October 14, 2020 Show with Vern Poythress on “The Mystery of the Trinity”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday. On this 14th day of October 2020,

I'm so thrilled to have for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, somebody that I've been wanting to interview for quite a long time, and finally this has come to fruition.

I am speaking of Dr. Vern Poythress, Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Biblical Interpretation, and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, author of a number of books, and today we're going to be discussing one of them,

The Mystery of the Trinity, The Trinitarian Approach to the Attributes of God, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Vern Poythress. Thank you very much for inviting me. Oh, it's my pleasure, brother, and well, before we go into something that is a tradition here, when we have a first -time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we normally have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, what kind of religious atmosphere they were raised in, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself, and we will have you do that, but first, tell us about Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for those of our listeners who may be unaware of that fine institution, although I'm sure the vast majority already are, but we have new listeners in our audience very often, new

Christians, I should say, and we also even have those that are not Christian at all, Muslims and atheists and others, so why don't you tell our listeners about Westminster Theological Seminary.

Okay, well, Westminster Seminary is a Bible -believing seminary in suburban

Philadelphia. It was founded in 1929 by a number of people, but the spearhead was from J.

Gresham Machen, because the denomination that controlled

Princeton Seminary began to corrupt its orthodoxy. It's a long story, but Westminster Seminary was determined to continue the tradition of what's called

Old Princeton, Princeton before it was reformed away from its commitment to the

Bible and to the teaching of the Bible. As the name suggests, it's named after the

Westminster Confession of Faith, which is a classic confession stemming out of the

Reformation, which summarizes the teaching of the Bible. So it's in the tradition, it's called

Reformed Theology, but the main thing is that we believe the Bible is the very Word of God, and that we teach people to preach the

Bible as the Word of God, and not anything else. Well, praise

God, if anybody wants to find out more information about Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, go to wts .edu,

wts .edu. And now, as I mentioned before, just moments ago, we would like you to fulfill our tradition today that we have where our first -time guests give a summary of their salvation testimony.

Right. Well, I made a commitment to Jesus Christ when

I was nine years old at a church camp. Wow. It was a really blessing to come to faith in Christ then.

I grew up in the context of parents and a church that believed the

Bible and that believed in Jesus as the Savior, and so I heard the message from an early age.

But that summer at the church camp, I heard the message again, of course, and I made a personal commitment myself.

I realized I was a sinner, that I had no hope of saving myself, that I needed

Jesus as the Savior. The invitation was given, they did it around the campfire every evening, they invited people to come forward if they wanted to commit themselves to Jesus as their

Savior and become His disciples. I did it. And for years I said, that's when

I became a Christian. It was a monumental experience in my life, and maybe that was when

I became a Christian. But afterwards, as I continued to reflect on it, I thought

I didn't disbelieve the message that I had heard even before that. But it was different because I personally, it wasn't just, oh, we as a family go to church.

It was me personally, and it was a personal commitment that was meaningful to me.

And then the circles I grew up were, it was Baptist, so I immediately, when we got home, from camp,

I was put into a class for candidates for baptism.

So the pastor taught us all some things, and then I was baptized at nine years old.

Well, that was the beginning, but of course there was lots of story after that.

But after that, I can remember from fairly early having an interest in spiritual things and praying to God and, you know, doing things that Christians do, and I read my

Bible, and we continued, of course, as a family to go to church. Well, praise

God. And how did the thought come into your head, or what providential circumstances rose up around you that led you to the conviction,

I am going to pursue being a professor or a teacher?

I see. Well, yeah, there's a long story there, too, but the

Lord gave me gifts in mathematics. I loved mathematics from an early age. I wanted to be an engineer, and then as I got into algebra and pure mathematics,

I wanted to be a college teacher of mathematics. I loved what I saw, the beauty of mathematics.

I know it's hard for some people, but for me it was beautiful. But I was also growing, of course, in my

Christian faith, and so by the time

I was in grad school, I noticed that my heart -level interest had shifted.

I was reading books about the Bible, books about theology in my spare time rather than math books.

I said, what does this say? So I realized that it was time to reassess before God.

Lord, what do you want me to do? And I decided to finish the grad program.

It was a doctoral program in mathematics. I decided to finish the program I was in and then go to seminary, but at that point,

I would leave mathematics behind, except as a hobby. So it was a matter of just shifting gradually in terms of my relative interest and the kind of level of heart devotion to the area of Bible and theology.

So when I went to seminary, I still didn't know what God wanted to make out of me. And I told

Him if He wanted me to be a pastor, that of course I was going to be willing.

He could do anything with me that He wanted. That was what it means to be a Christian. You follow Christ wherever He leads.

So I told God that, but I also told Him, look, if you're going to make me a pastor, you're going to have to really help me, because I sensed that I was more a bookish person than I was a people person.

Well, I've tried to grow in the area of people as well, but it did develop in the direction of my doing the more bookish calling of teaching in the

New Testament. Great. Well, now we have the opportunity to delve into this new book,

The Mystery of the Trinity. The Trinitarian Approach to the Attributes of God.

Well, perhaps if you could, it might be a wise place for you to start by giving us, as briefly as you possibly can, with a subject so deep and so vast and mysterious, as the title hints at.

Tell us, in summary form, who is the

Trinity? Yes. Well, there is one God who is three persons. That's a simple summary.

But if you try to go beyond that simple summary, it gets mysterious. Well, it's already mysterious, because how can there be one

God and three persons, each of whom is fully God? So that's a short summary of the doctrine of the

Trinity. But then, when you go beyond that, then you say, well, is that really taught in the Bible?

The word Trinity is not in the Bible, but the teaching is.

There's clear teaching that there is only one God. There's clear teaching that the Father, God the

Father, is truly God, that Jesus truly is God, that the Holy Spirit truly is God.

And there's also teaching that the three persons that I've just mentioned, that they are distinct from one another.

So, you put that all together, and the Bible is teaching the doctrine of the

Trinity. Yes, and I have been told by Christian apologists, and one in particular, actually, my friend for many years,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who's a Reformed Baptist apologist, and author of the book,

The Forgotten Trinity, he has told me, and others have said this, that very often, they have been dismayed when having conversations with Christians, sometimes

Christians who have been Christians for decades, and when the subject of the

Trinity comes up, they may provide, unfortunately, a modalist definition of what that is.

Have you found that in your own experience, that people don't really seem to have a grasp on the separateness of the persons, and yet the fact that they are in one

Godhead, they are all one God, and yet three, not only separate, but co -equal and co -eternal persons?

Well, the error that you call modalism is probably the most common error in the

Church. I can't comment as to just how common it is, and it's partly because less than some professors,

I don't do a lot of conference speaking, and the home church, where I am, is a well -taught church.

Well, that's a good thing, that you don't have that same kind of problem that you've encountered, but I guess it still exists, nonetheless.

And this is a subject matter that has even evoked differences of opinion in the body of Christ on how much someone has to understand and believe in this concept in order to be rightly called a brother and sister in Christ.

Is this what you would consider a vital, core teaching of the

Church that is really inseparable from biblical orthodoxy? If we find out that somebody that we have identified as a

Christian, who identifies themselves as a Christian, has some things really mixed up about this doctrine, should we still embrace them as a brother or sister?

How do you handle that situation? Right, it's an excellent question, but a difficult question.

I do think that the reality of the Trinity is vital and essential to the

Christian faith, because we have to know what God we believe in, and there are false gods all around.

Not only the god of Islam, but the gods, many gods of Hinduism, and you can go from one religion to another.

So it is vital. On the other hand, faith is not completely an intellectual thing,

Christian faith. There's an intellectual component, but at the heart of it is trust.

It's trust in Jesus Christ as Savior. And that means that you don't have to have worked out everything intellectually in order to come to genuine faith.

We hope that somebody grows intellectually in all kinds of ways, in their holiness of heart as well.

We hope that they grow after they become Christian, but when they first become a

Christian, there's lots of things that they still need to know. So we must be patient with that kind of thing.

That's very different from somebody who thinks he knows too much and is actually vigorously teaching a doctrinal error.

And the worst errors, which we call heresies, are errors that corrupt the central truth of salvation, what you need to know to be saved.

And the Trinitarian errors are that kind, because you have to believe in one

God, and you have to believe that that one God is active in your salvation in all the ways that He is in the

Bible. So that you relate to God who is your Father, right? That's God the

Father. You relate through Jesus Christ who is God who has saved you and who has become a substitute for you.

And you relate to the Holy Spirit who indwells you and teaches you the truth that is communicated in the

Bible. You have to have all three persons operative. But that doesn't mean you have to have self -consciously worked it out.

God can save people who are still confused. I would like to say we're saved by faith in Christ, not by knowledge of doctrine.

And there are people who know a lot of doctrine, including Trinitarian doctrine, who are not saved, because it's merely an intellectual thing for them.

And their hearts have not been changed. They've not been born again. It's like Nicodemus. So that makes it a lot more complicated to assess where other people are.

So there can be people who are welcome to come to church and welcome to listen to the sermons and we embrace and love.

But if the leaders of the church, the elders in our church, if they're doing their job, then if this person wants to become a member, then they interview them and they try to discern whether they have a credible profession of faith in Christ.

If they don't, then they say, we don't think you're ready. Stay around. We'll give you some literature to help you understand better.

We'll pray for you. So it's a friendly thing. Then there are people who are members of the church, but they are still expected to be growing.

So some of their formulations concerning God may be a little off, but we work with them.

We don't say, well, you said it wrong, so you're out. No, of course not.

So with those kinds of people, you work with them and you say, we hope for the best.

So you don't understand this as well as you should. What you said was really modalistic, but we're going to continue to work with you.

So there's that kind of person. And then there's a person, as I say, who actively wants to teach error.

In a biblically faithful church, the elders are responsible. You can see it in Acts 20.

The elders are responsible to guard the sheep against wolves that come in.

And the Apostle Paul says to the elders in Ephesus, even from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things.

So even among the leaders of the church, there can be people who are teaching not only minor errors, but serious errors that corrupt people's faith in God.

So those people then have to be confronted. And if they won't repent, then they have to be thrown out of the church.

It's called excommunication. So that doesn't mean that they won't go somewhere else and try to corrupt the

Christian faith in some other community. But the denomination I'm in, the

Presbyterian Church in America, has standards so that if you are excommunicated from one congregation, they won't accept you anywhere else.

So there's some protection of saying, look, this person has proved to be somebody who teaches serious error, and we are saying don't receive him yourself.

Now it's unfortunate that that kind of thing has to be done, but we have to be realistic about the time we live in.

Ever since the first century until now, false teaching has been a problem.

It's there in the New Testament. As I said, the Apostle Paul warns against it in Acts 20, but also in his letters, his counsel to Timothy, he's talking about false teachers there.

It's something that has been a strategy of Satan, really, in the end.

Ever since the first century, we have to be realistic about it, and we have to be realistic about what

Christian love means. It does mean continuing to pray for people in whatever condition they are.

But it also means that we love the sheep of God's flock enough to protect them.

Great. And by the way, I'm so thankful to have you confirm that confused people can still go to heaven, because I am very often one of the most confused people

I know. So that's very reassuring. And I say, again, it's

Christ who saves us, not our orthodoxy as such. Amen. And of course, judging from what you have already just said, one cannot run with that in order to welcome everyone into the

Church, who happens to be, especially if they are knowledgeable people who are actively trying to tear down the

Church with their false teachings or false practices. And those can be all kinds of things, whether they be cultic or leftist or what have you.

They are unfortunately multiplying very rapidly in the

Church today, and it is certainly obviously not only a glorious time to see the

Gospel continue to spread and to see souls saved all over the globe, but it's also obviously heart -wrenching to see people that you once knew and loved or thought you did, or at least people that you once valued in the literary world or as a preacher or teacher who later comes out of the closet, as it were, with a really serious heresy.

So we have to keep that balance of not being too harsh towards those who are truly among the elect for whom

Christ died, and we have to also be very leery and on the watch for wolves in sheep's clothing entering into the flock, or rising up from the flock.

I'm going to give our email address for those of our listeners who want to join us on the air with a question of their own.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com

And as always, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you believe in something that you know your pastor disagrees with, or your denomination disagrees with, and you don't want to identify yourself.

Perhaps you're even a pastor, and you've come to embrace a teaching that you know your fellow elders are in disagreement over, or your denomination, or what have you.

Whatever the case is, if it's a personal and private matter, we understand you wanting to remain anonymous.

But if it's just a general theological question on the Trinity, or you may have another question about Reformed theology, which is the theology embraced by my guest and myself, if it's just a general question, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Let's see here. We have B .B.

in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, How is this book, The Mystery of the

Trinity, different from your other book, Knowing and the Trinity, How Perspectives in Human Knowledge Imitate the

Trinity? That's obviously an informed listener, to know that there's another book that I wrote.

So I can't help chuckling, but it's a good question. The first book is really about the degree and the marvel that God's Trinitarian nature is reflected in various ways in which we can analyze the world in human thought.

So it's about perspectives, triads of perspectives that mysteriously imitate the

Trinity. So, you know, I could go into that more, but that's not the subject matter of this session.

The second book, The Mystery of the Trinity, has really two main topics as disclosed in the subtitle.

The first topic being the Trinity, and the second being the attributes of God. Now, the attributes of God just means

His perfections, the things that single Him out as God.

For instance, He is infinite, He is eternal, He's everywhere present, He knows all things, all those are attributes of God.

He is perfect love. That's an attribute of God. So all of those things describe

God, but I use the Trinity to help deepen our understanding of the attributes of God.

Great, well, guess what, B .B.? You have won a free copy of the book we are addressing today,

The Mystery of the Trinity, A Trinitarian Approach to the Attributes of God. So make sure we get your full mailing address in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

In fact, we still want you to give us that address, but it might be quicker for you to stop by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, where these books will be waiting for you.

As soon as we get them. We didn't get them yet, but you can call them at CVBBS and see if they have arrived yet, and you can pick up your copy as long as you identify yourself as a winner in the

Iron Trump and Zion radio audience. Thank you for your excellent question.

I have another question that I will read to you, and then I will have you answer it when we return from our first break.

We have a listener, I will give her full name because she happens to be somebody

I have interviewed many times myself on this program. She is a former

Mormon who, by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, converted to historic, biblical, orthodox

Christianity. Her name is Dr. Latane C. Scott, an author in her own right, author of the

Mormon Mirage and many other wonderful books. Latane C.

Scott's question is, I have been reading Dr. Poythress's book In the Beginning Was the

Word, Language, A God -Centered Approach, and loving it. He compares

God to a novelist who commissions the characters in his novel to act creatively while within the parameters of the personalities the writer has assigned to each character.

But the author ultimately controls the actions of the characters in the same way that God the

Father commissions the Son to make choices, act creatively, but in ways that harmonize with God the

Father's plan. Could Dr. Poythress please give an example of how

Jesus made choices or acted creatively? We'll have you answer that when we come back from our first break.

If anybody else wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Vern Poythress. We'll be right back with Dr.

Vern Poythress. We'll be right back with Dr.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Armisen, the host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full program is Dr. Verne Poythress. We are discussing his book,

The Mystery of the Trinity. Before I return to a question that was asked of Dr.

Poythress by Dr. Latane C. Scott of Albuquerque, New Mexico, I just wanted to read a couple of endorsements for this book by some very impressive folks that I have interviewed on this program.

One is Dr. D .A. Carson, Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Dr. Carson says, This book is a valiant and thought -provoking attempt to approach the attributes of God through the doctrine of the

Trinity. While broadly endorsing the classical doctrine of God, Poythress is suspicious of our reliance on well -defined technical terms and that are required to do our work for us.

He wants us to abandon our implicit reliance on Aristotelian metaphysics in favor of the sharpening power of the mystery of the

Trinity. In the hands of Poythress, this becomes an appeal to become more robustly biblical, not less.

This book is truly transforming, a capstone to all that Poythress has taught us over the last two or three decades.

Read it slowly and carefully. We also have another individual, a very prominent individual who has been a guest on this program,

Dr. Philip Graham Rykin, President at Wheaton College. Dr. Poythress applies his deep knowledge of scripture, his well -informed knowledge of historical theology, and his brilliant mind to some of the most difficult controversies in the theology of the divine attributes.

And there are many more commendations for this book as well. As I was saying before, before the break,

Dr. Latane C. Scott of Albuquerque, New Mexico, said,

I've been reading Dr. Poythress's book. In the beginning was the word language, a

God -centered approach, and loving it. He compares God to a novelist who commissions the characters in his novel to act creatively while within the parameters of the personalities the writer has assigned to each character.

But the author ultimately controls the actions of the characters in the same way that God the

Father commissions the Son to make choices, act creatively, but in ways that harmonize with God the

Father's plan. Could Dr. Poythress please give an example of how Jesus made choices or acted creatively?

Yes. I want to first pick up on another aspect of that question, because the person mentions that Jesus acts in harmony with the

Father's plan. And I think if we understand his creativity, we have to understand it in that context.

So for instance, John 5, verse 19,

So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the

Father doing, for whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. So there's no sense of independence, of, well,

I'm just going to do what I want to do, and ignore the plan of the Father.

Of course, the plan of the Father is worked out in fellowship with the Son. So there's no tension there.

And then also in John 12, For I have not spoken, this is verse 49,

For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment, what to say and what to speak.

So the creativity of Jesus is not an independence from the fellowship with his

Father. But now to give you an example of that creativity, Luke chapter 5, verse 12, a man comes to Jesus who is described as being full of leprosy.

And when he comes, he says to Jesus, If you will, you can make me clean.

If you will. So he realizes that it's up to Jesus.

Jesus has the ability to make him whole. But he has to decide.

And that's the way we are as sinners. We can't say, well, you have to do this for me. Right? Rather, it is out of his compassion and his will that he says,

Of course he does heal the man. He does say, I will. Right? So that's his creativity to decide to do this thing rather than another choice.

Now, I think what I had in mind, I'd have to look up the passage in my book. But I think what

I had in mind was more related actually to the doctrine of creation. Because when

God creates the world, he creates a marvelously differentiated world. But he does it by speaking.

And the background for that speaking is the eternal speaking that's mentioned in John 1.

What, in the beginning, was the Word? And the Word was with God and the Word was

God. Well, that Word is then later identified as Jesus Christ, who comes and takes on human nature.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, John 1, 14. So the background for the creation, and you can see in the beginning, right?

And you see all things were made through him in John 1. It's clearly that the background is clearly

John, not John, Genesis 1. Where God creates and says,

Let there be light, and there was light. Well, it's up to God. Here's the creativity. He didn't have to make anything at all, right?

But having decided to make a world, there's lots of choices, there's lots of creativity in exactly what kind of world that he's going to make.

And he exercises that creativity and expressiveness. I mean, we see it every day, you know?

What a marvelous God who's made chipmunks, who are, there's some in our backyard.

What a marvelous God who made hummingbirds, right? And as you go on and on, you say, Wow, God is really so creative.

How did he do that? By speaking, right? And so behind that is the eternal speech, which is

God the Son. So that's why I associate the Son, particularly with that creativity of God, because he decided in speaking through the

Son, to make one thing rather than a lot of other possibilities that we don't know about.

Well, thank you, Dr. Latane C. Scott. Make sure that we have your mailing address in Albuquerque, New Mexico, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS, can ship that copy of The Mystery of the

Trinity out to you, since you have won a copy by virtue of your submitting a question today.

And we want to thank P &R Publishing as well for providing with us a number of copies that we can give away today to our listeners who submit questions.

A limited number, of course, so unfortunately not everybody who's listening, who writes in,

I should say, will be able to get one, but at least a number of you can.

And by the way, I would appreciate our listeners praying for Dr. Latane C. Scott, who happens to be not only a longtime friend, but a frequently interviewed guest on this program.

She just lost, after I believe it was over 40 years of marriage, her husband, Dan, went home to be with the

Lord after a very long, debilitating illness. And of course, there's much reason for rejoicing, knowing that he was indeed a

Christian, and is certainly with the Savior, whom he loved to proclaim all these years, and no longer feeling the horrible effects of illness, but at the same time, obviously after such a long marriage, especially

Dr. Scott, is no doubt still in the grieving process. So please pray for her and her family.

In fact, they do have adult children as well, so pray for them as well, that the

Lord gives them the peace that surpasses all understanding. Well, we have David in Sumner, Washington.

Did the Holy Spirit indwell the Old Testament saints, or did he only come upon them?

Are you there, Dr. Poythress? I am. There's a passage in John, where Jesus says that the

Holy Spirit is going to come. And he says, he is with you and will be in you, which suggests an advance in the way in which the

Holy Spirit is at work. And what Jesus is referring to, I believe, is the Day of Pentecost.

So in the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is poured out on the church in a new and powerful way.

And that is associated with his indwelling each of us individually, so that our body is a temple of the

Holy Spirit. That's 1 Corinthians 6 .19.

So the question remains then, what's happening in the Old Testament? And it's true that most of the descriptions of the

Holy Spirit are with respect to particular spectacular actions, either prophets being inspired by the

Spirit to speak, or somebody like Samson, the Spirit of God comes on him and gives him the supernatural strength, that kind of thing.

But we have to be cautious here because people are always saved in the same way. Even in the

Old Testament, there's only one way of salvation, namely through Christ, through faith in Christ, and through the work of Christ being applied to you.

And how is that work applied? It's applied through the presence of the Holy Spirit. So there's a fundamental continuity because there's only one way of salvation.

But at the same time, in the Old Testament, that work of Christ has to be applied backwards in time, so to speak.

And that's really a mystery. You know, how can people benefit from the work of Christ?

How can they benefit from the fact that He bore their sins and He's raised to life to justify us?

That's Romans 4 .25. How can they benefit from it before He did it?

But of course, God reckons in a mysterious way, He reckons backward because He knows that Christ is going to accomplish it.

And so people receive those benefits, but they receive them, you might say, at a qualitatively lower level.

But still, they're saved. And we know that they're saved through the work of the

Holy Spirit changing the heart. So there's a sense in which then we can infer, well, in some way that anticipates the

New Testament, then the Holy Spirit was in the hearts of these people.

And David in Psalm 51 prays, Take not your Holy Spirit from me. Right? With respect to because he sinned, right?

But he's repentant. So the Holy Spirit is going to continue with him. So that's what

I would say, that it's a kind of both and because we have to understand that there's one way of salvation.

But we enjoy that one way in a much fuller sense in the New Testament because it's already been accomplished now in time and space through the work of Christ.

Well, thank you, David. And please make sure we have your full mailing address in Sumner, Washington so that we can have cvbbs .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship your free copy of The Mystery of the Trinity out to you.

I don't want to go too far afield of our subject at hand but I did have a follow -up question to David's.

In fact, I'm going to take it when we return from our midway break because we have to get to our middle break right now. If anybody wants to send in a question, send it to ChrisOrenson at gmail .com

and also please, while we have this longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

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While they do that, we air our globally heard commercials on this end.

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And that will further ensure that they will remain our advertisers for a longer period of time further ensuring that we will remain on the air for a longer future because we absolutely depend upon our advertisers and the funding that comes from them to exist.

But don't go away. We'll be back after these messages with more of Verne Poitras and the mystery of the

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Before we return to Verne Poythress and our discussion on The Mystery of the Trinity, which is his latest book,

I just have a few announcements to make. First of all, tomorrow, on this program,

I am delighted that we are having a return visit from Pastor Kurt M.

Smith, and he's going to be addressing his latest book, Thundering the Word, The Awakening Ministry of George Whitefield.

That's tomorrow, Thursday, the 15th of October, right here on this program.

Then, on Friday of this week, we have a first -time guest. We have

John Harris joining us for the very first time to discuss his new book,

Social Justice Goes to Church, The New Left in Modern American Evangelicalism.

And we will be giving away free copies of both of those books over the next two days for listeners who submit questions to the authors that we're interviewing, so make sure that you get those questions for us so that you can be blessed if you're one of the first number of questioners to receive these books for free, compliments of the publishers.

Also, I wanted to give you plenty of advance notice for something you should certainly have marked down on your calendars.

The last week of October, that's October 26th through the 30th, God willing, we are going to be airing a five -day tribute to Dr.

Greg Bonson. Dr. Bonson is a hero to many in the body of Christ, especially those who are in the field of apologetics, something that Dr.

Bonson championed. And we are going to be featuring at least five different guests on a couple of those days.

We'll probably even have multiple guests who knew Dr. Bonson very well, and or,

I should say, have been enormously blessed by his writings, his teachings, and his legacy.

And they will all be paying tribute to Dr. Bonson, and this is all connected to the

Bonson Project, where an effort is being made by a number of Reformed men who love the teaching and writing of Dr.

Bonson, and some of whom actually love him by their own personal friendships with him before he departed this earth and entered into eternity.

This is a project to purchase the rights for all of Dr.

Bonson's writings so that they can be made available for free to the public. So this is a very worthy cause for the sake of enriching the body of Christ with the knowledge that God had given

Dr. Bonson, knowledge and wisdom. So I hope that you tune in from the 26th through the 30th for that five -day tribute to Dr.

Greg Bonson, and we'll have more details on the actual names of those guests that will be on the program during the five days to pay tribute to Dr.

Bonson. Also, folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please,

I'm urging you, go to ironsharpenxionradio .com, click support, then click click to donate now.

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In other words, don't punish your church by blessing Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. Never do that, and never put your family in financial jeopardy if you are struggling to survive and make ends meet.

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click support, then click click to donate now as frequently as you can and give as generously as you can.

Also, if you want to advertise with us, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.

As long as whatever it is you want to promote is compatible with what we believe. You don't have to believe exactly as I do, but you need to be promoting something that's at least compatible with what

I believe. We would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we depend upon our advertisers, as I've been mentioning, we depend upon our advertisers' funding to exist in addition to our donors.

So send us that email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line. Also, if you are not a member of a local

Bible -believing church, and you need help finding one, no matter where on the planet earth you live,

I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the globe, and I have helped many people in all parts of the world find churches that are biblically faithful near where they live, sometimes within five minutes or less from their own homes, and they didn't even know that these churches existed.

So if you need help finding a church, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.

That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr. Vern Poythress on the mystery of the

Trinity. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And Dr.

Poythress, I was just about to ask you in follow -up to our listener

Dave in Washington State. I wanted you to clarify something because I think it is very much connected to his question where he was asking were the

Old Testament saints filled with the Spirit or did the Spirit just fall upon them?

I can't remember his exact wording right now, but there are people, there are even preachers and teachers who try to so separate the

Old from the New Covenant that they will actually teach that there were two different ways someone could be made right with God and be saved.

Some will actually teach that people were earning their way to God in some way in the

Old Testament by obedience and that this concept of salvation by grace alone through faith alone through Christ alone is completely a

New Covenant concept. Now obviously the Old Testament saints didn't know

Christ by name and so on. We understand that. We understand that although the cross, the crucifixion, although prophesied in the

Old Covenant very clearly did not physically happen until Christ walked this earth and lived a sinless and obedient life and so on, but is that true or false that the

Old Testament saints are in Heaven for an entirely different reason than those in the

New Covenant meaning that the Old Covenant was actually teaching salvation by works whereas we enjoy the freedom of being saved by grace through faith alone?

The answer is no, there is only one way of salvation. Amen. And you can see that taking place for instance in Psalm 51 where David confesses his sins and he says,

A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. That's basically a picture of the

Old Testament way of salvation and he's saying it's because I'm coming to you and asking for mercy because I've sinned.

But if you want the most powerful verses that underline the one way of salvation, they do occur in the

New Testament but they are truths for all times. When Jesus says in John 14, 6,

I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. Well, that's a truth, it's a universal truth.

So how were the people in the Old Testament saved? They had to be through Jesus the

Savior. And then in Acts 4 .12 I believe it is,

Peter's sermon says there was no other name given among men under heaven by which we must be saved, only the name of Jesus.

And if you think about it, if there were another way of salvation, then God would have taken it because the actual way is through the death of Christ the

Son. That's the most costly way you can imagine.

If there were another way, then you would expect to see it. So that's a really powerful example in time and space of the fact, look, this had to be done to save you.

There's no other remedy for sin. In the

Old Testament, of course, what's there is animal sacrifice. Animal sacrifice is not sufficient to take away sin in and of itself, but it is a symbol and a type.

It's a forward -pointing symbol that points to Christ so that people could put their faith in Christ who was to come as they practiced the animal sacrifices without as much understanding as we now have.

And yet they could have faith in Christ as saying, it is through a substitute and not through my own works that I'm going to be saved.

Well, we have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who asks,

I love the title of your book, The Mystery of the Trinity, and I want to know in a summary form, what exactly about the

Trinity is mysterious and what has been clearly revealed in the

Word of God, which we believe in the perspicuity of Scripture, so therefore it is clearly understood, at least those things that are required to be believed for salvation.

So there's obviously a dividing line when it comes to the triune

Godhead, those things that are mystery, and those things that we can understand from God's Word.

Could you give us a summary of both of those? Right.

Well, I think the central point from the question is a good one, that we can believe and be confident in what the

Bible says about God because it's God himself who's saying it. It's God who is the divine author of Scripture.

So we can be confident about that, but if we read the Bible, we find quickly that there are things that we cannot probe to the very bottom of, that we cannot understand as God understands.

In fact, we can't understand anything to the depth that God understands it. So there remains mystery in many cases in the

Bible, but particularly with the Trinity because the Trinity has to do with who God himself is.

So we say, because the Bible says that there is only one God, that's both Old Testament and New Testament have that message repeatedly.

In fact, 1 Corinthians 8, 6, there's one God, the Father, from whom all being comes, and there's one

Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord is, of course, another title for God.

There's one Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things came to be. And it's interesting because the differentiation is there.

It's from God the Father and through Jesus Christ in the context where it's saying there's only one

God and there's only one Creator, and that's a mystery. So what we have is there's one

God, and the Father is God, and Jesus is God, and the

Holy Spirit is God, and I could give verses there in my book and other books before mine because this is centuries old in terms of what the

Church has taught. That is, the Orthodox line of teaching in the

Church is centuries old, and they've appealed repeatedly to these verses that teach those things, and they also teach that the

Father is distinct from the Son because the Son is sent by the Father into the world. And some of the passages that I've quoted in the previous hour of where Jesus says,

I can do nothing on my own authority, but I do whatever the Father commands me, that presupposes that you can distinguish between the

Father and the Son. There are many passages like that. So we distinguish the three persons and we say each person is fully

God. Well, can you get a model of that on earth that completely captures everything the

Bible teaches? And I would say no, you cannot. There's a permanent mystery because there's nothing that is comparable to God.

All the things that He's created, there's nothing that is an exact duplicate of God, so that we would be able to master it.

So that's a sense of mystery, not that we know nothing, and we've got to avoid that too, because we can know whatever the

Bible says, we can know that that is true. But we can't completely work out in our own minds how that could be true.

By the way, CJ, we are sorry, but we are all out of the book now. We've given away all the free copies of The Mystery of the

Trinity. But if you want to purchase a copy, you can go to one of our sponsors that carries all of PNR Publishing's titles.

If they don't have it in stock yet or happen to run out, they will always reorder it immediately for you.

That website is cvbbs .com. Thank you,

CJ, for your excellent participation in today's show. Let's see here.

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know,

I believe that the Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church are indeed heretical seriously when it comes to the

Gospel. In fact, I would even be as bold to say that their Gospel is false. After all, the

Council of Trent, that the Church of Rome believes, defined a dogma that is still binding on Catholics in the 21st century, no matter how liberal the

Pope may be at this moment, they believe that the Reformers had a false

Gospel, therefore those who are heirs of the Reformation also have a false Gospel.

But having said that, I was wondering if there is any heretical flaw in the

Trinitarian beliefs of the Church of Rome The answer is no.

We can sort of breathe a sigh of relief, because the

Nicene -Constantinopolitan Creed is the fullest statement of the doctrine of the

Trinity, and that is agreed to, it's affirmed by the

Roman Catholic tradition and by the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Now there's a bit of flying ointment here, but it's on a more practical level.

One is that the Eastern and Western branches of the

Church split over the formulation of whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the

Father or from the Father and the Son. That's a very detailed issue within the doctrine of the

Trinity, and so I'd prefer to leave that to discussions in the book, because it is a deep and complicated issue.

But then at a practical level, there's also the fact that the Church has been subject to what

I would call a kind of non -Christian mysticism that has entered in from time to time, and it compromises the doctrine of the

Trinity by making God inaccessible. So what the

Bible says about God, there's something behind that that's more ultimate, and the way you get to that is by emptying your mind and trying to have a direct union with God.

Well, that's actually characteristic of Eastern religions. The religious background of Buddhism, for instance, is one where you achieve salvation by emptying your mind and emptying your mind of the illusion that the world is real.

And so it's still salvation by works. It's a kind of mental work. But the

Christian way of salvation is by filling your mind with Christ, and filling your mind with the

Word of Christ. It's the opposite, and by really taking to heart the

Scripture rather than seeking for something that's beyond it. So that's more on the practical level, but it affects this whole thing because you think, are we content with the

Bible's teaching, or because we don't fully understand the Trinity, for instance, or we don't understand all the attributes of God completely, do we seek something else beyond what the voice of Christ in Scripture gives to us?

And I'd say, no, you'd better not. Christ is the only Savior. Amen.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks,

Being a thoroughly Reformed Christian, I am under the conviction that only

Reformed theology can portray a Trinity where the three persons of the

Trinity are always in complete harmony with one another. It seems to me that the way non -Reformed

Christians fail, among other ways, is a belief, for instance, that Jesus desperately wanted to save every single individual who has ever lived and will ever live when he died in Calvary, and yet God the

Father will send many, if not most of those, to hell, and the

Holy Spirit will not conquer in love many in that number and save many in that number who are rebels against the

Lord, who allegedly had already received the benefits of his sacrifice on Calvary.

Would you agree that Reformed theology among the Christian traditions is the only one that truly has the persons of the

Trinity in total harmony all the time? Yes, well,

I think I basically do, though I want to reach out to people who disagree and say this area of the way of salvation is one that needs to be explored with submission to Scripture and not through a simple matter of appealing to principles that are independent of Scripture.

And I think that Reformed theology does that. But I learned from J .I.

Packer in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God something about the fact that when people pray, often their practice is better than their theology is on paper.

Right, I think he said that all Christians are Calvinists on their knees, didn't he? Yes. So I want to build bonds as much as I can to every true

Christian believer, but also to say we do want people to grow in an understanding of the wonder of the grace of God and salvation.

And I do think that's related to the fact that you get certain deep problems if the people who are saved don't match between the persons of the

Trinity and the plans of God and so on. Well, thanks,

Arnie. And we have Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks,

Can you please, briefly as possible, define the eternal subordination of the

Son controversy? And is this a serious enough issue to divide brothers and sisters in the body of Christ?

Wow, that's a big question. And it's a question I didn't directly discuss in either of the two books

I've written on the Trinity. It bears separate discussion. And I kind of despair of giving it a full discussion on this program, because I think it's another deep issue.

But let me say this, that the language of subordination has a history.

And in the first centuries of the Church, there was a heresy of subordinationism that basically said that Jesus was

God only in a secondary sense. Well, we don't want that. But the modern people who are talking about subordination of the

Son, if you read them carefully, I think what they're saying is not the same.

They're saying that all three persons are fully God, and equally

God. Yes, the ones that I happen to be personally familiar with. Subordination is in the relations between the persons.

So that's more complicated. But it's made complicated by saying, well, does that, in fact, put pressure on you to think of the

Spirit and the Son as less fully God? Even though these people don't want to do it.

On the other hand, there is in Scripture a differentiation of the persons.

So it's the Son, for instance, who is sent and not the Father. It's the Son who becomes incarnate and not the

Father. Is that arbitrary? Well, no, it isn't. It reveals something about who

God always is. Even though He didn't need to create the world, He didn't need to save the world, a fallen world, yet the way in which

He acts is consistent with who He always is. So I think that the labels Father and Son, for instance, with respect to the first and second persons of the

Trinity, they mean something. They're not interchangeable. And that order is something that's been acknowledged.

It's there in Scripture, even the terms Father and the Son, right? And the label the

Word as well shows the Word is the Word spoken by the Father. So there's an order, and that order is

Father, Son, and Spirit. And that's there eternally, even before God created the world.

But it's mysterious exactly what kind of thing is implied by that order if we're saying that each of the three persons is fully

God. So I prefer to be cautious in the way I talk about it. I don't condemn the people who use other language, provided they're able to affirm the essential things, namely that all three persons are fully

God, and that there is only one God. Well, and just to have you clarify something, it seems that you would agree with me that although this difference of opinion may be very serious, it would not necessitate brethren in Christ disfellowshipping each other or labeling each other as heretics and so on.

And that's on the one hand. And on the other side, those who do have this view of eternal subordination, many if not all of those that I have had personal conversations with seem to think that everyone who has a more traditional understanding of the roles of the

Trinity or the persons of the Trinity, that they are by nature of the dispute necessarily egalitarians and have an agenda to promote that there are no gender roles in the

Church. And that's a false assumption that everyone who disagrees with eternal subordination is an egalitarian.

So would you agree with me on both of those issues? I would. Okay, thank you.

Again, with the caution of saying, let's make sure we try to understand people, because there can be a lot of pain caused if we're not patient with that.

I chuckled briefly, but I don't want to minimize the seriousness of the possibility of doctrinal error.

But we also need to be patient with trying to work through the issues that come up.

Well, we have to go to our final break right now. We do have a listener in Cork, Ireland, Mary, who has a question.

And we will get to your question as soon as we return from this final break. If you'd like, if anybody else would like to join us with a question, please send it in quickly, because we're rapidly running out of time.

Chris Arnzen at gmail .com. Chris Arnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away.

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Welcome back This is Chris Arnzent and as I said we have a listener in Cork, Ireland named

Mary who has a question Mary obviously is a knowledgeable listener

She says I had a conversation with a man from The Way International which teaches a doctrine of God similar to Arianism and he was convinced that he was saved even though he denied the

Trinity I am aware of the controversies which arose between Arius and Athanasius regarding the same nature and similar nature of God We describe

God by saying He has one nature essence He is one being speaking of the nature of God using the

Greek word Ousia homoousios homoousios means same nature homoousios means similar nature

It was one single letter I which changed the entire meaning from same nature to similar nature

Surely this is a fundamental doctrine for salvation and yet he is convinced he is saved

What do you think? Again, when she says he she is referring to that member of The Way International that she was describing in the beginning of her comment so if you could respond to that Yes, well it's a good question

I think this gentleman is in error and we have to be saved by the real

Christ who is fully God so from the standpoint of reality it's only the person who trusts in the real

Christ and not a Christ of his imagination and as I mentioned earlier there is no other way of salvation no one comes to the

Father except through me, Jesus says in John 14 6 Now the only matter of caution is that particularly there are cases where genuine believers have their faith in the genuine

Christ overlaid with the confusions of a false teacher and when there is a whole group of people such as The Way that are together following that false teacher anybody involved in there is going to be sort of washed with that teaching that will overlay whatever faith they had and as a tendency

I would argue to destroy it but only God knows the heart and so we can be glad that God is the judge of the universe and we are not so we don't say well

I'm absolutely confident that this person is not saved because we don't know the level of the heart what they say is not good it's an error but that may be an overlay we can hope for the best that it's an overlay with some kind of genuine faith underneath that only

God knows the heart and on our level we can't judge people's hearts the way

God does but we can make every effort as God opens opportunity to endeavor to get this person out of the toxic environment in which he presently exists yeah do you think a lot of it would be similar when there is a professing

Christian that we know he may have even or she may have even been a professing

Christian for decades but they have fallen into such deeply scandalous sin that we are taught in scripture that we're not even to eat with such a one and yet we don't have the mind of God this person could be temporarily backslidden and will be restored at one point through repentance and will even be restored to membership and right standing with the church and so on we don't know that while they are still in that state of rebellion and just as with a heretic we don't really as you were saying we don't know the heart so at the same time we have to be very very cautious about treating that person like a brother and sister in Christ even if for some reason even though their profession or their explanation of their theology is very poor they might actually be regenerate right and there is a difference between somebody who is untaught and somebody who is falsely taught because the false teaching is then likely to have lodged more deeply in the soul but I agree with you

I think there is an analogy between people who are caught in moral sins right where they have they have committed a sin of embezzlement or adultery whatever it is doesn't matter if they don't repent that's the decisive thing whether it's from the human point of view a small sin or a big sin the issue is repentance if they don't repent then we don't know whether they are saved because what they are showing is inconsistent with a claim or verbal claim well similarly with a heretic except it's you might say an intellectual sin right rather than a behavioral sin but in both cases it throws in doubt their claim to be

Christians and in both cases we mustn't let the purity of the church as a community be compromised so the apostle

Paul God through Paul and Jesus himself during his earthly life lays out procedures for dealing with people who are not repentant you don't just abandon them but you exhort them to repent whether it's a behavioral sin or whether it's an intellectual sin and I'd advise people you know when they're dealing with this kind of heresy not to try to do it just by themselves to be honest a minimal point but to say well if you're interested let me have you talk to my pastor right or somebody else who has more skill and study to bring to bear to help this person out if they say no

I'm okay I don't need to meet with anybody well that's about all you can do well we do have somewhat of a humorous message for you from a former student of yours he's also a friend of mine even though we have extremely serious disagreements on the gospel his name is

Robert St. Genes who I have had involved in debates that I have orchestrated with Dr.

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, Dr. White is a Reformed Baptist and Robert St. Genes is a convert from Presbyterianism to Roman Catholicism and Robert St.

Genes says ask Vern when he is going to become Catholic tell him the question is from one of his former students in 1981,

Robert St. Genes who is at Westminster Theological Seminary during the Shepard Controversy yeah well

I recognize the name and you know now it's not the platform to get into those types of disagreements but I would hope that many people who belong to the

Roman Catholic Communion would come to true faith in Christ and to understanding of justification by faith alone and through the teaching of Scripture as this whole infallible source of doctrine and you know

I'm not going to give up on those people so yeah I'll become

Catholic when the Catholics come to true doctrine is what my response would be but I realize that can paper over a lot of long range discussions it's an area that is not it's not easy to discuss in a few minutes the answer to that to sum it up Robert is never but I want to thank you for taking the time to write in I want to thank you

Dr. Poitras for being such a superb guest I look forward to many more interviews with you if you are willing and obviously more importantly if God is willing and I want to remind our listeners if you want to purchase this book

The Mystery of the Trinity or any other book by Verne Poitras go to cvbbs .com

that's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service cvbbs .com I want to thank everybody who listened today and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater