October 12, 2023 Show with David Reece on “The Trinity & the Incarnation (& Common Heresies Associated with Each of Them)

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of Founding Father James Wilson, 19th

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Century Hymn writer George Duffield, 19th Century Gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

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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.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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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.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 12th day of October 2023.

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And it's so good to know that our Sovereign Lord answers prayer, even those things in the grand scheme of things that are infinitely less important than major things in our lives and in the world.

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We almost did not have the capability of broadcasting Iron Sharpens Iron Radio live today due to technical difficulties, but the wizard

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I have as an engineer, Eric Nielsen, appears to, with the

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Lord's help, have been able to resolve the issues. But today, I'm very excited to have a returning guest.

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He's not only a returning guest, but he is a primary sponsor and advertiser on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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His name is David Reese, and he is the pastor of Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona, and he's also the founder of Armored Republic.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Pastor David Reese.

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Chris, it's an honor to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be able to talk with you today about the doctrine of the

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Trinity and the to see people have a deeper understanding as we go through and talk about the different heresies that historically have popped up.

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Hopefully, that's a blessing to your audience. Yes, and I'm sure it will be. And before we go into that theme, let our listeners know something about Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona, especially for the sake of those who have not heard you on this program before.

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Thank you, Chris. So Puritan Reformed Church, we hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith. We are a strict subscriptionist church.

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We sing psalms, and we exclusively sing psalms a cappella.

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And so if you want to be encouraged by the congregational singing of the word of God and you're in Phoenix, Arizona on the

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Lord's Day, we have morning worship at 10 a .m. and we have evening worship at 4 p .m.

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And we continuously have a teaching in both services out of the word of God, expositing the scriptures.

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Occasionally, we'll have a systematic topic where we're trying to pull together scriptures from multiple places.

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But typically, what we're doing is we're going through the word of God, going through a book from beginning to end, trying to deal with every verse and to deal with the ways in which it interacts with the rest of scripture.

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And why don't you share with our listeners your website so that they can have all the information they need to know about Puritan Reformed Church.

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Thank you. And that's PuritanPHX .com. PHX is a shorthand for Phoenix, so PuritanPHX .com.

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Now tell us, tell our listeners about this fascinating company that you founded, Armored Republic.

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So Armored Republic, I actually had the honor of joining in. And so, although I'm the owner,

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I was not initially the founder, but I have been able to be there now for eight years.

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And so I've been honored to become a part of the company and then ultimately to become the majority owner.

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And in that company, what we do is we manufacture body armor and other tools of liberty.

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And in the process of being able to come in and enter management, it was a delight to be able to come in and to seek to build out a

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Christian culture and to have it become an explicitly Christian company, kind of working through that. And so the company, we manufacture body armor in Phoenix, Arizona.

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We have a factory in Phoenix. We also manufacture textile goods, pouches, plate carriers, the things that you use.

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So you look at tactical vests and movies and stuff like that. It's that kind of gear. And we also manufacture things like helmets.

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So I've been involved in a number of other efforts to try to expand that out.

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My goal is to build out Christian businesses and to be able to disciple in that context.

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And in particular, I find that if your company is explicitly Christian in terms of how you express who you are, mission statement, it's made known on your website and things like that.

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And then as you're recruiting, you make that known. The opportunity to be clear with the word of God in the business context is such a delight.

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And in particular, the Ten Commandments and the Book of Proverbs become very useful. You can put things throughout your documents for the company, but also in management.

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The Book of Proverbs is just chock full of tools for management. And obviously when you talk about the law, it creates all sorts of opportunities for you to be able to let your employees show you places where you are failing in the law and also for your employees to have opportunities where they see their own failings and it opens up the opportunity for the gospel.

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And so I think so often Christians are afraid to talk about the law because of the fact that we are imperfect ourselves.

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And I think when we acknowledge that we are failures and seek to repent whenever that's brought up, that becomes a valuable tool.

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So my employees know lots of reasons why I'm an imperfect human being and at the same time have been able to have lots of great conversations with that.

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So I would encourage people to do that. And one last thing that's very important to make people to know about, if they reach out to me on Twitter at RealDavidReese, I am in the process of closing out a purchase of another business to make it into a

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Christian business. Oh, wow. And so right now I'm looking for some accredited investors to help to close that out.

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We have $6 million out of the $6 .3 million necessary to close the deal. So we are so close with the last like 4 % there of that last bit of money raised to conclude the purchase.

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Praise God. And the website for Armored Republic is? ArmoredRepublic .com.

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It's ArmoredRepublic .com. The American spelling. So know you. Just a note. Armored Republic. Great.

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And we look forward to beginning to air the

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Armored Republic commercials as soon as the folks at Armored Republic provide us with that commercial.

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As I said at the outset, Pastor David Reese is an advertiser and sponsor on iNtrep and Zion Radio.

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You've already heard his ads every single day for Puritan Reformed Church.

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But we're excited to also begin to air the Armored Republic ads, and you will hear them,

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God willing, in the very near future. Well, I think it would be wise for us right now, or wise for you,

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I should say, to give the most succinct, summarized definition of the biblically orthodox doctrine of the

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Trinity in its purest form, including the elements that must be in a biblically faithful definition of the

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Trinity. That's a great place to start. Thank you for that, Chris. So I think for the doctrine of the

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Trinity, we want to communicate that there is one God first.

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And when we talk about the idea of one God, we're talking about there is one essence, there is one being or definition of God.

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And the Westminster Shorter Catechism does an excellent job of summarizing that in question four. It says, what is

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God? God is a spirit who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

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And that is such a wonderful, delightful definition for us to understand the biblical

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God. Now, the other thing is, besides God being one in essence, we also have the fact that he is three in person.

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And so when we talk about a person, what we're talking about is an individual spirit or an individual mind.

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And so what we have is three minds that share this definition. So the shortest way to say this is one in essence, three in person.

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And they are co -eternal and co -equal, and they share the same level of authority and power, correct?

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Absolutely. And that's true in the essence of each of the persons.

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They share the one essence, that one definition that we gave from the Shorter Catechism in terms of question four.

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And so when we talk about the unity of the Trinity in terms of the essence that's shared, what we're saying is it's true that the

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Father is a spirit that's infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. It's true that the Son is a spirit that's infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.

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And it's true that the Holy Spirit is a spirit that is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. So infinite in power, infinite in wisdom, infinite in terms of the omnipresence of each one.

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So each person of the Trinity knows all things, has all power, and is everywhere present.

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Now when you said the Son is spirit, since the incarnation in Bethlehem, has not

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Jesus Christ continued to be the God -man, fully God and fully man, although obviously in a glorified body now?

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Absolutely. So when we move from the doctrine of the Trinity to now the doctrine of the incarnation, when we look at the history of the church, the fight over the doctrine of the

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Trinity came first because it's logically prior, right? You have to have the doctrine of the Trinity down to understand the incarnation.

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And so you end up with the Council of Nicaea capturing accurately what the scriptures say.

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And then later, a century later, you have the Council of Chalcedon accurately capturing the view of the doctrine of the incarnation.

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And so when we think about the incarnation, we have the eternal Son, right?

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We have God, the Son, who is unchanging, eternal, without beginning in his divinity.

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But there is a moment in time at which he took on a human nature.

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And so that is the incarnation. And that is unchanging in the sense that it never ends.

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So the incarnation has a beginning. God the Son does not have a beginning. There is a point in time in which the incarnation began, and that goes on forever.

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And so Chalcedon, you have this very short way of summarizing the incarnation becomes we talk about God the

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Son having a human nature that he takes to himself. And so we say he is two natures or essences, and he is one person.

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And that unity is not a unity of essence because you can't take humanity and divinity and have them be mixed or have them be the same thing.

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There's a distinction of the two natures. And what we have is what we call the hypostatic union where there's a human mind and divine mind, and there's a union so that this is one person.

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And so we should talk about that and how that works in more detail. But the idea of two natures and one person, that is the core short version of how we would talk about the incarnation.

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And so as we think about that, there's a lot more to be said about both, but that would be the summary version for the incarnation.

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Now, obviously, we don't want to give our listeners the wrong impression that they have a liberty and freedom to develop unique and novel ideas of exactly what the

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Trinity is and delve into heresy and spread that heresy to others.

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But at the same time, shouldn't we encourage our

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Christian listeners who, after hearing what you said, may be terrified that they perhaps are not regenerate, they are not going to go to heaven because they just can't comprehend what you're saying?

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Isn't there a difference between not being able to fully comprehend a very serious and vital doctrine like the

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Trinity and not being able to comprehend it?

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There are just basic facts that we need to believe about it that have been revealed to us in the scriptures. I want to say two things there.

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First of all, I want to say that a person, when they are regenerated, is not going to understand everything that the

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Bible communicates all at once. And in fact, we are going to continue to learn about God forever, even after we die in the glorified state, and even after the resurrection in our glorified bodies, we will continue to learn forever.

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And so God is incomprehensible in the sense that he is infinite. And so anything he reveals, we can understand it if the

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Holy Spirit illuminates our minds. But there's an infinite amount to learn, and so we will never have a comprehensive knowledge of God.

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We will always be learning. So whatever he reveals, we can understand it and believe it. The Holy Spirit empowers us too.

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But we will never learn it all. And so we need to realize there's a process for us. We're going to be gradually growing in this.

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And so studying the Incarnation, studying the Trinity, meditating upon it, pieces of it will become more and more clear to us.

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And things that look contradictory at the beginning, as you study them and as you compare

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Scripture with Scripture, you find there is no contradiction. There are beautiful displays of God's glory in these doctrines.

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And so I would want to encourage people to not become discouraged, not believe it's impossible to understand. If God reveals a thing, it's so that we might be edified.

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Amen. And I think I should get this out of the way as well before I allow you to continue to elaborate on this glorious doctrine and also its counterfeits.

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But how do you respond to Roman Catholic apologists or just your average

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Roman Catholic who you're having a conversation with who says that no one would ever come to the conclusion that God is triune, that there is a

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Trinity without the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church teaching us this, that the

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Bible is insufficient to teach us this. And then you also have cults.

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You have Jehovah's Witnesses, you have Mormons, and you have other cults that are

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Unitarian or other forms of anti -Trinitarian heretics who will say the same thing.

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They'll say that you are just believing and teaching something that is a heresy of Rome because the

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Bible itself never teaches this. How do you respond to these folks? So first of all,

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I think that there has been excellent work done by the faithful pastors in the history of the church.

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Plainly, we can find these doctrines in the Scriptures. You can find plainly asserted that the

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Father is God, that the Son is God, that the Holy Spirit is God. But you also can plainly find the assertion of the idea of them being individual persons.

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For example, you have the Son praying to the Father. You have the sending of the

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Spirit by the Father and by the Son. The Eastern Orthodox would be upset about that second part.

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And so there's the plainness in which there's interactions to show the distinction of persons, and the plainness in which you can find the attributes of God, the actions of God, the worship of God attributed to all three.

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And so the idea that it's not biblical is silly. Anybody that reads the Bible looking for this is going to find it all over the place.

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It's sort of like the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. As soon as you understand it, as you read your Bible, you start to find it all over the place.

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And the same is true with the doctrine of the Trinity. Even in the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 1, you have, in the beginning,

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God created the heavens and the earth. And so when you see God, that label, typically you're thinking about either the group or you're thinking about the

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Father. And then you have the idea of the Word being represented there and the Spirit hovering over the water.

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So from the very first chapter of the Bible, you have these pointers to the

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Trinity, and then you find things like the baptism formula with being baptized in the name of each of the individual members of the

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Trinity, and you find the particular passages where you have things like Jesus being worshiped, being called by Thomas, his

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Lord and his God. And so these views are, this is not in the Bible, is nonsense.

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And the position of Rome that you cannot possibly get there, apart from the magisterial authority of the church, well,

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I'll tell you what. Athanasius had a pretty rough time trying to deal with the fact that throughout the world, overwhelmingly, church officers started to reject this doctrine in favor of Arianism, which is one of the heresies we need to talk about.

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The doctrine of Arianism is the idea that Christ is created, that he's the first creature, perhaps an angel or some sort of semi -god or whatever you want to call it, but typically the word angel is used.

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And so the Arians dominated the world, and Athanasius had to go with repeatedly being kicked out of the empire and going into exile.

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One of those times, he literally was in the middle of preaching in the middle of his church when he's being taken out by Roman soldiers to have to be exiled because of the fact that he's holding to the doctrine of the

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Trinity. And on the way out, he asks his congregation to sing Psalm 137 as he's being taken out, which is, how can

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I sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land? So Athanasius was against the world, against the

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Catholic, the universal church at the time. There was overwhelmingly this rejection of the true doctrine, and God gloriously in that darkness used his servant,

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Athanasius, to cause the doctrine of the Trinity and the clarity of the Scriptures to overcome that darkness.

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So I think the idea that we needed the magisterium of the church to get to this doctrine suggests not a serious reading of the

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Bible or of history. Amen. And that is why Athanasius has forever had attached to his name the nickname

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Athanasius Contramundum, Athanasius against the world. And he is a figure from history that should give everyone pause when they hear the

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Roman Catholic lie that we need them to understand the

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Bible correctly. If Athanasius thought that way, he would have become an

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Arian himself. Yeah, that's a great point, Chris, absolutely. And was this, in history, the first known,

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I'm speaking of Arianism right now, was this the first known recorded attack on the biblical doctrine of the

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Trinity in history? You know, that's an interesting question, because obviously what you can find in the

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Scriptures themselves is you find simply a denial of Jesus' office of being the

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Christ, and obviously you find the assertion of, for example, the

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Sanhedrin saying that it's blasphemy when they persecuted

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Christ and convicted him of blasphemy. The idea that he was calling himself the

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Son of God, that he was calling himself to be equal with the Father in his essence, they attacked that, so there seems to be a denial there.

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And so I think a denial of Christ's divinity would perhaps be the first, and then you could find

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Arianism and what we would call docetism, those two would be some of the very early on ones.

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And so whereas Arianism is the assertion that Christ is created and has no divine nature, the docetic view would be sort of an assertion that Christ does not have a human nature, but only the appearance of a humanity.

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And so those two things, the denial of either his divinity or the denial of him being truly human, those seem to be sort of the extremes.

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And it's interesting, when you see heresies in their original form, they tend to be more extreme. Sort of like when you think about the doctrine of grace, you have the idea that there's the

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Augustinian view of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and you have grace being the point of contention and whether salvation is all of grace, and you have the

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Pelagians saying, no, you can merit your own salvation. And so those are kind of extremes. I mean, very few people would just say, yeah, you can merit it on your own.

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They're all going to typically now, I mean, Rome is semi -Pelagian, and they're going to say, well, you need grace, and then you need to add on the merit of the saints or whatever.

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Or Arminian is going to come in and sort of talk about the idea that, yes, it's all of grace, but at the same time, grace isn't the effectual cause.

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So you've got these sort of, the more modern it gets, the closer it gets in terms of its forms of words.

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So this Josephism denying the human nature of Christ and Arianism denying his divinity, those seem to be rather extreme heresies that are early on, and so they become more plain.

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And so it's easier to detect those than some of the heresies that would come up later. Yeah, isn't it interesting that the scriptures teach that those who deny that Christ came in the flesh are the ones who are called

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Antichrist? Yeah, that's a great point. So it seems there that would be evidence that there's an earlier sort of assault there.

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So you have this denial that Jesus is God, and then you also have this denial that he came in the flesh.

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And so those two being captured in the scriptures, those seem to be the earliest, and then we sort of have those get manifested in more and more complex ways as things go on.

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Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Pastor David Reese of Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. You may remain anonymous if your question is personal and private. Let's say, for instance, you're a member of a womanist

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Pentecostal congregation, and you are beginning to see the truth of the

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Trinity. And you're becoming at odds with your own church leaders.

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Well, we would understand that you wouldn't want to necessarily, right now at this point in your journey, identify yourself publicly.

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So we will grant your request to remain anonymous. And there are other similar circumstances that might compel you to remain anonymous with your question.

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But if it's a general question about the biblical and historical teaching of the

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Trinity, and the incarnation of Jesus Christ, please give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

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We'll be right back with David Reese, so please do not go away. Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church.

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We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

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Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

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We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God, so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

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We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

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Christ. This is Pastor David Reese of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

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Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

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Puritan Reformed Church. Believe. Build. Fight. PuritanPHX .com

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And we are now back with our guest today David Reese, Pastor of Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona.

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We are talking about the Doctrine of the Trinity and also the heresies associated with it.

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If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com chrisarnzen at gmail .com

35:08

Give us a first name at least, your city and state and your country of residence. We do have a comment, not a question by Cindy in Findley, Ohio and she says

35:21

Jehovah's Witnesses recorded in one of their publications that it is important to follow their teaching because if a person read the

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Bible without their instruction they would come to the conclusion that there was a trinity.

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I never heard that but that's that's pretty self -condemning that they would write that.

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Have you heard that as well? That's hilarious. I'm sorry

35:50

David, I had you on mute. That's hilarious. I had not heard that before but I think that that would be true that if a person were reading the

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Bible and they were understanding the text that they would come to that conclusion. Unless they have a cult to help them to avoid understanding the

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Bible they would come to that conclusion that the doctrine of the trinity is biblical. Well thank you

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Cindy and once again if anybody else wants to join us our email address is chrislorenson at gmail .com

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Why is this doctrine so vital? There are people who may even claim to be

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Trinitarian but they say that we cannot possibly hold people accountable to believe and teach this.

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In fact, there are professing Trinitarians who are ecumenical with trinity deniers like the

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United Pentecostal Church International which is a oneness Pentecostal cult and there are other cults that teach a similar doctrine that are

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Unitarian in their understanding of the Godhead and also other aberrant ways of understanding

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God. They just say this is just for scholars in their holes of academia or their libraries to sit around and talk about these things while they puff on a pipe and have a sifter of brandy in their hand and that we can't possibly use this as a rule of faith or as a litmus test for fellowship with other people.

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How do you respond to that? Well first of all I would say that in the history of the church the church figured it out in its infancy.

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At the early stages of the church this was an early controversy and so when you look at the history of things people tend to deal with the more basic things early on and the splitting happens about those more foundational things.

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So you go from okay, here's the doctrine of the Trinity to now who is Christ and how does his humanity work and you go down the line.

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Doctrine gets worked through from the more basic to the less basic across history.

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Additionally, if you look at for example the Westminster Confession or the London Baptist Confession or the

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Congregationalist Savoy Declaration they all start with Scripture which is how do you know and then they go to the next most basic thing which is what's real?

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What's the most basic reality? The most basic reality is God. And so you get to chapter 2 of the

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Westminster Confession and we're talking about the definition of God we're talking about the Trinity and so who are the persons that are

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God and so if we don't know who God is if we don't know what God is and we don't know who he is then we don't know what we worship and that is superstition.

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So if we're going to be Christians we need to understand who Christ is. If we're going to worship the

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God of the Bible we need to know who the God of the Bible is and if we are unwilling to think about the very basic things about who

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God is then we're not taking this seriously we're not taking the truth seriously at all we don't care about the nature of reality we don't care about the good life and the good life is the life of glorifying

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God. If we're going to glorify God we have to know him and then we have to show the knowledge of him. Glorifying God involves knowing him and showing him and so if we don't know him and then we try to talk about him we're going to say meaningless words false words or we're going to tell the truth.

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And so if we want to tell the truth if we want to tell people about the God of the Bible we need to understand this doctrine.

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And so I think it is vital and I think when you look at things like for example the Westminster Assembly put together the

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Confession of Faith it's their chapter two they also put together a larger catechism to help to teach people how to be mature the

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Doctrine of the Trinity is there but guess what the Doctrine of the Trinity is even in the shorter catechism early in the shorter catechism to teach people who are learning the milk of the faith this is not something that eventually people get to someday this is vital this is essential this is foundational and so understanding who

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God is is how we have the most basic elements of the knowledge of God but also we're told in John 17 3 this is eternal life to know the only true

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God and Jesus Christ whom he sent and so this knowledge of who

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Jesus is and who the Father is there is listed there in John 17 3 this is life and so knowing

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God is how we have life and it's how we have it abundantly is by knowing him more so I think this is vitally important and I think that if we don't understand the

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Doctrine of the Trinity and we don't understand the Doctrine of the Incarnation we're not going to understand at a deep level at all what was accomplished for us so as we know

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God better we are more in awe of him and that inspires us to love him more deeply so the love of God proceeds out of a knowledge of God so I would say that's why we need to care about the

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Doctrine of the Trinity, Chris Yes, amen and if we claim to love God we are going to want to know as much about him as we possibly can

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I remember years ago my friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries I thought gave a great analogy how can you claim that you love your wife when you don't strive to know as much about her as you possibly can how can you claim to love her if you don't even know her favorite foods you don't even know her other likes and dislikes what music she likes what colors she prefers and we could go on and on and on and the issue is infinitely more important when you're talking about somebody claiming to love

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God obviously God is the one and no one else who gives us eternal life and so if we claim to love him and to be grateful to him we should be plumbing the depths of Scripture obviously that is not possible but we must be seeking to search the

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Scriptures as diligently and as deeply as possible to know as much about him as we can and that is basically and I'm sure you agree another reason why the evangelicals which there are many who think the kind of conversations that you and I are having are a waste of time that theology is something that may be nice an add -on to our faith but they just want to lift up Jesus and all this doctrine is just dividing us but that's a very dangerous position to be in thinking that way, isn't it?

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Absolutely, I mean which Jesus are we elevating? Are we elevating the Mormon Jesus? Are we elevating the Jesus of the

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Bible? Are we elevating the Jehovah's Witness Aryan Jesus that's creature? Which Jesus are we elevating?

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I'll tell you what it would be really offensive to my wife if I made a picture of another woman and then

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I put that picture in my wallet and I said, this is my wife this is my

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Katie if I did that if I said another woman was my wife to other people that would be so offensive to her how offended is the

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Lord Jesus Christ when people say they're worshipping him and they worship a Jesus of their own imagination?

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If you ever do that you better be wearing that body armor you manufacturer Absolutely Can I do one more thing

44:12

Chris about the evangelical church? There's two major errors that we see in evangelicalism today.

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One is we see the doctrine that you can't understand this doctrine, that it's not worth trying that it's not understandable.

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Again, you can't learn everything there is to know about God but we are going to learn forever and the things that God reveals are true and understandable they are knowable, they are revealed from him, his word is certain his word is true, it is reliable and so if he has said it, it is true, we can know it, we can believe it and so that's one thing.

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The other thing is, I find overwhelmingly that the doctrine of the Trinity is misunderstood in a way where the personhood of each member of the

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Trinity is denied. That seems to be the major error in evangelical churches. Historically, that error was called

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Sabellianism or Modalism. Here's that error. The error is God is one thinker, one spirit, one person, and he does different jobs and when he does these different jobs he's the father or the son or the

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Holy Spirit and so it's sort of like we think there's like one person in acting and that failure to understand that there are three thinkers, three minds three spirits that share the one definition the one divinity and this people go, well that sounds like polytheism.

45:41

They go, no here is polytheism. Polytheism says there are multiple gods with different definitions for example if you look at Roman polytheism or Greek or Nordic or Hindu polytheism, any of them you have different gods with different powers different jurisdictions and they don't share the same definition so you'll have the god of the sea the god of war, the god of the mountains or blacksmithery or whatever and these gods have different definitions, different essences, different powers different jurisdictions.

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The god of the Bible is one god. He has one shared definition, one essence and there are three persons that share that essence.

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So that is the triune god of the Bible as opposed to the polytheism that we see in paganism and as opposed to a modalism or Sabellianism that takes

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God and makes him into one person acting in different ways. We have the three persons of the Trinity and they agree to different jobs based upon a covenant.

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And so I want to make this clear, we see the son obeying the father and the Holy Spirit obeying the father and the son and the reason for that is not because the son is inferior to the father and it's not because the

47:00

Holy Spirit is inferior to the father or son in essence it's because by covenant they have agreed to different roles and so it's so important when we think about things like marriage or children a wife obeys her husband not because she's inferior in essence but because she has a covenantal role, though she's equal in essence.

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Children obey their parents not because they're less human but because they're under a legal authority.

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And so the son obeys the father because of the covenant made between the father and the son and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit obeys the father and the son for that reason.

47:35

So I want to make clear that this error of modalism or Sabellianism is wrong and I also want to make clear that the obedience of the son to the father and the spirit to the father and the son is because of that covenant relationship, not because of an inferiority of essence.

47:51

So those are things those are errors that I see in Evangelicalism and I hope that those things help to clear up failures of understanding.

47:59

You know when you were talking about the polytheists and all their gods have different powers and so on, it reminded me of the heresy of saint worship of the

48:14

Roman Catholic Church. Now they're not polytheists, of course, but they have a whole host of saints that God has assigned, according to their heresy, different tasks over which they have power as if God needs their help.

48:31

There's even a Saint Rocco who you're supposed to pray to if you're being attacked by a dog, which is why all of the images of Rocco, or most of them anyway, have him pictured with a dog at his side.

48:47

But I mean, there are many things that are laughably absurd and this actually goes right to the core of the power and authority and sovereignty of God.

48:58

How do you respond to the Roman Catholic, for instance, who says well, this is no different than when the

49:06

Bible commands us to pray for each other and we're here on earth supposed to do things for each other, benevolent things and this in no way violates

49:19

God's power and authority over all things. How do you respond to the Catholic that thinks that way and tries to defend their actions that way?

49:27

What they're doing is they are equivocating, they're committing an ambiguity.

49:33

What they're doing is they're trying to take the idea that well, we can ask each other for things, we can ask each other to pray, but you know, the word pray basically means to ask.

49:46

But none of us are confused when we talk to each other that asking somebody for something is an act of worship.

49:53

When you pray to somebody as opposed to walking up to a person and saying, pray tell, could you please hand me the

50:00

Grey Poupon? If I ask you for something, that's not the same thing as the act of worship we call prayer.

50:11

When the Lord Jesus Christ taught His disciples at their request, Lord, how shall we pray?

50:17

He taught them the Lord's Prayer. He wasn't teaching them, whenever you ask anybody for the Grey Poupon, do it like this.

50:24

He was saying, whenever you approach the Father in the act of worship, relying upon His omnipresence and omniscience to hear your prayer and to judge it, where He, as the

50:37

God of the universe, judges what you're saying, whether it is lawful, and He hears your prayer on the basis of the mediation of Christ, that is a different thing from walking up to a human being and saying, could you do this thing for me?

50:52

So, that being the case, the fact that those are different, that equivocation is an act of deception.

51:00

They don't believe it. They don't believe walking up to somebody and asking them for something is prayer.

51:07

And if somebody were to kneel down in front of some

51:13

Hindu cleric and start asking for things while bowing their head in such a way as to do religious acts, the

51:22

Roman Catholic would have to say, okay, that's a wrong worship. I'm not saying the Hindus teach that you need to worship your teachers or whatever.

51:28

I'm just saying, if somebody did that and they were outside of Rome, they would see that to be invalid. So, this is a special pleading.

51:35

This is an ambiguity. This is equivocation. It's a type of lying. They don't believe this. And so, it's obvious that if you're praying to some spirit that's not present, that it's an act of worship.

51:48

And so, if we did the same thing to demons, they would go, well, that's demon worship. But when you do it to an angel, it's not angelic worship.

51:56

If you do it to a saint, it's not saint worship. So, this worship prayer is an element of worship, and to say that it's not an element of worship when we're doing it to something else, so it's therefore not idolatry, is just an absurd shell game.

52:11

When they call it veneration and they insist that they are not worshipping Mary and the saints, that is just a different name for something that's identical, because everything that would go under the definition of worship is being conducted through veneration by the

52:28

Roman Catholic. Yeah, absolutely. And so, that failure to properly see that acts of worship are being done to creatures is one of the reasons why the idolatry of Rome has gotten so gross.

52:43

And it's a shocking thing that you have more people who still call themselves Romanists than who would call themselves

52:48

Protestants in the world. That's the level of deception that exists in the world. And so, we see now that Christ is undeceiving the nations by sending the gospel out, but there's a lot of undeceiving left to do.

53:00

Well, we have to go to our midway break, folks. Please be patient with us, because the midway break is always a bit longer than the other breaks in the show, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle, because the

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FCC requires of them to geographically localize Iron Trip and Zion Radio to Lake City, Florida, where they're located.

53:23

And they do so with their own public service announcements and other announcements that localize the show while we simultaneously air, in the middle of the show, our globally heard commercials.

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Use this time wisely. Write down as much of the information, the contact information, as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully contact our advertisers.

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Always remember, we need our advertisers to exist, so please try to respond to those ads as often as you can, and also send in your questions to David Rees.

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chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We'll be right back. Puritan Reformed is a

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Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

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Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

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Christ. This is Pastor David Rees of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

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Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

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It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

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Earth find churches sometimes within just a couple of minutes from where they live, and that may be you too.

01:10:34

If you are without a church home, please send me an email to chrisarns in a gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.

01:10:40

That's also the email address where you can send in a question to David Reese, our guest today, pastor of Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona, and we are discussing the

01:10:49

Trinity and also the heresies associated with it. Our email address is chrisarns in a gmail .com.

01:10:56

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Pastor David, we have

01:11:03

Carmen in Flanders, Long Island, New York, who says, Do you think it is proper for a

01:11:10

Christian to listen to music recorded and performed by non

01:11:17

Trinitarians, even if the music itself does not contain lyrics that oppose the

01:11:23

Trinity? So I think that in terms of listening to music, there is nothing immoral about listening to music that is written by heretics or by those who are apostate or ungodly.

01:11:39

The issue is whether the words themselves are going to have a negative influence on you.

01:11:44

This is just for listening to music. When we talk about music, we need to differentiate between two types of time. One is music that you could deal with in your ordinary life for your recreation, listening to it while you're doing work, whatever.

01:11:57

And the other is music that you would use to worship God. So I believe that the

01:12:03

Bible very plainly lays out rules for the worship of God, that we are not to worship

01:12:08

God in any way except how He is appointed. And so typically what you're going to find amongst people who are concerned about trying to take that seriously, they're going to have one of three positions.

01:12:21

They're going to say we should only sing for worship songs that we can show all of the propositions are from Scripture or are demonstrable from Scripture.

01:12:33

They're going to say we should only sing Scripture songs or they're going to say we should only sing psalms.

01:12:39

So I'm in that third group I believe that we should only sing the psalms. But those are going to be the three categories of people that are trying to take that seriously at all.

01:12:46

It's going to be things we can show from the Bible, Scripture songs, or the psalms themselves. And so when we're talking about worship, we have to be able to sing back to God what

01:12:57

He's told us to sing. When we're talking about ordinary life, we want to avoid filling our minds with filth, and we want to avoid filling our minds with falsehood.

01:13:05

And so if it is, if the words are true, if they are on things that are useful, profitable, and you look at Philippians it talks about whatever things are lovely, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble.

01:13:17

If the content of the song has those types of things in it, then it's useful to have on and to be a part of what's filling your mind.

01:13:26

Now, how would you respond to those? I've heard pastors counsel their congregations not to listen to the music for instance of Phillips, Craig, and Dean, who are known for being oneness

01:13:46

Pentecostals, not necessarily in the United Church of Christ International, but they are non -trinitarian.

01:13:52

They are modalists. And the reason that the pastor's giving that counsel primarily has been, that I've heard about, is that you can fall in love with their music because much of it is very faithful to the

01:14:07

Bible, but then if you love it so much you begin to investigate the beliefs and lives and churches of these

01:14:17

Christian recording artists, so -called, you may begin to believe in the heresies that they're teaching in their churches.

01:14:26

How do you respond to that? I would say the best way to arm people against the heresies of the

01:14:32

Trinity is to teach clearly what the Bible says about the doctrine of the Trinity, and I would say that it is the words of the song itself that you should judge.

01:14:43

And then, if people are having a problem with hero worship, they're particularly loving these artists in such a way, we also need to teach against hero worship.

01:14:52

And so, some people might say it's wrong to listen to any secular music or to any singer that doesn't have the

01:14:59

Orthodox Reformed faith or whatever. I don't think any of this is true. I think you can have people who are unbelievers provide the service of making some music.

01:15:09

The question is, is that music something that's worth listening to? What their beliefs are is a different matter, but it's not sin to listen to the music of a person who is an unbeliever if they are singing things that are wholesome or good, noble.

01:15:27

But I do think we need to be aware of the danger that some people love music so much that they improperly honor the musicians that they like.

01:15:38

And so, we need to talk to people about the role of the beauty of things. So, music is beautiful.

01:15:44

It's one of the powerful ways of creating beauty and showing beauty forth. And so,

01:15:50

I think what we need to do is to talk about the fact that beauty is supposed to relate to holiness. And so, if you have the truth of God and we are focused on the glory of God, beauty should be arrayed around glorifying

01:16:05

God and being holy unto Him. And then we ought to apply the law of God to choose righteousness in doing things.

01:16:12

And so, songs do have a dramatic impact on people's affections. They absolutely help to shape them.

01:16:18

So, with my children, for example, I prefer to give them as much exposure to the psalms as possible and to not make listening to other stuff really the focus.

01:16:27

But I also try to make it clear to them the difference between sin and things that are not sin. And it's certainly not sin to listen to things that are wholesome or noble in their content, even if the singer or the writer of them is not noble, not righteous, not a believer.

01:16:42

And so, I want to differentiate between those things. I understand being careful about the influences, but I also think it's important that we teach people how to judge and how to not follow people just because they make a song into wickedness or to overly emphasize their influence.

01:17:00

We have Alphonse in Washington, D .C., and Alphonse says,

01:17:08

I know that a part of the theme of your discussion today is that there are heresies associated with the

01:17:16

Trinity. I was wondering if you have come across this one as often as I have.

01:17:22

When doing research on different congregations that I may be interested in visiting, for instance, while traveling, there are more churches than I care to admit that when they are defining what they believe, they appear to be either intentionally or unintentionally defining the

01:17:45

Holy Spirit as a power rather than a person. Is this something that you've come across frequently as I have?

01:17:54

Yes, and I think that tends into a sort of the thought of our age is to emphasize power or to emphasize the spirit or force.

01:18:04

We think about spirits not as persons. That can tend into sort of a pantheistic direction or something that's almost magical, and so I think that is a dangerous falsehood.

01:18:14

We need to realize that the Holy Spirit is not a power or an influence. He's a person. That being the reality, the

01:18:22

Holy Spirit is a person. One of the three persons of the Trinity is extremely important. I think one of the things that's been really helpful early on when

01:18:30

I was studying the Trinity, reading Augustine's work of the Trinity is fantastic. He had these seven propositions that he used to talk about the doctrine of Trinity.

01:18:41

He'd say, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is

01:18:46

God. Those are the first three. That's great, but here now, you start to get into a little bit, and you go, okay, I'm following.

01:18:53

Well, the Father's not the Son, and the Father's not the Holy Spirit, and we have that the

01:19:01

Son is not the Holy Spirit. Those six, you go, okay, we've got all three persons are

01:19:08

God, and they're not each other, so you have the differentiation. Then, you have the seventh proposition, there's one

01:19:15

God. You have this, the differentiation of the three persons, the fact that each of them is

01:19:22

God, and then the oneness of God. When we make the Holy Spirit into a force, then we've no longer got

01:19:30

Him as God. He's no longer one of the persons that shares in the essence of divinity.

01:19:35

He now becomes the power of, the energy of, the force of somebody else. Or, we make all of the members of the

01:19:43

Trinity impersonal. I think that's a very important heresy that has to be opposed, and yes,

01:19:48

I see that more often than I would like to admit as well. We have

01:19:55

Marguerite in Stanford, Connecticut, who says, I have heard preachers who are

01:20:01

Trinitarian say that the role of the Holy Spirit is not to be center stage in our worship services.

01:20:10

Although He is co -equal and co -eternal with the Father and the Son, He is to Christ who should have center stage in our worship.

01:20:19

Do you agree with that? I think that we are, so the

01:20:25

Son points to the glory of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit together point to the glory of the Father. The Father glorifies the

01:20:32

Son and the Spirit, but they glorify each other. So we are to glorify the

01:20:37

Triune God. However, in the worship of God, there are particularities of how we're instructed to worship.

01:20:44

For example, you find that the Father is, we're told to pray to the Father, we're told to pray in the name of the

01:20:52

Son, and we rely upon the power of the Holy Spirit. So when we see the way that we're instructed to pray, we worship the

01:20:59

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in prayer. But there are distinctive roles.

01:21:05

It would be heretical to pray in the name of the Father. The Father did not die for our sins.

01:21:11

The Father's merits are not the basis of our justification. The Father is not the mediator between God and man.

01:21:18

So we are only to pray in the name of Christ, in the name of the Son. And so it is, there are particular roles, and those particular roles have a different emphasis.

01:21:29

So that is true that there's a different emphasis. And I think what that pastor is probably preaching against is the idea of trying to find a bunch of fantastical, emotional, and hysterical gifts that we can call

01:21:43

Holy Spirit gifts, and making them sort of the object of fanfare in worship. And so when we think about worship, worship is supposed to be always for edification, and it's always supposed to be decently and in order.

01:21:55

And when we look at the instructions, for example, the Scriptures give about tongues, first of all, we're told that tongues cease at a certain point in time because they're a type of prophecy.

01:22:03

Secondly, we find that anybody who's going to speak in them in public has to have an interpreter.

01:22:10

And thirdly, we're taught that they're only supposed to speak one at a time. And so these are all things, for example, that you find in Pentecostal churches that are ignored.

01:22:19

And so I think that may be the kind of thing that that pastor was preaching against. Okay, we have

01:22:28

Fritz in Nanilchik, Alaska. And Fritz says,

01:22:35

I've been fascinated and edified by everything that you're saying today, and I was wondering what you think is the worst heresy, or at least aberrant teaching that you have heard, taught, and preached by those who do claim to be

01:22:54

Trinitarian. And I'm assuming that Fritz means in relationship to the

01:22:59

Trinity. Yeah, I think the worst heresy that I have typically heard in churches that are not even just claiming to be

01:23:10

Trinitarian, but even claiming to be Reformed. The most common heresy that I will hear there is the idea that we cannot understand the doctrine of the

01:23:18

Trinity, that it's a mystical nonsense, that it is not only apparently contradictory, but irresolvably so.

01:23:25

And so, the idea that everything God has revealed does not contradict itself. If he's revealed it, it's understandable.

01:23:32

That's what revelation is for, is for our understanding, is for our edification. And so, to make the doctrine of the

01:23:38

Trinity into a nonsense doctrine, into an un -understandable doctrine, which, again, is not to say that we can all understand everything that God has true about himself at once, but anything he wants to reveal, he can reveal, and he causes us to learn over time.

01:23:55

And that's not the same thing as saying we can't understand what God has said. And so, I think that error, that the doctrine of the

01:24:01

Trinity is somehow nonsensical or un -understandable, it totally turns off any effort to try.

01:24:08

If somebody tells you you can't understand the doctrine, you go, okay, well, I'm not going to listen anymore. And so, that is,

01:24:14

I think, the most destructive thing, because it makes it so that rather than trying to understand that doctrine and to believe it, that we simply turn off any effort to think about it.

01:24:24

And that makes it so our faith remains infantile. Now, when you say we can understand the

01:24:32

Trinity, I'm assuming you do not believe that we can fully understand and comprehend it.

01:24:38

We can understand what God has revealed, as you just said, but aren't there limits to how an infinite

01:24:45

God can be understood by creatures like us? Absolutely. So, the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God is the doctrine that God is infinite, and because He's infinite, there's an infinite number of things to be known about Him.

01:25:02

And so, we can never have a comprehensive knowledge. We can never have a knowledge that is encompassing everything there is to know about God.

01:25:11

And so, let me give you an example of this. Sorter Catechism, Question 4, gives you a definition of God. God is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, and is being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

01:25:20

Okay. Does that tell us everything there is to know about God? No. It's not a comprehensive definition in the sense that it tells us everything is true about God, but it is a definition that shows us the difference between God and other things.

01:25:35

And so, it's sufficient for us to understand the difference between God and something else. So, no creature is infinite, eternal, or unchangeable in His being.

01:25:46

Only God is. And so, we know all creatures have temporal, finite, and changeable beings.

01:25:55

Whereas God has infinite, eternal, unchangeable being. Right? So, there's way more to say about God, and so we don't have a comprehensive definition that says everything about God, but we do have a sufficient definition to differentiate

01:26:09

Him from creatures. And so, I don't want to say that we can understand everything about God in the sense that we could ever know everything, because there's an infinite amount.

01:26:18

But we can, the things He has revealed are for us to know. And so, the other thing is, you commonly will hear this word incomprehensible thrown around, and here's how people mean it.

01:26:28

What they mean is, the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God means that we can't know anything about God.

01:26:37

Well, that's heresy. That is nonsense. That if we can't know anything about God, then we can't be saved.

01:26:44

We can't have eternal life, because this is eternal life, to know the only true God in Jesus Christ whom He sent. So, we have to be able to know

01:26:51

God at some points. And the points at which we can know Him is what He's revealed, and we will gradually grow in the knowledge of what

01:27:00

He's revealed over time. And that includes the doctrine of the Trinity. So, you might start out and just say, okay,

01:27:06

I understand that God is three persons with one essence, and there's lots of things you don't know. Then, the next day, you might learn, okay,

01:27:13

God is three persons with one essence, and the three persons have different roles. Now you've gained an extra truth.

01:27:21

And so, the gradual teaching that God does, there's an infinite number of things to understand about the difference between the

01:27:27

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we're never going to learn all of them, but we will learn some of them, day by day, across time.

01:27:35

And that joy of knowing more truth that God has revealed is a part of the growth that occurs.

01:27:44

We have Claudio, or Claudio, in the Bronx, New York. And Claudio asks,

01:27:53

I have heard Trinitarians say that although they believe in the

01:27:58

Trinity, when they baptize people, we can either follow the example in Acts, and baptize in the name of Jesus, or baptize in the name of the

01:28:09

Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as in Matthew in the Great Commission. Do you think that these things are interchangeable, as these pastors are saying?

01:28:20

And believe me, I am not saying that these are oneness Pentecostals, or Jesus -only cultists.

01:28:28

I'm saying that I know of Trinitarian pastors who believe that the formula is interchangeable because they say it's scriptural.

01:28:37

So, no, I don't think that it's interchangeable. I think that we are required to baptize explicitly in the name of the members of the

01:28:44

Trinity. However, I believe that the usage in Scripture for talking about baptizing in the name of Jesus is used as a literary form called a synecdoche.

01:28:54

So, a synecdoche is when a part is used to represent the whole. So, when we talk about the idea that, for example, in Acts, when it says that these disciples were baptized by John's baptism but not baptized in the name of Jesus, that's what's occurring there.

01:29:11

And the reason is because, one, when you have two places of Scripture and one speaks more narrowly, and the other one speaks more broadly, it communicates more information, you interpret the one that has less in light of the one that communicates more.

01:29:28

And so, the other thing is, if we're uncertain, if we don't have, we don't have, for example, the showing that this is what we're commanded to baptize in, so there's no commandment to do it, there's no approved example, what we have is simply a referencing of the baptism of Jesus.

01:29:45

And so that baptism of Jesus or baptism into Jesus is something that we need to understand is the same as the

01:29:52

Trinitarian baptism, and therefore, we need to apply the form that's been given to us and not take the shorthand and simply use it.

01:30:02

Okay, we have Roberta in Aquabog, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:30:11

I have heard from those that know Hebrew that Jehovah false way of stating the name of God in English.

01:30:23

And if you agree with that, should we ever sing hymns that refer to both the

01:30:32

Father and Jesus as Jehovah, or should we substitute what I have heard is the more accurate pronunciation

01:30:39

Yahweh? So, I do think the more accurate pronunciation is

01:30:44

Yahweh or Yehoah. Pastor Philip Kaiser is a pastor I respect and he emphasizes the idea of Yehoah.

01:30:51

I've seen the arguments for Yahweh as well, and so I think that that is an accurate one.

01:30:58

My understanding of the history of Jehovah is it's taking the Hebrew consonants and putting into them vowel points for the term

01:31:10

Adonai. And so, that doesn't immediately make sense to me looking at it from some of the things that I've seen, but that's what

01:31:18

I've heard repeatedly from people I respect, a number of scholars, and that is the basis for the origin. There's dispute about that, but that's the thing that gets put out there.

01:31:26

So, what does that mean? Well, first of all, the name Jesus, for example, is

01:31:32

Yeshua. And if we see it often in Greek, you're going to see it in the genitive form.

01:31:38

It's going to be Yesu, right? So you have these different ways of pronouncing. This is an anglicized name that we're trying to use.

01:31:46

I think the important thing is not how we've transliterated it or how we've taken the sounds and put them over as much as it is the importance of understanding what we mean.

01:31:59

So the definition is more important than the sounds. The particular syllables or sounds that we're making are not as important as the understanding of the meaning of the term.

01:32:11

So, I don't think that it's sin to use that, although I do think that Yahweh is more accurate as a pronunciation.

01:32:19

I don't believe it's wrong to use that. That would be sort of like, is it wrong?

01:32:25

There's obviously going to be different sounding when you talk to somebody in a different language. They're going to try to take those sounds and put them into a word and there's going to be a transliteration process of trying to take those and put them into a different language.

01:32:39

So, it's not the sound themselves, it's the meaning that we intend, the definition of the

01:32:44

God that we are talking about. That's the thing that I think is more important in terms of when we are giving worship to God.

01:32:51

By the way, folks, there are some of your names that I don't recognize. If you are a first -time questioner, if you listen to this program with regularity, you know that first -time questioners automatically receive a free copy of the

01:33:07

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB, who are very generous financial supporters of this program.

01:33:15

So, if that includes you, if you are a first -time questioner, please let me know and we'll have

01:33:20

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com ship that Bible out to you.

01:33:27

Thank you for your participation. Before I go to any more listener questions, because we are approaching our final break shortly,

01:33:35

I want to make sure that you do not leave out some of the primary issues that you wanted to bring up at the outset of this program on this theme of the

01:33:44

Trinity. Thank you. I appreciate that. A couple of things

01:33:49

I wanted to point out is one of the things that happens that makes us feel complex to people is that there is a bunch of special words that get thrown around.

01:33:58

I started out at the very beginning by saying we need to remember that the Trinity is one in essence and three in person.

01:34:06

The word essence, people talk about the word essence, they don't know what they mean. I think making it clear, the word essence is just a

01:34:14

Latin word for being. We talk about a being. What's a being? Your being is your definition.

01:34:20

Your essence is your definition. The Greek word is usia. The word usia just means being. A definition, question four of the

01:34:28

Shorter Catechism, for example, tells us a definition of God. God is a spirit, is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, and is being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

01:34:37

That idea of an essence being a definition, what is God? That whatness, what

01:34:45

God is, is so important. When we talk about essence, being, definition, usia, nature, we're talking about the same thing.

01:34:53

When we talk about a person, normally the words that get used historically, what's a person?

01:34:58

A person is a mind, a thinker, a consciousness. A person is, we have the

01:35:04

Latin persona, which came from the Greek hypostasis. The hypostasis is to stand under, hypo, under, stasis, to stand.

01:35:11

An actor was called a hypostasis, this idea of the person that was under the mask, the

01:35:16

Greek drama masks, the smiling one and the frowning one. You think about those. That idea of the mask, you have the person that is wearing the mask.

01:35:28

That person is the actor. A person, a persona, a hypostasis, and you have the word substance thrown in.

01:35:34

One last thing that happens is you find that that word substance ends up getting used for both. That's part of the confusion.

01:35:40

You go, oh, the Trinity is one substance, or the Trinity is one essence with three substances. The use of the word substance in two different ways is a source of a lot of the confusion in the history of this doctrine.

01:35:51

I just want to say, when you're looking at the word substance can be used to mean being or it can be used to mean person, depending on the writer you're reading.

01:35:59

I wanted to make that clear for everybody. We're talking about one shared definition of divinity and there's three persons, the

01:36:06

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are co -eternal. They're equally glorious. They're equal in power.

01:36:13

We want to worship the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's the most important thing to me, that people get what those two terms, person and essence, mean.

01:36:23

We have to go to our final break. If you want to join us on the air with a question of your own, send it to ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

01:36:29

We'll be right back. Please do not go away. I'm Brian McLaughlin, President of the

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Subscribe to the Iron Sharpens Iron radio podcast right now. And while you're at it, you can also sign up for the reformrookie .com

01:40:51

podcast and visit our website and the YouTube page. We are dedicated to teaching Christian theology from a

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01:41:14

And finally, if you're looking to worship in a Reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, New York.

01:41:24

Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avino and thanks for listening. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

01:41:33

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01:41:41

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01:41:47

I'm Pastor Nate Pickowitz of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmont and Ironworks, New Hampshire, and the

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01:42:01

NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Sule Prince of Oakwood Wesleyan Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and the

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Church of Friendship in Hockley, Texas, and the NASB is my Bible of choice.

01:43:18

I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

01:43:28

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01:43:36

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01:44:07

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01:44:15

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01:44:24

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01:49:17

Welcome back, Pastor Dave Reese. Do you have any other thing that you wanted to highlight in regard to the

01:49:24

Trinity and its counterfeits and its opposing heresies before I move on to a listener question?

01:49:33

I look forward to talking about the connection of the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation when we get to talk again in the future, but I think that that main thing, again, being the definition of essence versus a person, that in essence is the definition.

01:49:48

That's a given in question for the shorter catechism, what is God? And a person is a mind, a thinker.

01:49:54

So we have three persons with one shared definition, and I want to emphasize that. Okay, we have

01:50:02

Edwin in Bayside, Queens, New York, and Edwin says, when teaching on the

01:50:12

Trinity, do you have any books that you can recommend in addition to the

01:50:17

Holy Scriptures, of course, that you think may help us and your listeners to better understand this concept?

01:50:27

So, first of all, I think that Gordon Clark's book of the Trinity is magnificent.

01:50:33

I think it's the best single volume. It's very short. He does an excellent job of pulling the verses together and also pulling together the history of what's been discussed.

01:50:43

I also think that Augustine's book of the Trinity is very good, and he lays out some excellent things.

01:50:50

And one of the beautiful things that Augustine communicates in that book is he talks about how meditating on the doctrine of the

01:50:57

Trinity is a sort of healing process that properly orders your soul, because you begin to think properly about the distinction between God and man, and to think about the persons of the

01:51:07

Trinity. And so, he talks about this idea of a habit of thought, and how meditation on the truths of God as a habit of thought helps to rightly order the grooves that our thought places in our minds.

01:51:21

So, this sort of like the idea that there are roads that we make, that as we think, we have a habit of thought that places our minds to return to.

01:51:30

And what a beautiful thing if you could have the habit of when you have spare moments going to reflect upon God and His glory and the definition of the

01:51:39

Trinity. So, that idea. So, Augustine's great book there. Also, I would say that there are three systematic theologies that if you have any of these in your library already are really great ones to check out.

01:51:50

Calvin's discussion in the Institutes about the doctrine of the Trinity, Francis Turretin's definition and discussion of the

01:51:57

Trinity. Also, Charles Hodge does a magnificent job there in talking about those.

01:52:03

So, when you look those three systematic theologies, good resources where you might be able to look it up easily.

01:52:11

Thank you, Edwin. And I know of Pastor Edwin in Bayside Queens. I don't know if this is you, but if it is, greetings, brother.

01:52:21

But greetings to you anyway, whoever you are. When it comes to teaching the

01:52:31

Trinity, in addition to books, I'm assuming that you have either audio or YouTube presentations, either in sermons or a conference that could also be a great aid in understanding this.

01:52:50

Do you have anything that you could recommend? Yes, thank you very much. So, you can go to puritanphx .com and find our sermon library.

01:52:57

It's also available on Sermon Audio if you have the app for that or anything. But I have a series where I went through the whole of the

01:53:04

Westminster Confession. And so, chapter two is on the doctrine of God and on the doctrine of the

01:53:09

Trinity. And so, I've gone through that there extensively. I also have a membership class.

01:53:14

It's a five -part class where one of the classes, we focus on the doctrine of the Trinity and the

01:53:19

Incarnation because we think that those are so essential for people to understand coming in. So, we teach about it in our membership.

01:53:26

So, it takes up one of the five hours that we really spend on helping people to make sure they've thought about the

01:53:31

Shorter Catechism. And I would really encourage people, the history of the church, the church has thought about this a lot.

01:53:37

And the Westminster Confession and the Shorter Catechism and Larger Catechism have great places where we talk about it.

01:53:43

So, chapter two of the confession, whether it's the London Baptist or the Westminster or the Savoy Declaration, they all have really great teaching on the

01:53:51

Trinity in that second chapter. And you can find wonderful verses there. So, you look at that in the second chapter of any of those confessions, you're going to find that they have all these proof texts for the doctrine of the

01:54:03

Trinity that are fantastic for considering that doctrine. Great.

01:54:09

And we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania. And Arnie says,

01:54:16

I don't know if your guest is familiar with the debate between Reformed Christians, which is an in -house debate amongst us, where there is great disagreement, it seems, over the idea of God having passions.

01:54:31

The thing that I don't understand is that those who insist that we can never refer to God as having passions or emotions, is that they will say that when

01:54:42

Jesus Christ walked this earth in his humanity, he did have passions and emotions, but since he is still the

01:54:50

God -man, he is still God in the flesh, why would that cease now that he is seated at the right hand of the

01:54:57

Father? So, it's a really great question. First of all, the scriptures plainly teach that God does not change.

01:55:06

And it says plainly, for example, in Malachi, that his compassions change now. So, the idea that he has, if he doesn't have a changing of attitudes, our emotions are the process of our attitudes changing over time.

01:55:20

And so, with God, when we talk about anger, God has a steady anger towards evil all the time.

01:55:26

He's not changing it. It's not like he's not angry with evil, and now he's angry with evil. He's always angry with evil.

01:55:33

So, it's not an emotion in the sense that we would think of a human emotion with that up and down, because he's unchanging. The human nature of Christ is human.

01:55:41

Christ is truly human. And so, he has a human nature in which he has emotions.

01:55:49

That does not occur in his divine nature. It only occurs in his human nature.

01:55:55

Just like his divine nature doesn't have a body, his human nature has a body.

01:56:02

And so, there's a unity there. We talk about one person, but there's no mixing. And so, when we talk about this next time, hopefully we'll get to talk about the

01:56:09

Chalcedon and the idea that Christ doesn't change into man and stop being

01:56:15

God. He doesn't mix the beings. He doesn't have a slapping together of parts where he's part of God and part of man, and those get put together into a new thing.

01:56:23

But at the same time, him going to the right hand of the Father, that does not end his humanity.

01:56:30

Christ doesn't stop having emotions in his humanity, and he never will.

01:56:36

He will have emotions forever in his humanity as a part of his humanity. And so, in his divinity, he has no emotions.

01:56:44

In his humanity, he does. And so, I would want to emphasize that, and I guess it's actually a great thing for us to when we discuss things next time, is talking about the

01:56:54

Incarnation, and we can go into the two natures and how emotions would be related to there. Well, I would like you, in two minutes now, to summarize what you most want etched upon the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:57:07

Absolutely. So, I think one thing is that the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed in Scripture. Because it's revealed in Scripture, it can be understood.

01:57:15

We can't know everything there is to know about God because he's infinite, but what he has revealed, we can know, and we will learn that gradually over time.

01:57:23

And he will keep revealing truth to us when we're in the glorified state, so we'll keep learning forever. And so, that being the case, what we need to know is that God is defined in his

01:57:34

Scriptures. He tells us his attributes, and when he tells us his attributes, he's telling us what he is.

01:57:40

He's telling us who he is. And so, we need to remember that God has one definition, and we need to remember that that definition includes him being omniscient, omnipresent, and all -powerful.

01:57:54

And then, furthermore, we need to recognize that there are three persons, the

01:58:00

Father, who is God, the Son, who is God, and the Holy Spirit, who is

01:58:05

God. They are equal. And so, their equality is an equality of divinity.

01:58:10

Each of them has the same nature, the same essence. They share that definition of God. And so, when we think about the three persons of the

01:58:18

Trinity, we want to think about them as three spirits or minds, all sharing that definition. And then, we recognize the

01:58:25

Scriptures plainly teach that the Father gives commands to the Son and to the Spirit, and the

01:58:31

Son gives commands to the Spirit, and the Son and the Spirit both obey the

01:58:36

Father, and the Spirit obeys the Son as well. And so, why is this? Because they have a distinction of roles based upon covenant, not because of an inferiority of essence, but because of a differentiation of roles in covenant.

01:58:53

And so, they have a shared definition, so they are one God. They agree about everything, so there's no metaphysical paradox of, what if the

01:59:02

Father wants this and the Son wants that? They agree about everything. And because they agree about everything, they were also able eternally to have covenant, to differentiate roles, so they could glorify each other.

01:59:14

And so, that's what I want to make sure people take away, is understanding the Trinity and how the members of the Trinity work together.

01:59:21

Well, don't forget, if you want more information about Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona, go to PuritanPHX .com.

01:59:29

PuritanPHX .com, if you want to find out more about Pastor Reese's business, Armored Republic, go to ArmoredRepublic .com,

01:59:38

ArmoredRepublic .com. Thank you so much, Pastor Reese. I look forward to your return to the program on Wednesday, October 25th, and frequently thereafter.

01:59:49

And I want all of you to always remember, for the rest of your lives, that Jesus Christ is a far greater