Simply Trinity Study (part 13)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father in Heaven, we thank you this morning for all that you are, all that you've blessed us with, all that you've supplied us with in Jesus Christ, for forgiveness full and free for the fact that all of our sins are nailed to the cross, that we bear them no more.

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Father, you demonstrated that by raising your Son from the grave on the third day. Father, we pray by the power of your

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Spirit that we would be encouraged, strengthened, and focused, even as we talk about the

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Trinity this morning, discuss these rich, rich treasures that you have presented to us through your

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Scriptures, as interpreted by the gifts that you have provided to the

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Church, and through the Church, through the many centuries. We pray that you would allow us to grapple with these issues and understand them better in Jesus' name,

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Amen. Okay, anybody who doesn't have a quiz, quiz chapter five, five quiz, quiz five.

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I don't think I've ever asked Patty face to face why we keep getting these wonderful quality pages, but yeah,

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I mean it's like the default, the default is for excellent paper, only one.

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Okay, sorry. That's alright. Steve goes down with a concussion, okay, alright, you need more, okay, here, there you go.

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And we're on question number five, just to catch up for those who sadly weren't here last week.

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Number one is false, number two is false, number three is true, number four is true, and if you're picking up a pattern, false, false, true, true, forget it because that's not going to work.

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Number five, true or false, Jesus himself spoke of his pre -incarnate glory.

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Jesus himself spoke of his pre -incarnate glory. It is true. Where would we find that,

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John? High priestly prayer, which is

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John, late John, like after he died, after John died, 17, high priestly prayer,

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John 17. This is Barrett, by the end of John's gospel, see, that's why, you know, you knew it was late

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John, Jesus prays to his father knowing he will soon be raised up on the cross.

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This is John 17, verses four and five. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

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And now, father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

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Now, I read that and I think to myself, I mean, are there questions that arise to your mind when you read that passage now in light of what we've been learning over the last several months or, you know, year and a half or whatever it is.

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Is there anything, you know, when you read that now, do you think any differently about John 17? Let me frame it a different way, since the coffee hasn't fully kicked in.

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When you read that, do you think to yourself, okay, when Jesus came to earth, did he stop being glorified?

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It says here he was, he says, he had glory before he came to earth, right, and he wants that glory again.

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Does that mean he stopped being glorious? What happened? Okay, good. So let's just pause there for a second, hold that thought.

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The flesh that he put on veiled his glory. We would see that on the

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Mount of Transfiguration, right, where, okay, so go ahead. So, you know, did it go away, you know, or did he stop being glorified, or, you know, did he,

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I mean, there are all kinds of things that we could say which would be wrong. You know, like he laid aside his glory as if, you know, it went into the closet, right?

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Did the trinity, part of the trinity stop being glorious for, you know, the time that he was on earth?

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The answer is no, it was just hidden from sight. So he says, you know,

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I've done everything that I'm supposed to do here. I'm kind of done with this whole veiling thing, can we just, you know, get on with it here.

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And you know, this is, and it's kind of, from a human perspective, knowing that he was in Gethsemane, praying, you know, as a man,

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I don't want this, but I'm going to do it, right? If there's any other way, Father, please take it.

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But here in John 17, it's like, okay, you know, we're almost there, let's just get this done, right?

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I want to get back to the full, fullness of exercising all my, you know, my deity all the time kind of thing.

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I mean, that is, yeah, he's deserving of glory because he accomplished a mission, but it is kind of an amazing concept, right?

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Did Jesus add to his glory by completing the mission, the work that the Father gave him?

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We tend to think it's like, you know, that the

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Father or the Son is going to stand before the Father and he's going to hear, well done, my good and faithful servant, which is true, right?

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And then there's going to be some kind of promotion, but, yeah, but the reality is what did the

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Father say at baptism, right? At the very beginning of his ministry, this is my beloved

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Son in whom I am well -pleased. He was well -pleased with him, he's always well -pleased with him, Jonathan, yes, right?

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But that's kind of the idea that we have, you know, now that the mission is done, Jesus is good and faithful and true and righteous.

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No, he's always good and faithful and true and righteous, yeah, Jonathan? And that's, you know, I think that is kind of the key or very much the key is more of the glorious nature of God, you know, revealed to us through the personal work of Jesus Christ and the answer is yes, so good.

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That's a bonus true or false question, okay? Number six, true or false, the

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Father is to be honored more than the Son. I mean, that should be like shooting fish in a barrel, which

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I don't know why we use that. Have you ever done that? I confess,

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I've never even really thought about, gee, that'd be fun, let's go shoot some fish in a barrel, ever.

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I mean, who put the fish in the barrel in the first place? The Father is to be honored more than the

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Son, what do you say? False, that's obviously false, but you can see even why this would be an issue because people think, why do you suppose it would be an issue, let's put it that way, let's think through this a little bit.

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Why would anybody say that the Father should be honored more than the Son? Okay, it's what we're used to.

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Even Jesus said, yeah, we're back in EFS9, but there's another twist to it, eternal functional subordination where the

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Son eternally is second in command. But there's something else to this too.

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If we just think about it this way, if we go back to the ancient world where some people, some people claiming to be

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Christians, and I've spoken about this in the past, these Gnostics, in fact, there are people today who say the

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Gnostics were also Christians. No, they weren't. And they weren't because they said, in addition to this idea

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Gnostic means, it's from the Greek word gnosis, which means higher knowledge, secret knowledge.

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They said that they knew things that other people didn't. But the key to Gnosticism, in terms of it being a heresy, is they said the created world is inherently evil.

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Not because of the Fall, but it's just inherently evil. Physical world is bad, right?

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So Jesus didn't actually have a body, he only appeared to have a body. And therefore, the

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Father should be honored more than the Son because the Son had a physical nature and therefore was less than the

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Father. The Son had a physical nature. So that would be one reason. Let me read what

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Barrett says. If the Father, existing before the ages, is always in glory and the pre -temporal

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Son is His glory, and if in like manner the

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Spirit of Christ is the Son's glory, the Spirit of Christ being the

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Holy Spirit, always to be contemplated along with the Father and the Son, then there can be no, quote, before in what is timeless, nor can one person be more honorable in what is all essentially honorable, says

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Gregory of Nysa. So the idea is can one be higher, more honorable, more highly to be thought of than all the rest of the

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Trinity? And the answer is no. Thoughts, questions, concerns, heresies.

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I'm always on the lookout for more heresies, you know, so maybe a good one will pop up.

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You never know. Number seven, true or false? A good heresy. True or false, number seven,

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Paul says both the Father and the Son created. Both the

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Father and the Son created. Seeing some nods.

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Of course, some of them are kind of diagonal nods. I don't know what that means. What's a diagonal nod? The answer is true.

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Barrett, just after Paul says an idol has no real existence, right, that's a lot of times just mini insight here.

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A lot of times that's why we will see scripture refer to God as the living God or, you know, the

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God who is that kind of thing, because all the other so -called gods are false gods. They have no real existence.

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And that there is no God but one, he then says, Paul does, for although there are many so -called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one

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God, the Father, from whom all things and for whom we exist, and one

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Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

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Well, he just said, he just said that basically the same thing of the

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Father as he does of the Son. Barrett goes on to say there's no question

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Paul has the Shema in view. What is the Shema? Anybody know the address of the

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Shema? Deuteronomy? What? Six?

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Getting closer. 6 -4? Okay. So close.

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He says, he quotes from Deuteronomy 4, 35, 39, 8, but who in the

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Old Testament ever included another name, another person in the Shema? To do so would have been blasphemy, but Paul does.

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In the same breath he quotes from the Shema, he names Jesus Christ. There's only one

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God, and he exists in the persons of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yeah, this is fun.

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Number 8, true or false? One could reasonably conclude that Paul was a binatarian.

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I had to work so hard on that word, so, you know, I hope somebody will fall for this. Yeah, it's false.

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Oh, somebody did fall for it, thank you. So, Barrett says, but wait, where's the

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Spirit in 1 Corinthians 8? The Spirit is not referenced, but Paul is no binatarian, so he's not, just means two gods instead of three.

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He's trinitarian. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul will use the same lordship language, except this time he applies it not only to the

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Son, but the Spirit. Let's listen to 2 Corinthians 3, verses 17 and 18.

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So, who's transforming us into the image of Christ? That's right, it's your own works.

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Remember that. You're being made in the image of Christ by your own works. No, it's the Holy Spirit, as Christine said, the

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Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit has unveiled our faces so that we are the recipients of the new covenant's blessings.

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But notice, the Spirit can only do so because he is the

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Lord himself. As the Lord, the Spirit of God not only awakens us to new life, opening up our blind eyes, but transforms us, even sanctifies us, so that we have the mind of Christ.

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And he suggests there that we consult 1 Corinthians 2, 10 -16. What's the subject of 1

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Corinthians 2, 10 -16? You remember any of those verses there?

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Let's read them, since we don't recall them. 1 Corinthians 2, verses 10 -16.

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Once we start reading it, I know some lights will go off because these are very familiar verses, especially if you've ever sat through a

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Fundamentals of the Faith class. A few people here have actually taken that from me. Some of them have taken it 10, 12, 15 times.

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I don't even know how many times. Sorry, inside joke.

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I'll make sure when I get home. Alright, 1 Corinthians 2, verses 10 -16.

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These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

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For who knows a person's thought except the spirit of that person which is in him? So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God.

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Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God. That we might understand the things freely given to us, or freely given us by God.

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And we impart this in words, not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the

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Spirit. Interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. And then verse 14, the one that is just killer.

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The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

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So who's the natural person? An unsaved person, right? Does not accept the things of the

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Spirit of God, spiritual things, because he's not able to grasp them. Because he doesn't have the

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Holy Spirit. Verse 15, the spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.

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For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

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We have the mind of Christ because we have the spirit of Christ. We have the spirit of God. I mean, it's so easy to get frustrated when you're talking to an unbeliever.

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And what you have to do is remind yourself of one thing. You're speaking

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Spanish to a person who speaks, I don't know,

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Japanese. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense to them. They don't get it because the spirit hasn't illumined them.

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So does that mean then we shouldn't try to talk to them about spiritual things? Or we shouldn't share the gospel with them?

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Or we shouldn't give them scripture? No, it just means that we shouldn't be shocked if they don't get it.

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Because unless the Holy Spirit's working in them, they won't. Thoughts or questions, concerns?

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Okay, number nine. True or false? Because we have been adopted by God, he sends his spirit to us.

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Okay, true. Barrett. Paul writes to the Galatians concerning their adoption as children of God.

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We were enslaved, but when the fullness of time had come,

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God sent forth his son so that we might receive adoption as sons.

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And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying,

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Abba, Father. I'm not even going there.

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But this is what happens. We're adopted. God adopts us into his family and then grants us his

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Holy Spirit. We have the presence of his spirit. Okay, number ten.

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True or false? In Paul's writing, we often have to guess which person of the

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Trinity is in operation. It's a mystery.

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That's false. Come on. He's pretty clear.

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And I guess maybe I don't know the mind of the question writer here.

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Well, actually I do because it was my spirit. The idea behind this is it may not always be perfectly clear who's doing what, but even if it isn't, does it really matter?

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Because emphasis is placed on different persons of the Trinity doing things in Scripture.

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But we said this before. If one person of the Trinity is doing something, are the other two just kind of observers?

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No. Everything they do, they do together. You get a better understanding of them.

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But it comes down to it's all the same will. Same will.

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I think the question was, is it so that we get a better idea of – well,

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I'll just put it this way. I think it's so that we get a better understanding of the nature of the Trinity, that in different places, different persons of the

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Trinity are emphasized. And we've given this example before.

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Who raised Jesus from the dead? And you all know this. That's why I'm using it because it's an easy example.

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Who raised Jesus from the dead? Okay. God.

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Mr. Zook is being so willful. That is correct. He's 100 % correct.

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The Father raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus raised Jesus from the dead. And the Spirit raised

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Jesus from the dead. So all three persons present. And, you know, who saves somebody? Who draws somebody to Christ?

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Jesus says, I will draw all men to myself. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

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And who is it who convicts of sin is the Spirit. So who is it who ultimately saves somebody?

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Yes. All three persons of the Trinity. Okay. Barrett writes, whether Paul is referring to the gospel adoption or the unity of the church, he assumes in each of these the trinity of the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In Paul's mind, there is but one God, one Lord, and his one name is

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Paul is merely mimicking

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Christ before him who commissioned his disciples by commanding them to baptize in the name singular of the

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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28, 19. As the church has confessed down through the ages, each person is a subsistence of the one divine essence.

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How much of the subsistence? How much of the essence? How much is each person of the

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Trinity a subsistence of the divine essence? You know, how much of the divine essence do they have?

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All of it. It's just, how does that work? Trinity.

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You know, it's kind of, Trinity. As the church has confessed down through the ages, each person is a subsistence of the one divine essence,

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Father, Son, and Spirit, holding the one essence in common, consubstantial of the same substance with one another.

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Okay. Number 11. True or false? Because God has no body, he is simple.

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I don't know, man. This is like... Okay, first to recap. Divining simplicity and what was that?

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His attributes are his essence and his essence is or are his attributes, right?

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I mean, you can't divide him up and make him one thing or another.

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You know, well, God is love. Yes. And that's not all God is. But he is simple.

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Okay. Because God has no body, he is simple. Let's read what Barrett says.

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As Hillary, and can you trust a man named Hillary? Yes, because the man who climbed

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Mount Everest was named Hillary. As Hillary of Poitiers, I don't know how you say that,

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Poitiers, says, it is because God has no body, bodies being divisible by parts, as we know from experience, that he is simple essence.

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No parts, but an all -embracing whole. Nothing quickened, but everything living.

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Now, the point was brought up that Jesus has a body. So, does that kind of, you know, muddle things up here?

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Well, it makes things, you know, difficult. But again, I would refer to this fantastic handout that we had several, many weeks ago.

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The double consubstantiality handout, which, you know, with its in -depth diagram, and if you haven't seen this diagram,

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I'll just do it in the air. You know, the triangle representing the triune

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God, and then the rectangle representing the man Jesus Christ. So, if we just think, okay, because God has no body, well, does

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God have a body? No. Does God have a body?

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I could foresee, you know, a research paper, you know, in your future.

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Let's just think about this. In his humanity, is

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Christ simple? If he's truly human, and is he truly human?

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Yes. I mean, I can hear R .C. now, you know, with his nicotine -stained voice, 100 %

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God, 100%, you know, truly God, truly man. That's the historical confessional language.

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He's truly God and truly man. Well, in his humanity, is he simple? No. In his divinity, yes.

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So, okay. Thoughts, questions, concerns? Research papers to be assigned?

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Footnoted? No less than 10 sources?

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That's true. 11 is true. Never 12.

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True or false? Monotheism means that God is a simple person who rules the world.

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Thank you. True or false? Monotheism means that God is a simple person who rules the world.

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That's false. Let me quote Barrett. Barrett, monotheism does not mean that God is a single person who rules the world.

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Thank you. Okay, well. All right.

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Well, that was simple. Number 13. True or false? True or false?

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Generation is something that happens to the sun. Man, that is so hard.

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I heard a false. And false, by the way, is? I want to say true, but I'll just say correct.

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False is correct. Why? See, that's the key, right?

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You want to kind of underline that word happens. Because that's where things get sort of messed up.

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Why does that mess things up? You're on the right track there with the word spontaneous.

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Yeah, that's it. I mean, happens is that whole concept of time. Let's listen to Barrett here.

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He says, how can simplicity apply to the persons of the Trinity or to the persons if the father acts to beget his son?

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Does an eternal generation assume the Trinity acts and become something he is otherwise not?

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Then he answers, no. The reason why the persons are not agents with their own wills or the reason is they're not persons with their own wills.

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Generation is not something that happens to the sun. Rather, to be the sun just is to be begotten.

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And again, this is where, you know, your mind just starts to bend. And why does it start to bend? Because we don't understand what it is to be outside of time.

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It is just beyond our ken. It's beyond our limitation.

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It's beyond our capacity to fully grapple. Because we think, okay, we have a son.

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That son is formed in the womb and then he's born. So we understand everything in a linear way.

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And, you know, here we have just eternal generation. The son is eternally generated.

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And why is that important, again, just by way of review? Why is it important that we say he's eternally generated and not just that he's generated?

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Okay. If he's generated, there will be a point in time where something changed. And that something would be that the son came into being.

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And that is just, again, that's where we just kind of go, you know,

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I need to get off this ride. Because it's just not something we can grasp because we think everything has a beginning point and an ending point.

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And, okay, let's look at it this way. Let's think about it this way. And then I'll get to your question here in a sec.

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If we say that God has a beginning point or that Jesus has a beginning point, then what else might we conclude?

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That he's not eternal. You know, it's like what goes up comes down. That which has a beginning has an end.

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God is without beginning and he's without end. Yeah, eternity is a long time.

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I mean, that's what I used to say to my kids, right? They'd say, Dad, you're never going to let us do X. And I'd go, kids, never is a very long time.

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See, you always have to, let me excuse you, interrupt for just a moment, sorry. When you say, what would

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I say? That's not really a good model. So, go ahead and finish your question. How can you believe something you can't understand or don't understand?

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How can you believe something you can't understand? So, in other words, and this gets back to the 1 Corinthians 2 .14

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question, essentially, you know, how can somebody be expected to believe that which they don't have the capacity to understand?

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Is that what you're asking? Yes. Okay. I mean, I'm not sure what you're asking me.

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Are you just asking me generally, you know, how are we supposed to believe in the Trinity when we can't fully understand the

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Trinity or? Well, right. I think we can understand the concept.

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Right. Because the actual, I mean, we can say to ourselves, okay, there was never a time when the

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Son wasn't. There was never a time that the Spirit wasn't. Now, how exactly does that work?

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I don't know. Right. Because, again, I'm a creature of time. I think in linear terms.

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And, you know, even at my best, if I try to think in a nonlinear, you know, if I try to apply,

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I don't know, some kind of wacky calculus or imaginary numbers or, yeah, quantum theory or whatever

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I'm trying to use. By the way, I don't even know what quantum theory means. But whatever

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I try to do, I'm not going to be able to grapple with it because, or, you know, fully understand

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I can grapple with it. I can try to wrestle with it. But I'm not going to get it. I have to understand it or I have to just accept it because the

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Bible says it, because it is true, and because the fact that I can't explain it beyond the words and I can't really understand how there could be an eternity of three persons, that's on my limitations that has nothing to do with the truth of it or not.

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So, okay. Let's see.

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Do you remember something that happens in the sun? Okay. Okay.

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As Anselm says or prays, you are so simple that there cannot be born of you any other than what you are, nor can there proceed from your supreme simplicity what is other than that from which it proceeds.

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Thus, whatever is singly, that the whole Trinity is together, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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So what Anselm just said so well is something that I really don't get. He's saying it, and he's saying it in a different way.

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But, you know, again, I can explain the words, but can I fully grasp it in my mind?

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No, because he's divine and I'm a creature. So, number 14, true or false,

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God is one in the same way he is three. God is one in the same way he is three.

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I feel like this enters like some kind of feng shui or something. I don't really know.

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It is false. Very good. Excellent. Simplicity and Trinity are only a contradiction if God is one in the same way that he is three.

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So, he can't be. He says, but as we've just seen, that's not the case.

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When we say that God is one, we are referring to his essence or being or nature.

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Those three words mean the same thing. When we refer to God as three, however, we are referring to three persons.

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Specifically, the way the simple essence subsists or exists in each person in a special manner.

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So, he is one and he is three, but he's not one in the same way that he's three.

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Number 15, God the

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Father and God the Son are more God. Let me read that again.

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God the Father and God the Son, in other words, I mean together, are more God than one of them separately.

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Kind of sounds true though, right? One plus one equals? Don't say one.

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That's new math. But that's false.

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Yeah, God the Father and God the Son are not more. So, there you go. Father and Son together are not more being than Father alone or Son alone, but those three substances or persons together, if that is what they must be called, are equal to each other singly, which the central man does not perceive.

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That's 1 Corinthians 2. The central man, carnal man, worldly man, unsaved man.

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1 Corinthians 2. Number 16, true or false, each member of the

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Trinity wholly possesses the divine essence. You guys are getting pretty good at this.

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Each member of the Trinity wholly possesses the divine essence is true. God's one essence is indivisible.

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It has no parts. The divine essence does not break into three parts to form three persons.

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And see, I think that's one of our stumbling blocks. We want it to be like that so it makes it easier for us to understand.

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Introducing such a separation results in a God compounded of parts.

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So, he's not simple. Rather, the three persons are one in essence, each a subsistence of the identical self -same essence, wholly possessing that one essence, not merely a portion of it.

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And when you start thinking deeply about that and you go, okay, each person has the whole of the divine essence, it's pretty easy to see how people could go from that to what heresy.

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If I think the Father has the whole of the divine essence, the Son has the whole of the divine essence, the

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Spirit has the whole of the divine essence, then what am I like on the precipice of falling into? Moralism.

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I mean, it's not hard to see. Yeah, and that's wrong, Patrick. Happy St.

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Patrick's Day, belatedly. Okay.

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He says, although we distinguish the persons from the essence, we dare not think of the essence as some fourth thing, that the persons divvy up to hold it in common.

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I like that. It's good to think of it that way. They don't divvy it up. Number 17, and we'll close on this one.

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True or false, the Son and the Spirit, being derivative, are nevertheless truly

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God. Derivative is a scary word unless you're dealing with what?

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Calculus, I think. So, what's that? I don't think

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I could do any derivatives these days. Okay. That's false.

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Says Aquinas, the whole fullness of divine nature is present in each of the persons.

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Even when we say that the Son, for example, is God from God, in Nicaea, we do not mean that he is

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God from God as a whole from the part, or as part from the whole, or as part from part.

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No. If there is God from God, the whole God is from the whole

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God. And again, there we go. It's just like, okay, the whole God from the whole God.

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Well, how can you still have a whole God? Because God, God has no part.

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Simplicity. Okay. Thoughts, questions, concerns? Any last -minute modalistic heresies you want to get out of your system?

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Well, Pastor, if I have a donut and I break it, stop. Just stop.

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That's partialism, Patrick. Okay. All right.

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Well, let's go ahead and close here.

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And then I'll try to figure that out. Our great

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God. As we read, study, wrestle with these issues,

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Father, it ought to remind us again and again of how, while the world tells us that we are essentially the center of all creation, that we're the center of the universe, that we are the most important thing there is, the reality is we're so insignificant.

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You are so transcendent and so noble, yes, but we can't really fully grasp you.

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This, Father, drives us to worship and to recognize that the amazing truth is that while we are not the center of the universe, you, in the person of Jesus Christ, condescended to take on our sins, to take on human flesh, to live the life that we never lived, ought to have lived, should live, and don't.

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And then he went to the cross, innocent, perfect, as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, that we might be forgiven of our sins.

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Then you raised him up on the third day. And, Lord, we praise you for that. And we want to honor you in all that we do and say and think and help us to think rightly about you.