Roadtrip DL #2: A&O Seminary Study Continues

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Well, greetings. Welcome to the Dividing Line take two. We tried to do this half an hour ago and it had,

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I had nothing to do with it. I was just sitting here talking. I heard all sorts of windows sounds being made.

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I just, you know, what can you say? You, uh, so I'm not going to go back over anything that I said before, cause

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I don't remember what it was anyways. Um, we have, uh, we have dark clouds heading our direction and looking at the radar, it could split around me, but as Rich said, uh,

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I am in a trailer park and storms just like trailer parks.

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Uh, we did have, um, uh, a fair amount of hail, uh, a few hours ago.

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So yeah, uh, we'll, we'll see what happens, but I want to at least get to, um, the important stuff.

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I was gonna talk a little bit about all the mask mandate stuff. Oh, by the way, one thing

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I would recommend, uh, Doug Wilson's blog and may blog that came out,

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I think yesterday or maybe, maybe today. I don't, I heard it today. Um, if for no other reason than Doug has such an incredible sense of sarcastic capacity, uh, that when he goes after the

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Biden regime, it's, uh, it's, it's enjoyable to listen to.

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It really, really is. Um, so anyways, I'll tell you those, uh, those four wheel thingies, uh, that are going by outside.

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Uh, I don't, I guess if you've got four wheels, you're a four wheel drive thing, you don't have to have a muffler. Um, anyway, so, uh, yeah, uh, listen to blog and may blog.

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It was something about a custard with yellow on the outside or something. I forget what that was all about, but it's a, it's about, uh, resistance to mask mandates and vaccine mandates and all sorts of stuff like that.

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So take a listen to it. And if I recall correctly, yes. Oh, okay.

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Um, a voice in my ears tells me that, um, so I could never do the, the guy on TV thing where you have to listen to stuff and not say it again.

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That would not, that would never work for me. So I was just told to remind you that a preliminary schedule of speaking events on this trip has been posted.

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Uh, the last one in Las Vegas, I didn't have the info with me at that point.

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So we'll get that one added on. Uh, but, and, and I didn't, I'm hoping people are hearing you.

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Uh, otherwise I just look really dumb just going, what, what? It's very, very distracting.

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Um, I was about to say the Moscow stuff. I didn't include all that because I still have to go over what's been there's a bunch of stuff, but a lot of that stuff isn't really gonna be stuff that people are gonna be attending that would drive up there for it or something like that.

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Um, and then a lot of stuff's gonna be recorded as well. So anyway, so that will be a, that will be coming up as well.

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So, uh, yesterday on the program, we started looking at, um, a very, very, very important section of the

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Institutes of the Christian Religion. The Institutes are not inspired. They are not infallible.

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Um, but anyone living in, and nobody cares what color

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John Calvin's skin was. Uh, he was French. Okay.

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I mean, the fact that he could overcome such, such an incredible, uh, disability as that, um, means, means a lot, but I, I have even over the years learned to not even, not even allow his

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Frenchness to even enter into my, into my analysis or anything like that. Um, the fact of the matter is, uh,

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Calvin's Institutes, there have been, there have been historians who have made the argument that the

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Institutes may have had more fundamental and foundational impact upon the creation of Western society than any other single, uh, work of literature outside the

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Bible itself. And especially when it comes to law, the

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Puritan work ethic, the, um, the fact that, you know, people have documented that in the

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United States, uh, it was the Scotch Irish, uh, who had such a huge impact on the formative years of this nation and the formulation of the nation's, uh, ethics and morality.

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Well, what were they influenced by? Institutes of the Christian religion, just no question about it.

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And when you think about the fact that man wrote them before he was 30, now that wasn't the final edition of the edition that we're looking at, of course, is the

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English translation of the 1559 Latin. He did do a, uh, final

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French edition. And I think that was, was that 1562 or three may even been the year of his death, 1564.

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Anyway, he did a French edition, but my understanding is the vast majority of, um,

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English translations, of course, are based upon the 1559 Latin edition and it grew over time.

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So the first edition of the Institutes is a single volume. Uh, now it's normally two volumes with two books in each one.

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If you printed the books separately and, you know, you could make it look bigger, I suppose, but it's a, it's a substantial work of theology.

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And I gave you some information about it last time. Calvin said at one point, because remember

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Calvin wrote some of the best commentaries on the Bible that you can read to this day.

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Sometimes they're dated, sometimes there's been updated information that's become available, but just simply for having common sense ability to follow an argument, um, it's great.

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But Calvin himself said not to determine his theology from his commentaries or his sermons, but from the

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Institutes. So he was the one that said the Institutes are the overarching, um, schema, the, the, the matrix of my theology.

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And therefore you should interpret my sermons and things like that on the basis of, uh, what is found in, in the

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Institutes. And so that was his own, his own assertion. So he was involved not only in the

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Reformation, but we need to recognize that the Reformers as a whole were very concerned.

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They heard the argumentation of Rome. And the argumentation of Rome, um, was that, um, the

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Reformation would result in utter anarchy, a breaking down of society, because for a very, very long time, the only, uh, thing that people looked to that gave some type of unity was the

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Church. Well, the problem was the Roman Church had become so incredibly corrupt by this point in time that, um, that, that really wasn't working anymore.

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Uh, but the Reformers understood, Luther especially was extremely sensitive.

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That's why you have the, the, the backlash that you have, um, when

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Luther, uh, responds very negatively to the, uh,

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Peasants' Revolt in 1525. Uh, Calvin, I think,

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Calvin's a little bit different because he wrote the Institutes initially as a defense of the faith against the persecution of Reformed Christians, Protestants in France.

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And so there, there was always an apologetic element to it. And there was, there was more of a, Luther, I think, had more interest in Islam.

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He, I've seen, uh, with my own two eyes, uh, Luther's copy of the

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Quran. And he had more interest in that, I think, than, than Calvin did, uh, in, in particular.

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But Calvin was an apologist as well as a theologian. And he was very, very concerned to maintain the, the, the central elements of the

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Christian faith, but at the same time to bring a kind of critical analysis to post -Nicene theology.

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He was immersed in post -Nicene theology. He appreciated, when

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I say post -Nicene, what I mean, of course, is like the great Cappadocian fathers, uh,

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Basil and the Gregories and, and lesser names at that time period. But, but the, the people who helped to transition from the

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Arian conflict in 325, remember for 40 years after 325, you have the

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Arian resurgency, uh, and a tremendous amount of difficulty. Um, but you have a transition into the

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Christological controversies, the discussions of, okay, if Jesus is truly homoousios, of the same substance as the

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Father, fully divine, then what does this mean in regards to his person?

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And so you, you'd get, um, the Christological controversies from that point, uh,

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Apollinarianism, Historianism, Eutychianism, those types of things. So anyway, um, he's well aware of all these things.

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He appreciates the depth of theology of the Gregories of Basil. You can see the number of times he cites these people, but of course,

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Augustine especially as well. Um, but that doesn't mean that he is not, he is willing to criticize.

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He is willing to say, well, that they may have gone a little bit too far in their speculations about this, that, or the other thing.

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And I've said many times, and we'll get into the text here, uh, just a moment. I'm always, I'm sitting here really concerned that I'm going to hear something in my earphones.

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Well, we're frozen up. We're dead. Um, I've said many times that it is a wise thing to compare and contrast

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John Calvin with Jonathan Edwards, two absolutely towering intellects, towering intellects, but Calvin specifically stated that we need to make an end of speaking where scripture makes an end of speaking.

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Edwards, not so much in Trinitarian theology, though in some ways he did do this, um, but in other areas, especially in regards to Adam and Adam's will pre -fall, chose to go beyond what you would specifically have in scripture and in the process ended up, and even his own fans will say, uh, in contradiction and understandably so.

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And so I've always appreciated Calvin's recognition that while his mind was certainly enough that he could have gone much, much farther and probably did go much, much farther in his own private speculations and thoughts, um, that he did not feel it was wise to teach upon such things or to speak about such things.

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And I think he was quite right about that. No, no two ways about it. So, um, anyway, with that, with that said, that's a little bit of the background to chapter, to book one, chapter 13, which we started looking at last time.

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And we read through, um, portions, uh, we, we stopped at, um, the end of chat of, uh, paragraph 18.

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And, um, some days I don't need these and some days it's best to have them.

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Um, this will make things a little bit easier. So let's, uh, look at 18, actually we stopped at 17.

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Let's look at, uh, no, actually 19, 19.

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We're going to go ahead and get into the, uh, specific section that prompted all of this was a citation of paragraph 19 in the debate last week with Jake Brancatello.

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And so let's look at, uh, paragraph 19 in the institutes. Furthermore, because he's already talked about the difference of father, son, and spirit.

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Now we have the relationship of father, son, and spirit.

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Furthermore, this distinction is so far from contravening the utter simple unity of God as to permit us to prove from it that the son is one

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God with the father, because he shares with the father, one, the same spirit. The spirit is not something other than the father and different from the son, because he is the spirit of the father and the son.

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For in each hypostasis, the whole divine nature is understood with this qualification that to each belongs its own peculiar qualities.

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So, uh, Calvin is a monotheist. He emphasizes the utterly simple unity of God.

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And yet at the same time, he recognizes the distinctions presented to us in scripture of the father, son, and spirit.

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And for in each hypostasis, the whole divine nature is understood.

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So what do Christians say? The divine nature, the being of God cannot be divided into thirds.

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The father is not one third of God, the son, one third of God, the spirit of one, one third of God. No. So in each hypostasis, the whole divine nature is understood with this qualification that to each belongs his own peculiar quality.

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So in other words, we can identify father, son, and spirit.

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They're not, they're not undifferentiated. And so it's not that you just had three divine hypostases in eternity past, and then when creation is initiated, one takes this role, one takes another role, one takes another role, whereas before that there was no distinction between them.

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No. The assertion is that while each fully shares the being that is

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God, there is a means of differentiation. Now there's clearly a means of differentiation in what's called the economic trinity.

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That is once you have creation, then the roles that each takes in relationship to creation and especially to redemption are differentiated from one another.

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And so you can see that, but the question is, can you identify the distinctions between father, son, and spirit prior to creation and without reference to creation?

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So you're not reasoning upward from something that's lower to something that's higher, which can sometimes be very troubling and lead to issues.

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So to each belongs his own peculiar quality. The father is holy in the son, the son holy in the father, even as he himself declares,

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I am the father and the father in me, John 14, 10. And ecclesiastical writers do not concede that the one is separated from the other by any difference of essence.

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This is what the Arian controversy was all about, obviously, homoousios.

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By these homoousios, no distinction,

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Jesus isn't a lesser being than the father. By these appellations, which set forth the distinction, says

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Augustine, is signified their mutual relationships and not the very substance by which they are one.

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This is all, what is important to understand is what comes before a questionable use of a citation.

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And this is what I was responding to. And even during cross -examination, tried to point out this issue.

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Notice what he says, these appellations, which set forth the distinction, says

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Augustine, is signified their mutual relationships and not the very substance by which they are one.

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So what is the given? What is the absolutely unquestionable foundation?

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There is one being of God and each of the divine persons participate in the possession of that one divine being in absolute equality.

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Everything is going to be discussed when we talk about appellations, names, hypostases, whatever terminology is used.

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And that was one of the problems in this time period was

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Latin and Greek translation, terminology, things like that. But the key issue is that there is one being of God.

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And so when Calvin emphasizes Jesus' full deity, what he's saying is he possesses the divine being in fullness.

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And as he's going to say, this is seen in scripture a number of different ways, Colossians 2 .9, but very, very importantly, the use of the name

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Yahweh furthermore indicates this reality.

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I'm going to try to, it hurts the nose. I'm not sure why this is difficult today.

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It might be the light or something. Anyway, in this sense, the opinions of the ancients are to be harmonized.

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He realizes they have to be harmonized. It's very easy if you want to create disharmony.

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And Jake, let me just say something to you, because I know you're going to watch, probably watching live now, but maybe at some other point in time.

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One of the issues that I would raise to you is the widely divergent and contradictory range of sources that you utilize.

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So you'll take a quote from this person, a quote from this person, a quote from this person, and these three people come to completely different conclusions.

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They use different methodologies. They use different lexicons, but you're pulling their statements together and trying to tie them together.

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Now, there may be some context in which that could possibly be done, but in most instances, that's just going to result in a mess.

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And when you're looking at the codification of theology through conflict in the early church, if you want to create disharmony, it's easy to do.

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What Calvin is saying is that in this sense, the opinions of the ancients are to be harmonized, which otherwise would seem somewhat to clash.

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Sometimes, indeed, they teach that the father is the beginning of the son. Sometimes they declare that the son has both divinity and essence from himself, and thus has one beginning with the father.

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Augustine well and clearly expresses the cause of this diversity in another place when he speaks as follows.

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Here's the quote of Augustine himself. Christ, with respect to himself, is called

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God. With respect to the father, son.

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Again, the father, with respect to himself, is called God. With respect to the son, father.

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Insofar as he is called father with respect to the son, he is not the son.

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Insofar as he is called the son with respect to the father, he is not the father.

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Insofar as he is called both father with respect to himself and son with respect to himself, he is the same

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God. So, what is foundational to this? What is the only way to even understand what's being said?

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The distinction of being a person. Separate categories, separate issues.

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One is fundamentally ontological. The other is trans -temporally relational.

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Relational. Those are not the same things. To speak of ontology and then to speak of non -temporal or trans -temporal relationship is not to speak of the same things.

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There is no category that I am at all familiar with in Islamic theology for any type of trans -temporal relationship or anything like that.

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It's just because of the fundamental presuppositional assertion that Allah would never enter into his own creation, that he would never take on even a perfect human nature, which he himself created.

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None of this has a place. And in fact, to be honest with you,

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I think a really good PhD dissertation would be for someone to find out when, for the first time in any meaningful way,

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Islamic scholarship even started to deal with the issue because it's very clear that in the early centuries, this was not understood.

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I could expand on that with some interesting original sources, but that's the quotation from Augustine.

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So Calvin then comments on what

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Augustine has said and uses the same kind of categories that Augustine has used.

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But here's Calvin's position. Therefore, when we speak simply of the son, without regard to the father, we well and properly declare him to be of himself.

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And for this reason, we call him the sole beginning. Now, I want to see if I can make this work here.

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I want to, oh, I have to have it up to do that. Okay. Hold on a second here.

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All right. And now I think I can do it. There we go.

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All right. I should be sharing this. Hopefully you're able to see it.

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It says we're able to see it. As I said, the final official edition of the institutes, the 1559

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Latin, and here is the 1559 Latin.

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So here you have Augustine's citation that we just looked at.

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And here I've outlined in orange, the key issue, the key phrase from Calvin that must be understood if we're going to understand what he's saying here.

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Therefore, when we speak simply of the son, without regard to the father.

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So we are not talking about relationship here. We are not talking about the relationship that exists between father, son, and spirit.

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We're not talking about distinguishing the divine persons. When we speak simply of the son, of him, de filio, sine patris, of side from, without reference to the father.

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Notice what he says. Bene et propri, ipsum a se, oops,

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I've got the thing in the way. A se essa assarimus. And I want you to see right here.

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I wish I could draw on it, which Ase, of himself.

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This is the foundational Latin phrase to aseity. And so what is

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Calvin saying? He is saying, of the son. When we simply speak of him in regards to being, then we properly, specifically say, we well and properly declare him to be of himself.

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And for this reason, we call him the sole beginning, principium, right here.

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So here is the Latin. Here is, you can't get any more official for Calvin, any more specific in regards to what he's saying.

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So, but he goes on. For this reason, we call him the sole beginning.

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When I took Latin years and years ago, it's funny. I'm not sure why I just thought of this, but I was in a

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Latin class at Phoenix College when I had my only vehicle I've ever had stolen.

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It was a little Nissan pickup truck. They found it the next day. There wasn't almost anything left of it.

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It was stolen directly out of the Phoenix College parking lot. I was in a Latin class. I remember walking out of that Latin class and the feeling, it's a horrible feeling to walk out and go,

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I think this is where I parked. Oh, the confusion is horrible. But then when you find the glass, where they broke the window, you know.

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And the horrible thing was there, there was a beautiful little

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Nestle Alland, I think 26 edition Greek New Testament. There was also a Hebrew text in there that I had had that same

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Jehovah's Witness guy bind and they were behind the seat. And of course, you know, all they left, all the left of the shell and, you know, they took everything else and, and they took everything inside and, you know, smoldering in the

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Phoenix city dump someplace. But yeah, that, that, that was one of the nicest little

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Greek New Testaments, of course. I now think back and realize I wouldn't be able to read it anymore.

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So there you go. But you will hear people say principium or principium.

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And my, my professor at that time, you know, walk through what the differences were and said, we're going to do it this way, but you're going to find other people to do it a different way.

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Fine. Some people get really, really strange about pronunciation issues.

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Anyway. So, but when we mark the relation that he has with the father, okay.

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Let me, let me make sure that we, we, we see this here. When we mark, okay, right here, natamus, which he has cum patre, with the father, relationum.

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So when, when we're no longer talking about ontology, we are talking about relationship.

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Okay. Calvin is saying this is a different context.

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This is, we're talking about something different now. Okay. Now we're just being honest with, with Calvin.

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We're letting the language, original sources, not what somebody else says about Calvin.

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We're letting Calvin speak for Calvin. That's a good way of doing things. But when we mark and you notice in English, new sentence introduction,

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Latin can get rather long than again, so can green. But when we mark the relation that he has with the father, we rightly make the father, the beginning of the son, of the son's person.

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Is this temporal? No, it's because father, then son, it's a relationship term, has nothing to do with his deity, eternality.

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It has to do with relationship, which is an eternal relationship.

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Calvin would immediately reject anyone who would say, and this means the son comes into existence at a point of, none of that is anywhere in Calvin, because as I pointed out in the debate,

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Calvin argues that the son is autotheos, God of himself. And he just uses ause in regards to his being.

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The whole fifth book of Augustine on the Trinity is concerned with explaining this matter. But then note, indeed, it is far safer to stop with that relation, which

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Augustine sets forth, than to by too subtly penetrating into the sublime mystery, to wander through many evanescent speculations.

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So I think that's Calvin saying, we're getting to the edge of how far the light extends.

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The light of scripture extends. And there is no safety past where the light of God's word extends.

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I have no respect for a person who calls himself a Christian, or a

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Christian philosopher, who does not recognize this wisdom. But philosophers as a whole, in general, do not possess this wisdom, which is why you get all the strange, odd things that you do in philosophy.

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We're going to continue on. I think we started right at five. Therefore, let those who dearly love soberness, and who will be content with the measure of faith, receive in brief form what is useful to know, namely, that when we profess to believe in one

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God, under the name of God is understood a single, simple essence, in which we comprehend three persons or hypostases.

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He makes the distinction. Any conflation of these categories, he would reject as a fundamental distortion of the biblical narrative, and certainly the narrative of the early church.

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Therefore, whenever the name of God is mentioned, without particularization, there are designated no less the

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Son and the Spirit than the Father. But where the Son is joined to the Father, then the relation of the two enters in.

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And so we distinguish among the persons. But because the peculiar qualities in the persons carry an order with them, that is, in the

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Father is the beginning and the source, so often as mention is made of the Father and the

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Son together, or the Spirit, the name of God is peculiarly applied to the Father.

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In this way, unity of essence is retained, and a reasoned order is kept, which yet takes nothing away from the deity of the

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Son and the Spirit. Certainly, since we have already seen that the apostles declared

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Him to be the Son of God, whom Moses and the prophets testified to be Jehovah, it is always necessary to come to the unity of essence.

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Certainly, since we have already seen that the apostles declared

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Him to be the Son of God, whom Moses and the prophets testified to be

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Jehovah. What did I say a month ago?

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Key issue, the New Testament's revelation of the fact that the

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Son is to be identified as Yahweh. This is what you have in Philippians 2.

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This is what you have in 1 Peter 3. This is what you have in John chapter 12. This is what you have in Hebrews chapter 1.

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It is a repetition on the part of the New Testament writers to take texts which are specifically about Yahweh and apply them to Jesus, and not in some merely generic sense.

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Hebrews chapter 1, it's about Yahweh being immutable, the unchanging creator of all things, and that is assertive of Jesus.

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Thus, we regard it as a detestable sacrilege for the

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Son to be called another God than the Father, for the simple name of God admits no relation, nor can

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God be said to be this or that with respect to Himself. So, you have a seity, you have meaningful simplicity, you have the clarity of the existence of the divine persons, the distinctions between them, all balanced on the basis of Scripture, which was one of my points in the debate.

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Now, that the name of Jehovah, taken without specification, corresponds to Christ is also clear from Paul's words.

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Three times I besought the Lord about this, 2 Corinthians 12, 18. When he received Christ's answer, my grace is efficient for you, he added a little later, that the power of Christ would dwell in me, 2

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Corinthians 12, 9. For it is certain that the name Lord, kurios, which of course in the

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Greek septuagint, was used to render the tetragrammaton from the Hebrew. For it is certain the name

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Lord was put there in place of Jehovah, and thus it would be foolish and childish, so to restrict it to the person of the mediator, seeing that in his prayer he uses an absolute expression which introduces no reference to the relationship with the

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Father and the Son. What he's saying is, and this is something someone might do, well, in fact, come to think of it, this is a little bit similar to what

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Anthony Buzzard did when he and Joseph Goode debated

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Michael Brown and I. He attempted to create multiple

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Jehovahs. Well, which Jehovah is it? Assuming Unitarianism. But Jehovah is the one who places our sins upon the

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Messiah, that's the Father. So the name, one name is used of Father, Son, and Spirit.

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Spirit of Jehovah, Spirit of the Lord, Jesus identifies as Yahweh, the

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Father is Yahweh. So you don't just limit it in a Unitarian sense.

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And we know from the common custom of the Greeks that the apostles usually substitute the name kurios,

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Lord, for Jehovah. And to take a ready example, Paul prayed to the Lord in no other sense than that in which

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Peter cites the passage from Joel, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Where this name is expressly applied to the

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Son, we shall see in its proper place that the reason is different. For the present, it is enough to grasp that when

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Paul calls upon God in an absolute sense, he immediately adds the name of Christ.

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Even so, Christ himself calls God in his entirety Spirit, John 4, 24. For nothing excludes the view that the whole essence of God is spiritual, in which are comprehended

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Father, Son, and Spirit. This is made plain from Scripture. For as we there hear

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God called Spirit, so also do we hear the Holy Spirit, seeing the Spirit is a hypostasis, the whole essence spoken of as God and from God.

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I'm just going to continue on. It looks like I've still got 20 minutes here.

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I want to get through to section 22, so we have a good context for this.

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And I'll try to remember one section of 23 when I get there. Moreover, Satan, in order to tear our faith from its very roots, has always been instigating great battles, partly concerning the divine essence of the

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Son and the Spirit, partly concerning the distinction of the persons. He has during nearly all ages stirred up ungodly spirits to harry

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Orthodox teachers over this matter, and today also is trying to kindle a new fire from the old embers. I am sure that Servetus was in his mind at that point.

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For these reasons, it is important here to resist the perverse ravings of certain persons. Hitherto it has been my particular intention to lead by the hand those who are teachable, but not to strive hand to hand with the inflexible and the contentious.

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But now the truth which has been peaceably shown must be maintained against all the calumnies of the wicked.

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And yet I will exert a special effort to the end that they who lend ready and open ears to God's word may have a firm standing ground.

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Here indeed, if anywhere in the secret mysteries of Scripture we ought to play the philosopher soberly and with great moderation, let us use great caution that neither our thoughts nor our speech go beyond the limits to which the word of God itself extends.

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I double underline that. I use two different colors. That was how

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I emphasized things. And I want you to hear it again. Here indeed, if anywhere in the secret mysteries of Scripture we ought to play the philosopher soberly and with great moderation, let us use great caution that neither our thoughts nor our speech go beyond the limits to which the word of God itself extends.

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Some of the wisest words ever written in regards to this subject.

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For how can the human mind measure off the measureless essence of God according to its own little measure?

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I think that's what I said in the debate. A mind as yet unable to establish for certain the nature of the sun's body, though man's eyes daily gaze upon it.

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Well, we're still learning stuff about the sun. We've got satellites around it now. Indeed, how can the mind, by its own leading, come to search out

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God's essence when it cannot even get to its own? I think all philosopher majors should think about that.

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Philosophy majors. Let us then willingly leave to God the knowledge of himself.

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For as Hillary says, he is the one fit witness to himself and is not known except through himself.

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In other words, we are dependent upon special divine revelation for all these categories.

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And it is, from Calvin's perspective, dangerous and arrogant for us not to recognize those limitations.

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I obviously agree fully. On this question, there are extant five homilies of Christendom against the

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Anemonians, yet not even these could restrain the presumptuous sophists from giving their stuttering tongues free reign.

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For in this matter, they have behaved no more modestly than they usually do everywhere. We ought to be warned by the unhappy outcome of this presumption so that we may take care to apply ourselves to this question with teachableness rather than with subtlety.

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Teachableness rather than subtlety. And let us not take into our heads either to seek out

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God anywhere else than in his sacred word or to think anything about him that is not prompted by his word or to speak anything that is not taken from that word.

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I'm going to repeat that one. Let us not take it into our heads either to seek out

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God anywhere else than in his sacred word or to think anything about him that is not prompted by his word or to speak anything that is not taken from that word.

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Verily and amen. But if some distinction does exist in the one divinity of father, son, and spirit, something hard to grasp, and occasions to certain minds more difficulty and trouble than is expedient, let it be remembered that men's minds, when they indulge their curiosity, enter into a labyrinth.

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And so let them yield themselves to be ruled by the heavenly oracles, even though they may fail to capture the height of the mystery.

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It's been years since I read it, but again, it's smudging. All right.

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To frame a catalog of the errors with which the sincerity of the faith was once assailed on this head of doctrine would be too long and needlessly irksome.

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And very many of the heretics, with brutish ravings seeking to overthrow the whole glory of God, have thought enough to alarm and confuse the uninstructed.

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Presently, indeed, from a few men there have boiled up several sects, which partly tore asunder

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God's essence, partly confused the distinction that exists between the persons. Indeed, if we hold fast what has been sufficiently shown above from Scripture, that the essence of the one

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God is simple and undivided, and that it belongs to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and on the other hand, that by a certain characteristic the

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Father differs from the Son, and the Son from the Spirit, the gate will be closed not only to Arius and Sibelius, but to other ancient authors of errors.

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Then he does make reference to Servetus, which we won't get into right now.

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And I just want to look at one section, section 23 as well.

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They object if he is truly, this is paragraph 23, the second paragraph of what's called section 23.

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They object if he is truly the Son of God, it is absurd to think of him as the son of a person.

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I reply that both are true. That is, he is the Son of God because the word was begotten by the Father before all ages.

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For we do not yet have occasion to mention the person, the mediator. And yet for the sake of clarification, we must have regard to the person so as not to take the name of God here without qualification, but as used of the

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Father. For if we consider no one but the Father to be God, we definitely cast the son down from his rank.

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Therefore, here's the point. Therefore, whenever mention is made of deity, we ought by no means to admit any antithesis between son and father, as if the name of the true

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God applied to the latter alone. For of course, the God who manifested himself to Isaiah, Isaiah 6 .1,

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was the true and only God, the God whom nevertheless John affirms to have been

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Christ, John 12 .41. Now, okay, this was not quite 500 years ago.

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We're getting there. I can't tell you how many times

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I have shown a person who denied the deity of Christ, whether it be a

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Muslim or Jehovah's Witness or other kind of Unitarian of some sort, that very passage in John 12 .41.

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And if you caught my sermon at G3 last year, that was my text.

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Now, I didn't get it from Calvin. Well, I'll take that back.

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I suppose the possibility actually does exist, that that was where I first ran into it.

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That's not my recollection, but I suppose it's possible. Give credit where credit's due,

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I guess. But it's one of those things that to me shows the unity that comes from Sola Scriptura and Tota Scriptura, the unity that comes from having

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Jesus' own view of Scripture. Have you not read what

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God spoke to you saying? And I think it's a beautiful thing, and I think it's incredibly precious at this time in our history.

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When so many things are being used to tear us apart, to rip us apart from one another as believers, and what is the great spiritual glue?

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Well, obviously we're in draw by the Holy Spirit of God. And that spirit drives us into the

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Word, makes us submissive to the Word, makes us love that Word, hear that Word, believe that Word, that Word more than anything else, and only that Word in a special way.

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Let me just make one further comment. That does not mean that we do not believe in logic.

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We believe that true logic is thinking God's thoughts after Him. We believe the only basis for logic is that there is a personal creator who has made the world to function according to His rules, and that He desires us to see

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Him in what He has created so that He can have relationship with us.

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And so it is simply untrue to state, well, you don't believe in logic. I was going to grab it, and again, it was a busy day.

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Like I said, we had some problems this morning. I found a screw in my back tire in the truck.

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So I have to get that taken care of. There were two citations, and let me just look real quick.

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Maybe it would just pop up. Sometimes you never know what comes up on a search in something.

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Well, this is interesting. I'm going to pop this up real quick.

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We'll see. Rich, I may actually end before the top of the hour, so be ready to go with it.

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I'm actually looking at two different keynote presentations here, and I'm going to see if the quotes in one of them,

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I'm not sure why it would be in this one, to be honest with you.

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But this is a nice presentation. Wait. I found them.

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Ha -ha. I've got four terabytes of hard drive space on this laptop, which given my first laptop had,

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I think, you know, just floppy drives is this amazing thing.

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So whenever I find something from years ago, I'm feeling pretty good. Blaise Pascal, let me recommend to you.

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Blaise Pascal. Wow, I'm doing a lot of French people. Rich, have you put something in the water or something?

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I don't know. But Blaise Pascal was a Jansenist. That was a sort of proto -reformer group amongst

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Roman Catholics. His pensée, which in French means thoughts, highly recommend it to you, highly recommend it to homeschoolers.

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Putting him in context, very, very useful. But let me give you a quote from Blaise Pascal. You've heard of Pascal's wager?

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Same guy. You've heard of Pascal? Well, again, same guy. Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.

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It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that.

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That's from the pensée. Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it.

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It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that.

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And the great Puritan writer John Flavel expressed it this way.

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I know there is nothing in the word or in the works of God that is repugnant to sound reason. But there are some things which are opposite to carnal reason as well as above right reason.

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And therefore, our reason never shows itself more unreasonable than in summoning those things to its bar which transcend its sphere and capacity.

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John Flavel. I know there is nothing in the word or in the works of God that is repugnant to sound reason.

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But there are some things which are opposite to carnal reason as well as above right reason. And therefore, our reason never shows itself more unreasonable than in summoning those things to its bar which transcend its sphere and capacity.

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I believe that a consistent worldview that takes into consideration the empty tomb must come to understand that what both

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Flavel and Pascal said is absolutely true. And that in fact, the rescue from the absolute destruction of knowledge and rationality that we see going on around us is to be found in the same worldview and only in that worldview.

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There is a whole sermon coming up so we better sign off before I start preaching it because this is important stuff.

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I will try to remember when I blog this to put those two quotes there. I don't have the references on them but you could probably pull them up fairly easily on Google with the unique phrases in it.

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So anyways, thanks for listening to the program today. Thank you, Rich, for getting it going.

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And sorry for the mess up at the start but I'm feeling nice, cool wind here, which is great.

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I think Rich is getting slammed down there. I've got a little weather station at home and it's sending me messages going, it's raining where I am, things like that.

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So active weather pattern here in Arizona. It's good. We need it. It's beautiful. Thanks.

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Again, get the app. Support us on the Travel Fund. We'll use the app to let you know when we're going to try to get together next time.

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Be ready for an impromptu get -together on Monday.

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I'm going to try to work something out with Jason Lyle. So it would either be before we speak, on like Tuesday afternoon, or maybe on Monday.