The Forgotten Trinity Part 1

Dr. White, welcome. Good to have you back in South Africa once more. This is your 5th, 6th?

I've lost track. Me too. I've completely lost track. I've really lost track. And it's always wonderful to have you here and it's always wonderful to have you close to us in South Africa rather than anywhere else.

Today we're going to look at your book, The Forgotten Trinity, and I think it is just such an appropriate topic of discussion.

The title of the book is very provocative because you start off and you say it is The Forgotten Trinity. Can you say why you chose this title and why it's important to you?

Well, the reality is in most of evangelicalism around the world, we act in a schizophrenic fashion.

On the one hand, when the Jehovah's Witness comes to our door, we automatically put that person aside because they believe that Jesus is

Michael the Archangel and deny the deity of the Holy Spirit. Or when the Mormon missionaries come by, we recognize that the doctrine of the

Trinity is important in that context and we will split fellowship. We will not have fellowship with someone who denies that divine truth.

But then, to be honest, and I've said this in many a church setting, how many of us can go through an entire week without ever meaningfully reflecting upon the doctrine of the

Trinity, how that relates to the gospel, how that should relate to our prayer life, how that should relate to worship.

Most Western Christians, Western in the sense of culturally speaking, are functionally monotheists but not truly

Trinitarian. If you were to ask, I think most of them, a lot of our seminary graduates, what is important about the doctrine of the

Trinity as it relates to the gospel itself, I think many of them would struggle to come up with a decent sermon on a subject like that, let alone live in light of that.

And we see this confusion. Just in a Bible study in someone's home, if you listen to people praying, you'll hear

Trinitarian confusion in the prayers. Oh, our dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this wonderful day.

We thank you for all you've given to us. We thank you for dying for us. The Father didn't die for us. It was the

Son who died for us. And there will be confusion. Honestly, how many people would be able to give a meaningful answer to, well, can you pray to the

Son? What would that mean? Why is that different than praying to the Father? How do we?

So we will divide over it, but how many sermons do you hear about it?

And I started off, I think the most commonly referenced parts of that book,

I wrote in a hotel room in Chicago. I remember exactly where it was. And it's where I said,

I love the Trinity. And I said, when was the last time you heard someone say that? You'll hear them say,

I love prophecy. I love the Bible. I love eschatology. I mean, you'll hear a lot of I loves, but you almost never hear anybody say,

I love the Trinity. Because as soon as you say, I love something, it's sort of expected that you might feel comfortable explaining why and what that means.

And even a lot of our seminary grads would struggle, I think, in sermons and in preaching and teaching to differentiate, for example, between the

Father and the Son in a meaningful fashion. What's the relationship between the Father and the Son? Why did Jesus say, if you've seen me, you've seen the

Father? And the fact there's so much modalism in the church.

I think a large portion, at least I'll speak for American Christians, I think if I were to give a test on a

Sunday morning in almost any large, conservative, Bible -believing church,

I am quite concerned that over a majority of the attendees would test out as modalists, as people who would not, in an orthodox fashion, be able to enunciate the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit.

And if you specifically press the idea of, well, Jesus said, I and the Father are one.

Would that mean it's appropriate to refer to Jesus as the Father? I'm scared about how many people would go, oh, okay, yeah, right, no problem.

So that's where the title comes from, is Athanasius.

During the days of Athanasius, it was said that as you walked down the streets of Alexandria, you would hear the shop owners discussing the relationship of the

Father and the Son. So that was the discussion of the day. That's not even the discussion of the day in a lot of education today, let alone in the church.

Our focus is elsewhere. So in a sense, we've forgotten that, and of course you and I, involved in so much interaction with our

Muslim friends, we can't afford that. We have to be very focused on why the

Doctrine of the Trinity is definitional, because that is the key issue with our Muslim friends.

They think we're tritheists, so on and so forth. But most of our fellow believers are not interacting with people in that way, and so the centrality of the

Doctrine is really lost on a lot of folks. But you have many more questions.

If you don't stop me, I just keep going. I just keep rolling forever, so that's the way it goes. Robin Perry said something interesting.

He said the Doctrine of the Trinity is almost akin to an appendix. A lot of people know it's there, but they don't know what it's about.

And what I see in the churches in South Africa is very similar to what you experience in America.

We know it's there, we know its importance, but ultimately we do not know how to define it. And I think in your book on page 21, you quote

William J .T. Shedd, that in actual fact says that this doctrine is an immense doctrine.

I think definitions will be in order before we start the conversation. Can you define and tell us, give quite a good description of it in your book, the three pillars of what we believe when it comes to the

Doctrine of the Trinity? I give a pretty short definition right toward the front, but short definitions are liable to misrepresentation and confusion because you import certain meanings of words.

But you can start basically in asserting the fact that you have to start with monotheism, fundamentally understand that there is only one true

God. And I think that's where some people are wondering why we spend so much time on this.

And that's probably because they haven't spent so much time talking to Mormons. And that was the first religious group that I spent a great deal of time studying and dealing with.

And so I emphasize that most Christians go, what, there's someone who doesn't believe there's only one true

God? Yes, actually there are. But within the one being that is

God, there eternally exists three co -equal and co -glorious divine persons, the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And each one of the words that we use to define that doctrine,

I believe, have to be fundamentally informed by and drawn out of the text of Scripture.

Now, this gets us into the whole issue of authority of the church and the authority of tradition and creedalism.

There are many people who are Trinitarians because of the Nicene Creed, because of the

Athanasian Creed, because of a belief that you are fundamentally honoring what

Christ has done in building His church over the centuries. I've taught, the first class

I taught graduating from seminary was church history. And I've taught it many, many times since then. I love church history.

I recognize the absolute necessity of our knowing church history, recognizing our place.

I firmly believe that Christ is building His church and that He is King of kings and Lord of lords, and He's going to continue doing that.

But I also believe in sola Scriptura, and that means that the

Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith of the church, not the only rule of faith of the church.

The church has expressed its faith in many different ways, and that's an important thing. It's a communicative thing, a thing that gives clarity.

How do you balance those things together? Some people would say you can't. There are scholars today who would say that if you truly believe in sola

Scriptura, that your belief in the Trinity is an inconsistency for you. Because as far as the specific definitions that you have at Nicaea in 325, and then after Nicaea, you have the

Arian resurgence, where, as Jerome would say, in the next century, the world woke up and was shocked to find itself

Arian. And then you have the collapse of Arianism, because Arianism is really an incoherent system when you think about it.

And then you have the Christological controversies. You have all the discussions about, okay, if Jesus is truly

God, then how is He the God -man? What is the relationship between the divine and the human and Christ?

And I hope you don't mind I mention this, but recently, we have at the church where I'm a pastor now, called

Apologia Church, we have a catechism question as a part of our, we only have one service, because we don't have our own building, we rent from other people.

So we only have one service. And so we have a catechism question as a part of that. And right now, it's from the

Baptist Catechism, and we're focused upon a particular section that talks about the hypostatic union.

And we were about to do the catechism question, and I was staying there talking to my fellow pastor,

Jeff. And I said, I sort of leaned over to him, are you going to talk about the hypostatic union? And he says, you want to do that?

Okay. So for the next number of weeks, as I did the catechism question,

I explained what the hypostatic union was, the relationship of the divine and the human and Christ, one person, two distinct yet united natures.

And then I went and introduced all of our people to the errors that existed in church history.

So the idea of Nestorianism, or the idea of Eutychianism, what gave them the various ideas, so that would make the catechism question more meaningful.

It's one thing to memorize something, but then to have the church history aspect of it. Well, back to the point, you've got all this development over time, there's no question that Ignatius of Antioch, who dies around 107 -108, is not having discussions about Nestorianism or Eutychianism or any of the other

Christological errors, Apollinarianism, so on and so forth, that would exist at a later point in time.

So can we acknowledge development in the sense of the church examining questions that could not have been present in the first century, or even the second century, and hence clarifying while still believing in Sola Scriptura?

Or do you have to embrace a model of ecclesial authority that would allow for Cardinal Newman's development of doctrine, the concept that Roman Catholicism would present?

And again, these are things that most people are never faced with having to think through, until someone comes along and starts trying to proselytize you.

Then you have to start thinking these types of things through, until they're knocking on your door, or they're in the cubicle next to you at work, or wherever else it might be, believe me.

Sadly, after three and a half decades of ministry now, I have met with many a person who was either contemplating making a major shift or something else, and there's lots of reasons why people do those things.

So anyways, as you know from reading the book, I emphasize that I am a biblical

Trinitarian. That means I am a person who can fully understand and appreciate the

Council of Nicaea. If you take my church history class, be assured, on the final, of every final, will be the question.

325 AD, Council of Nicaea. You got to know it. You need to memorize that thing. I appreciate it.

I think later on we will look at the merits of that. And I just want to affirm, that's exactly what you said on page 28, and I have to repeat this because this is very good.

The Trinity is a doctrine for Bible -believing people. And getting back to the foundation of this, you mentioned just that in Foundation 1, monotheism, there's only one

God. Foundation 2, there are three divine persons. And in Foundation 3, the persons are co -equal and co -eternal.

A lot of people will look at this doctrine and say, but this is not specifically stipulated. We hear the argument made all the time.

This is not specifically stipulated in Scripture. Where did Jesus ever say, I am

God, worship me? How many times? But how would you, from a biblical premise, explain this unity and diversity that we see in the

Christian Scriptures? Because I know of some Christian theologians that say, well, if you look at the Old Testament, it's not evident in the

Old Testament. It's only made relevant in the New, with the revelation of Christ. How would you speak to somebody, and especially

Christians that hold to the Bible as being the soul -inspired Word of God, how would you explain this truth?

Well, all three truths that you stipulated from the… Wow, there's so many things there. There's two major issues that, again, both of these are addressed in the book.

So, I'll start with the Foundational one, but I also want to make sure to get to the question of where and how is the

Trinity revealed in Scripture. Both those are fundamentally vital questions that have to be clarified.

Those three, the reason that I can look at someone just and say the doctrine of the

Trinity is a biblical doctrine is because of those three foundations.

And I suggest, for the majority of Christians, that when you get into a conversation, or even when you're teaching or preaching on this subject, making sure that believers understand the fundamental origin in Scripture of the doctrine and how it is forced upon us.

If we're going to believe sola Scriptura and tota Scriptura, sola

Scriptura, Scripture is the sole and fallible rule of faith. Tota Scriptura, all of Scripture is

God -breathed, not just the portions that we want to select or that we like better.

If you allow all of Scripture to speak, you are forced to the doctrine of the Trinity. This is the history of the

Church. This is what the Church was struggling with. It was always going back to Scripture, and Scripture plainly taught there's only one true

God. So, we cannot have a competing deity.

We cannot have Yahweh and a second Yahweh, or a secondary Yahweh, or some other deity that we're going to call by a different name.

We have to recognize there is only one true God, and we are absolute monotheists.

And this is built on something like the Shema, Deuteronomy 6, verse 4,

Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. If you want to do it in the more politically correct way, yes,

Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. I don't get into the

Jewish tradition there, but yes, it comes from the beginning, and I know it's very, very popular in Old Testament studies to assume that the

Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, the Ketuvim, what we call the Old Testament Scriptures, the Hebrew Scriptures, are actually evolutionary, that they develop a doctrine of monotheism over time, etc.,

etc. It seems very clear to me from the very beginning that there is a revelation that there is one

God who's the creator of all things. That's what made the Jewish monotheism of Genesis onwards so strikingly offensive to the people around them.

And so, for me, I think the trial of false gods in Isaiah 40 -48 is probably the most extended, illustrative, forceful teaching on the subject, the fact there is only one true

God. We learn so much about the nature of God and his relationship to his creation and so on and so forth in those particular chapters.

I love Jeremiah chapter 10, where the people are already under the dominion of the

Babylonians, and so God gives to them, in the language of the Babylonians, that they can communicate with them the very words that they're to use to defend their belief in monotheism.

Most people don't realize that it's written in Hebrew, and then it switches to Aramaic, and then goes back to Hebrew. So, thus you shall say to them, comma, now in Aramaic, here's what you say.

The gods that did not create the heavens and the earth shall perish from under the heavens and on the earth. And that's a perfect description of the

Babylonian gods. They came forth from the creation. They were not the creators of it. So, it's fascinating that God would do that.

But anyway, so there's numerous references in the Old Testament, and there are a couple in the

New, but the New assumes the reality of that revelation of the fact there is only one true God. It begins with that.

Where people struggle is the second foundation. Sorry, and you mentioned a definition that you take from another theologian on page 27, where he gives a description of it is one what and three who's.

And I think, sorry, I just want to add on to that. That is basically where the problem comes in. Okay, but you're defining the one what and the three who's.

And there is no comparative to that. Right. Well, yeah, I mean, we need to recognize we're talking about an absolutely unique situation here.

That's why any analogy that we've ever created for the doctrine of the Trinity will fail at some point.

Some of them, some of the more popular analogies fail from the start. They're unorthodox to begin with.

But any analogy we come up with, we might be able to illustrate a portion of the truth.

But because God is absolutely unique, any analogy, because analogy by nature is referring to the created order, is going to fail.

But as I said, one what with three who's. One what being the being of God, three who's, the persons.

And so God's being is not chopped up into thirds or sixth or anything else, or ninths, or wherever we came up with that idea.

God's being cannot be divided. But the who's are those persons that are revealed to us in Scripture that are distinguished from one another.

And if we don't recognize the difference between being and person, the being is what makes you what you are, person is who you are, then we fall into all the traps that the various other religions and false religions that claim to be

Christian really are not, try to lay for us. And it's painful. Sometimes I'll be in a public situation,

I'll start listening to a conversation in a restaurant, and I hear this happening, and I just normally end up getting up and getting involved.

It's a bad thing, it gets me kicked out of restaurants more than once. But because people have not thought through, and it's so easy to lay false traps.

And as you know, and probably in an upcoming debate that I've got in a few days,

I'll have to be going back over fundamental, basic misrepresentations of the

Doctrine of Humanity that are based upon not recognizing that we are distinguishing between being and person.

But that's where that second foundation comes in, is we are distinguishing between the

Father, Son, and the Spirit because the Scriptures consistently distinguish between the

Father, the Son, and the Spirit. There is so many texts that we could look at that distinguish between them.

But even in the ones that people refer to, such as John 10, 30, I and the Father are one.

That Greek verb is plural. I and the Father, we are one, not

I and the Father is one. Even there, Jesus is plainly referring to the oneness

He has with the Father in the salvation of God's people. It's talking about the, you know, I give eternal life to them.

The Father gives eternal life to them. They're in my hand. They can't pluck them out of my hand. That's where that oneness is coming from.

And so there is, John chapter 17, Jesus' high priestly prayer, even though it plainly presents

Him as a pre -existing glorious person, distinguishes Him from the Father.

And so it's vitally important that we follow that biblical parameter, no matter how challenging that might be.

And it also helps us to understand why it is that the New Testament writers can take the

Old Testament name Yahweh, and they apply it to the Father, they apply it to the

Son, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Yahweh. That's, I think, one of the most important New Testament evidences of what the apostolic witness was really all about.

And so one God, three divine persons that are separated, that are distinguished, not separated, distinguished from one another.

And then, of course, the equality of those persons. That's really where people are a little bit more comfortable, in the sense that people sort of automatically defend the deity of Christ, and they recognize that when

Jehovah's Witnesses say, the Spirit of God is a impersonal active force, like electricity or running water, they just automatically realize, that sounds really off to me, even though they may not know exactly how to respond to it.

That's where a lot of the argumentation takes place. But if you don't understand the second foundation, that third one can become very, very, very confusing to people.

It really can. And so, but the point is, when you are in a conversation with anyone who is questioning the doctrine of the

Trinity, I say, go find out from the conversation, which one of those three foundations they deny, then you can go into Scripture to respond to it.

And so if they are a Mormon, they're going to accept the second and third foundations, because they don't believe in the first foundation.

They believe there are many, many, many gods, and that's going to lead to polytheism. If they are a oneness

Pentecostal, they're going to deny the existence of three divine persons, and so they're going to conflate those persons.

Or in the case of the most popular group today, they believe Jesus was two persons. He's the

Father and the Son, but the Son is not eternal. The Son came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem.

And so you go to those texts that demonstrate the eternal existence of the Son. John 1, 1,

Philippians chapter 2, John 17. And then if you're dealing with someone like Jehovah's Witnesses, they deny the equality of the persons, they're subordinationists, and so you're going to be going to those texts that illustrate that.

So that's, I think, a vitally important thing to help the Christian to see where they need to be going.

Because most conversations on the doctrine of the Trinity, people will say to me, well, we talked for two hours, but I'm really not sure we accomplished anything because we talked about everything.

And if you don't have a goal in your conversation to communicate something to the other person, and if you're confused about a doctrine, the other person's going to be more confused about that doctrine.

As my church history professor said, that which is a mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew.

So if you're the one trying to explain to someone else, and you're not really certain, don't expect you're going to be able to get much clarity for that.

Not really going to go very well. So all of that being said, there was the other aspect that I wanted to make sure, and it's more toward the end of the book, and you may have a colorful little tag back there someplace,

I'm not sure, but it is foundational to me. And there are differences of opinion on this, so I can only give you my own and let you test it.

But what I frequently do when I'm asked to speak on a subject in a church, in a public teaching situation, is

I will go, now, where do you think the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed? And most people have not been asked that question.

Well, it's in the Bible. Yeah, but where? Because I can remember as a teenager, at a very large mega church that I was a member of, a

Bible study one morning, where we got onto this subject, and they're like, well, why do we believe in this doctrine?

And we were literally looking under the letter T in the concordance in the back of our

Bible. I mean, literally, that's what we were doing. Well, where is the verse that says

Trinity? Exactly. And so, you know, there are a lot of Christians that, you can look up atonement, you can look up resurrection, you can look up inspiration.

So why can't you look up Trinity? And I am very, very indebted to a great

Princeton theologian whose grave I visited a number of years ago.

If you go to Princeton today, sadly, you can learn more in the Princeton Cemetery than you can in the

Princeton Seminary because of the people that are buried there, including

Jonathan Edwards. But one of the people buried there is named

B .B. Warfield, Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield. And his work on the Trinity was extremely helpful to me when

I was in seminary. And I continue to fully embrace what he himself said because I've seen it, that it's a very solid exegetical understanding.

So what I'll do is I'll ask people to turn in their Bibles to Matthew chapter one.

And I'll say, now, you see the gutter in the page between that and the last verse of Malachi?

That's where the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed. And you get some of the strangest looks when you say something like that.

But it gets everybody's attention. They want to know what in the world you mean. And what I'm trying to do is get them to see that the

Bible was revealed in history. And as you know, between, you know, right there in that gutter was, depending on when

Matthew was written, let's put Matthew, I think pretty much most of the New Testament was written before AD 70, to be honest with you.

So let's put Matthew at about 60, okay? Could be earlier, could be later, but it's a nice round number.

That means there's about 460 years between the ministry of Malachi and Matthew.

A lot of stuff happened during that period of time. But for our purposes, the most important thing that happened during that time was the incarnation, ministry, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So the Son enters into human flesh, and then having accomplished His redemptive work,

He ascends to the Father, and the Father and the Son send the Spirit, whom

He promised in John 14 and 16, to indwell His people. And so you have the incarnation of the

Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And that's before a single word of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, anything has been written down.

And so everything from Matthew onward is written in light of this tremendous invasion of history by God that is prophesied very clearly in the scriptures that came before.

I'm not saying that when you look at Psalm 2, or Psalm 102, or Psalm 22, or numerous passages in Isaiah, that you cannot see prophetic insights into, you know,

Isaiah 9 -6. Yeah, for sure. Wow, I mean, it's... But did that mean that it was, that's when it was revealed?

Or is this a prophecy of what was going to happen? And that the fundamental revelation of the doctrine of Trinity is found in the incarnation of the

Son, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, so that this explains the nature of the

New Testament documents. A lot of people go, why don't we have a straightforward creedal statement in the

New Testament that says, there's one God who exists in three divine persons? Why is it that we have to look at Matthew's recording of the

Great Commission and go, see, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, Son, all authority has been given to me. Why do we have to look at benedictions?

You know, the grace of God, the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.

Why are we looking at things like that rather than a direct creedal statement?

Why do we properly invest time at looking at what Paul says to the Corinthians when he says he takes the

Shema and he expands it to include Jesus? Why not just a straightforward statement?

And the answer is found in the mechanism by which the doctrine is revealed. That is, everyone that you're reading in the

New Testament is an experiential Trinitarian. They're already living in light of this great event.

And so they're speaking from that platform. And when you're speaking from the matrix of an already established reality, you're not gonna keep repeating what you and the people you're writing to already hold in common.

So that's why the doctrine comes out in the expressions of the

New Testament. Is someone like Peter, as I point out in the book, Peter is an experiential

Trinitarian. He walked with the Son, he heard the

Father speaking on the Mount of Transfiguration and now he's involved by the Spirit. So he's an experiential

Trinitarian. He's already seen this. And so when he, for example, writes one of his epistles and he's drawing from the

Old Testament text to exhort his fellow believers to not become disheartened when they experience persecution, it is second nature for him to draw from Isaiah and say that you are to treat, don't be afraid when they mistreat you.

Do not let them make you afraid or fear. But instead, do what? Treat Christ, and we struggle with the translation here because we struggle with what it's actually saying.

Set apart Christ as Lord in your hearts is one of the standard English translations of that particular verse.

Always being ready to give an answer to the hope that's within you that anyone asks you a reason for it. Yet with gentleness and reverence, we all know it because that's one of the primary texts we go to when we talk about apologetics.

What we miss is what Peter was doing. When you look at the text he's drawing from in Isaiah, it's talking about Yahweh.

When he says set apart Christ as kurios, kurios is the

Greek term that is used in the Greek Septuagint to render the Tetragrammaton, Yod -Heh -Wah -Heh, Yahweh. It's the name of God.

And the text he's quoting from Isaiah is specifically about honoring or fear.

Don't fear them, fear Yahweh. And what Peter is saying, don't fear them, fear the

Messiah as Yahweh in your hearts. I mean, it's a plain reference.

It's one of the many places where the New Testament writers take a text specifically about Yahweh from the Old Testament and apply it to Jesus in the

New. How can they get away with that? Because they're Trinitarians. They're functional Trinitarians.

Peter has experienced this. So it's second nature for him to take that text, and he doesn't blush to apply a text that was originally about Yahweh and say, hey, you know what?

As a Christian in your heart where you're making all your decisions about your priorities and everything else, you're to set

Jesus the Messiah apart as Yahweh in your heart. And that changes everything.

And that is exactly what we see in the Old Testament. You see the full spectrum already present.

You've just mentioned that when you look at the Old Testament, you can see the angel of the Lord. You can see the spirit of the Lord, but you can see

Yahweh interacting apart from the spirit of Yahweh and the angel of the Lord. You can look at the book of Samuel.

There is certain instances where I know some Christian theologians, especially those that come from the

Old Testament, will say, like Warfield, this is dimly lit in the

Old Testament. It's shadows awaiting the full fulfillment, right? And this is what we see.

So what you're actually saying is that the full spectrum of this revelation is only revealed in the reality of the coming of Jesus Christ.

And this is what we see in John 1, 18. He made the Father known to us. And then obviously John 14 to 16, we see that reality as well.

I just want to give you another objection, and we went past it very quickly. But we mentioned, first of all,

I asked you, what do you say to somebody that says that the Trinity is not explicitly mentioned? And you covered that.

But one of the other difficulties for people that struggle with the doctrine of the Trinity is they will say that, you know, when we look at the

Trinity, it seems philosophically incomprehensible. And we mentioned then the one, the three, the difference between the being and the persons.

And you showed quite well that if you separate one of the two, obviously you're going to fall or into tritheism or mono...

Modalism. Modalism, sorry. I just want to ask you to explain those terms, modalism and tritheism for our listeners, because I don't think it's a term that they're quite often familiar with.

Well, I also think it's important to recognize that when someone says it's not philosophically coherent, it most assuredly is.

We're not contradicting ourselves. We're not saying there is one being who is three beings. We're not saying there's one person is three persons.

We are confessing that God is unique. And as such, if your philosophy demands that it only draw from creaturely categories, then yeah, you can fault the

Trinity for being based upon divine revelation and not being something that man just thought up for himself.

But you can't say that it's actually incoherent or irrational because we're not saying that three is one or one is three, that we are making a clear distinction.

It's an understandable distinction. It does not have any correspondence to any other creature, just as Jesus' incarnation does not have any correspondence to any other creature in that sense.

But if that's your only objection, then you're just basically saying God can't really be utterly unique, which

I would say is your philosophical problem. And again, it boils, what I've seen from some of our very notable

Unitarian friends is they will start off and say what we are saying as biblical Trinitarians is we are saying

God is one, but God is not one. And then we are saying God is three, but God is not three.

And I always say, yes, you can lay it out like that, but we're not saying God is one, God is not one. We are saying

God is one, but God is also three in person. So it's not a logical contradiction between A and B.

It's rather an affirmation of one and A, if you want to look at it that way. As long as you can think in proper categories, then you can understand what is being said.

And you have to ask the question, well, why wouldn't someone allow that? Because they have traditions that they're defending.

And that's really all there is to it. So to define those terms, when you talk about tri -theism, you're simply affirming the idea that there are three beings that are

God, three divine beings. That almost immediately results in some kind of subordinationism.

That is you make two of those beings lesser than the other because otherwise you have ancient paganism with multiple gods running around fighting with one another and creating all the problems that exist there.

So we're not tri -theists. We do not believe there are three gods. And it's very important.

That's why, for example, I strongly suggest that when talking to Jehovah's Witnesses that you emphasize the fact that you use the divine name and that you apply the divine name to each of the divine persons.

That's what they're not used to hearing and that's what they need to hear. That we are directly affirming that the

Father is Yahweh but they just limit Yahweh too much. They limit Yahweh to Unitarianism.

As do the modalists in a sense. The concept of modalism is that God exists in different modes and so depending on which modalist you're talking to and exactly how they work things out, they're talking about the idea that God can switch modes of expression of himself so that in the past he might have shown himself as the one

God to Israel but then as the Son now and then they differ as to exactly is it the

Spirit now? What's the relationship of Father and Spirit? They struggle but these are modes, not persons.

There can be no communication between modes. So for instance at the baptism of Jesus as we see in Matthew chapter three, they believe it's some form of a ventriloquism.

The Son is speaking and Father is speaking from the side which is pretty weird. And then the

Spirit somehow comes down as a dove. We're not sure how that works. But yeah, obviously the baptism was one of the primary texts that was used in the second century because most people don't realize this.

Arianism, the denial of the deity of the Son, is a fourth century heresy. The, well late third too but second century what the church was primarily dealing with was the heresy of Gnosticism on one hand but then internally was modalism.

That was the earliest problem that they were dealing with and had condemned it.

And that gets us into church history. We might end up wandering too far afield at that point.

But let me just ask and I think you've touched upon this. Another objection that I hear is commonly raised against the

Trinity is that the Trinity is not necessary to explain the person of Christ as well as his preeminence.

And on page 66 of your book I think you start to look at this argument and I'll give you the argument now.

You said a difference in function does not indicate an inferiority in nature. And I think when somebody reads the

Christian scriptures and especially the New Testament they will say but when we look at Jesus he says the Father is greater than I.

When we look at Jesus he says I'm not doing anything from my own will but I do what the Father's revealed. So there is a subordination from the

Son to the Father. And we know recently there's been an incredible conversation going on eternal functional subordination versus a subordination which is incarnationally.

But how will you answer somebody when they look at the passage of scripture like that and they say well look at Jesus he just submitted himself to the

Father and clearly he was inferior to the Father. Yeah at that point you have to understand the roles that each of the divine persons play in bringing about the eternal covenant of redemption and that they have not taken the same role.

Many people again our Muslim friends are particularly fond of this assume that if you have equality of the persons that means they're going to say and do the same things.

There's going to be equality of function and equality of everything. And that's where they miss what it is we're saying.

The Son can be fully Yahweh and yet take a different role and bring about the glorification of the triune

God than the Father and the Spirit in the same way. And so participation in the divine being does not mean that you're going to take the same roles in the economy of salvation.

And so there's two ways that we distinguish the persons in the

Trinity. There is the external way that is by the mechanism to call them opera ad extra the external things that they have done that distinguish themselves from one another.

So primarily that's the primary way we distinguish them because that's what we as creatures would see.

So it's not the Son who becomes incarnate. It's not the Father becomes incarnate. It's the Son. It's not the Spirit who is sent to dwell to.

It's not the Son and the Father et cetera, et cetera. They take different roles. But then there's the opera ad intra.

This is a little more esoteric where we say that, yes, the

Father, Son and Spirit have been distinguished as Father, Son and Spirit in eternity past. And that's really where a lot of people struggle.

And that's where a lot of there's been conversation recently on that particular subject. But the opera ad extra, in other words, different roles that they take where Jesus does submit himself to the

Father or in John 14 when he says, the Father is greater than I am.

If you actually read it in context, what he's saying, he has revealed them. I'm going away. And if you had loved me, you would have rejoiced that I said this because the

Father is greater than I am. So what the whole context is actually saying is if you really loved me and you were focused upon me, you'd realize

I'm going back to a greater place than walking along the dusty roads of Galilee with the

Pharisees nipping at my heels, constantly twisting every word that I say. I'm going back where I was in the presence of the

Father in glory beforehand. And if you loved me, you would have been, yeah. Instead, they're all like, oh, what was us?

What are we going to do? There's total focus upon themselves. So, yes,

Jesus says the Father is greater than I am because he has voluntarily humbled himself.

It is interesting that when you look at that great text in Philippians 2, the Karma and Christi, what's often overlooked is it is said that Jesus made himself of no repute.

This is something that Jesus does. It's not done to him. It is done by him.

And hence, he voluntarily takes this position where he submits himself to the

Father, becomes obedient, even the point of death, even the death on a cross. And so then the

Spirit, likewise, even to an even greater extent, takes a role where he is not pointing to himself.

He is pointing to the Son. He takes from the things that are the sons. And a lot of people say, why isn't there more?

There's just not that much about the Spirit in the New Testament in comparison to the Father and the

Son. But the text itself says that's not his role. He has taken this role specifically during this time.

And yet you get to 1 Corinthians 15, there will be a day when those roles are completed in the sense of the great day of judgment.

Death has finally been vanquished. The last enemy has been put under his feet. And then we will worship

God as God not having forgotten what the

Son of the Spirit did and not focusing only upon the Father, but worshiping the triune

God for what he has accomplished. With one important caveat there. The one thing that must be kept in mind, and I think a lot of Christians either don't think about this or, but the

Son always will be the God -man. You know, Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, when they address the issue of the resurrection, they're not exactly sure what happened to Jesus's body because they don't believe

Jesus rose physically from the dead. So what happened to Jesus's body? Well, one of the theories is that it's on display somewhere in the universe.

Others say it was dissolved into gases, whatever else. There's a lot of Christians that have a view of Jesus as now being non -incarnate.

Despite the resurrection, despite John 20 and everything else, you still have people who have that kind of a perspective.

What we need to realize is who is it that we have been united to? You know,

Ephesians chapter one, 10 times in 13 verses, in Christ, in Him, in the beloved one, we have been united to the

God -man. The incarnation is central to the salvation of God's people because we are united to the

Son. And that becomes our union with God the

Father is through our being united with the Son and then dwelt by the Spirit. So Jesus will always be the

God -man. Now that did not bring about a change in the being of God because remember the hypostatic union, if this had happened, if there had been a mixture of the divine and the human, then that would have changed the very being of God.

That's why the hypostatic union is so important. But that is an eternal reality.

And that is how we've been united with God without becoming God's ourselves. So many of the religions of man have always struggled with this very issue.

How can we be united with God without taking on His nature? Because of the

God -man. That's why Jesus had to be who He was. And Doc, can you please explain that?

Because a lot of people struggle to explain the fact that Jesus had both, you know, an eternal, you know,

I always used to say that when we look at Christ, you look at this person that walked upon the face of the earth and He is indwelled by transcendent infinitude, yet He is, you know, infinitely finitude as well.

And a lot of people think that it could be two separate realities. He could be indwelled by a spirit of God.

You know, a lot of Unitarians use that argument. But scripture makes it clear. And you wrote about the prologue of John and you said this is a masterpiece and you exegeted it so wonderfully in the text.

How can we explain to people that even though Jesus as a singular person, He had both this reality of transcendent infinitude and even infinitude.

I think we need to slow down and explain that because a lot of people confuse that and they think sometimes it's almost an ancient

Gnostic idea. The Spirit of God came, indwelled Christ, empowered Him from above. We see this in Luke chapter 4.

He did nothing from Himself. Bruce Ware recently wrote actually a very good book that explains that reality of the humanity of Christ.

But sometimes there's the overemphasis where people think that He wasn't really divine. He was just indwelled by a divine spirit.

I think you started with John's gospel and explaining that that is just not the reality.

The prologue especially helps us to understand by beginning with the equality of the

Father and the Son, the relationship that is theirs, not using that terminology until verse 18, but that's plainly what he's communicating, verse 3 verses.

Emphasizing that the Logos has eternally existed as God created all things. It's not till verse 14 though that you have the incarnation.

And so every reference to the Son before that is talking about His eternal nature. He has eternally existed.

He is uncreated. And then in verse 14, He changes the verbs and at a point in time, the

Logos entered into human flesh. He's not eternally been enfleshed. I've actually encountered

Christians who thought that Jesus says eternally existed as an enfleshed being. No, there is a point in time when the incarnation takes place.

And as a result of that incarnation, He is able to be the revelation of the

Father that we can fully trust. How can we know who God is? Well, because the Son is who the

Son is. If the Son was just a exalted creature or a man indwelt by a spirit or something like that, we would not have the kind of knowledge that we have of the

Father. But the very term that is used there is He exegeted Him. He explained Him. He made Him known because He is called the monogamous

Theos, the unique God. And that's due to the incarnation. And so you have not a mere human being who is being indwelt.

But again, that hypostatic union, that relationship of the divine and the human in Christ, one person, two natures, is absolutely unique.

And I've had, you'll remember one particular Muslim apologist who isn't with us anymore, demanding that you give an illustration of any, just show us one other thing that's like Jesus.

I can't and I won't because if I could, then I just disproved my own point.

Because He is absolutely unique. This is the only time that God has invaded

His own creation in this sense. And so that hypostatic union, where the two natures remain distinct, there is no intermixture.

It's not the idea that you have a human nature and then a divine nature indwells this at a point in time and then leaves or something like that.

You don't have the idea where there's a part of the human nature that is taken away and the divine takes its place.

It's called apollinarianism. All these errors the church has said over the years, well, wait a minute, that would violate this element of scripture.

That would violate this element of scripture. We can't go there. And that's why we draw the lines that we do.

But it is truly, what we're talking about here is the reality that the truth about who

Jesus is as the God -man is central to what we believe about how God has brought salvation about.

Because if Jesus was anything less, than the New Testament reveals him to be, he could not have functioned in the way the

New Testament says he does as the very one to whom we are united and therefore have his righteousness, his life.

He couldn't be the savior of God's people that he is. So yes, it's absolutely unique.

And if you ask for it to be anything other than that, you're asking for something much less than Christianity actually offers.

Yeah, you're right. Now, I hear a lot of Christians also now saying that when you look at John 1, the words in the beginning shows that the human

Jesus obviously had his incarnation and his beginning in that instance where he was incarnated into this world.

And they will basically hold that therefore he was not an eternal creature because there's a beginning.

But you've exegeted this in actual fact, you've showed that the beginning that is exegeted here in the

Greek, in actual fact, you can push it as far back in time pass as possible. Can you do that for us a bit and show us why?

Yeah, yeah. I remember learning this in Bible college and it was an important insight to get early.

And I mentioned it just briefly. And that was that consistently the apostle, when he's speaking of the son in the first 13 verses, he distinguishes the verb forms that he uses.

He uses what's called the imperfect form of I'm me when he speaks of the son and the imperfect form would not refer to a point of origin.

It's just simply continuous action in the past over against the heiress, which is it's a, it's just simple action.

It's sometimes can be point action. The past doesn't have to be. But the point is that when he talks about creation or John, he uses the heiress and because John didn't eternally exist.

Creation didn't eternally exist. When he's talking about the Logos, it's always was no concept of point of origin.

Then at verse 14, that changes and it says the word became flesh.

How Logos sarks, again, again, it has the heiress form. So there was a point at time when the

Logos entered into enfleshment, but he had not eternally existed in that way.

And so there is, there is purpose on the part of John. It is very plain that he wants to communicate.

And the point is that he utilizes the first 18 verses as the lens through which he wants you to view the rest of his book.

And as long as you read the rest of the Gospel of John in light of what's in the prologue, it all makes sense.

So you go to John chapter five and you read those words about the son doing nothing except what he sees the father doing.

The son can do nothing from himself. People will look at that and say, see this, this just destroys your doctrine of the

Trinity. And yet that's the same John chapter five, where you're to honor the son just as you honor the father, where it starts off with Jesus making the amazing claim he has healed a man on the

Sabbath. And this causes controversy and Jesus's response when the controversy arises is to say, my father is working until now and I am working.

And most of us miss that because we don't know the Jewish background, but the Jews had come to the conclusion. They had a couple different ways of dealing with how

God continues to work on the Sabbath, but they had come to the conclusion that as far as continuing to support the existence of the universe, that this is obviously something

Yahweh does on the Sabbath, they just made the universe his house. You could do what you wanted to in your house.

And so the universe is God's house and so he can move around as much as he wants and work as much as he wants in his house. But the point was, they recognized that Yahweh was continued to make the sunrise and the earth spin and so on and so forth.

So when Jesus says, my father's working until now and I am working, what's the response in the next verse?

Therefore, the Jews are seeking all the more to kill him. Why? Because he not only loses the Sabbath, but he was calling

God his own father, making himself equal with God. So they fully understood exactly what he was claiming.

And he doesn't come back and say, oh no, no, no, no, I'm Michael the Archangel, can't you see that? No, he doesn't do that.

He comes back and makes claims. And in making those claims, he makes it very, very clear.

He is not some renegade deity out trying to find worshipers of himself in opposition to the father.

There is perfect unity between the father and the son. They are accomplishing the exact same things.

He is the one that's been sent by the father. So he's speaking the words of the father. He's doing everything the father wills.

And because he can do so perfectly, because he's the eternal son, you're supposed to read this in the light of the prologue.

Because of that, if you don't honor the son, you're not honoring the father who sent him, which becomes the very words of 1

John. And so he doesn't deny that he's making himself equal with the father.

What he denies is that he is in any way detracting from the worship of the father because they're accomplishing the same thing.

So what you've got to see in John 5 is the unity of the father and the son that comes out in other texts in John as well.

And you mentioned that, sorry to interrupt you, Dr. White, in chapter 1, verse 1 of John, the predicate normative, the third clause in that passage, in actual fact, affirms that because the son was one with the father.

He was God. Yeah. What you're referring to there gets you into some tall weeds with certain

Jehovah's Witnesses, but not necessarily entering into that right now. The form has resulted in the mistranslation of the

New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses as the word was a God. And the reason is because it says,

Kai theos ein halagos. Now, if we translate that into English improperly, just in word order, it would be and God without what's called the definite article, the.

And God was the word. What people need to understand is the

Greeks did not use a definite article like we use a definite article, not by a long shot. And if what had been originally written there was

Kai ha theos ein halagos, where both lagos and theos have the article, that would teach modalism because it would make the lagos and theos completely interchangeable.

By placing the word God before the verb and not using the article, what it's emphasizing is that the lagos is as to his nature, theos,

God. It's not making identity. It's not trying to say that the

God with whom the lagos was, they're the same person. There's no modalism.

Um, but there is likewise no subordination ism as in a denial of the deity of the sun.

So it has to be handled very carefully. It has to be looked at very carefully. And of course, anything that requires that level of care can then be abused by someone who has their own purposes for so doing.

We have to remember that all of these divine truths we're looking at somebody at some point in time has perverted them for their own purposes.

Yeah, I like the title heading. You say indefinitive, definitive or what?

Yes. Yeah, which is pretty cool. Doctor, thank you for that. I think we're gonna go on a break now because you've been speaking already for an hour and then we'll come back and do the rest.