Matt Slick Live - Basic Christian Doctrine

Everybody, how you doing? Hey, it's a nice Monday, and it is the 25th of November. Guess what I'm gonna be doing? Teaching on basic Christian theology. Got a lot of stuff here. Stay tuned.

This is Matt Slick. Live with your host, Matt Slick. My hero. Founder of CARM .org, the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry. Call now with your questions. Bible questions, God questions, hard questions.

Toll free across the nation, 877 -207 -2276. That's 877 -207 -2276. No fluff, straight answers. And now, your full contact theologian. Here's Matt Slick.

All right, everybody, how you doing out there? Hey, it's a nice November 25th, 2013 day. And hey, this year's flying by, isn't it? Well, guess what? What I plan to be doing today is teaching on Christian theology.

And I wanna just kind of make a couple announcements, pray and get right into it, to just teach. Won't be taking calls while I'm doing this. Next week, I plan to do something on Jehovah's Witnesses. I've never done anything really on Jehovah's Witnesses, but I will, you know, Lord willing, do that.

All right, got my notes here. Let's see, I got, I like 12 pages of notes. What I'm gonna do is kind of read through them a little bit and expound. And the reason is because what I wanna do is be able to produce a, you know, a YouTube video that'll have the scriptures up there with them so people can just watch, listen, and it'll be there.

And if you just wanna listen via MP3, you know, without the visual, then, you know, the scriptures will be referenced as well. So that's what I'm doing. I want you to understand that it's coming from the word of God, not from just, you know, some slickism.

We're not interested in slickisms, unless it's things like slick and quick, or I'm great, you know, things like that. Those are slickisms. And my wife's rolling her eyeballs right now. Her eyes, you know, she's, because I know she'll listen to me.

Hey, love, how you doing? And so I was talking about her today, and I was talking to somebody. Had to do a, you know, so official, something on the phone, and they needed to put her on something, so they had to talk to me.

And then the guy said, do you get permission? I go, yeah, if I don't, I get an arm hit. And he was laughing. He goes, yeah, I know how that is. So I think women really rule the world by arm hits. That's what I'm thinking.

Because, and the look. Arm hits and the look. You know, whack, and then stare. It was like, okay, what do you want? It's okay, that's all right, you know. All right, that's kind of inane and persiflage, isn't it?

Hey, look up that, that's a new word, persiflage. Look up inane and then the word persiflage. See, I'm giving new vocabulary, it's good. All right, now, so no calls. Hey, folks, if you want to support this ministry, I would ask that what you do, go to karm .org, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G.

Just go to the karm .org website, if you would. And please consider supporting us with $5 a month. You can go to the donate thing and just sign up, if you would, donate $5. You'll notice there's no commercials in this show.

We just kind of go. And for a lot of people, that's inundation of information. Hey, there's a slickism. The inundation of information. I like that. Okay, why don't we get into this? That way, Leanne, the producer, doesn't have to do anything.

She can go back to sleep. Oh, what was that look? Yeah, I said she's asleep. Yeah, she's a lazy girl. She doesn't do anything here. She's just collecting nothing. Okay, it's another look. Yeah, I'm getting myself in trouble.

No, she's busy. She works hard. She's a lot. She does a lot. Sometimes. Another look. I'm in trouble. Okay, I think I'll kind of quit while I'm not too far ahead. All right. Kind of hard to get in the mood.

I mean, I don't know what it's. Coffee, hold on. Oh yeah, that's good. Actually, it's not. I made it myself. Pretty bad. Wash it down some water. Get myself going here. I'll be going through the pages, going through the information, and let's get it going.

Monotheism and the Attributes of God

All right. Okay. All right, this is a teaching on basic Christian theology. And for those of you who will be listening to this, the MP3 or whatever recording, feel free to copy it and distribute it freely.

I would ask you don't alter it and that you consider it to be something valuable valuable from the Lord. Please feel free to distribute it, give it away, no charge. And here we go. All right. What I wanna do here is teach on the basics of the Christian faith.

Now, each topic, I go into a lot more detail, but I'm not going to. What I wanna do is get an overview. There's gonna be a lot of scripture here. I'll be reading a lot of scripture, giving a lot of references.

So if that sounds good to you, listen away. Here we go. All right, now the Bible teaches what's called monotheism. This is one of the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. There is only one God in all existence and in all places and in all times.

Exodus 20, verses three through six says, you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the water under the earth.

You shall not worship them or serve them for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.

Now, we can see that there is a curse here associated. If you don't serve the true and living God, there's gonna be a curse to the descendants. That's very interesting because God is laying a foundational principle here.

We have monotheism. You have no other gods before me. Now, some people will say, well, that's monolatry in that there's many gods, but you only serve and worship one and usually in monolatry, it's one at a time.

Henotheism is a teaching that there's many gods, but you only serve and worship one. Well, let's knock that out of the ballpark. You see, look, Isaiah 43, 10 says this. You are my witnesses, declares the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen in order that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

Before me, there was no God formed and there will be none after me. Now, there are those who would say, well, wait a minute. That just means of this planet. Well, that's not what it says. It says that there's no God formed before him.

There will be none formed after him. Check this out in Isaiah 44, verse six. Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last. And there is no God besides me.

Isaiah 44, eight says, do not tremble and do not be afraid. Have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? Or is there any other rock I know of none?

Now, I've had people tell me, particularly the Mormons, say, well, that just means of this world. And I say, well, look, let me ask you a question. If God wanted to say that there's only one God in all existence, how should he word that according to you?

And what's really interesting is, they don't give me any answers. They don't say things like, well, he should say there's only one God in all existence in all place and all time. Well, then I would say, well, what about our dimensions?

You know, this is exactly what the scripture says. Isaiah 43, 10, 44, six, 44, eight. There aren't any other gods. This is monotheism. If you believe in more than one God, then you're not a Christian.

But if you believe more than one God exists, you're not a Christian. Sorry, you're not. All right, let's take a look at who God is. We know there's only one God, that's monotheism. Now, who is God? Well, Isaiah 6, 3 says that God is holy.

We see in 1 John 4, verses eight through 10, that God is loving. We see in Psalm 7, verse 11, that God is righteous. We see in 1 John 3, 20, that God knows all things. We see in Jeremiah 32, verses 17 and 27, we see that God is all powerful.

In Psalm 90, verse two, and in 1 Timothy 1, 17, we see that God is eternal. In Psalm 139, verses seven through 12, we see that God is everywhere. In 1 Kings 8, 27, we see that God is without limit. And another verse for that is Jeremiah 23, 23 and verses 24.

We also see, now this is important, that God is non-contingent. That's Isaiah 44, 24. Now, why do I mention this non-contingency? It's a real simple and important teaching. Contingency means that something is dependent upon something else.

God is not dependent upon anything else for his own existence. He's non-contingent. He's always been, Psalm 90, verse two says, he's always been, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. If that's the case, then he does not depend on anything else because he's always existed.

This non-contingency is very, very important. See, he created the universe. He brought it into existence. And therefore, the universe is contingent upon him. Its contingency rests upon God's creative work, not the other way around.

Nothing, or excuse me, God is not contingent in any relationship to anything. He is completely independent. Now, this is very, very, very important. You've gotta understand this because this has ramifications into other areas of theology.

God is eternally self-sustaining, self-sufficient, all right? It also would mean that God's choices for what he does in history are not contingent upon man's choices. Otherwise, God's decisions are based upon what man would do.

Now, that's the case. Before he created the universe, he would have to, so to speak, look into the future to see who would do what and then make his decisions based on what he would see them do. But that would mean he was contingent.

His decisions were contingent upon them. And so we have a problem here. God is non-contingent. I could go into this a lot more detail, but sufficient for now is the fact that he's non-contingent. Now, what I wanna do is talk about what's called the communicable attributes and the incommunicable attributes of God.

The communicable attributes of God mean those attributes that belong to God that can be communicated to us, that we can participate in. Now, there's incommunicable attributes and communicable attributes.

So let's look at the communicable ones. Excuse me, the incommunicable, my bad. The incommunicable attributes of God, his immutability. What that means is God does not change. He has always been God, Psalm 90, verse two says.

And also you can go to Malachi 3 .6 and Hebrews 13 .8. And it says in these verses that God has always existed. He's unchanging. That's called immutability. Now, he's also infinite. And what that means is that he is without measure.

He's without limit. He's without duration in that he has to abide by time. He's infinite. There are no constraints upon him from the outside. He is completely self-sufficient and non-contingent, as I mentioned earlier, and he's infinite.

And we can go to Genesis 21 .33 for that. And also we could look at Deuteronomy 33, verse 27 and Isaiah 40, verse 28, all right. So God also has omnipotence. That means he is capable of performing anything he desires.

So we can see that in Psalm 33, verse nine and Isaiah 40, verse 28 and Isaiah 46 .10. He is able to do anything he wants. Now, some people say, well, what, can God make a rock so big he can't pick it up?

Well, no, he can't. He cannot do the logically impossible because logic and the necessary preconditions for intelligibility rest in the very mind, the essence and transcendency of God. We won't get into that.

I could do a whole show on that. But God can only do that which is consistent with his nature. So for example, he cannot sin. He cannot lie, Titus one, verse two says. So whatever God desires to do will always be consistent with his nature, and he can always do whatever he wants to do, he can.

Unlike us, we cannot perform everything we want to do. If I want to fly by flapping my arms, I can want it all I can, but it's not gonna happen. I don't have omnipotence. Another quality that God has is omnipresence, omnipresence.

God is in all places and in all times and all dimensions simultaneously. Nothing in the universe exists outside of the presence of God. You can go to Psalm 139, verses seven through 12, and Jeremiah 23, verse 24.

This is important. Omnipresence, omnipotence, and now the third one, omniscience. That means God has perfect, complete knowledge. He never learns, nor does he ever forget. He knows all things that exist and all things that could have existed.

God cannot grow in knowledge, understanding, or wisdom. Now you can find those verses that substantiate that in Romans 16, 27, Hebrews 4, 13, and of course, first John 3, 20. So we see that the incommunicable attributes of God, these attributes that belong to God alone, immutability, infinitude, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, these are qualities that belong to God.

They are part of his nature. They cannot be communicated to us. We don't possess the ability to be unchangeable. We are not infinite. We do not have all power. We do not have all presence. We are not all-knowing.

So God alone possesses those attributes. However, there are what's called communicable attributes of God. The communicable attributes of God. For example, and there's many, but I'm only gonna go through four.

Goodness, God is good. Well, we can also be good, though not in a perfect way, the way God is. So his goodness can be communicated to us also. God has knowledge. Now where he knows all things, we can know things in a partial way.

Now it's not omniscience that's communicated to us. It's just the attribute of knowledge. In other words, he knows things, we can know things, though not perfectly. God is love, 1 John 4, 8 says. And we can love, but not perfectly.

We do not express love perfectly like God does. I know that for sure. I've tried for a few seconds. It's pretty tough. But God is pure and he's perfect. Now, God is also truthful. Truth is a quality where the statements properly reflect actuality as well as morality.

God is always truthful. But we are not. We can be truthful, but we're not always truthful. Where God would manifest his, what are called communicable attributes perfectly all the time, we never manifest them perfectly all the time.

We manifest them imperfectly. But we can share in the attributes of God. Why? Because, as it says in Genesis 1, 26, we are made in the image of God. The image of God. So we exist as a reflection of God's character, as God's essence, not in the sense of us being divine.

We are not divine, we're not gonna be God's. That's not gonna happen. But where we are made in his image, we can be rational. We can think, we can love, we can hate, we can experience, just as God does.

And so that's what it means to be made in the image of God by expressing and experiencing the communicable attributes of God. All right. So we also find out that God is a trinity. Now, the word trinity itself does not appear in the Bible, but the word trinity is a theological term used to denote the Christian doctrine that God exists as a unity of three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Each of the persons is distinct from the other, yet they are all identical in essence. In other words, each is fully divine in nature, but each is not the totality of the other persons of the trinity.

Each has a will, each loves, each says, I and you, when they're speaking, and me and my and you and yours. They exhibit what we call the characteristics of personhood. The Father is not the same person as the Son, who is not the same person as the Holy Spirit, who is not the same person as the Father.

Each is divine, yet there are not three gods, but one God. There are three individual subsistences. Let me try that word again, subsistences, or three persons, as we like to call them. Let's take a look at three verses that hint at the trinity.

Matthew 28, 19, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Second Corinthians 13, 14, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

First Peter 1, 2, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus and be sprinkled with his blood. May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.

All right, so here's a question I often ask people who are critical of the doctrine of the trinity. They'll say the trinity is not biblical because the word's not found. Well, a word doesn't have to exist in the Bible for the concept to be taught.

The fool has said in his heart there is no God. Proverbs says, well, that's the concept of atheism. Well, the word atheism is not in the Bible, but the concept is taught. Neither is the word monotheism, the idea that there's only one God in all existence in all places at all time.

But just because the word isn't there doesn't mean the concept isn't there. So how is the doctrine of the trinity arrived at? Well, it's arrived at systematically. What that means is we look at the whole of scripture, not just one verse, not just two verses, but the whole of scripture, and we see various things.

We see, for example, that the Father is called God. That's in Philippians 1, verse two. We see that the Son is called God, John 1, verse 14, and Colossians 2, 9. And the Holy Spirit is also called God in Acts chapter five, verses three and four.

We see that the Father is called the Creator, Isaiah 64, eight. We see that the Son is also called the Creator, John 1, three, and also Colossians 1, verses 15 and 17. And the Holy Spirit is called the Creator, Job 33, four, and verse 26, chapter 26, verse 13.

We see that the Father is everywhere, 1 Kings 8, 27, that the Son is also everywhere, Matthew 28, 20, and the Holy Spirit is also everywhere, Psalm 139, verses seven through 10. The Father is all-knowing, 1 John 3, 20.

The Son is all-knowing, John 16, 30, and 21, verse 17. We see that the Holy Spirit is all-knowing, 1 Corinthians 2, verses 10 and 11. The Father's called the life-giver, Genesis 2, seven, and John 5, 21.

The Son is also called the life-giver, John 1, three, and John 5, 21. The Holy Spirit's called the life-giver in 2 Corinthians 3, verses six and eight. The Father's called eternal, Psalm 90, verse two.

The Son is eternal, Micah 5, verses one and two. The Holy Spirit is eternal, Romans 8, 11, Hebrews 9, 14. The Father has a will, Luke 22, 42, and the Son has a will, Luke 22, 42, as does the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12, 11.

The Father speaks, Matthew 3, 17, and Luke 9, 25. The Son speaks, Luke 5, 20, and 7, 48. The Holy Spirit speaks, that's Acts 29, 11, 12, and 13, verse two. And finally, the Father loves, John 3, 16, the Son loves, Ephesians 5, 25, and the Holy Spirit loves, Romans 15, 30.

So what do we do? And there's many more like this. We see that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each called God. We see that they each share attributes of being creator, of being everywhere, of all-knowing, of being eternal, having a will, speaking, loving, et cetera.

These are truths that we find in Scripture. And since we also know that the Bible said there's only one God, and the Father speaks to the Son, the Son speaks to the Father, the Holy Spirit speaks, one sends the other, things like this.

Then we call them three distinct persons. We use the term person because, well, it's just what we do, person. Signifying attributes of personhood, self-awareness and awareness of others, having a will, being able to love, and things like that.

The Father does this, the Son does this, the Holy Spirit does that. So therefore, we say that God is a trinity of persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Furthermore, we have, in the doctrine of the Trinity, we have what's called the ontological trinity.

And all that is, big fancy term for the view that the three persons within the Godhead are all equal in nature, essence, and attributes. Each member of the Trinity is equal in omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, holiness, et cetera.

It means that they share the divine nature, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The ontological trinity, from the word ontos in Greek, nature or essence. We also see what's called the economic trinity. Now the economic trinity, that's a term that comes from the Greek word oikonomikos, which means relating to an arrangement of activities.

Well, what we see here is that each of the person in the Godhead has, apparently, different roles. The Father sent the Son, that's John 6 .44. The Son came down from heaven not to do His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him, John 6 .38.

The Father gave the Son, John 3 .16, who is the only begotten, John 3 .16, to perform the redemptive work, 2 Corinthians 5 .21 and 1 Peter 2 .24. The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit. The Father, who chose us before the foundation of the world, Ephesians 1 .4, predestined us, that's Ephesians 1 .5 and Romans 8 .29, and gave the elect to the Son, John 6 .39.

So we see this is called the economic trinity. In other words, the Father sent the Son, but the Son did not send the Father. The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit did not send the Father and the Son.

Only the Son became incarnate, not the Father and not the Holy Spirit. We call this the economic trinity, in that they relate one to another differently, and there's a relationship. And we see this manifested in the doctrine of the trinity.

The Deity of Christ and the Hypostatic Union

All right, so let's move ahead now to the deity of Christ, the person of Jesus. Jesus is God in flesh. He has two natures. He's both divine and human. That means he is God and man. So let's look at the scriptures that support this.

John 1 .1 says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1 .14, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

So clearly, John 1 .1 and verse 14 says that Jesus Christ is God in flesh. That's what it says. John 8 .58 is where Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, or before Abraham was, I am.

Now, that's really interesting because they wanted to kill him. They picked up stone to throw at him when he said this, and he hid himself. Now, what was he doing? Well, a lot of people, and I'm one of them, agree that what he was doing was referencing Exodus 3 .14, and Moses is talking to God.

And Moses asks God, well, what's your name? And God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I am has sent me to you. Now, this is significant because when we go to John 8 .24, this is what Jesus says.

I said, therefore, to you that you will die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins. Now, that's significant. You have to believe that Jesus Christ is God in flesh.

If you deny that, you can't be a Christian. This is important theology. This is important doctrine. Now, we can continue in Hebrews 1 .8. It says, but of the son, he says, that's the father speaking, but of the son, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is a scepter of his kingdom.

So what that's saying, because God the father's speaking, and he's speaking of the son, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. That's a quote from Psalm 45, verse six, which says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever.

Is Jesus God in flesh? Absolutely. Now, when we look at 1 John, or chapter four, verses two and three, it says this. This is how you can recognize the spirit of God. Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.

This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and now even is already in the world. So if you do not believe that Jesus Christ is God in flesh, that he's come in the flesh, then you're in the spirit of the Antichrist.

Serious stuff, isn't it? Now, we have this doctrine concerning Jesus. It's called the hypostatic union. Big, fancy, theological term, the hypostatic union. And what it means is that Jesus has two natures.

He's both divine and human, or God and man. So we see, for example, that he is worshiped. That's Matthew 2, 2 -11, in 1433, 28 -9. We see that Jesus is worshiped, and also you can go to Hebrews 1 -6, but he also worshiped God the Father.

That's basically, take a look at John 17. He's called God in John 20 -28. That's where Thomas, doubting Thomas, says, my Lord and my God, he called Jesus God. And in Hebrews 1 -8, we just read, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.

So he's called God, but he's also called man in Mark 15 -39 and John 19 -5. He was called the Son of God in Mark 1 -1, but he's also called the Son of Man in John 9, 35 -37. He's prayed to in Acts 7 -59, yet he prayed to the Father again in John 17.

He is sinless, that's 1 Peter 2 -22 and Hebrews 4 -15, but yet he was also tempted, Matthew 4, verse one. He knows all things, John 21 -17, yet he grew in wisdom, Luke 2 -52. He gives eternal life, John 10 -28, yet he also died, Romans 5 -8.

All the fullness of deity dwells in him, Colossians 2 -9, yet he has a body of flesh and bones, Luke 24 -39. So we call this the hypostatic union. In the one person of Jesus are two distinct natures. In the one person of Jesus are two distinct natures, the divine and the human.

Now there's a further doctrine that is important here called the communicatio idiomatum. Now that's a fancy Latin theological term that means the communication of the properties. It's a real simple doctrine.

All it means is that the attributes of both the divine and the human nature are ascribed to the single person of Jesus. This means that the man Jesus could lay claim to the glory he had with the Father before the world was made, as he says in John 17 -5.

He could claim that he descended from heaven, as John 3 -13 says. He could also claim to be on the present, as he did in Matthew 28 -20. All these are divine qualities that are claimed by Jesus. But we also know that Jesus was a man who thirsted and who walked.

Now no one doubts those. He was there, he was definitely human. So the attributes of humanity and divinity were both claimed by Jesus. And this is important. You see, as a man, Jesus was able to offer a sacrifice on behalf of men.

As being God, divine, he was able to offer a sacrifice that was able to satisfy God the Father. So he had to be both God and man in order to offer a sacrifice on behalf of men to God. So you see, look at it this way.

Jesus was both God and man on the cross. But only the human nature died because divinity cannot die. How then was the sacrifice of divine value? Well, the Communicatio Ideomatum answers it. The doctrine of the communication of the properties.

In other words, the properties of divinity and humanity were both claimed by the person of Jesus. Therefore, the person, when he died on the cross, was of divine value. This is really important doctrine.

Now, the Bible is about Jesus, John 5 -39. The prophets prophesied about Jesus, Acts 10 -43. The Father bore witness of Jesus, John 5 -37 and John 8 -18. The Holy Spirit bore witness of Jesus, John 15 -26.

The works Jesus did bore witness of himself, John 5 -36, John 10 -25. The multitudes bore witness of Jesus, John 12 -17. And Jesus bore witness of himself, John 14 -6 and John 18 -6. Let me tell you, if any group, organization, church, whatever it might be, does not bear witness of Jesus, does not point to Christ, they're not of God.