Defining the Trinity

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Well, I am excited.
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I have been looking forward to this study for many months.
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We are beginning tonight our lesson series on the doctrine of the Trinity.
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And in our first lesson we are entitling it, The Doctrine Defined.
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It amazes me as I watch and listen and teach and I look out at the modern church, it amazes me how much is not said in reference to the fact that the God of the Bible has revealed Himself in a Trinitarian way.
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That He is Trinitarian by nature.
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And whether it be that people do not mention the Trinity, or when they do talk about the Trinity, they mention it in an improper and sometimes even heretical way.
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I notice that this once foundational doctrine is not really vital for most people who call themselves evangelical Christians.
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And it is no longer vital as a part of worship for many people today.
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Yet while this is true, if you were to ask a majority of confessing evangelical church members in the world, if they believed in the Trinity, they would probably say, Yes, we suffer today in the church, and I say this not to be rude or arrogant, but we suffer today in the church from an epidemic of ignorance.
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We are ignorant of history, we are ignorant of theology, we are ignorant of doctrine, we are ignorant of our own denominational differences.
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The reason why most people are Baptists in reality is because Mama was a Baptist.
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The reason why most Methodists are Methodists is because Mama was a Methodist.
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I mean, we have to be honest, right? And so, when you ask somebody, Well, why is it that you choose to baptize your infant? Or you don't? Well, it's because it's what our church does.
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It's part of the tradition of the church.
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There's no reason, necessarily, it's there.
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And it's the same if somebody says, I don't baptize my infant.
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I'm not attacking anybody who necessarily practices infant baptism.
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I'm saying it goes both ways.
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People would say, I'm a Baptist because this is the way I was brought up, or I'm a Methodist or a Presbyterian or whatever have you.
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And as I said, I say this not to be ugly or rude, but simply to point out the fact that most Christians have become so engrossed in tradition, and so engrossed in the feelings associated with Christianity, that they become far removed from the facts.
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And most people don't want to study the faith anymore.
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They don't want to dive deep into the things of God, but are more satisfied, rather, with having a shallow and often a lukewarm faith.
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And what does the Bible say about a lukewarm faith? Well, it doesn't speak very well of it, of course.
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If you go to Revelation, it says that Jesus says, Those who are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth.
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So a lukewarm faith is not a good thing to have.
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So I'm giving this series on the doctrine of the Trinity in hopes that those who hear them will become hungry.
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And I like to just throw it out.
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I want you to become hungry for the Word of God, and that you will see the need to go past a superficial study of the Word.
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I want to clear up miscommunications in regard to our own understanding of the Trinity as Christians.
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In his book, The Forgotten Trinity, Dr.
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James White says this.
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He says, The single greatest reason people struggle with the doctrine of the Trinity is miscommunication.
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You see, people can say the same words and mean different things.
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And a lot of people say the word Trinity, but they can't define it.
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Or when they do define it, they're actually defining something called Sabellianism or Modalism.
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Or they're defining Unitarianism, not Trinitarianism.
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And those are issues that most people don't even realize they're making that mistake.
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They wouldn't even know how to define the difference between Trinitarianism, Sabellianism, and Unitarianism.
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And what makes the difference.
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And why one is considered to be a heresy, some almost 2,000 year old heresy.
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And the other is considered Orthodox Christian teaching.
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But you see, we use words, but we don't define the words.
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We use words all the time that we become part of the vernacular.
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And as I said, they have a traditional meaning.
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But we don't search the meaning or the history to know exactly where they came from or what they mean.
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Think about the word Gospel.
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We have our fishing hole.
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Our fishing hole is our evangelism booth.
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We will be starting it tomorrow night at the Northeast Florida Fair.
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And we put a booth at the fair.
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And what does the sign that hangs above the fishing hole ask? Do you understand the Gospel? It's a simple question.
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But you know, I had a guy one time come to the booth.
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I was just sitting behind the table handing out Gospel tracts to people who came by.
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And he came by and he looked at the sign.
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And he looked at me and he said, you know, that's a difficult question.
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As I began to converse with the guy, I found out he was a minister.
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I said, it's a difficult question and you're a Gospel preacher? It's in the title.
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It's part of your job description.
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It's not a difficult question.
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But what does make it difficult is when people redefine it.
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If I say the word Gospel, and I use the biblical, historical, Christian, Orthodox definition of the Gospel, and I'm talking to a Mormon, and they use the word Gospel, it will be a different meaning.
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We'll have an entirely different understanding of what constitutes the Gospel.
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So too the word Trinity has been misunderstood.
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I say the word Trinity, someone else says the word Trinity.
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But we must look past our traditions and past what we might bring to the conversation with our own ideas.
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You know, well, it's ice and water and steam.
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By the way, that's modalism, not Trinitarianism.
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It's a case you didn't know, and we're going to talk about that later.
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But that's what people do.
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They bring in their traditions, their ideas, but they don't know the history.
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You realize that this one particular issue created such division and adversity in the early church.
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Well, when I say early church, the first 400 years of the church.
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That the first church council was brought together on the issue of whether or not we are to consider Christ homoousia or heterousia.
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Same substance or different substance than the Father.
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There's two Latin phrases.
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Is he the same as God? Or is he different? Or is he homoousia? Similar.
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Homo means similar.
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That's where you get the term.
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Doesn't change it one iota.
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By adding the iota, the letter.
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It's Greek.
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I said Latin, it's Greek.
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Adding the iota letter changes it from same to similar.
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In 325, the council of Nicaea met because a man named Arius taught that Jesus Christ was not God in the flesh.
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But that Jesus Christ, though he was divine, was a created being.
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He was similar to the Father, but not the same in substance.
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And thus, Athanasius and others came against him.
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Railed against him.
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And taught what the believers had believed for, at that point, 300 years.
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No, Jesus Christ is homoousia.
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Same substance with the Father.
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See, that was the issue.
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Do we even think like that anymore? Do we even care that that was ever an issue? There was a time in history where you could literally be asked when purchasing bread, and I'm not making this up, whether or not you believed the Son was begotten or unbegotten.
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And it was a question of whether or not you could even do commerce in certain areas.
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Because it was such an issue that created so much division.
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And yet today, people say, I don't care which church I go to as long as I've got good music.
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I'm not being ugly, people do.
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I say, I don't care where I go.
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As long as the people are nice, it doesn't matter what they believe.
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You know? We must, we must, we must be concerned with the truth.
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You might say, well those people were nitpicky.
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No, those people were concerned with the truth.
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When discussing the doctrine of the Trinity, it's easy to fall into the error of miscommunication.
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And as we will see, just because someone affirms Jesus is the Son of God, doesn't make them a Trinitarian.
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And just because someone believes in the Holy Spirit, does not make them a Trinitarian.
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In fact, the Mormons would believe both of those things.
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They would say Jesus is the Son of God, they believe in the Holy Spirit.
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And yet, they would say, they don't believe in the Trinity, not as we do.
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The Jehovah Witnesses would say, sure, Jesus is a created God.
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You realize that that's what is believed, that Jesus is a deity, but he's a created deity.
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Which is in itself an oxymoron.
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I mean, it created God.
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That's an antithesis of scripture.
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God said, before me there was no God formed, and after me there will be no God formed, Isaiah 45.
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Just not possible.
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But yet, the Jehovah Witnesses believe that.
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In fact, I've said this before.
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Mormonism is further from Christian teaching than Islam.
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Mormonism is further from Christian teaching than Islam.
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Because at least Islam is monotheistic.
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Mormonism is the most polytheistic religion in the world.
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You think Hindus have a lot of gods? Mormons have what's called the eternal regression of the gods.
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There have been gods forever in the past, and they've always been going back.
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Because our God was a man on another planet who had a God himself.
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And that God was a man on another planet who had a God himself.
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And that God just goes on forever.
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It's the most polytheistic religion in the world.
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And again, I'm not here to attack anyone.
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I'm here to point out the fact that these are issues that are serious issues.
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We must understand them.
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So for this first session, I want to outline for you what I hope to accomplish in tonight's lecture.
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And as I said, we may finish, we may not.
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We might.
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We've got a good amount of time.
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But the four things we're going to do tonight, and this is on your sheet.
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We're going to describe the competing views of God in the world.
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Now obviously we won't describe all of them, but we will look at a lot of them.
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The second is we are going to define.
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Tonight you will leave here knowing the scriptural, historical, orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.
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You tonight will be able to leave and articulate what it is.
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Now you might say, does that mean I'm going to comprehend it? Comprehension, at least as far as I understand it, means to fully be able to understand something.
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To fully wrap your mind around something.
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And you didn't come in tonight fully wrapping your mind around all that is God.
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So you're not going to leave tonight fully wrapping your mind around all that is God.
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Any more than you understood how God can be eternal, you're not going to leave understanding how God can be a Trinity.
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But you will understand what we're saying and what we're not.
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That will be the key.
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Definitions matter.
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And how you define truth matters.
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The third thing, we're going to discern the errors that people often make in regards to the Trinity.
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And fourthly, we're going to distinguish Trinitarianism from other views of God.
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So those are our four main points for the evening.
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And I hope that we get through them.
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We'll see how we do.
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Number one, major theistic worldviews.
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Now I'm going to take one of your blanks, because mine doesn't have the blanks.
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I want to make sure I give you all the...
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Because people hate that when you miss a letter.
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So I want to make sure I don't miss any letters.
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Major theistic worldviews.
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And as I said, we're only going to look at a few.
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We could look at more, but there are three that I want you to consider.
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They're going to help us to communicate the absolute uniqueness of the doctrine of the Trinity.
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Number one, major theistic worldview is monotheism.
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The dictionary defines monotheism as the doctrine or belief that there is only one God.
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Mono, meaning singular, or one, refers to there being one God in the entire universe.
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Normally monotheists understand the God that they serve to be independent upon anything else.
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Solely perfect and self-existing.
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In fact, that's what the scripture says about God.
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That he is independent and that he's self-existing.
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What's the name that God uses of himself in the Old Testament? I Am.
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What is the I Am? Have you ever wondered what the I Am means? It sounds like an incomplete sentence.
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But the phrase I Am, and I've taught this before.
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Most of you have probably heard me say this, but just in case you've never heard this.
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The phrase I Am is a statement of absoluteness.
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If I say I Am, what I'm saying is I exist.
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But I must say I exist because of certain qualifications.
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I exist because there's the right amount of air to fill my lungs and allow me to breathe.
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I exist because my heart beats within my chest and allows the blood to flow through my body.
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I exist because I'm standing on an earth that doesn't pull me too hard as to crush me into the ground.
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Or pull me too loosely to allow me to float off into space.
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I have a lot of things upon which I am dependent.
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I'm dependent on my wife and every other husband in the yard too.
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We're all dependent.
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We have so many things upon which we're dependent.
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God says I Am and that's it.
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I exist.
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There's nothing upon which I depend.
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Everything depends upon me.
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So there's an absoluteness to the nature of God.
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And that's when we talk about monotheism.
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We are saying something very important about God.
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We're not only saying that He's the only one.
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But we are saying that He's unique among any other being in the universe.
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Because He is the sole source of all things.
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He is the uncaused cause.
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Because everything that you see is an effect.
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You are an effect.
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You exist because at some point two people came together and brought you into being.
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And they existed because two people brought them into being and so on and so on.
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We exist because of a process of effect.
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And everything had a cause.
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God is the uncaused causer of all things.
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He is the original cause.
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Okay, and that's an important idea.
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Who believes this? Who are monotheists? Well, if you want to go to the major monotheistic religions of the world, of course you can't encapsulate everything.
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But if you want to say the major monotheistic religions of the world, you would start with Judaism.
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Judaism, Islam, Christianity.
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Okay, those are the three major monotheistic religions.
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Now, we are going to make a distinction later when we talk about Christianity being the only Trinitarian.
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But from the perspective of the major worldviews, Christianity is monotheistic.
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Don't ever let someone confuse you or try to convince you that Christianity is not monotheistic.
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We believe in the Shema.
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Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is one Lord.
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We believe that.
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That's in the Scriptures.
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We do believe that.
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Okay, don't let anyone confuse you.
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There's one God, one mediator between God and man, man and Christ Jesus.
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There's Scripture upon Scripture.
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Old and New Testament.
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Okay? Number two.
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We have monotheism followed by what do you think? Polytheism.
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That's right, polytheism.
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That's the other side of it.
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Poly being many.
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So you have monotheism, one God, poly being many.
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So that means many gods.
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It's in contrast to monotheism.
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You can't have only one God and have a bunch of other gods at the same time.
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That would be a logical contradiction to say there's one God and there are many gods.
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So you can't have both.
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This is why I say that there's more of a difference in Mormonism.
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I said this already, but this is why I do say there's more of a difference in Mormonism and Christianity.
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Because at a foundational level, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity at least affirm the singularity of God in His nature.
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Yes, sir? Jehovah's Witnesses would be Unitarian, but I'm going to show where they come actually in the third group.
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They would call themselves monotheistic, but I'm going to make a distinction.
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So to be fair, yes, they would call themselves monotheistic.
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But the third one is henotheism.
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Most people are not familiar with this one.
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Henotheism is the belief in one God without denying the existence of other gods.
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You say, now what does that mean? Huh? Well, it's tribal in nature.
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My God is my God and He is the only God for me, but there might be another God for you.
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Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
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Hinduism would be polytheism, but henotheism because typically there's that unique God for the individual or for the tribe.
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It's very tribal.
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But where I say Jehovah's Witnesses tend to fall into this, because Jehovah's Witnesses believe Jesus is a God.
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They believe He's a created God.
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They just believe Jehovah is the only eternal God.
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So I tend to fall then under the category of henotheism because they don't deny that Jesus Christ is a deity.
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They just believe He's a created deity, which creates what? Another God.
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But He's not the same as my God.
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My God is the eternal one who needs to be worshipped, but that doesn't mean there aren't other gods.
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And as I said, so that sort of creates...
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They would argue they're monotheistic.
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I would argue they're henotheistic because of their position on Christ.
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That He is a created God.
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They base it on John 1.1 because they say in the beginning was the Word.
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The Word was with God.
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And the Bible says, and the Word was God, but their Bible says the Word was a God.
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They add the indefinite article a to say that Jesus was a God, but not the God.
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Yes, you were going to say? Yes.
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But they don't deny the existence of...
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Yeah, they don't deny the existence of other gods, but they say, you know, for our tribe, for our people, this is the only God.
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But that doesn't mean that there can't be other gods or that there aren't other gods, but He is the only one that we worship.
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And as I said, it's sort of a tribal mentality.
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Yes, dear? Yeah, there are many of those.
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Yeah, because if you think about how they treated the God of Israel, they treated Him as another God, just not the God they worshipped.
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It wasn't that they didn't believe in Him.
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It was they were saying, but our God is Baal or whatever, whatever the particular God would be.
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Yes.
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And you could say, well, that's just polytheism redefined.
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Well, if you want to, you know, I'm trying to just help us make the distinction.
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Because polytheists generally say that all the different gods are worthy of worship.
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Where henotheism would say, no, we worship our God, that doesn't mean He's the only one.
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So that's how the distinction sort of falls in.
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Not trying to create confusion, but I am trying to make it make sense.
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So again, we have belief in one God, belief in many gods, belief in one God for us without the exclusion of other gods for others.
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As I said, that's not an exhaustive list.
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But, because honestly, if we wanted to, we could put dualism, pantheism.
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Dualism is the idea that there is no personal God, but that there are forces that govern the universe.
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Light forces and dark forces, positive forces and negative forces.
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You've seen this? What's that? Yin Yang symbol.
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What does the Yin Yang symbol stand for? It stands for positive and negative.
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It has the Yin, which is the female or the feminine or the negative energy.
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And the Yang, which is the positive, the masculine, the powerful energy.
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And that these two things must stay in balance.
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And if they get out of balance, then you have sickness and disease and problems.
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And the universe itself is balanced by this eternal power, this qi, which flows through every living thing.
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That's dualism.
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Most of us have heard of it in different language.
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Pantheism, the idea that God is in everything.
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We would say God is everywhere, but we wouldn't say God is part of this page.
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Pantheism would say God is not only everywhere, but He is part of everything.
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See, we believe God is distinct from His creation.
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The Bible teaches that God is not part of creation, but He is everywhere.
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Where they would say, no, God is in the page, God is in the wood, God is in the tree.
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You've heard that, right? And again, these are all distinctions that certainly could be made.
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As I said, we could go a long way.
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You don't mind? I'm going to erase that.
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Just an awkward symbol to have up there while I'm teaching.
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We could even say atheism is a position.
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I mean, if you want to, that's what I'm saying.
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So this list could go on.
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We could say pantheism, dualism, atheism.
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What is atheism? Well, the fool says there's no God.
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But what is atheism? It is the belief in no God.
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So, like I said, you could go on and on.
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But for the subject of the Trinity, the three that I like to focus on are these.
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Because we are monotheistic, we are accused of being polytheistic.
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And some people have accused us of being henotheistic.
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So if we're understanding the Trinity, it's important to understand these three so that we understand why we would be here and not here or here.
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And that's what Islam does to Christians.
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Oh, yeah, we are polytheists.
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You believe in three gods or a three-headed monster god or something.
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It's very, very unfair, and not defending Islam, but there's just as much unfairness from Christians who don't know anything about Islam who talk about it, too.
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So it kind of goes both ways.
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They'll say things about us that are not true because they haven't studied.
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And Christians do it, too.
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They'll say things back about Islam because they haven't studied.
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They've only heard what they heard somebody else say.
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Very few people.
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How many of you read the Koran? Okay, see.
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But if you say to them, how many of you read the Bible? Same amount of hands.
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They don't know either.
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This is why I appreciate men like Dr.
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White who will go and engage them and had actually learned Arabic so that he could engage on a level of dialogue that most of us aren't able to.
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And that's important.
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If you're going to engage someone, you need to at least understand what they're saying and be fair to what they're saying.
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Because if all you do is create a straw man that you're going to set on fire, it's called a straw man argument, that's not righteous argumentation.
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And we are to be people of the truth.
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So, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
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They would affirm or they would accuse us of polytheism.
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And that's why we need to know why we're not.
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All right, so let's go now to number two.
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Defining the biblical, historical, orthodox, and I know that's a lot of words, but each one of those is important.
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It should be biblical, it should be historical, and it should be orthodox.
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And biblical means it's derived from the Bible.
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It's not read into the Scripture.
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Historical means that this is what Christians have believed.
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We didn't just make this up in the last 50 years or whatever.
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Orthodox, what does that word mean? Orthos means straight.
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Think about your orthodontist, makes teeth straight.
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Orthos means to straighten something.
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And doxa is glory or truth.
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So it's being straight with the truth or straight with that which is correct.
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And so orthodox meaning right, correct.
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So we want to be biblical, historical, and straight with our doctrine.
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When one begins to define the doctrine of the Trinity, you immediately run into a problem.
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Because we just said we're going to define it.
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Well, when we start to define it, we run into a problem.
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The problem is that you lack anything in the universe with which you can compare it.
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When you define the doctrine, it's likely that you'll begin to try to imagine something to compare it to.
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And when you realize there's nothing to compare the Trinity to, it becomes very difficult then to make a definition.
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For instance, think about how you explain to your children what round is.
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You say, well, it's round.
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It's like the ball.
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Ball is round.
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Round is ball.
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So how does your child learn what round is? It's that shape.
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They have a comparison.
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This is a box.
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This is a cube.
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You draw a picture.
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This is a square.
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You show it to them, right? Because that's the way we learn things.
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We learn things by association with other things.
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In fact, it's funny when you look up words in the dictionary.
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Sometimes you look up one word and it'll use another word to define it.
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And if you go to look at that word, it'll use the other word to define it.
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And you're like, well, I don't know what either word means.
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And so what runs into this issue is we have no analogy for God.
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We have nothing to correspond Him to.
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And as such, it becomes difficult to make a comparison because nothing compares to Him.
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Certainly many have tried to compare things to God.
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Yet they've often come away in error or more confused than they began.
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I've heard people say God is like a pie.
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They'll say, here, God is like a pie and He has three parts, like a pie.
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I think it looks sort of like a peace symbol, but still, you understand.
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They'll say God is like a pie.
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And that's God.
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He's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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Okay? No.
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But that's where they'll start.
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Or they'll say, God is like a man.
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Because a man can be a father.
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You're a father.
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And He can be a son, because you also are a son.
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And He can be a brother, because you're also a brother.
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So you're a father, a son, and a brother.
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And God is one God, and yet He can be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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And so they make that distinction.
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And yet what we have here is we have two things that are incorrect.
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In fact, we have a tritheism, and we have what is called modalism.
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Tritheism is here, modalism is here.
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Both of those are incorrect definitions and incorrect analogies.
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Because they're not making an analogy to what we're actually saying about God.
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But this is what people do.
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In fact, I did this this week.
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I looked up the word Trinity.
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Just Googled it to look at an image.
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And I was actually looking to throw an image into an e-mail, so I could send out a reminder to remind everybody to come.
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So I just, Trinity.
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And then Google search images.
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The first picture was a three-headed man.
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It was a man sitting on a throne with a face in the middle, and a face on this side, and a face on this side.
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It was very, I almost said, that one.
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I was like, oh, this will get people coming.
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What is he teaching? And then you had the three Jesuses.
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Because you know Jesus looked like a 16th century Englishman with a beard.
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And there was three 16th century Englishmen sitting with a white robe.
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With Jewish accents.
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With Jewish accents, yeah.
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With three thrones.
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And that was the picture.
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And I said, wow, what a great example of how little we know.
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Yet that was what people were, that was what people came up with.
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As I said, this is tritheism.
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That's modalism.
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Also called Sabellianism.
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When we get to errors, I'll define those more clearly.
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Yes, sir.
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Oh, okay.
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Sorry.
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Before our introduction, I want to actually give you what the Bible teaches.
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And we are going to look at Scripture as we go.
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But tonight I just want to give you the simple outline.
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When you say, okay, I'm going to define the Trinity.
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Okay.
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There are three definitional statements.
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All of which come from Scripture.
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Which we will prove in the time of this course.
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But there are three definitional statements.
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That when you are defining the Trinity to yourself and to others.
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You need to understand these three things.
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Number one.
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There is one being who is God.
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There is one being who is God.
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Or that is God.
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I'll give you half a sentence.
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Within the being of God, there exists three persons.
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There is one being that is God.
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Within the being of God, there exists three persons.
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Third and finally.
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These three persons are equal, eternal, and distinct.
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Equal, eternal, and distinct.
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Now that seems simple enough as a definition.
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I told you, you are going to leave tonight at least knowing the definition.
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And I can honestly say, I didn't make this up.
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This isn't the Keith Standard version.
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This is the historic, biblical, orthodox doctrine.
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This is what is taught and understood throughout historic Christianity.
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There is one being who is God.
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Within the being of God, there exists three persons.
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These three are equal, eternal, and distinct.
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Now that seems simple enough.
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Yet we know that this causes many questions in regards to how God can be three and be one at the same time.
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And for years, Christians have been accused of being self-contradictory.
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By saying that there are three persons and yet only one God.
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But one thing should be understood from the outset.
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Though the doctrine stated above has no comparisons that we can look to.
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It is not contradictory.
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Because a contradiction, by definition, is a statement that is necessarily false.
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For instance, if I said I would like to introduce you to my friend Bob.
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He is a married bachelor.
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This is Bob.
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He is a married bachelor.
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What would you say? He can't be.
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Bachelor's degree.
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Well, okay.
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I like your thinking, but that is very creative.
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If we said he is a married bachelor, and we meant it in the context of the normal use of the term for that context.
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We would be making a contradiction, would we not? Because what is the definition of a bachelor? One who is not married.
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And yet I called him a married bachelor.
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Thus, one would by necessity negate the other.
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That is a contradiction.
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For instance, if I said that animal is white.
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And then I said that animal is black.
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If I was talking about a zebra, I could be right.
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But if I said that animal is white.
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And then I said that animal is not white.
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I could not both be right.
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Because I have now stepped into the realm of the contradiction.
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It is what we call the law of non-contradiction.
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Something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same relationship.
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I can't be here and not be here at the same time and in the same relationship.
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Can't do it.
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Because it violates the law of non-contradiction.
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So, how is it that we can say God is one.
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And we can say God is three.
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Without violating the law of non-contradiction.
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Because is one different than three? Just think about it.
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One is not three and three is not one.
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So, how are we not violating the law of non-contradiction? By our definition.
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We have made a distinction between being and person.
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That is key to the doctrine of the Trinity.
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Making a distinction between being and person.
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We are not saying there is one being who is three beings.
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Neither are we saying there is one person who is three persons.
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Because both of those would be a contradiction.
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Would they not? They would.
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If I said there is one being who is also three beings.
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I would be wrong.
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Because that is contradictory.
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Yes, sir.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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So, we talk about the unity of being.
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And the triness of person.
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Absolutely.
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So, there are three persons.
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But one being.
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There is no analogy.
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Did I say that already? Have I said it enough times? Let me say it one more time.
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There is no analogy.
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But now I'm going to give you an analogy.
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I'm telling you there is no analogy.
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And I know somebody somewhere.
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I'm going to get an email.
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Because they are going to say, but you gave an analogy and it wasn't right.
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Because I'm about to give you an analogy.
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And I'm giving you a preface.
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I'm prefacing this by saying this is not a perfect analogy.
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Okay.
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God is one being.
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Three persons within the one being of God.
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There are three persons.
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These three persons are co-equal, co-eternal.
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You say, that can't be.
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And this is what Islam would say.
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Can't be.
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One person equals one being.
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Always.
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One person equals one being.
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Always.
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So you can't say God is one being and three persons.
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Can't happen.
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We say now, calm down.
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Because you're, by your statement, not making a distinction between the two.
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There is a distinction between being and person.
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And if you don't believe that, I can take a rock.
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And I can show you that it has being.
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Because if you don't believe it, I will throw it at you.
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And when it hits you, you will realize it had being.
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Because it done being hit me in the head.
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But it doesn't have person.
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There's no personality.
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If it throws and hits you, it won't hurt the rock at all.
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And it will feel no remorse.
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Rocks have being but no person.
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Agree? Cows.
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Cows have being.
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You might argue that they have cow personalities.
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I don't know.
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I've never been on a farm.
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They might have little personalities.
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I have no idea.
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But certainly their personalities are not as expressive as human person.
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You have one being and one person.
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That's what makes you, you.
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And you can't be me.
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Because you can't step out of your person and become me.
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And I can't step out of my person and become you.
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I get one.
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One and one.
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One being, one person, right? God is one being and three persons.
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There's still a distinction to be made.
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And here's the analogy.
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That wasn't the analogy.
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Here's the analogy.
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If a single-celled organism had the ability to contemplate its own existence.
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They don't.
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But just imagine that a single-celled organism had the ability to contemplate his own existence.
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And he looked at you.
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How many cells are in your body, Dale? Millions, right? I don't know.
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There's billions of cells in the human body.
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A single-celled organism would look at my body.
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And he would say, that's billions of me.
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And thus it's billions of beings.
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But how many beings are you? One.
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So we are not, this is not a perfect analogy.
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Don't email it.
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But what I'm saying is when you look at God and you say, okay, God is one being and three persons.
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And you say, I can't comprehend that because it's not like me.
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That's like the single-celled organism looking at me and saying, I can't comprehend how he's one being because he's not like me.
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You understand? That's just the same type of rudimentary thinking that we would have to do.
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We'd have to say, well, God can't be that way because it wouldn't be like me.
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Well, that's just foolish.
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We're not making a contradiction because we're making a distinction between being and person.
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There is a distinction between being and person which is provable in nature.
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And there is a distinction between us and God.
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God is not like us.
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Yes, sir.
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You mean like schizophrenic? Okay, well, there have been people who have accused Christianity of saying that God is schizophrenic.
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So it's interesting that you mention that.
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And you probably didn't even know that.
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But there have been accusations that Christians make God a schizophrenic God.
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We are not saying that God is confused and there's a bunch of different mental ideas running around in God's mind.
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What we are saying is that which is God, that which is completely God, the fullness of God, His nature is shared by three persons equally.
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Does that make it easier when I say it that way? That the fullness of God is shared equally by three persons.
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That's why this analogy doesn't work.
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Because God the Father doesn't get one-third of God.
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And God the Son doesn't get one-third of God.
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And God the Holy Spirit doesn't get one-third of God.
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And thus making three equal parts.
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But God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit share that which make up the divine nature.
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In fact, the scripture tells us this in Colossians.
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It says all the fullness of deity dwell in Christ bodily.
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All the fullness of deity dwelt in Christ bodily.
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Not a part.
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Jesus didn't just have a third of God.
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But He had all the fullness.
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Yes ma'am, you had your hand up.
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Yes, there is a relationship.
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And that's where, I guess I'm going to stop here for tonight because we are out of time.
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I'll get to the errors, the false views next week.
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We'll split this in half.
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Do you guys mind doing that? Because I don't want to keep us here.
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Because I could go another hour.
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But we'll save it for next time.
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But let me, I want to key in on the last sentence.
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Because we've talked about what being means.
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We've talked about what person means and how they are different.
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And how this creates your, it's a paradox but it's not a contradiction.
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It's paradoxical because we don't understand it.
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That doesn't mean it's contradictory.
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It's just we can't fully comprehend it.
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But the third one is important.
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Because when we talk about Christ, the Spirit, and the Father.
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These three are equal.
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Now you might say, well Jesus says the Father is greater than I.
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Jesus was speaking in His incarnate nature.
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Because Jesus is the only one of the Trinity who took on flesh.
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You understand that the Father didn't become incarnate.
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And the Spirit didn't become incarnate.
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That's an important Trinitarian distinction.
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And that's why the third word here, equal, eternal, and distinct.
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This is why I don't believe Jesus was praying to Himself.
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People say, well if Jesus is God, who did He pray to? He prayed to the Father.
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He says, I will pray to the Father.
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And He will send you another comforter.
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One who is like me.
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It's the same thing.
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He says, I'm going to pray to God.
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He's going to send the Spirit.
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So He made a distinction within the Trinity.
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But not a difference.
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And a distinction can be made without separating them.
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And we'll see in the weeks to come, things like the Athanasian Creed.
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The Nicene Creed.
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Even the Apostles Creed.
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Which have been used historically to help define these things for Christians.
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So that we understand what we're saying and what we're not saying.
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We say Jesus is begotten.
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But not made.
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I can't wait to talk about that because it's one of my favorite phrases to explain.
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How is Jesus begotten and not made? Because begotten doesn't mean made.
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It's not the same thing.
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We're going to talk about that in the weeks to come.
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But hopefully you understand what I'm getting at.
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Equal, eternal, and distinct.
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When we say distinct, that's an important truth.
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Because that's why the Father, the Son, and the Spirit can be in a relationship.
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If they were not distinct from one another.
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Which is what modalism teaches.
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That they're not distinct.
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Then there would be no relationship in the Trinity.
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And thus, we would be bound to a false view.
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Alright.
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Hopefully that was helpful.
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Hopefully that was a lot to take in, I'm sure.
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But we'll continue in the weeks to come.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this time of study.
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I pray that it's been encouraging to your people.
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I pray that this will be used to help us understand better this doctrine.
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And I pray that they'll continue to come in the weeks ahead.
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To learn more and more about this foundational teaching.
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In Jesus' name.
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Amen.