehrman in terms of his entire approach, his rejection of scripture, and so on. So Timothy Paul Jones that deals with Ehrman, some of the books, some of the radio shows of James White has taken on James Ehrman, done a good job there.

Some of the debates could be... You mean Bart Ehrman? Bart Ehrman, yes, and some of those areas could be looked at, would be helpful to young people to watch a debate between James White and Bart Ehrman and others who have debated that on YouTube.

That would be a pretty good place to go. Plus, Caleb could work through some of the material of the book and teach them some of these foundational issues that the Church has always known through the ages that have.

To be reaffirmed today. Well, Pastor Caleb has a second question. Does your book, God the Son of Man, address the question of the transference of sin from generation to generation in regards to the sinless nature of the Incarnation?

I know there are multiple models theologians have developed ranging from purely genetic transference to exclusively spiritual transference. I was simply curious if you had scriptural cause to lean in any particular direction on this very challenging.

Question. Well, I don't deal directly with the whole question of what we call original sin, right? So the relationship of Adam's sin to then the rest of the human race, all those who come after. That's the whole discussion there of transference and imputation and so on.

I assume that the answer to Adam to us would be what is best understood in the Reformation and post-Reformation era as Adam acts as our covenant head, what is often known as a federal head. He's not just the first man of the human race, but he is acting on our behalf as our representative so that his guilt is imputed to us.

We are guilty in Adam and there's also a corruption of human nature so that we come into the world both guilty tied to Adam's representational work and we also come into the world fallen or corrupted or polluted, different words that describe that.

In Romans 5 that deals with the imputation of Adam's sin to us as well as Ephesians 2 and other places that describe by nature gravity that is total or pervasive within us. And then as it comes over then to Christology or the person of Christ, I do heption, that is the most significant, and the issue then of the transmission of sin of God in the incarnation endless.

And I do argue, I think scripture teaches that when the human nature that there was the unique triune God uniquely of the Spirit from Mary, right, so there is no human from Mary that's fallen, yet there is then the sanctifying work of the Spirit.

Chapter 1 where it's describing the Spirit of God salting is the Holy One, is that there's a unique sanctifying work of the Spirit so that the Son of God takes to himself an unfallen human nature so that he remains not only not acting in sin but he is sinless, he is unfallen.

And that is due to then the supernatural agency of the Spirit as well as the fact that the Lord Jesus does not come into the human race supernaturally through Mary so that Christ is not in the sense of a representational union with Adam the way we are.

We come into the world in Adam which means that we are guilty as well as in Christ. He comes outside of the human race yet unites himself to a human nature that is sanctified so that he is unfallen, he is sinless.

And so I do discuss the Virgin Conception, the relationship of the Virgin Conception. Well thank you Pastor Caleb,.

I'm also going to plug your website redeeminggraceny .com, and remember there's two g's back to back because it's redeeminggraceny .com. And because you are also a first-time questioner Pastor Caleb, please give us your full mailing address because not only have you won a free copy of Dr. Willem's book, God the Son Incarnate, the Doctrine of Christ, you've also won a free New American Standard Bible.

So make sure that you get your full mailing address in Massapequa, Long Island to us so that we can ship that book out to you. Actually so cvbbs .com can ship that book out to you as soon as possible.

We have another first-time questioner. We have JB in Amarillo, Texas. And JB says, Dr. Willem, can you give an understandable summary of the recent eternal subordination social media blow-up and clear up whether or not both sides fall within Orthodox Christianity?

And if they are, why there was such a heated debate in the first place? If this topic is so terribly important, why had I never heard a single sermon on it in nearly 50 years? Was this debate actually Christological or was it really about complementarianism and egalitarianism?

That's JB from Amarillo, Texas. I remember this issue was brought up in part one of our discussion last Tuesday. But if you want to respond to JB about this. Well, the issue,.

Yeah, I certainly will. And it's a large issue, right? Because nothing is so simple as anything looks by appearance, right? So in the question, there was an issue of, well, was this really a Christological or Trinitarian debate or was it more egalitarian and complementarian?

Well, unfortunately, both of those things got bound up with each other. And they, in my view, need to be kept distinct. Yet, I think some, and this is generally speaking, some saw this as an opportunity to deal with the egalitarian and complementarian issue.

Others dealt with it purely in terms of, let's correct what was perceived as an inaccurate way of understanding how the persons of the Godhead are related to one another. So it depends on who you're talking to in the debate and so on.

But there are many factors that led to the blow up a couple of years ago. And, you know, we would have to spend some time looking at that. Now, in terms of the debate itself, there is a difference of viewpoint.

And this was a legitimate discussion. Anytime we deal with these kind of matters, they're not just, again, esoteric or not important or so on. They do have important ramifications. And I do think that all the parties, I mean, all, I have to be careful when I say all, but, you know, the main parties in the debate, I do consider them brothers and sisters in Christ, that this was an in-house discussion among people who do affirm the doctrine of the Trinity and who do have a high view of the Lord Jesus.

That was not at stake, but it was really getting at larger discussions. And the larger discussion, how we understand the relations of Father, Son, and how do we define what it is for the Father to be a person and the Son to be a person and the Spirit to be a person.

And these are crucial, crucial matters that are with us through the whole history of the Church and that we have to wrestle with from Scripture. And the classic position, those who went on the attack are saying that the best way that we understand the persons is that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are to one another.

They share the same divine nature, yet they are distinguished by a property. That's the language of the Church. So the Father has fatherhood, paternity. The Son has sonship. That way, and how do we understand those relations?

Well, the Father is the one who is unoriginated. He is the one who is first in order of relations, not in sharing the divine nature more or having more divine attributes, but he is the one who is first or who is Father.

The Son is the one who is eternally from the Father, so he's of the eternal generation. So the Son has something the Father does not. Namely, he is the one who's from the Father or of the Father, and the Spirit is of the Father and the Son.

And those were the ways of distinguishing. You cannot distinguish the persons by appealing to divine attributes. They share the divine nature equally. They're God equal with one another, yet they are distinguished by their person relations.

That was the classic way, and I think that's the best way of understanding how to distinguish Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet it's not an ordering of attributes or sharing of the divine nature or so on.

They're God equal with one another, yet the Father is the one who is Father. The Son is from the Father. He is the eternal Son, and the Spirit is from Father and Son. Now, the relational view, the eternal relational authority subordination view or mission view, they then said, no, the way you distinguish the persons is not only the Father has fatherhood and the Sonship and the Spirit is from Father and Son, but that the Father has perty or the person property of authority.

So he has first authority. The Son has a kind of, it's, he has an authority from the Father, and the Spirit has then an authority from the Father and the Son. So you have a kind of authority relations or authority hierarchy.

And they then said, no, this doesn't compromise the full deity of the Son or Spirit, because authority relation, they argued, is just simply the way the persons relate. So they're not denying anything of deity or in sharing the divine nature, but it was a different way of conceiving of how the persons.