Presup, Van Til, & Trinitarian Theology w/ Lane G. Tipton

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September 23, 2022

In this episode, Eli interviews Van Tillian scholar Lane G. Tipton on his new book “The Trinitarian Theology of Cornelius Van Til.” #presuppositionalapologetics #revealedapologetics #lanetipton #theology #apologetics

00:01: Alright, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today
00:07: I am back with another guest. If you looked at the YouTube thumbnail, you guessed it,
00:13: I have Dr. Lane Tipton on to speak with me about Cornelius Van Til's Trinitarian Theology.
00:20: He just wrote a wonderful new book, of which I'm still in the process of reading. He was so kind to me, sent to send me a
00:27: PDF of it, and I have my phone read it to me, so I'm still in the process of plowing through some stuff.
00:33: But so far it is an excellent read, and folks can definitely pick that book up right now on Kindle and hardcover.
00:41: It is $9 .99 on Kindle and $34 for hardcover, if you're that kind of guy that likes to smell the the wonderful smell of a brand new book.
00:51: I know I have a weird obsession with new books. I don't know if any of my listeners share that, but both of those options are open to you if you so desire to go over to Amazon and pick that book up right now.
01:03: It's available. But I would like to just share a little bit about my guest,
01:09: Dr. Lane G. Tipton. He is associated with Reformed Forum. He teaches theology there, and there are a lot of content on the
01:19: YouTube channel, especially with respect to what we're really interested in on this channel, presuppositionalism,
01:25: Vantillian apologetic methodology, Reformed theology. And so I highly recommend you guys check out
01:31: Reformed Forum. Dr. Tipton is also a minister in the OPC, the
01:36: Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and his academic interests include hermeneutics, soteriology,
01:42: Christology, covenant theology, Trinitarian theology, modern theology, and the integration of biblical and systematic theology.
01:49: So he has his hands, if we can say his mind, in many different topics, and I'm pretty sure everyone who is listening today will enjoy
01:59: Dr. Lane Tipton. So without further ado, I'd like to invite him on the screen with me. Dr.
02:04: Tipton, how are you doing? I'm doing great, brother. It's a delight to be here. Long time coming.
02:11: Well, wonderful. Yeah, so just for background, I had invited Lane. Is it right if I call you
02:16: Lane, right? Absolutely, brother. Okay, okay. So we just met like five minutes ago, so we're best buddies, right?
02:22: So we've emailed. That's right, that's right. So I had invited Lane onto the show a while back, and he was super busy, and so we kind of pushed it off for a long time, but I'm super happy that he's been able to make the time to come on with me tonight.
02:39: So I'm very much looking forward to this conversation. Is there anything you'd like to add about yourself that you think folks might find interesting before we kind of dive into the main topic of our discussion?
02:50: Well, not necessarily interesting, but Reformed Forum, where I'm serving in terms of teaching, has a
02:56: Reformed Academy, is publishing a wide array of literature right now, and is really starting to,
03:04: I think, present a wide range of theological material that can assist pastors and elders and interested students, and of course,
03:15: I just delight to serve at Trinity OPC in Easton. It's wonderful, and it's an overflow of just a love for the
03:24: Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which I've had for many, many years. So thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
03:30: No, it is an honor and a pleasure. What I really appreciate, when I was reading a little bit of your description, is that you have a strong background in academic theology.
03:40: I mean, you're in academia, you write at the scholarly level, you publish, yet you are a minister, a servant of the
03:46: Church, and I think that is a very powerful and very Christ -centered and Church -centered thing to do, that you have one foot in academia, the other foot in the
03:54: Church, and use, you know, what you've learned, what you've studied, to kind of benefit the body of Christ, and I think that's where all the action is at.
04:01: That's what God has called us to do, so I very much appreciate that about you. Now, I think you're gonna get a kick out of this, so when people hold to presuppositionalism, they'll call themselves a presuppositionalist or a
04:14: Vantillian, but I have not heard this before here. This is from Jeff Downs. He says, I'm a Tiptonian.
04:20: I love Jeff, he's a dear brother. Let's just say we're
04:28: Reformed, we're in the tradition of Gerardus Vos, we're confessional, we love
04:34: Vantill, and insofar as Tipton is helpful in some small way, we'll listen to him.
04:41: We need to make that go viral, though. A Tiptonian presuppositionalism. That sounds awesome.
04:48: Well, thank you, that made me laugh when I read it. Jeff's kind, but that's way overstated and out of focus. Order and proportion, order and proportion.
04:56: So now, I want to talk about your book, but I have a question that a bunch of people always ask me, and I'm going to use my self -centered greediness to ask this question first, before we get into the topic of your book.
05:07: Now, we all know that as Reformed Christians, the bedrock, the soil out of our
05:13: Reformed theology is where our apologetic flows from, right? So our apologetic flows from a consistent application of biblical
05:19: Reformed theology. But I keep getting this question, Lane, is it possible to be a presuppositionalist in any consistent way without being
05:28: Reformed in our theology? For example, I don't know if you're aware, but there are a lot of Eastern Orthodox Christians claiming to be presuppositionalist, and even some
05:38: Roman Catholics. Is that inconsistent? If so, why? A lot of people ask this question, and I figured you'd probably be the guy to ask, since you are well -informed with Reformed theology and Vantillian thought.
05:50: Oh, sure. Well, let me try it this way. You probably already know this about me, but I give kind of textured, layered answers.
05:58: If you begin with a kind of broad, evangelical, biblicist, Reformed view that's out there, represented by the
06:07: Oliphant frame and others, you could be a covenantal presuppositionalist, believe that God is mutable, ignorant, developmental, changes, grows, but somehow we're just presuppositionally committed to God.
06:25: And that kind of me and my Bible, mutualist, biblicist approach, that can appeal to almost anyone.
06:33: So Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, evangelicals, they can say, well,
06:38: I'm presuppositionalist. I presuppose God exists. But that's just surface level and unhelpful.
06:47: So the follow -up answer to that is that if you look at Vantill's theology, and I'm not trying to center my book, but if you do read the book, if anyone happens who's listening to this to read the book,
07:03: Vantill begins his apologetic with a self -conscious integration of the
07:10: Continental Dutch and English Puritan, or to put it a little more narrowly, old
07:17: Amsterdam, old Princeton reception of Calvin's Trinitarian theology, which
07:23: Calvin was trying to refine from Augustine and others. And he presents his apologetic as the fruition and outworking of a uniquely and distinctively
07:36: Calvinistically reformed doctrine of Trinity. So it's, yes, is it biblical?
07:42: Yes. But it's biblical as received in terms of the creedal, lowercase
07:49: C, Catholic tradition, and as the reformed tradition. And in Vantill's instance, the integration of the
07:57: Continental Dutch and English Puritan tradition, so that you cannot be presuppositional.
08:02: And by the way, I prefer that vastly to the more recent mutualist biblicist nomenclature of covenantal.
08:08: We can talk about that if you desire to. But the presuppositionalism of Vantill is robustly and staunchly from the outset committed to an autothean
08:19: Calvinistic doctrine of the ontological Trinity and the way that interfaces with the reformed doctrine of federalism, image of God and covenant.
08:27: So the long answer is that the longer answer than the first one is that if you look at the actual deep structures of Vantill's thought, the
08:36: Eastern Orthodox denial of the ontological Trinity as understood in the
08:41: West, it's denial of the filioque, it's denial of the immutability of God and his revelation with its essence, energies, distinction.
08:52: That precludes them. The Roman Catholic nature -grace dualism of Thomas Aquinas, its insistence on the donum super additum and participation in the essence of God, that precludes the
09:04: Roman Catholic view from Vantill. So the short answer is that presuppositionalism as articulated by Vantill is an organic and inexorable extension of the, and this is the way
09:18: I put it in the book, I'm not trying to turn to the book, we don't even have to talk about the book. We're going to get to the book, but I'm glad to hear.
09:24: But for Vantill, apart from my book, for Vantill, Vantill's theology at its root is an ecumenical, synthetic, and constructive expression of the continental
09:40: Dutch and English Puritan expression of classical reformed
09:45: Trinitarianism and classical federalism, reformed federalism.
09:52: That integration is what underwrites the presuppositional approach to apologetics so that it's just not possible for mutualists, biblicists, covenantal types,
10:04: Eastern Orthodox types, Roman Catholics, Bardians, dipolar theists, open theists,
10:12: Socinians, they cannot embrace the presuppositional approach to apologetics because they have not embraced the reformed
10:20: Trinitarianism and covenantal theology that underwrites it. Yeah, now one more kind of question related to that and then we can switch to the book because I do want to talk about Cornelius Vantill's Trinitarian theology because I think it's so much wide -ranging application to so many different other areas, but what about libertarian freedom?
10:38: Someone who holds to a libertarianly free will position, is that in any way inconsistent with say a reformed understanding of God and how we relate presuppositional methodology in a way that's consistent with how we understand
10:51: God and his decrees and things like that? I'm so excited you asked this. I love stuff like this, brother, by the way, so I love this give and take stuff.
10:59: Let me put it this way. The classical expression of libertarian free agency I think has been captured by the
11:05: Socinians in the 16th century and the open theists in the 20th and 21st century.
11:11: Their argument is that God, now please hear this, their argument is that God cannot in the nature of the case foreknow the acts of moral agents who possess libertarian freedom.
11:24: It's unknowable. Why? Because the libertarian conception of freedom is that moral free actions, free agency is not determined by natural causality or the decree of God and I have an old professor.
11:37: He's one of my favorites from Westminster in California. The reformed affirm foreknowledge and foreordination.
11:45: The Arminians affirm foreordination, deny, pardon me, affirm foreknowledge, deny foreordination, and the
11:54: Socinians and open theists deny foreordination and foreknowledge. And so the
12:00: Calvinists affirm that God foreknows exhaustively and definitely the free actions of moral agents in part because God is omniscient and in part because they don't possess libertarian free agency, namely the idea that free actions are not determined by natural causality or divine foreordination.
12:27: Secondly, and this has been fascinating to me, I won't give you names at this point because it's not necessary, but there have been some even within the ostensible,
12:37: I'll call it nominal, Vantillian tradition who have published as far back as 2003 up to 2018 this doctrine that when
12:46: God is calling out to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 .9, where are you? He does not know where they are.
12:54: Now this is key, not because they have libertarian free agency, but because God, when he relates to creation, either
13:06: A, assumes to himself a distinct and separate second mode of existence that's contingent, temporal, and ignorant, or he generates somehow or takes to himself somehow covenantal properties by which he is ignorant like the creature.
13:27: So there have been even those who claim to be Calvinists who say that God so limits himself in his relation to creation that while creatures don't possess libertarian freedom,
13:40: God has limited himself in such a way that he's taken to himself the mode of creaturely noesis, namely, some put it this way,
13:50: God has a covenantal mind that's ignorant, that's developmental, that doesn't know where Adam and Eve is.
13:56: Genesis 3 .9, when he says, Adam, where are you? He doesn't know. Or in Genesis 22, 13 through 18,
14:04: Abraham, now I know that you believe me. These so -called reformed theologians are saying, well,
14:13: I didn't know before, but Abraham, now I do. I really know that you believe in me.
14:20: But the irony is this, this so -called approach, this second mode of existence or covenantal approach, it's not
14:31: Socinian in the strict sense of the term because it doesn't affirm libertarian free agency, but it belongs in the
14:40: Socinian tradition because due to either voluntary transformation or voluntary self -limitation,
14:48: God actually doesn't know the future. Now over against both of those views, the traditional
14:54: Socinian view, the open theist view, libertarian view, God doesn't know the future. And this newer,
14:59: I don't know what to call it. Some people even call themselves Vantillians. I'm just going to call it an evangelical reformed biblicist view.
15:09: That's the best way I know how to do it. People who claim to be reformed, but have a view that's functionally Socinian.
15:15: Over against those, I wrote an essay. I don't know if you're even aware of it, but I wrote an essay in the
15:21: Confessional Presbyterian. It was published about a year ago. I could send you a copy of it if you want me to.
15:26: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. You can post it wherever you want, if you want. But Herman Boving, who's so useful here, he and Vantill, but I'm going to talk about Boving.
15:35: Boving says that the view, this is so beautiful in his Reformed Dogmatics, says that the view of Genesis 3 .9,
15:43: that God doesn't know where Adam and Eve are, that he's ignorant, is quote unquote absurd.
15:49: That God might speak in an accommodated way. God might be denominated by categories borrowed from the creature and in space and time and creaturely qualities might render the way
16:04: God relates to creation. But even though those creaturely qualities render God's relation to the creation,
16:11: God remains, and this is key, this is Augustine, this is Calvin, this is Westminster Confession, this is
16:17: Boving, this is Vantill, this is Foss, this is not the Socinians and not these covenantal types or these evangelical mutualists, but that God remains omniscient and immutable and impassable and simple in his sovereignly willed relation.
16:33: He's the same apart from that relation as in it. And so when you ask me that question, they're really kind of a 1A, 1B, the
16:42: Socinians and the modified covenantal evangelical mutualist biblicist types on the one side.
16:48: And then there's the old school Augustinian Calvinist Reformed on the other side. And the people who belong on that other side, that Reformed side, are the likes of Augustine, Calvin, Boving, Foss, Vantill.
17:01: And there is, it's so funny you've asked me this, I'm thrilled you did. I'm so happy you're answering it in such a long way because this is, you have no idea how often,
17:10: I just got a question today, I'm like, I'm a Molinist, can I be a presuppositionalist? I'm thinking, well, Molinist holds a libertarian freedom.
17:16: I wonder if there's a relation there. So I'm happy you're unpacking this. This is super helpful. I'll just put it this way. The tender answer to that is no.
17:24: No, let's talk. Let's keep talking. You can be a
17:31: Molinist and you can go with Craig and the Socinians and the Opentheists and the covenantal mutualist biblicist types, but there is a qualitatively different Augustinian Calvinist Reformed alternative.
17:46: And it's really key. So I'm so glad you asked me this. And I don't deal with that as directly in the book, but in that volume or shorter essay that I told you about,
17:57: I think it's called, how about this? I don't remember my own essay title, but it's something like Bovink and Van Til on anthropomorphism.
18:08: They just offer a robust affirmation of, here's the deal. I'll put it this one last way, brother, and then we'll move on.
18:15: The Reformed affirm an unqualified doctrine of omnipotence, omniscience, simplicity, immutability and impassibility in God's relation to creation, as well as apart from God's relation to creation.
18:32: So it's unqualified. God, whether he's apart from creation or in relation to creation is unqualifiedly living, immutable, impassible, omniscient, and simple.
18:42: All other forms of whether it's Bardianism, whether it's
18:48: Schleiermacher, whether it is open theism, dipolar theism, covenantal apologetics, or process theism, all those other views are going to have a dialectical conception where God is immutable apart from creation, mutable in relation.
19:08: Simple apart from creation, composite in relation to creation. Eternal apart from creation, temporal in relation to creation.
19:16: Omniscient apart from creation, ignorant in relation to creation. Omnipotent apart from creation, but impotent, relatively speaking, in relation to creation.
19:30: And probably, I'm not sure this is because it's been burned and pulped and hidden, but the best dialectical expression that I've just explained is found in this volume.
19:42: It's hard to find anymore. God with us, yeah. Yeah, yeah, God with us. It's also, you know, in a lot of other books, but that's a real good kind of crisp summary of that dialectical, sick at known, qualified doctrine of immutability, impassibility, simplicity.
20:00: And there are others. I mean, Frame does it, Clark Pinnock does it,
20:08: Cobb and Hartshorne. There are a host of others, but that's the more well -known, you know, question mark view.
20:15: Sure, sure. Now, I just want to let you know, Lane, I wish I can put you in my pocket and when I want to talk theology, take you out and start talking.
20:23: Listen, I love that when you explain something, the love of the topic shines out in how you explain it.
20:31: And so you're very engaging to listen to. And I love how you just unpacked that. And I'm going to tell folks right now,
20:37: I keep getting asked that question. I'm going to make that little segment a separate video, and I'm going to share that.
20:43: And it's a joy to do this with you. I really enjoy it. Like I said, it was too long in coming, but I'm glad we're doing it.
20:51: Well, awesome. Well, hopefully we can be friends in the long run. I would love to just connect with you and pick your brain. I know you're busy, but.
20:57: I think we're instantly friends, brother. We'll just keep developing. Awesome. All right, cool. All right. Well, let's talk about your book,
21:03: Cornelius Mantle. Yes, that's why we're here. Well, my question wasn't related directly to your book, so I want to focus on the book so that people know we're now talking about the book specifically.
21:14: So, and Jeff again, he's like, Eli has become a Tiptonian. The name is going to stick,
21:22: Lane. No, no, no. We can't let it, brother. We can't let it. I need to get a mug with you on it and then
21:27: I'm a Tiptonian. I'm just kidding. I'm just going to put it this way. The men that I am talking about who have expounded the biblical text, they must become greater.
21:37: I must become smaller. That's just, that's how it shall be. All right. Well, before I kind of ask you specifically about your book, like more directly, why is
21:46: Van Til someone that people should read today? I mean, he's definitely a major player in reform circles, but why would you say people in general should read
21:56: Van Til? What value does Van Til have for the Christian world today? And then we'll kind of pivot into the specific topic that you've chosen to write about and kind of unpack with respect to his thought.
22:07: It dovetails well, and I can tell you've been doing this for a while, brother, because that's just a tremendous question, authentically.
22:14: I really mean it. Let me put it this way. I'm going to play to some of the sympathies of the people that I think listen to your podcast.
22:23: Okay. Remember that time you first became a Calvinist, when you remembered that or realized for the first time,
22:30: God is a sovereign, immutable, all determining, all decreeing, loving, covenantal
22:39: God. And you thought to yourself, this Calvinism, this reformed theology that I've found is so precious to my soul.
22:47: Well, that's what in large part motivated the pursuit of this study and the expression of Van Til's theology.
22:56: And let me put it this way. This is like an inclusio, Eli, of my book.
23:01: It's the introduction and it's the epilogue. I probably should have called it prologue epilogue, but I didn't get cute enough.
23:10: But anyway, here's the point. Van Til offers, and I hope this is practical to people.
23:17: Some people will say, when you first hear me, I think a lot of people say, that's not practical. But if you listen and keep thinking, it becomes about as practical as anything in the world.
23:26: But let me put it this way for your listeners. I interact toward the end of the book, and I know you didn't ask me about the book and I didn't ask you about Van Til, but they segue so well.
23:38: There's a book that was edited by Bruce McCormick and Thomas White.
23:44: I consider McCormick the preeminent Barth scholar, and White is one of, but not the, preeminent
23:51: Thomas scholars. I think Emery's probably preeminent. Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth, an unofficial
23:56: Catholic -Protestant dialogue. At the beginning of that volume, which I cite in the epilogue, they say that Thomas and Barth, traditional
24:05: Thomistic theology and Barthian theology, modern
24:10: Barthian theology, are analogous to Dante and Shakespeare.
24:17: They dominate the landscape, just as Dante and Shakespeare dominate the landscape of literature.
24:24: So Thomas and Barth dominate the landscape of viable, contemporary, conservative, orthodox,
24:32: Trinitarian theologies of the God -world relation and all that it entails. What I argue in the epilogue, and I try rigorously to demonstrate in the book, is that there's a third figure.
24:45: He's neither Dante nor Shakespeare. I haven't decided how to transpose that analogy, but in the theological analogy, the third person is
24:56: Cornelius Van Til. And here's what I mean by that. Thomas holds to a view of the creator -creature relation that requires the ontological reproportioning of the creature to participate in the essence of God.
25:10: White grants it. Emery grants it. Thomas says it. It's quite clear.
25:16: It's basic, if you know, standard, traditional Roman Catholic theology. Barth, on the other side, says that God—and I'm going to use a little different language than Barth uses—but
25:27: God reproportions himself to the modality of the creature. God limits himself. He becomes his opposite.
25:33: He becomes finite, temporal, mutable, in the Christ event. And so you have these two monumental presentations of the creator -creature relation, but both of them, in Van Til's terminology, are correlativist.
25:48: The creature participates in the being of God for Aquinas. The creature—God participates in the becoming of the creature for Barth.
25:55: It's astonishing how similar they are, and McCormick and White note the ecumenical potential for traditional
26:03: Thomistic and traditional Barthian theology. Standing in sharp contrast to them is
26:10: Van Til, who says God does not reproportion himself to the categories of the creature in the decree or in creation.
26:19: We're not talking about incarnation. And the creature is not reproportioned to God.
26:26: God relates—here's my way of putting it—God as God without modification relates to the creature as creature without modification in creation and covenant, as distinct, inseparable, simultaneous facets of his condescension.
26:42: And what that means, and I'm trying to make this relevant, brother, I promise I'm trying to make it as practical as I can to your listeners.
26:48: You're doing great. That means this, that if you are following Calvin, the
26:56: Confession, Vos, Bavink, Van Til, old Princeton, Van Til's integration of all of them, you have a distinctively unique, confessionally reformed conception of the creator -creature relation that cannot be reduced to and is antithetical to medieval
27:20: Roman Catholic theology on the one side and modern
27:25: Barthian theology on the other side. It's a tersemquit, it's a third thing. It's a unique, distinctive, deep -structure voice that I call the deeper
27:36: Protestant conception. So there's the deeper Protestant conception that stands in antithetical relation to the deeper
27:42: Catholic and the deeper modernist conceptions of Aquinas and his ilk, Barth and his ilk.
27:48: So for your readers, if you're interested in Van Til, he gives voice to that old -fashioned
27:57: Calvinist reformed theology you fell in love with when you understood the five points, covenant theology, and the system of doctrine contained in the
28:06: Westminster Confession of Faith. And when you read all those reformers who were saying, we don't agree with the Romanists, and when you read all those 20th century conservative theologians who said, we don't agree with Barth, Van Til gives you the most profound integrated alternative to both of those differing theological traditions.
28:24: Excellent, excellent. I hope it's useful. Yeah, excellent. Thank you so much. So Van Til is still very relevant to us, and I think if people just know him through his apologetic,
28:34: I think they should be encouraged to read some of his other things, because that reformed theology kind of oozes out of everything that he writes and everything that he says.
28:42: And so I would commend that to others who are interested. Now, Van Til's Trinitarian theology, what drew you to focus on this element of Van Til's thought?
28:53: I mean, there's so much that he has contributed to in the realm of theology and apologetic methodology.
28:58: What caused you to focus on his doctrine of the Trinity? I think there are two things. Number one is, you've shown me your cup on Bonson, and let me just say before all your listeners,
29:08: I studied under Greg Bonson from around 1990, yes, until 1995 when he died.
29:16: I believe it was December 11th, 1995 when he passed into glory. And I have, as an apologist,
29:23: I categorically disagree with the theonomy, categorically reject the post -millennialism, but in terms of his reading
29:31: I think among the second generation Van Tilians, head and shoulders above the rest.
29:37: Frame, Oliphant, Edgar, and others. He really was, he just stood out.
29:43: But when I studied with Bonson, I would take courses with him, Eli, correspondence courses, and if I would finish with a segment,
29:52: I'd get one hour with him for Q &A, just the two of us, where I'd call him up landline.
29:59: This is back in the day. I mean, people are going to think TV was still in black and white when I'm telling this story. I mean, this is way back in the day.
30:05: We don't even have computers yet. I was taking notes by hand. I'd call him up and I'd talk to him. And I told him,
30:10: I said, Dr. Bonson, after I'd had him for about like a year or two, I said, hey, Dr. Bonson, and he was the nicest guy in the world to me, just nothing but kind.
30:21: And he also had an encyclopedic understanding of things, and I couldn't tell if he was lecturing or reading notes, because he was just that like, it's like kind of data, the
30:29: Star Trek thing is just like, yeah. But I would ask him, I said, Dr. Bonson, I noticed that you talk so often about worldview and about the way that the
30:40: Christian worldview accounts for logic and causality and ethics. It accounts for abstract universal entities, as well as changing and variable patterns in experience.
30:50: But what I've noticed, Dr. Bonson, is that you don't trace in any sustained way, in any of your writings that I've found, the relationship between the self -contained ontological trinity, his revelation in covenant, and its implications for worldview apologetics.
31:09: And he said to me, I don't remember the year, it was somewhere around 1993 before I went to Westminster, California, when
31:16: I was in Austin, Texas. He said, Lane, you should write a book on that someday. He said, go for it.
31:23: He said, I haven't. I haven't gotten around to it. It requires a special expertise in Trinitarian theology.
31:29: I've been more focused on method, and I think the worldview is correct, Van Til talks about that, but I've not connected the dots.
31:37: Brother, here's what I did. Little young Lane, in 1993, 25 years old,
31:43: I wrote that down, read up on this, exclamation mark. That's point one.
31:49: Then point two, I go to Westminster, California. I'm going to abbreviate this story. I study under my two favorite professors,
31:56: Strimple and Klein, one A and one B, and I don't even know who to put first. They are militant
32:02: Van Tilians. And they talk about them all the time, and they tell me that I should go on to do a
32:07: PhD. And I don't want to do philosophy, I want to do theology. They say, go study under Gaffin.
32:13: So I come to Westminster, Philly in 1998, still at that time, old
32:18: Westminster, committed to the old doctrines and everything. Gaffin was still there. And Gaffin told me, he said,
32:24: Lane, what do you want to write on? I said, well, for my dissertation, I said, I'd like to write on ontological and economic facets of Christology, and try to trace out the relationship between Trinitarian processions, the missions of the
32:39: Trinity, and the resurrection of Christ, because you haven't done that. And he went, you know,
32:45: Dick, he said, that's fair. I haven't. But then he said, but there's one thing you've yet to do.
32:53: He said, you have yet to write on Van Til's doctrine of the Trinity. He said, Dr. Strimple told me that you'd written a paper for him out there.
33:01: You must write a dissertation on Van Til's doctrine of the Trinity, clarify his doctrine of the
33:07: Trinity, situate it in terms of the tradition, develop its implications for covenant and apologetics.
33:14: You must do it. It's 75 years overdue. And he would not let me switch. He told me, you know, seriously, brother,
33:21: I mean, Dick is not a forceful man. Dr. Gaffin's still alive. He's not a forceful man at all. He was forceful with me.
33:28: That pushed me to say, okay, let me get all of my Van Til material. Back then it was the
33:33: CD -ROM, Eric Sigward's CD -ROM. This is way back. And I read absolutely, made sure
33:39: I read absolutely everything Van Til had written and then wrote the dissertation, which now,
33:47: Eli, has what you have in the book that's before you and others is a perfecting and absolute comprehensive rewriting of that volume.
33:58: So that's how my interest connects to the book that's right before you. See, I love those background stories.
34:06: I love them because it's those little things that contribute to what people look, that people see the book and they're like, man, this is a great book.
34:12: I want to like, you know, study this and pick it apart. But it's, it's those little beginnings that give birth to these big projects.
34:18: And it takes a lot of research to, to, to do those things. And so I really love that background sort of stuff.
34:24: That's really fascinating. Now, when I often hear discussions on Van Til's Trinitarian theology, there are a lot of people who misunderstand
34:32: Van Til and claim that he holds to an illogical understanding of the
34:38: Trinity in terms of which God is both one person and three persons.
34:44: And so I've often had people message me and say, Hey, you know, what, what do you think Van Til meant by this? It doesn't sound like that's a logically coherent concept to hold.
34:52: Could you unpack for us Van Til's understanding of the one person and the three persons, since that seems to be a violation of the second law of logic?
35:00: Yeah. Yeah. I'll put it in, in contrast, Gordon Clark holds to a doctrine of the
35:08: Trinity. That's heterodox. And he's the one who claimed that Van Til was being illogical in the book.
35:13: This is in like, I think chapter five, I don't recall if chapter four, chapter four. I remember my own book in chapter four,
35:21: I situate Van Til's doctrine in light of Boston personalism, Gordon Clark.
35:26: Gordon Clark held that the principle of individuation in the Trinity is that each person is comprised of a discrete bundle of thoughts, an incommunicable bundle of thoughts.
35:40: Thought bundle one is the father. Thought bundle two is the son. Thought bundle three is the
35:47: Holy Spirit. And that means there are discrete, get this, discrete and inaccessible bundles of thought within the
35:56: Trinity. And then he goes on to say those personal thought bundles have to be distinguished from what he called mute essence.
36:05: So in order to salvage the personal thought bundles that are the father, son, and Holy Spirit, he related them to what he called a mute essence, an essence that isn't conscious.
36:18: The essence has no thought bundles. Can I ask something? Can I, because I'm trying to make, I'm trying to follow what you're saying and connect the dots.
36:25: With mute, a mute essence, is he then suggesting that there is an abstract impersonal element of God as opposed to God being an absolute person with no impersonality undergirding that?
36:41: Precisely. Eli, your instincts are 100 % right. He posits mute and unconscious substance in order to make way logically for living thought bundles, father, son, and Holy Spirit.
36:59: Right. Wow. Okay. Well, yeah, I know that that's, but, but Gordon Clark, here's the, I want to say this charitably.
37:06: Gordon Clark was a philosopher, not a theologian. Yes. And so he was punching way above his weight class.
37:12: It's like a lightweight punching up toward a heavyweight and it's just not his thing. He did his best.
37:19: That's not orthodox. It is tritheism. Tritheism says there are separate self -conscious centers, incommunicable thought bundles in each person and that the unity is either love or purpose.
37:35: Okay. And so Clark turns in that direction. But Van Til, and I have this in the book, so I'll just economize the presentation in the book.
37:44: Sure. All Van Til is doing when he says God is absolute personality, this is kind of a, a well -kept secret, but I've exposed it.
37:53: Yeah. Yeah. Here's the musterion is being open. No, I shouldn't do that. That's too much. But there is a kind of a hidden secret here.
38:01: All Van Til is doing is quoting and expounding Bavink. The absolute personality language comes directly from Bavink's reformed dogmatics.
38:09: And to put it, to put it in a twofold form, when you're talking about is the essence of God absolute personality,
38:16: Bavink says two things. Number one, God is self -sufficient, self -conscious, and self -willing.
38:26: In other words, all of God's acts are how many? Here are the options.
38:32: One, three, or potentially infinite. They're one. There's one God. He acts in the unity of his being.
38:41: And so that one God acts within the unity of his being. He's purposeful.
38:49: His decree is a decree that comes from one God. The creative works of God come from one
38:57: God. The redemption that we know comes from one God. So there's a fundamental baseline unity of God whereby he decrees, creates, redeems, governs, and consummates as one living and true
39:17: God. Bavink says that is personal. It's not impersonal.
39:23: Electricity doesn't do that. Gravity doesn't do that. God does that.
39:29: So there's a fundamental personal dimension to his unity.
39:36: Second point, Bavink says that that unity expresses itself in what
39:42: Bavink calls a threefold differentiation that we call the eternal processions, where God's love for himself,
39:53: God's knowledge of himself is expressed in terms of eternal self -differentiation, where the
40:03: Father generates the Son and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And there is this threefold subsistent differentiation within the one undivided personal being and unity of God.
40:18: So there's one personal purposeful God, but there's a threefold subsistence within that one purposeful
40:27: God. So in that sense, it's not a contradiction once you explain and qualify the statement that God is one person and three persons.
40:37: And so that language, although it can be confusing, we want to emphasize that there is no impersonality, no impersonal context that undergirds the three persons as we describe
40:47: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Brother, that's a perfect segue. Let me add my third point because that's Bavink.
40:53: So there's one self -purposing, self -determining God. That one
40:59: God exists in three distinct subsistencies, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is
41:04: God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God without remainder. Each subsists entirely as that undivided essence.
41:12: Then Van Til, when he talks about absolute person, he uses it synonymously with absolute personality and says within the absolute personality of God, there are three personal subsistences.
41:27: And so the people who think Van Til is making some equivocation, like person is not equivocating, like person is used in exactly and exhaustively the same sense, have not understood
41:42: Bavink and have not understood the fact that there are not four but only three incommunicable personal properties within what?
41:52: The being of the one absolutely personal God. So absolute personality is not an abstract conception but a tri -personal conception.
42:06: And so is the Father God? Yes. Is the Son God? Yes. Is the Holy Spirit God? Yes. Are there three minds separately conceived?
42:14: No. Are there three wills separately conceived? No. There is one mind, one will, one
42:23: God, yet there are three distinct persons who are, and that copulative verb deserves all the emphasis, who are that one
42:33: God. And right there, Van Til plants the flag of what I'm going to call, I'm going to call it this, the
42:40: Augustinian, creedal, Calvinist, confessional,
42:47: Austrian, Vantillian, old Princeton, old Amsterdam flag of mystery. That's got to be on a t -shirt or something.
42:53: That's got to be there. We got to get one going. We've got t -shirts coming from Reform .org. But it's mystery.
42:59: And so it's not a syllogism to be solved. Okay. It's not to say that there are contradictions.
43:06: It's to say that there are ineffably sublime, absolutely and eternally impenetrable mysteries to this
43:16: God who is three in one and one in three, in whom there is absolutely no vestige of impersonality.
43:23: And let me come back to Gordon Clark. I'm sorry to do this because I know some people still love him and I think he was a fine fellow.
43:30: He and Van Til were friends, but there are not three separate thought bundles and there's not a mute essence.
43:37: That's what you get when you try to solve this mystery rather than worship this mysterious
43:42: Triune God. That is awesome. I, I, that's awesome. I have some people in the comments here.
43:48: I need to read his book. Yes, you do. You gotta go check it out. It's there in a more orderly way.
43:54: I'm not quite as orderly right now, you know, of course, but you're doing, you're doing, you're doing a great job. Now let's throw, let's throw a monkey wrench in here.
44:01: We do a lot of apologetics here. My channel is called Revealed Apologetics, which is my fancy way of referring to presuppositional apologetics.
44:08: But what happens then? So you have the Trinity as you've just defined, you know, his absolute personality, three subsistence.
44:17: What happens now when you have the hypostatic union and the will of the man Christ Jesus, for example, in the garden of Gethsemane, where he says, you know, if it be, if it's possible, let this cup pass for me, but not my will, but your will.
44:30: How do we understand the one will of the Triune God and the hypostatic union, the person of Christ in which there is both human and divine natures, which seems at times the human nature is in conflict with the divine nature, which appears that way.
44:49: How would we explain that? Because I know that often comes up in apologetical context when people challenge the coherency of Jesus Christ being both
44:56: God and man. Yeah. Several things to remember. I'm going to give you the embryonic thumbnail version here, but, and I will reference you to this
45:05: Camden Busey and I about a month ago did a, a video.
45:13: I'm so old fashioned, did a podcast. I'm sorry. I don't know. Had our pictures taken.
45:21: I'm terrible. This wide has been earned. You're not that old. You look like a youngish older guy.
45:27: I am. That's a good way of putting it. I'm a youngish older guy with an emphasis on the youngest and the oldest.
45:34: But, but we did something on this about a month ago. So your listeners, if they're so inclined can look at the deeper
45:41: Protestant conception of the person of Christ. I'm gonna give you a, a, a modified version that also had an essay in the
45:48: Sinclair Ferguson Festschrift on this topic, but I didn't talk about the hypostatic union.
45:53: Here it is in a nutshell. The locus of unity within the God -man is the divine person.
46:01: Jesus is not a divine human person. He's a divine person. And the humanity of Jesus subsists in the, in the person that is divine.
46:16: That's an in hypostatic conception of the person of Jesus.
46:22: The humanity never exists apart from union in the person of the logos.
46:29: It's an hypostatic in that this second point, the, the, the humanity of Jesus is not a person in itself, but it's personalized in union with the person of the logos.
46:42: So in an on hypostatic Christology is absolutely critical to recognize that Jesus is and remains a divine person.
46:50: Second point, your heart is Voss. And I don't have it with me. Oh, I do.
46:57: I do. Pardon me. Pardon me for leaning back. But volume three of Voss's Reformed Dogmatics.
47:03: And by the way, don't, I don't want to offend anyone. Don't get the one volume, get the five, get the five volumes.
47:11: Volume three. See, I've even got my library right here. Is the one volume a bridge? There's like stuff left.
47:17: No, it's not a bridge, but it's got fly paper instead of book paper in it. And I go catch flies with that thing.
47:24: It's so thin. I'm not diminishing the people. I like thick pages. I like to feel like this new edition here.
47:33: It's got good pages. The Bonson book, Van Til's Apologetics, it's got nice thick pages to write notes in it.
47:40: I'll only reference people to the old unabridged, unedited, non -commented versions of Van Til's works.
47:46: Those are the pure things. The non -mutualized versions. But just remember, he's a purist,
47:56: Van Til. But Voss says, point two, that the person of the logos, this is so important to remember, cannot be, this is a quote from volume three, cannot be changed or eradicated in the hypostatic union.
48:13: So in the hypostatic union, the person of the logos, the eternal person does not change in the new relation to the human nature.
48:23: And you're asking yourself, well, that sounds weird. No, it's simply the logic of the new relation to creation. In this volume, which
48:30: I strongly suggest you get, volume one, theology proper, pages 178 and following,
48:38: Voss talks about the new relation of creation. And here's what he says, following Bob. He says that when
48:45: God personally condescends to create, the relation between the creator and the creature changes.
48:53: The creature in the relation changes. And this is key, brother.
48:59: But the essence and the persons of the triune God remains living and immutable and unchanged in that new relation.
49:08: So it's the old meatloaf song, two out of three, ain't bad. The relation changes, the creature changes, but the triune
49:17: God, yeah, that's back in the day. Isn't that the guy, I would do anything, is that the guy?
49:24: Yeah, but before that it was, don't feel bad, because two out of three ain't bad.
49:31: Bad out of hell, baby. It's one of the best concept albums in the history of rock. That is awesome. It's not Pink Floyd variety, like Dark Side of the
49:38: Moon, but it's good. But the point is this, always remember this. There are two, but not three changes.
49:43: The creature changes, the relation changes, the immutable persons of the trinity do not change in the new relation to creation.
49:50: That logic is maintained in the hypostatic union. The eternal son of God assumes a new, a true humanity to himself.
50:00: And in that assumption, what changes? The humanity changes. It did not once exist, now it exists. The relation changes.
50:06: It was not once related to the person of the son, but it now is. But the immutable and living person of the son of God does not change.
50:16: So we predicate of him change according to what? Human nature, unchanging according to divine nature, omniscient according to what?
50:25: Divine nature, limited knowledge according to human nature. But the locus of all of these predications for change is the human nature permanently and personally united to the logos.
50:42: And so really the best formula I know how to give it, and this is just pure Vos, Van Til affirms this,
50:51: Boven confirms it. It's standard Chalcedonian orthodoxy, but these reformed theologians really picked up on it, is that the immutable person does not change in the assumption of a true, changing, finite, developmental human nature.
51:09: And the predications we make of his person, we make them improperly with reference to his humanity, properly with reference to his deity.
51:17: But as goes the logic of the new relation to creation, so goes the logic of the assumption of a human nature.
51:27: The only difference is there's an intensification of the mystery when it comes to the incarnation.
51:33: It's a more intense version of the mystery, but it's the same mystery. And I'll say this, third point,
51:40: I guess this third point, all forms of modern, Bardian, Schleiermachian, Covenantal, open theist, dipolar theist, process versions of the incarnation, all of them, you have to grant this, you have to appreciate this, all of them ascribe change to the person simpliciter.
52:09: And what it introduced was Eli, and this is a pernicious error, and as time goes on, more and more people will see this,
52:17: I've been pointing out for several years, and a few others have, you can spot heterodoxy a mile away in this, that they will say that the essence does not change, but the persons do.
52:35: Now, what's so wrong with that? Well, if the person, what is classic, I'm sorry, brother,
52:41: I don't wanna go too long here, but what is the classical definition of a person?
52:47: A subsistence within the Godhead. Trinitarian persons are defined as subsisting, only as the whole and undivided essence in their works ad intra and in their works ad extra.
53:04: If the essence, if the person is the essence, and the essence does not change, brother, the persons don't change, but there's a,
53:14: I call it dialectical conceptions of Trinity that shared by Barth, the covenantal view, the dipolar view, that the essence is immutable, but the persons generate in free knowledge, generate in creation, generate in revelation, these new dynamic mutable properties by which they change, they develop, they're ignorant, they grow, and it's right there that you should recognize that you're talking about a concept of person as something other than a subsistence of the divine essence.
53:54: It's a different conception of Trinitarian personality, and it is rife, ranging from modernist to so -called biblicist reformed, to open theists, to just your kind of post -conservative evangelical and post -liberal world out there.
54:15: It really has taken traction in the mid -20th up to now, middling toward the mid -21st century.
54:24: Excellent. Thank you so much. This is awesome content. I mean, this is definitely something folks can go back and listen to and pick apart and really get a lot from what you're saying, because I like how you answered in layered ways, because it can kind of take us through the journey of like the flow of your thought and what you're trying to say.
54:40: So I do appreciate that. Now, we are at the top of the hour, and I would like to take the time to go through some audience questions, if that's okay.
54:46: We have a couple of questions, if you don't mind taking some of them. Let's do a couple. Yes. Okay. Please. Yeah. All right.
54:52: So - Time's up. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Okay. What was that? What were you kidding about?
54:58: That was a joke. I said time's up. That was a joke. Oh, okay. That was bad. That was bad.
55:03: All right. So Viet Mai says, hi, Dr. Tipton. If each person of the Godhead fully coincides with the divine essence and tri -personality is an attribute in the divine essence, why do we not say that each person in the
55:17: Godhead is also tri -personal? Thank you. Sure. The verb there coincides is infelicitous.
55:24: It for two things to coincide, they have to be separate, right? Like if I'm on a football,
55:30: I used to play football. If I am lined up on defense and running backs on offense, and he's going to run to point
55:37: A, I'm going to coincide with him at point A. But we're separate. Coincidence entails separation.
55:46: So if you take out that verb, coincides, and you say, Dr. Tipton, if each person of the
55:51: Godhead subsists as, not coincides with, not as separate from and then touches, but subsists as, that is, is entirely and without remainder the divine essence.
56:08: If you put it that way, then it's quite clear that tri -personality requires monotheism, that each person, the father is without remainder
56:18: God, the son is without remainder God, the spirit is without remainder God, not because they coincide as extrinsic and then meeting in the middle somewhere, that would be like some third thing.
56:30: Because if I hit the guy who's running with the football, we meet in a third place where we didn't start, right?
56:36: That third place is a univocal tertium quid where I hopefully level him. And maybe he fumbles, maybe
56:43: I pick it up and run for a touchdown, but that's irrelevant. There's a separation of the two that closes in a common place, a third thing.
56:53: That is a conception that's alien to Trinitarian orthodoxy. So if we substitute it with subsists entirely as the divine essence, then that question is resolved because each person is the full and undivided essence of God, yet the father is not the son, the son is not the spirit, and the spirit is not the father and the son.
57:18: There are distinguishing, discriminating personal properties and three subsistent relations to that undivided one essence that doesn't diminish or partition that essence as each person is unqualifiedly the whole of it.
57:34: Excellent. Thank you so much for that. We'll kind of go through these quickly. We'll see if we can get, there's some really good ones I think that people would really enjoy to hear your thoughts, but we'll see if we can move through these quickly here.
57:42: Richard Cox asks, do you have any thoughts on Ligonier, especially Dr. Matheson's criticisms of Van Til and his theology's impact on the doctrine of God?
57:50: Yeah, Matheson is a refurbishing of some old critiques of the Du Bois. I mentioned him in a footnote.
57:57: It's recycled, it's not fresh, it's not creative, so it's really not worthy of careful scholarly attention because it's a recycling of the
58:06: Du Bois, which Carlton Wynn, Camden Busey, and I have already dealt with in the
58:11: Van Til group. I do some work on it critically in terms of a footnote in the book, but if you want to get the real
58:19: Van Til, Matheson and the Du Bois should be put aside and you should just read Van Til, go to the book, look at what he says, and recognize that he is the embodiment and integration of the classically reformed
58:32: Continental Dutch and English Puritan tradition, and if Matheson would turn his attention to primary sources rather than the recycled stuff of the
58:42: Du Bois who were philosophers, not really good theologians in the first place, his understanding of Van Til would be much better.
58:48: Excellent, thank you so much for that. Samuel Haupt, I hope I said that right, how would
58:54: Dr. Tipton address John 5, especially verse 26, and we could turn there if you don't know it off the top of your head.
59:00: I know it off the top of my head. Okay, all right, cool. Since it seems to contradict autotheos, Calvin applies the text to the economy but limits it to that in a rather unconvincing manner.
59:11: First, in an unconvincing manner you just bracket and get rid of, it applies to the economy. Autotheos does not apply to the economy, it applies to ontology.
59:19: Therefore, Calvin will appeal to other texts such as Hebrews 1 .3, the sun is the apaogus mate staxes, the active radiation of the essence.
59:30: Colossians 1 .15, he is the eternal icon to Theu, the image of the invisible
59:35: God. He is the morphe to Theu, Philippians 2 .6. He is the pleroma,
59:45: Colossians 1 .19 and Colossians 2 .9, of the divine essence, of the divine substance.
59:53: And here's the key for Calvin, the manner in which the sun possesses the divine essence is not passive and receptive but active.
01:00:05: Why? Because God is simple, each person is the active essence of God, each person is fully the essence of God.
01:00:16: And to posit that the father is entirely generative of the essence and the son is entirely receptive of the essence compromises the simplicity of God.
01:00:28: So Calvin says it deals with the economy, I agree with him.
01:00:34: You might not be convinced of it but it wouldn't therefore be an applicable proof text and it wouldn't address the more convincing and powerful proof texts that talk about the sun as the fullness and entirety and active effulgence.
01:00:48: I'll turn this person Samuel Haupt, turn him to Voss's teaching of the epistle of the
01:00:54: Hebrews where he addresses apaogus mate and gives a series of arguments for its active sense which means the sun is not a bare passive reflection of the essence but the active radiance of that essence which is what?
01:01:07: Autotheon. And it deals with the economy, it deals with ontology not the economy.
01:01:13: Excellent, thank you so much for that question Samuel. Now you addressed this question before but maybe a quick thumbnail because it keeps coming but I'm going to make this as a separate video because I know people are asking but why don't you in brief, because I know you answered this, why can't an eastern orthodox person be a consistent presuppositionalist?
01:01:30: Maybe just a quick summary again. The eastern orthodox and I'm thinking particularly if you read the work of someone like Lasky on the beatific vision or Zizoulas on the being as communion,
01:01:47: I've read a book by Reid on the essence energies distinction. Here's the best way to put it.
01:01:53: The essence energies distinction posits that God in his essence is modally distinct from God in his energies.
01:02:03: That there are qualities that you find in and express through the energies that are distinguished from the essence of God and the essence therefore is
01:02:15: God not relating to creation. Energies are the means by which
01:02:20: God relates to creation and I'm not giving an exhaustive answer because you asked me to keep it short so I'm not doing my typical layered thing.
01:02:26: I'm trying to keep it short so that the point is that eastern orthodox theology as I've seen it posits the energies as a tertium quid, a place where God and the creature meet and participate.
01:02:41: The energies facilitate the meeting between the God and the between God and the creature in a manner similar to the way
01:02:49: Barth's third time is the place where God and man come together and participate in a common event.
01:02:58: So I would say that that the reason why people get kind of stuck on this is that you can you can see some similarities between Barth's tertium which is
01:03:07: God's time for us, Oliphant's tertium which is covenantal properties, Frame's tertium which is
01:03:13: God's second mode of existence or the eastern orthodox tertium which is energies in which the creature participates.
01:03:20: Creatures participate in energies and not essence so the essence is the coming together of the creator and the creature in a tertium that violates the logic of this creator -creature distinction and relation that Van Til maintains.
01:03:35: There is no tertium, no third thing in which God and man participate in order to relate.
01:03:41: The eastern orthodox tradition therefore shares a family resemblance to these forms of mutualism and this positing of a tertium that I've cited in various expressions of the western tradition.
01:03:53: Excellent, thank you so much. Again, I cannot, I cannot, I'm not exaggerating, this question comes up all the time so I very much appreciate it.
01:04:00: Hey, just real quickly, I've talked about the deeper modernist conception, I've talked about the deeper catholic conception,
01:04:06: I've talked about the protestant conception, and if I live another five years
01:04:11: I'm going to write a volume on the deeper orthodox EO conception and try to differentiate all four views of the
01:04:22: God -world relation and show that it's only the deeper protestant conception that avoids some species of mutualism, some tertium.
01:04:32: So we need to pray that you don't die in the next five years. I would, for my kids and wife's sake, pray for like 30.
01:04:39: Hey, I have good Pentecostal friends who are really good prayer warriors. Get them going, brother, because as I feel every day, daylight's a -wasting,
01:04:49: I've got to keep working here. That's right. Well, we have almost 50 viewers in the live chat right now, people asking a bunch of questions, but I want to respect your time.
01:04:59: Is it okay if we go to two more questions and then we'll wrap things up? Let's do two more and then we tap. Okay. All right. Sounds good.
01:05:05: All right. So T .J. Brown says, concerning the Trinity, why three? Could it be that when two are communicating, there must be a third as the divine witness of the two and require a fourth, would do, would, grammatically incorrect, would to undermine the third and so there can only be three, or it would be denying the perfection of the three?
01:05:25: I'm probably way wrong, but was thinking about why three during a podcast in the past. Sorry if this distracts from the discussion.
01:05:32: God bless you all. Well, let me put it this way. Our theology, for better or for worse, is not a speculative one.
01:05:41: I have not sat in my study and tried to out -Hegel Hegel and engage in abstract philosophical speculation about the inner essence of eternal and temporal reality, but we live by revelation and the scriptures are our principium for our theology.
01:06:00: They're the norm, the norming norm for the creeds and confessions and the scriptures just most basically reveal this.
01:06:08: I'm just going to put it super basically. There is one living and true God, the Father, the
01:06:14: Son, and the Holy Spirit. There is no other and all others are an idol.
01:06:21: That's the most basic way I know how to put it. So if you ever let yourself get unhinged, hey, wait, what's this podcast called?
01:06:29: Revealed. Apologetics rests on what? Revealed theology. So it's the fact that it's a revealed theology and a confession.
01:06:39: Let me speak directly to this brother, TJ Brown. TJ, I'm speaking directly to you.
01:06:46: The reason why you believe in the Trinity at one level is that only
01:06:52: Jesus Christ has called to you through his word, made himself known to you by his spirit, atoned for your sins by his death, been raised to new life for your justification, and summoned you effectually into union and communion with himself so that you confess that his
01:07:12: Father is the Father of heaven and earth and that there is no son but Jesus and that he has poured out his
01:07:19: Holy Spirit on the church. So brother, you keep worshipping and you reject that rationalism that's in the back of your mind with the revelation of the self -contained ontological
01:07:29: Trinity and the Christ of Scripture who's the same yesterday, today, and forever. If I can just provide some hypothetical context where I think this question is coming from.
01:07:38: On this channel, Lane, we talk a lot about the transcendental argument and the necessity of the ontological Trinity to ground the one and the many, and of course these are preconditions for predication and all these other sorts of things.
01:07:49: That's Bonson, baby. I'm hearing it. That's right. So I think when we argue, for example, the triune
01:07:56: God provides the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience, people will often talk about the triune
01:08:02: God as a hypothetical hypothesis. Why must he be three? Why can't he be four?
01:08:09: But your answer is saying he's three because we are not talking of God as a hypothetical hypothesis.
01:08:15: We're talking about God as the one who has in fact revealed himself as triune.
01:08:22: And so that's why he must be three is because that's how he's revealed himself to us. To come full circle on Bonson, Bonson himself told me to do this.
01:08:29: The wagon is worldview. The horse is the Trinity. And your worldview is pulled by that Trinitarian horse as it were.
01:08:42: And so you're never to posit that there is some intelligible realm of universals in particular, some kind of realist realm.
01:08:54: And then you're in search of the most coherent worldview. That's actually, that view right there is
01:09:00: Clarkian coherentism, where you have a set of experiences and laws, and then you test those experiences and laws against, give me a second, against axiom systems, systems that have axioms.
01:09:17: And Gordon Clark says Christianity has the most axioms that render experience coherent.
01:09:24: So if you're not really careful, if you put your worldview cart before the
01:09:30: Trinitarian horse and you reverse that order, you can very quickly become a rationalist and be led to say, well, look, if this worldview renders things intelligible, maybe
01:09:42: I can worship a pantheon of gods. Maybe I could worship Zeus. Maybe I could pray to Thor, Dwight from The Office.
01:09:49: But if you recognize the order and proportion of worldview, it is a function of the revelation of the self -contained triune
01:10:00: God and grows out of a distinct theology of image and covenant enabled by that Trinitarian theology.
01:10:09: Excellent. Excellent. All right. Well, thank you so much for that. We're going to cut this short. I know we said two more, but I feel bad.
01:10:15: We've gone an hour and 10 minutes, so we'll just - Give us one last more. Let's do one last. One more. Okay.
01:10:20: All right. I appreciate it. My heart's always open, brother. Okay. Well, Patrick asks - Even though flesh is dwelling, the heart is the spirit.
01:10:26: The spirit's dwelling, the flesh is weakening. We got it. That's right. So Patrick asks, what do you think about divine temporality?
01:10:33: Advocates of this view claim that if God were timeless, the incarnation and creation would be impossible.
01:10:40: Yeah, it's fascinating. There's a thesis out there. I think I showed this earlier, but this thesis got with us, where the timelessness and eternity of God is like an impediment or a barrier that has to be overcome so that in order for God to relate to creation, he has to generate a set of properties.
01:11:04: They're called covenantal or they could be called other things, but they're called covenantal. They're accidental, if you use more classical language.
01:11:11: Accidental properties that facilitate the relation of the eternal and immutable
01:11:17: God to the temporal and immutable creature. And it's said that those properties resolve that question that God is eternal in himself, but when he knows in his free knowledge, the actual world, he generates new properties of before and after noesis.
01:11:37: He enters into time, as Frame would say, a new mode of existence, where he assumes covenant when wills covenantal properties is all if I would say.
01:11:45: Here's the problem with that. There are two main ones. There are like a hundred that I could talk about, but I don't want to do the full layered thing.
01:11:53: I'll do like a quick bisection layered answer. Point one is that requires an infinite regress of new properties.
01:12:02: If in order for God to relate to what is temporal, he has to assume properties that enable the relation to the temporal and those properties are themselves temporal.
01:12:12: He has to assume a new set of properties to relate to the temporal properties that enable the relation to time.
01:12:19: So it's an infinite regress. There's just no end to the multiplying of new mutable interactive properties that God needs to relate to time.
01:12:29: The second one is I think the most, a more profound one, and I'll just put it this way.
01:12:37: And I struggle for terms sometimes, Eli, but this is the best way I know how to put it.
01:12:43: Our reformed, our Augustinian Calvinist reformed Vantillian tradition affirms an unqualified doctrine of immutability, simplicity, impassibility, and omniscience.
01:13:00: God in his revelation does not change. Two quick ones. Covenantally, he says to his people,
01:13:07: Malachi 3 .6, I the Lord in covenant with you do not change, not even a little bit.
01:13:13: I know where you are. I know everything about you. I ordain everything about you.
01:13:19: I'm purely actual. I'm living and I'm immutable. And because of that, you have religious hope.
01:13:25: Do you see? You will not be consumed. But what's the implication? If I change just a little bit, all bets are off.
01:13:31: You're on your own. In the words of Prince, right? Remember Prince? In this life, you're on your own.
01:13:38: So anyway, it's Prince theology if God is not unqualified and immutable. Second, and Boven can
01:13:44: Vantill quote these. This is why I'm giving it to you. James 1 .17, the father of heavenly lights in his acts odd extra in his giving of every good and perfect gift does not change like shifting shadows.
01:14:01: He's immutable. He's dynamic. He's living. He's self -contained. He's simple. He's impassable in his acts that fall in time.
01:14:10: And so this idea that God has to somehow become temporal in order to relate to creation is the reason why so many rationalists posit, well, he's got to change.
01:14:23: Well, here's the, to take it to the incarnation. Okay, third level. The third level answer, to take it to the incarnation.
01:14:29: The incarnation, classically and in terms of creedal and reformed confessional theology, please hear this, is that the eternal and immutable son of God assumed to himself a temporal and mutable human nature, right?
01:14:48: That's Chalcedon. That's, that's reformed theology. That is in Westminster confession eight.
01:14:55: It is enshrined in Boven, in Voss, in Hodge, in Vantill. It is
01:15:00: Chalcedonian orthodoxy. The eternal and immutable son of God assumed to himself a temporal and mutable human nature.
01:15:09: But if you posit that God changes in this free knowledge to become temporal, that God changes in the work of creation to become temporal, that God changes in the event of the hypostatic union.
01:15:26: You have a creature assuming a creaturely nature. You have a temporal and mutable person assuming a temporal and mutable nature, and you no longer have
01:15:40: God in the flesh. If you affirm, I'm sorry to pound, but if you, if you affirm a doctrine of divine temporality where God mutates, changes, limits, transforms himself to become temporal,
01:15:54: God with us doesn't exist because there is no immutable self -contained eternal person assuming human nature.
01:16:02: There's a creature assuming a creature and it compiles the idolatry. So you can't worship such a construction.
01:16:10: I'll just do this because I was an English major. That's a, that is a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem to be born.
01:16:21: In the words of William Butler Yeats, it's a monstrosity.
01:16:26: It's an idolatrous conception. So we've got to remember that the eternal living immutable son of God assumes a temporal and mutable human nature, and that is
01:16:41: God with us. Anything else is an idol. Okay. Well, thank you for that.
01:16:47: Oh my goodness. There are so many questions. Someone asked the question and maybe I'll take a shot at it and we'll wrap things up because it's a question towards me.
01:16:56: Maybe you can kind of correct me if I'm wrong, but Brenda says, if time is a succession of events and thoughts are a succession of mental events, does
01:17:04: God have thoughts? How is that possible if he's outside of time? It is my understanding that God does not think in a discursive fashion, one thought after another.
01:17:13: Rather, he has all knowledge laid bare and kind of one fell swoop of intuition. Am I correct along those lines that he doesn't think one thought after the other like we do?
01:17:22: You are so right. This volume posits though that in his free knowledge,
01:17:28: God generates or assumes to himself a temporal, discursive, incremental, and ignorant covenantal mind by which he comes progressively to know things.
01:17:39: In the Orthodox tradition of Chalcedon, Westminster Confession, and the Reformed tradition,
01:17:45: Eli, you are 100 % right about the knowledge of God. It is as immutable and simple as his being.
01:17:54: Excellent. Lane, I have to tell you, I have interviewed some of the top scholars,
01:18:00: Reformed folks as well, and I have to say, this has been my favorite question so far.
01:18:12: I love your love for Vantillian theology, for the
01:18:18: Bible, and just the energy with which you kind of explain your position.
01:18:25: Thank you so much for giving me one hour and 18 minutes of your time. It is greatly appreciated.
01:18:30: It was a delightful one and 18, and I look forward to future opportunities, brother. Thanks for having me on. I deeply appreciate it.
01:18:36: Keep up the wonderful work and blessings on your ministry, brother. Absolutely, and ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening and sending in your questions.
01:18:44: I hope you guys enjoyed this. It would do me a great benefit if you went on iTunes and wrote a nice review.
01:18:51: Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and thank you so much. I really appreciate my listeners, and until next time,
01:18:57: I have a big announcement coming up. I'll let you guys know when things are in order, but it's exciting. So until next time, take care and God bless.