Trinity Oneness Debate: Matt Slick vs Rodney Smith

Debate Format and Introductions

All right, we had a little bit of a technical difficulty and it seems to be working fine. Now tech problem was on Rodney's end and I'm an ex-computer tech, so I was giving him some pointers and stuff.

If it continues, then what he'll do is turn his camera off and then that should take care of the problem. If it continues, we'll just, we'll figure something out, you know, and just bear with us. Things happen and that's just life.

All right, so today is August 24th, 2021 and Rodney and I are on opposite sides of a certain theological issue, but he seems to be a nice guy. We've agreed to a debate format of a 10 minute opening. I'm going to put it in here, but I have a feeling he's going to be about as adaptable as I am.

So 10 minute opening, five minute response, then cross-examination for 10 minutes and closing statements for five minutes each, then Q &A from the audience. I can stay longer. I don't know how long he wants to stay.

And some, what's that? I can stay as long as, as long as we're going. Okay.

Sometimes, you know, 10 minutes cross-exam often what happens is, for example, I'll just ask you questions for 10 minutes, you answer. And then it's your turn to ask me questions for 10 minutes. That's one option.

The other one is we could just have a 20 minute, 30 minute, just dialogue back and forth. And I'll let you decide which one you want because I'm game with either one.

Yeah, I am too. I normally like the back and forth. I have a list of questions that might work, but, you know, we can work that into a dialogue. That's fine with me.

So you're the guest. You decide which one you want to do, back and forth or 10 minute segments.

Let's do, let's do the dialogue. Was that 10 minutes? Back and forth. Yeah, that's fine.

20 minutes, half hour-ish. And so he, folks, he and I are going to just, we're going to, we're going to time ourselves. And if we go over a minute, we go over a minute. But it's not a big deal. All right.

Or if we go under a minute, no big deal. And we've agreed that I'm going to go first. Okay. So, Rodney, why don't you introduce yourself? I'll introduce myself and then I'll start.

Okay. I'm Rodney Smith. I appreciate Matt hosting this. And I hope he, thanks for giving an opportunity for little guys like me to to get in the fight on theological issues. And I hope they keep doing that.

I'm one, this Pentecostal Christian from, well, lived in San Diego for a long time and in Auburn, Alabama right now. I attended Bethel Seminary in San Diego, got a Master of Arts there in Concentration in Biblical Studies and still attend there.

I've all but finished my Master of Divinity, all but internship. So I'm entering my internship right now. I've worked with several different, I've had the pleasure of attending and also serving in several different oneness churches as well as Trinitarian churches, including I taught at the International Apostolic Bible College, which is the official Bible college for the Oneness Pentecostal denomination, the Apostolic Assemblies of the Faith in Christ Jesus.

So I've had some teaching experience. I have also currently, currently I have a teaching ministry called the Word Center Online, where I teach courses at different, different Bible, different, different churches.

I'm able to offer biblical education to different churches. They're all Oneness Apostolic, Oneness Pentecostal churches right now. So my, my ministry for reaching out and providing that ministry is right now I'm trying to consolidate it all in a website, which is WordWarriors and it's WordWarriors .cc.

OK. All right. All right. My name is Matt Slick. I'm the founder and director of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, CARM .org. It's had over, I don't know, 150, 60 million visitors. Forgot which.

I've been doing radio for 16 years and 16 and a half years. I've been doing apologetics, written a lot of books, do a lot of debates. And most of you guys know who I am. Not a big deal. Matt Slick is my real name, just in case some people are new and coming in because they sometimes think it's a radio name or, or just some avatar name, whatever.

But that's my real name. So there you go. I am a devout Trinitarian and I consider, no offense meant to anybody who holds it, but I consider Oneness to be a damnable heresy that if you hold to it, you cannot be a true Christian.

And if you're consistent in it, you, when you die, you will face eternal damnation. This is my position. And we can have a discussion on that particular issue later on. It might come up, might not. All right, let me go ahead and begin.

And like I said, we're going to time ourselves. And so I'm just going to, you know, if we go, it's supposed to be 10 minutes, but if we go 11, not a big deal. We both agree to that. So here it goes. All right.

The Trinity Defined and Argued from Scripture

All right. So in the context of our debate tonight, the God of Christianity is either Trinitarian or Unitarian. He is either three eternal, simultaneous and distinct persons, or he is a single eternal person.

Now, the Trinity doctrine is this, that there is one God in three simultaneous, eternal and distinct persons. So if Mr. Smith asserts in any way that the Trinity is three gods, then he is not arguing against the Trinity.

He's not involved in our debate. So as I always teach my students, definitions are important. We cannot determine if God is a Trinity of three persons or just one person if we don't define what we mean by the term person.

So let me offer definition of what it means, as well as some attributes of personhood. And if he disagrees, he can offer something better. We can discuss it because this is important. We need to know what person is before we can talk about personhood and whether God is one person or three.

So personhood is the unique status shared by human beings, angels and God that involves the power to think, act and value. Traditional theories of personhood stress that persons are a substance of rational nature.

More contemporary theories emphasize the ability to act and have emotions. And these often link personhood to the ability of use of language and relationship to others. Now, I agree with this definition.

Some of the characteristics of personhood are such things as self-awareness, awareness of others, having a will, being able to love, being able to speak, make decisions, aware of other people themselves, things like this.

This is the definition of what we have in personhood. So since I have already defined God to some degree, let me expand on it a little bit. There is only one God in all places and all time. There have been no gods before him.

There will be no gods after him. He is the one and only uncreated, necessary Trinitarian being, eternally consisting of three simultaneous and distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The three persons share the same divine essence, but express different functions in creation. Neither person derives his substance from either or both of the others. In the Trinity are unity and diversity, which are equally basic and mutually dependent upon one another.

I can get involved in this a lot more, but I don't have time. In Genesis 126, it says, let us make man in our image. The us is plurality. It is not metaphor, it is not a royal we of self-declaration, nor does it include the angels.

We know this because in Isaiah 44, 24, God says that he alone is the maker of all things. So when he said, let us make man, God first begins his description of himself in the plurality, in the plural.

The continuation of the plural nature is all over the Bible. I'll just give a few references. In Genesis 11, 7, God says, let us go down and confound our language. In Genesis 19, 24, it says that Yahweh rained fire and brimstone from Yahweh out of heaven.

In Isaiah 48, 16, it says, from the time it took place, I was there and now the Lord God has sent me and his spirit. In Exodus 6, 2 and 3, God spoke further than Moses and said to him, I am the Lord, I am Yahweh.

And I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, Lord Yahweh, I did not make myself known to him, to them. Yet in John 6, 46, Jesus says, not that anyone has seen the father except the one who is from God, he has seen the father.

In light of this, who are they seeing? Who were they seeing in the Old Testament? Who's God Almighty, but as Jesus says, is not the father. How would oneness theology respond to this in light of the idea that Jesus distinguishes between himself, between the father and himself, since he is the one person who has seen God the father?

Now, sometimes oneness people and others will say it's an angel or it's a vision, but that's not the case in Exodus 6, 2 and 3, because it says God spoke and said, I am Jehovah. So the text is very clear.

Furthermore, Jesus said in John 6, 38 to 39, for I've come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. This is the will of him who sent me that all he has given me. I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.

And notice in verse 38 that Jesus said he came down from heaven. He said that he came down from heaven not to do his own will, but the will of him who sent him. This must mean that they each have a will.

Before Jesus became flesh, notice I came down from heaven. I, he's identifying himself as that person who was in heaven and came down. We know this because Jesus says he came down from heaven to do the will of him who sent him.

Notice that Jesus says the I, this is very, very important. This is identification as a person. Personhood is recognized by attributes such as being self-aware, aware of others, could say you and yours and me and mine.

Persons have wills, can make decisions, et cetera. This is exactly what we see here. In fact, in John 14, 20, I don't get into that, we're running out of time. Now, what I've presented so far is background information that supports the plurality of God.

But the Trinity is not arrived at by only considering these verses or verses like these. Instead, we arrive at the doctrine of the Trinity systematically by looking at the whole of Scripture. Now, let me repeat this.

This is critical. The doctrine of the Trinity is not arrived at by looking at just a few verses. It is arrived at by systematically applying logic to the full revelation of Scripture. Therefore, there is no single verse that proves or disproves the doctrine of the Trinity.

If my opponent seems to invalidate the doctrine of the Trinity, then he has to do so by reducing the system to something that's false. He'd have to demonstrate that the system I'm going to reveal is false.

And if he does, great, let's see him do it. If he does not do that, then the Trinity teaching is maintained and his oneness theology falls by the wayside. So this is how it works. We know the Bible said there's only one God in all places and all times.

But the Bible says that the Father is called God, the Son is called God, and the Holy Spirit is called God. I can give you all the references, I've got them. Each is all knowing. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are said to be all knowing.

We have fellowship with each one. We have each one has a will. Each one is said to love. Each one speaks. Each one is demonstrating the attributes of what we call personhood. If he wants or anyone just wants to say that the Trinity is not true, then you have to negate these scriptures being supportive of personhood because they're called God.

They have knowledge. You have fellowship with them. They have wills. They can love and they can speak. These are the attributes of personhood, and they're established and expressed by each of them, particularly when they talk to each other.

Now, does the Bible teach that the Father is called God along with the Son? Yep. Does the Bible teach that the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit are each all knowing? Yep. Does it teach that the Bible teach that the Father and the Son have separate wills?

Absolutely. Luke 22, 42, Jesus says in the garden, he wants to escape the crucifixion. He says, not my will, but your will be done. Does the Bible say that we're called in the fellowship with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit?

Yes, it does. That means that fellowship with Jesus is to occur now. There's a question. How do we have fellowship with Jesus right now if he's not God in flesh? We'll get to that later. Probably. Does the Father speak to the Son and the Son speaks to the Father?

Yes, they do. This is exactly what we would expect in personhood. This is exactly what person is. See, these facts are clearly taught in Scripture. This is exactly what we would conclude about the Trinity if we were to look at these verses.

We see there's only one God. We see the Father speaks, the Son speaks, the Holy Spirit speaks. We see each one has a will. They talk to each other. Not my will, but your will. These are the facts that we Trinitarians use to say three persons.

It would be up to Rodney here to show that these scriptures mean that God is not three persons. And to show why the Father is not a person and or that the Son is not a person or that the Holy Spirit is not a person means he'd have to negate the idea of them each having wills, each speaking, recognizing others, have fellowship with them, make decisions, be rational and all of that.

But that is what the Bible teaches about each one. And they're each called God, so there are four or three persons in one God. So he must deny that each one has a will, that each is all knowing, that he speaks, recognizes others in order for his oneness to stand and then say somehow they are all just one person.

But that does not make any sense. If he ignores my presentation on how the Trinity's arrived at, then my argument stands unrefuted. Now, if I acknowledge my opponent acknowledges, as he should, according to scripture, that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit each speak, each have a will, each speaks to the other, each loves, each is all knowing, etc., then he is agreed to exactly how we arrive at the doctrine of the Trinity.

I am curious to know how he's going to tackle this. I'm done. You want me to just go now? Yeah, yeah. You have, I think, 48 seconds. OK, I don't know how you did all that in 10 minutes. Brevity is not my gift.

All right, I'm going to start my timer. Skip stuff. OK. And what I'm going to do is remove myself from the overall window. And if you start breaking up, I'll come back in and show you you're breaking up.

But OK. So I'm good. OK. All right. Thank you.

Oneness as the Biblical View

All right. I'm starting my time. All right. So I'm not going to be responding to Matt's statement right now. I'm going to give my opening statement. We'll have rebuttals later. But man, this is a big topic and so little time.

Maybe it'll unfold throughout this evening. But first, see, I want to start by defining the topic of the debate, by the way, which is the biblical view is what we talked about in the original. So obviously, you know, Matt said, I think, which is true.

And he was proving, you know, he was biblical, which is biblically true. So I wanted to start off by defining biblical and the end trinity and oneness, which is the biblical view of my position is oneness is the biblical view and not trinity.

And by biblical, what I mean is that is expressly stated or taught in Scripture. So by the biblical view, if a view is truly biblical, it's what the biblical writers are seeking to convey. That's what their meaning is.

For example, if the baptism of Jesus at the baptism of Jesus was intended by the writers to to say to show, oh, there is now a plurality or there is a threeness in God or to convey that message, that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three persons in one God, then that would be biblical and a biblical illustration, a biblical presentation.

But actually, it's that scene is, you know, meant to show us that this is God's Son and listen to him. So a couple of examples would be a expressed biblical statement. Christ died to save sinners. Christ died according to the scriptures, was raised according to the scriptures, and then a biblical allusion, such as Matthew 28, 19, baptized in the name of the Father.

Son and Holy Spirit, we see in Acts 2, 38, baptized in the name of Jesus and throughout the book of Acts, baptized in the name of Jesus. So we can deduce from those two statements that the apostles understood that there was one name, Father, Son, Holy Spirit shared the name of Jesus.

So I do not believe this is how I define biblical, by the way, and I do not. I think that in order to make something inviolable, a test of orthodoxy, you have to be a true Christian. It should be something that the Bible explicitly states, explicitly presents and teaches.

All right. Now, Matt defined the Trinity for us already. I'm going to define it a little bit myself. One God in three persons. He said, now, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there is only one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each that one God, and the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit.

They're each individual, except the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son. So there is that necessary distinction. Oneness, on the other hand, what I believe is there is one God who is personal, indivisible, omnipotent.

He's not limited by space and time, who for our sakes manifested himself in visible form. And in 2000 years ago, in the person of Jesus Christ, in human form. Note the similarities between these views.

Trinitarianism is there is one God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit are each God, but Father, Son, Holy Spirit are not one another, personally distinct. In oneness, there is one God as well. Father, Son, Holy Spirit are each God.

But then they're not understood to be distinct in their persons, in their identity. So God is one in his person. So I'll demonstrate that the biblical view is that solely based on the presentation of Scripture and accounting for the totality of biblical revelation.

This is something else. This is something else later. Part of the definition of biblical, I'm all out of order. Is that it must not contradict something else within the Scripture. So the Trinity, and that's oneness.

Yeah, I'll demonstrate that oneness is biblical. It's expressly presented in Scripture and it does not contradict anything in Scripture and it accounts for the totality of biblical revelation. On the other hand, the doctrine of the Trinity is derived from biblical statements and systematically pieced together from the teachings and statement of Scripture.

However, where Trinitarianism violates the Scripture is when it extends beyond scriptural statements based on inferences drawn from the text into formulations and affirmations of statements which are not found anywhere in the text.

So namely, that God is one being yet three co-equal, co-eternal persons that is not found anywhere in the biblical text. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not one another. Father is not the Son. Son is not the Spirit.

That presentation is, that statement or idea is not presented anywhere in the biblical text. So that is where the debate lies on that third part. Where, let's see, if biblical, if, okay, skip that. So God is one in his person.

There are vast problems with the doctrine of the Trinity. I can only go into a few of them. But the God in Scripture is presented as a person. Now, God himself, the one who created all things alone by himself in Isaiah 44, 24, is a person.

Let's see, he said, I am Yahweh who makes all things and stretches forth the heavens alone and spreads abroad the earth by myself. It's the same God in Yahweh in Isaiah 43, 10 through 11. You are my witnesses, my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

Before me, there was no God formed. Neither shall there be after me. I, even I, Yahweh, am Yahweh. Beside me, there is no savior. The same one in Isaiah 45, 12. He says, I have made the earth and created man upon it.

I, my hand, stretch out the heavens. So there is personhood in God himself, Yahweh. This one creator who is alone by himself has to be God proper. If he's three persons, this is all three persons. But the alone, the one who created alone without anyone by him is a person.

By using I, me and all of these personal pronouns, he's indicating that he is personal. There is, let's see, proofs. There are some difficulties with the doctrine of the Trinity as far as. Yeah, when there's proofs about Yahweh raining down fire and brimstone from Yahweh in heaven or in the baptism of Jesus, if those are used to, you see father, son and Holy Spirit coming down like a dove.

There's an assumption that each of them are spatially located, that the son is only in Jesus when they're all supposed to be co-equal, co-eternal. And those passages are completely explained by God's omnipresence.

They take the relationship between the father and the son and in the incarnation and apply it to the eternal Godhead. When God says in Hebrews 1, quoting 2 Samuel 7, I will be to him a father, he will be to me a son.

It assumes the preeminence of the father. The father is said to create through the son. The father sends the son in John 6, 38 and 39. If the father sends the son in John 6, 37 and 38, and Jesus came not to do his will, but the will of him who sent me, why is one person of the Trinity submitting to the other person of the Trinity?

Why is one sending the other? When Jesus ascends, why does he said to only be ascending to the father and not to the whole Trinity? There should be, where is the Holy Spirit and God and the second person who is eternal in heaven as well?

There is a duality in scripture that proves oneness. For example, in John 1, 1, there's the word. The word is with God. The word is God. The word becomes flesh. There's no mention of the Holy Spirit there.

In Revelation 22, 21 through 22, there's the throne of God and of the lamb and his servant shall see, shall serve him in Revelation, Revelation 21, 22 to 23, his servant shall see him and see his face.

But the synonym, there's a vast synonymity that proves oneness. We've already seen that in Revelation. But in Isaiah 9, 6 is a child born and he has a dual identity. He's a son that's given and he is the everlasting father.

When, let's see, the spirit of God is called the spirit of Christ and Christ in you, the spirit of the son, the Lord is that spirit. In 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians 3, 17, in 1st Corinthians 15, the last Adam, Christ is made a life giving spirit.

In Acts 2, 38, we received the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5, 16, we walk in the spirit. But in Colossians 2, 6, as you have therefore have received Jesus Christ, so walk in him. So in John chapter 14, there's a huge, my last thing of synonymity here.

Jesus says in John 14, 7, the father, if you would have known me, you would have known my father also. You have now both seen him and known him. In verses 15 through 26 of John 14, Jesus says, I will pray to the father.

He will send you another comforter. And he says, I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. And the world cannot receive him because it neither sees him nor knows him. And his disciple, Judas, not as scary asked, how will you manifest yourself to us and not to the world?

So he knew what he was talking about, manifesting Jesus himself coming back, as he said in Matthew 28, 20. I am with you always. The son, Jesus ascends to heaven and becomes omnipresent in his disciples.

But that's described as the father and the son in us, as well as Jesus coming to us. So in John 14, a little bit later, Jesus says that he answers Judas question. If anyone loves me, my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him.

So there's this synonymity in 1 Corinthians 12. There's the same spirit. The spirit gives gifts to the body in Ephesians 4. Christ gives gifts to the body. In Ephesians and 1 Corinthians 12, God sets up the leaders in the church.

In Ephesians 4, it is God who does it. And my very last point here, because I'm a minute over, Ephesians 4, 6, it says there is one God who is above all. In John 3, 30 through 31, John the Baptist says the one who is from heaven, speaking of Jesus, is above all.

So there is a synonymity that shows that Jesus is the father manifested in the flesh. He is the visible expression, the visible image of the invisible God. And he is. And so that proves the synonymity, proves that the second half or that the third part of the Trinity, the father is not the son, is not true.

And one is true.

There we go. Sorry, muted myself. Are you, I assume you're done, right? Yeah, I hear you now. Okay. All right. So now we'll do a five minute response, then you'll do a five minute response, and then we're going to just do a dialogue back and forth.

All right. All right. Let me put myself on this full screen here. Let's see. I think I'd do it this way and then put on my thing for five minutes-ish. He went over. That's fine. We already agreed, folks.

That's fine to do. We didn't, we don't care about that. Really, we're just using this as guides. Okay, here we go. So he defined what is biblical. I'm grateful for that. He said expressly stated or taught in scripture, and it must not contradict anything in scripture.

I totally agree. He said, Trinitarians violate this when it goes beyond the scripture. We don't go beyond the scripture. And you'll see that, namely, that God is one being and three distinct simultaneous persons.

That's called begging the question. He's assuming his position to be true. We have yet to establish if it is or is not. But he, of course, is going to do that, just as I'm going to beg the question by assuming my position to be true.

All right. And he said that the doctrine of the Trinity is not presented anywhere in the text. And he says where, namely, that God is one being and three distinct simultaneous persons. This is a mistake on his part.

You see, it works both ways. The Bible doesn't say God is one person. If we are required to have a theological statement to support a particular theological view, the way the person, the opponent wants it, well, then I can say, show me that the Bible says there's only one person.

It doesn't say that any place in scripture. God is one person. It doesn't say that. Now it says God is one in Exodus, excuse me, in Exodus 6 -4, but the word one, echad, is a composite unity. So that's not a good place to go.

But nevertheless, so that argument works against him. He said that if there's a definitive Trinitarian statement to be biblical or to address that, I'm going through my notes. He said the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and each are the one God.

Now, we're short on time, so he really can't explain what he means by that. But we Trinitarians don't say that, but some do, that they are the one God. We would say that the three persons comprise the totality of one God.

I'm not sure if he understands, maybe we can find this out, divine simplicity, perichoresis, economic trinity, and ontological trinity, because these are necessary to understand if you're going to debate the Trinity, along with when you debate, as we talk about Jesus later, the hypostatic union and the cuneicatio idiomatum, which are necessary to understand who Christ is and what he's done in totality as they relate to the doctrine of the Trinity.

But nevertheless, he acknowledged personhood by saying that they, persons, say I and me, use personal pronouns, and that in that God is acknowledging that he's personal. This is what he said, that God's acknowledging that he's personal by using those kind of pronouns.

Good, because this will become very important later on when we discuss the personhood of Christ, personhood of the Father, their relationship. Because if I can show you that there's at least two persons in the Godhead, which I don't affirm is only two, but at least two, oneness is falsified, oneness is proven to be false.

So I'll be using that statement later. He said that they, the Trinitarians, take the relationship between the Father and the Son and apply it to the eternal God. Yes, we do. That's correct. It's refreshing to at least find out that Rodney here has a much better understanding of the Trinity than my last one, this opponent, who said that the Trinity was three gods and that he knew more about what I believe than I do.

And so Rodney's not doing that. I'm grateful for that. He assumes the preeminence of the Father. This has to do with the economic trinity. Don't know if he knows about that. The Father created the Son.

This is just more doctrine of the Trinitarian extent, which is necessarily true because it's the Father who sent the Son from all eternity. You have to exist in order to be sent. It's a real simple thing.

We'll get to that later. The Father sent the Son. Why did Jesus not do his own will, but the will of the Father? That's a good discussion. Why would he do that? Because if he came to do the will of the Father who sent him, and he said he was John 6, 38, he came down from heaven to do the will of him, not to do his own will, but the will of him who sent me.

You have to exist in order to be sent. And he sent from heaven logically necessarily means that the preincarnate Christ was in heaven with the Father and was sent by the Father. And since he already admitted, these are the terms of personhood because of his I, me and pronouns, that this is what God designates as person.

Then we have a perfect example that by his own admission of that very thing. And let me go to my one last thing here. He said, I will not leave you alone. I will come to you in reference to John 15, 26.

Rodney, you misspoke there where Jesus says, I will come to you in reference to the Holy Spirit. No, he said, I will send you the Holy Spirit. But not I will come to you. It's just, we often, you know, it happens.

We misspeak sometimes and we correct ourselves later. But there you go. There's my five minute response. You're on. All right. Okay, let's see.

Oh, five minutes, right? I'm bad at this. Five minutes. All right. Matt's opening statement. He said that oneness was a damnable heresy. You cannot believe it. You cannot be a true Christian and believe that.

Then if that's the case, then we would need to, well, have a statement like that in scripture. You can't believe what is oneness believe. I showed that oneness believes everything that Trinity believes.

That there is one God and the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are each God, except for the part that the three are distinct persons rather than the three being the one personal God. So we would need to have a statement of that last statement.

Unless you believe that Jesus is not the Father, the Holy Spirit is not the Father. If you confuse, such as in the Athanasian Creed, you know, unless you affirm this and separate all of the persons, then you're anathema.

Matt defined personhood and I agree with it. All of his definition of personhood, think, act, value, love, relate, have a will. Now, he said the Trinity is one God, unity and diversity, eternally consisting of three persons.

That's what the scriptures teach that there is one God and that one God is a person. So if he consists of three persons, then what about, you know, in Isaiah 44, 24, God created all things alone by himself.

And in the New Testament, we see the Father creating by the Son. Well, why does the Father get credit for what the Son is creating? Rather, what we have is a God who creates by himself, who that God is one person, and we can have a relationship with God.

We can relate to him in an I-thou relationship. I would like to hear what Matt's view is of us relating to God himself as the totality of God. Is he a person or do we have to relate to, or can we only relate to the individual persons of the Trinity?

Um, let's see. So I affirmed that the omnipresent Spirit of God, God is omnipresent Spirit. He is eternal. He is invisible. I don't think I said that, but he has made himself visible. And so he has manifested himself in the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament.

He's come in the flesh in the New Testament. He's visible. He's knowable. He's experiencing his world, and he creates through that world. That's how the Son can say, have said to the Father, is the Father creates through the Son.

That's why the Father gets credit. Because the Father, in John 14, uh, 17, 3, Jesus said, the Father is the only true God, and eternal life is knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

In 1 John 1, 1 to 3, 3, John says, uh, this is the, this is eternal life that they may, uh, wait, that, uh, this, you are in him who is true and in his Son, Jesus Christ. Um, this is the true God in eternal life.