Are Owen Strachan, Wayne Grudem, & Bruce Ware's Trinitarian Views Heretical? With Russell Fuller

Conversations That Matter

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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We have a special guest who's been on the podcast before with us,

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Dr. Russell Fuller. How you doing? I'm doing well, John. Good to see you. Good to see you too. For those who don't know,

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Dr. Fuller taught for many years at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He's on the board for TruthScript, and if people want to find out more about your theology classroom, if they want to learn theology at a good seminary level, where can they go?

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They can go to my website, RussellTFuller .com. RussellTFuller .com.

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Let me tell you, a lot of people have told me who have taken your courses, Dr. Fuller, that they're enriching and a blessing.

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They get this for just pennies on what they would have paid to go to seminary. If you want to learn hermeneutics or hold a

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New Testament survey, or I don't know what you're offering this semester, but they can go there.

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Yes, absolutely. Well, we have a big topic, and I feel like maybe we should both give our testimonies first on how this came about.

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Of course, you're more, I would say, connected in a close proximity to this whole issue, being a professor at Southern Seminary with Bruce Ware, who advocates the position we're going to be talking about, this eternal subordination position.

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Then of course, Owen Strawn was a student of yours. I know for me, this has been something for a few years

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I've actually wanted to talk about. In fact, I've had on my browser queued up a debate with Bruce Ware and Owen.

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I'm trying to remember who it was now. Bruce Ware was one of the participants arguing for this

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Trinitarian position. I think I got halfway through it, and I never quite finished it.

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I read some things, and I had this plan of talking about it, but I felt like it was fraught with minefields.

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It was such a big topic. I didn't want to get anything wrong. Other things were happening that were important that I thought needed my attention, but I knew that this was a bad argument to try to ground for people who don't know.

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We're going to define our terms, but what I saw in this doctrine, this Trinitarian doctrine, was an attempt to ground the relationship of husbands and wives in the relationship that the father and the son primarily had in the

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Trinity. This was a way of promoting a complementarian view. Instead of grounding in creation, which is really

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I think what you see in Scripture, the attempt is made to ground it in the Trinity, that it's just like the

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Trinity where women and men can be equal, but there's still this ordering.

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Maybe some would say a hierarchy could be argued from that ordering, perhaps, which we'll get into.

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That was my interest, was just let's stop making really lame arguments for complementarianism.

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Let's make better arguments, and this isn't one of them. It just got away from me until I was sitting with you, and Stephen Wolf was there, and a few other people, what, maybe three months, four months ago in Wisconsin.

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This topic came up of paternal subordination, and you articulated, I think, the concerns very well, and so I reached out to you and said, would you be willing to do a podcast, and you got back to me right away and said you'd love to.

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So that's how I'm approaching this. My concern is for Christians who are being given this view from people like Wayne Grudem or Bruce Ware or Owen Strawn, and I don't want them to make these bad arguments, and I'm also concerned that this isn't an orthodox view of the

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Trinity, and so that's the heart I have on this topic. What about you,

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Dr. Fuller? What put this on your radar? Yeah, the first time, of course, like you said, I taught with Bruce Ware at Southern Seminary for 22 years, and again,

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I like Bruce very much, a very nice guy. We always got along very well. Owen Strawn was a student in one of my classes, so I've had contact with him as well, but the first time that really caught my attention that was something different about Bruce's view of the

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Trinity is when he told me one time, he says, you know, we're not really supposed to pray to the Son, but we're supposed to pray to the

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Father, and I thought, you know, that's different because I thought, when he first said it,

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I didn't say anything to him. I mean, he's a theology professor. I'm an Old Testament professor, so I'm like,

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I better think about this again, but again, as I look at Scripture, I see passages like in 2

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Thessalonians chapter 2, I think around verse 17 and 18, where Paul is praying to the

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Son and to the Father, you see, very clearly there, and so I was like, this is different, and then

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I started hearing rumors, and then in 2016, the internet just sort of blew up over this topic because there were many who were holding to, let's say, the traditional

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Trinitarian position, and they saw this as a real threat to Orthodox Christianity, and so people like Mark Jones, for instance, and I think his name is

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Liam Goliger, these two gentlemen in particular were going against this new view of Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudemann, and again,

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I've heard it called different things, but I think the way they like it to be called is the eternal relations of authority and submission, and they're talking about in the eternal relations, if you go back to the

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Trinity itself, there is within the Trinity these relations, and these relations are, of course, that the

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Father has authority, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, they have submission, so they have different roles, they have different relations with one another, and therefore, there is a real hierarchy of sorts, so if we get into this here,

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I'll sort of, again, contrast the two different views. Well, it's important to note,

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I think, as you just did, that this was a controversy maybe, what, seven or eight years ago, and it's somewhat died down, it's still kind of brought up,

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I see every once in a while someone brings it up, but it's very rare, and it's like,

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I don't know if people forgot or what, this was a hot topic, though, I remember even in 2017,

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I remember at Southeastern, there were students doing their dissertations on this topic, so I think it is important, even though we're downstream from some of the controversies over it, it's still around, the people who express this view are still expressing this view as I understand it, and there hasn't been, you could correct me if I'm wrong,

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Dr. Fuller, any kind of denouncements or retractions or anything like that, this has been really,

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I mean, the people, Bruce Ware, Wayne Grudem, and Owen Strawn, in particular, haven't made any adjustments as far as I know.

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You know, over time they have modified their position, because some, they've,

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I know Bruce has, Bruce has made modifications as, because I know on Southern's campus, a lot of the theology professors, they kept telling

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Bruce, you know, hey Bruce, we're concerned about this, this is a real, this is a problem, none of the other professors, to my knowledge at Southern, agrees with Bruce on this, and many of them, at least privately to me, spoke about real concern that this was, this was something that was alarming to them, and so again, and even some of the professors in the church history department, again, expressed to me, let's say, very deep concerns, very serious concerns about this doctrine, and that it was not, you know, that it was really contrary to the doctrine of the

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Trinity as the church has known it for the last 1 ,500, 1 ,600 years. So would it be fair to say there's been some tweaks, but not fundamental adjustments?

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That's correct, that is right. There's been some tweaks made to it as the, as the criticism has come in.

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There's been a lot of tweaking it, but at the same time, the essential assertion that in the

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Trinity itself, just considering the, like let's say, the existence of the Trinity, there is an inherent authority that the

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Father has that the Son and the Holy Spirit does not have. They're not equal in authority is what we have here.

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So we have really an inequality in the relationship. They're going to say that's just in their relationship, not in their being, but in their relationship, they're not, they're not equal in authority.

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You know, it just occurred to me often, this is a totally new thought that maybe I shouldn't share, but I'm going to share it because it's interesting to me.

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But you know, since this has been used so much to defend complementarianism, why can't you defend labor relationships with this?

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Why can't you say, well, you know, slavery is okay because the

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Trinity or something, you know, it's kind of very, I don't know if anyone else has brought that up, but it just occurred to me that this is something that probably has a wider application than just trying to narrowly defend complementarian views.

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But anyway, I should digress from that one since everyone's not mad. Let's talk about the

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Trinity itself because, you know, everyone who's watching this podcast, a lot of the people I should say that watch this podcast are, they're in churches, they're

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Christians, they believe in the Bible, they want to do what the Bible says, they want to be faithful to scripture, right?

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And their concern, of course, is that some of the institutions they funded, including even churches sometimes, have not been faithful, but they don't all have necessarily the theological background that someone like yourself has to understand these ideas.

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And so I think it's helpful to walk through this. What is the Trinity? You don't see the word Trinity in scripture, so what are we talking about?

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Yeah, the word Trinity has the idea of the tri -unity, the three in one.

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And again, this was the first great controversy in the church because here's what the

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Bible teaches. God is one. He's not two, he's not three, four, no.

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God is one, yet the Bible also teaches the Father is

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God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. And so how do we put this together?

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How can God be one and yet God be, as it were, three?

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And so this was the, again, the first great controversy in the church.

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And it took years, I mean, we're talking about a hundred years or so, for this argument really to work itself out.

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And also we have to understand that these are not three different ways of God manifesting himself.

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So God's manifesting himself one time as a Father, the next time he manifests himself as a

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Son, the next time as a Holy Spirit. No, these are not just manifestations of God, these are actual, what we would call, persons in the

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Trinity. And so the notion of the Trinity, again, is three persons in one divine being, one substance.

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And how do we distinguish? And this is the key part, I think, one of the key parts of this debate now.

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How do we distinguish the three persons in the Godhead? And I think we should do it by what we call their personal properties.

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And what are the personal properties? The properties of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So this is normally the way it is said, the

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Father begets the Son, the Son is begotten of the Father, and the

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Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son from all eternity.

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And it's very important that we say from all eternity, because it's not as if the

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Father existed for a while, and then the Son was begotten later.

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And then after a while, then the Spirit proceeded from the Father and the

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Son. No, all of this happened from all eternity past. In other words, there was never a time when the

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Son was not begotten. There was never a time when the Holy Spirit didn't proceed from the

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Father and the Son. So we do have an order in the sense of the

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Father begets the Son, and the Father and the Son, the

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Spirit proceeds from them. There is an order there. But again, it's an order of their sort of, we have a subsistence of three persons in the

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Godhead. So it's giving us the subsistence, but that's not meaning that, okay, the

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Father is superior to the Son, and the Son is superior to the Holy Spirit or something like this. No, they're equal in the sense that they're all

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God, they're all equally God. The fullness of the Godhead dwells in each one, not as Ed Linton, when he ran for the president of the

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Southern Baptist, if you looked at his church website, the Father was a third God, the

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Son was a third God, and the Holy Spirit was a third God. No, no, no, no. I forgot about that. You're right.

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No, that's not the Trinity. And so it's very important that we understand what we're talking about here.

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So again, there are one divine being or one divine essence, okay, very important.

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Therefore, they're one in glory, they're one in power, they're one in majesty, and this is very important.

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They're one in will. There's one

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Trinitarian will. If you have three wills, and again, Bruce Ware will say this as well, if you have three wills, then you have three gods, really, okay, not just three persons in the

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Trinity, you have three gods. So it's important that in the

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Trinity, there is one will. Okay, that's very important, because again, they're one person.

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Again, there's none before or after, there's none greater or lesser.

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Again, they're co -equal and they're co -eternal.

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And so this is the doctrine of the Trinity. Now is this doctrine that you just articulated from, are we talking since Nicaea, this has been the understanding?

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How long has this been the view? Yeah, Nicaea was a great victory for,

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I believe his name was Alexander, he was an archbishop, and also for a young man named

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Athanasius. They got an important victory at the Council of Nicaea, that's like 325, but sort of the final victory, because again, you might win one victory, but usually you're going to have to battle this over and over again.

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It's like social justice. You might get a victory in social justice today, but let me tell you, you're going to need another one for tomorrow, next week, next month, it's the way it works.

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So it's going to take a while, even for something like social justice to be completely slain, or really what's going to happen is until the next thing comes along and takes the place of social justice.

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But really social justice will just come back in another form, that's what we're really talking. But then later on around 381

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AD, we're talking, at the Council of Constantinople was considered the final victory, but there were still a few tweaking of the

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Trinity to come, but not really. From that point on, really all the essentials were there, and really the doctrine has not been fundamentally or essentially changed in like 1 ,500 to 1 ,600 years.

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This new way of looking at the Trinity would be a fundamental shift in how we understand the

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Trinity. I mean, the Apostles Creed is pretty much every, not just Protestants, obviously

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Catholics, Protestants of every stripe, I would, even Eastern Orthodox, I would think would hold to that.

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Oh yes, they would. Okay. Yes, and they would hold to Nicene as well. They would hold to that one, and even to Constantinople, I believe they would all hold to that as well.

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Yeah, right. And maybe that's what I was, I said Apostles Creed, yeah, the Nicene Creed. Now later on, there's something called the Athanasius Creed that comes in the 500s, and there, it's according to what version of it, because remember the

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Eastern Orthodox Church does not believe in the, in other words, the

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Holy Spirit only proceeds from the Father, not from the Father and the Son. That's Eastern Orthodoxy, but in the

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West, whether we're talking the Catholic Church or the Protestant Church, we've always said no, the

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Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. So if you look at the Athanasius Creed, you'll see kind of two versions of that.

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Interesting. Okay, so with that background in mind, let's continue on with the competing view, as you said, you call it a competing view.

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So you have the traditional view of the Trinity, and the eternal relations of authority and submission challenges this.

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Right. First of all, what I think the people who are holding to this view of this,

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I'll just call it, I'll shorten it up, say the eternal relations view. Okay. They would say, listen, everything

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I've just said, we agree. We agree with everything that I had, the things

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I said earlier, but then they would say, but wait a minute, we can also distinguish the personal properties of the three persons in the

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Trinity, not only by, you know, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, like I said, or again, the

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Father begets the Son, the Son's begotten of the Father and so forth. They would say, there's another way that we distinguish them as well, and that is in their eternal relations, and in the eternal relationship among the

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Trinity, we're talking about the Trinity in itself, they have relations between one another, and we can distinguish the members of the

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Trinity, or at least one from the other two, which is kind of strange. You would expect you would be able to distinguish all three, but in a way, one is distinguished by authority, that's the

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Father. The other two are really not distinguished. They are really sort of, they're really undifferentiated here, but yet they have something called subordination.

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Okay. They are submission. They're submitting to the authority of the

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Father. So this is a, again, a major shift here. We're going from their personal properties to really the role, or the function, or the relationship they have with one another.

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There's a relationship of authority and submission between the two, and that's the first difference.

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The advantage here, of course, is that then you can say, wives submit to your husbands, and it's not tyrannical, because this happens in the

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Trinity. Jesus submitted to his Father. That's what they're trying to do, right? Right. Now, they'll tell you, they'll tell you, no, wait a minute, we didn't create this in order to talk about, you know, husband and wife relationships.

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However, what is true, though, is they came up with this view in the heat of the battle for what was going on at the time, which was a big controversy between egalitarianism and complementarianism.

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And to Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware's credit, they were leading the charge on this.

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I think they were doing a great job until they wanted to use, until they said, hey, wait a minute, we've discovered now that the

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Trinity is also important in this, and they brought the Trinity. I think anytime you bring the

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Trinity into, let's say, creaturely relations and try to compare the

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Trinity to something in the created world, we're going to be in great danger of creating

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Trinitarian errors. And I think that's what they've done. And again, you know, if you look at the time when this happened in this great debate, and by the way,

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I got to tell you this, John, I was at the

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Evangelical Theological Society. And when they came out with this view, the people who were pushing for egalitarianism, that, you know, men and women are equal in every way in the home, in the church, they can be pastors, all this stuff, you know, it's just feminism.

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And when Bruce and them came out with this, they were delighted, because now they knew they had the higher ground, where they can say, hey, look, they even have to, you know, hurt the

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Trinity to get their position. So I even went to hear some of their lectures, because I'm like, oh, no, what are they going to say?

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They got up and they were teaching Orthodox Trinitarianism. So they were able to shift from their error to the error of Bruce and Wayne on their, so I mean...

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I see what you're saying is the more egalitarian minded people were able to use this against...

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Oh, they gave him a hammer. And they were just, and really, I mean, all the good, or let's say most of the good that Bruce and Wayne did, they really lost some, a lot of this through their using the

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Trinity. And again, they would say, no, no, no, we found this and then we noticed that, but it really does look like these things happened at the same time and the heat of one battle.

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Even the Trinity's on our side on this. Look at this. Let me ask you something, because I know that Christians listening to this,

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I'm sure some of them have the question, it's in their minds right now. You know, what about when Jesus says things like, you know,

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I do what my father tells me to do, or when he says things like, just as my father and I are one,

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I want you and he's on to his disciples to be one. I mean, doesn't it seem like he's taking, obviously not using the word

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Trinity, it's not in the scripture, but he's taking this relationship, at least that he has with the father and he is bringing it into a human paradigm, kind of.

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What would you say to push back like that? Yeah, I mean, you know, if Jesus uses it, that's one thing.

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If he wants to use a comparison between him and his father, we've got to be very careful about making,

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Jesus knows the Trinity. The Trinity is, we don't fully comprehend it.

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It's not fully comprehended by us, so we must be careful.

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Again, he was making an analogy about the unity between him and the disciples, but I would still say, again, we must be careful about it to make...

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So he wasn't, maybe the distinction is he was not trying to say that there is a subordination of some kind that you should have among yourselves because my father and I have that subordination.

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He's more talking about the unity of purpose they have. Well, remember, John, also he's talking, here's some of the difficulties of this discussion.

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Sometimes when Jesus speaks, he's referring to himself as, of course, he's the

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God man, and sometimes he really has in mind, as it were, his human nature, sometimes his divine nature.

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As divine, he's equal with the father. As a human being, he's inferior to the father.

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So we have to keep those kinds of things in mind as well. Now with this view, and I'll get to it in a minute, but maybe

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I'll go ahead and say it now since we've sort of touched on it. This new view, they sort of, that distinction, they rarely bring that distinction in.

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They almost eliminate that distinction. So anytime the son is speaking, he's speaking as the second person of the trinity as opposed to the

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God man. And so that's why, you know, when Jesus says, you know, no man knows the day or the hour of the second coming.

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Not even the son knows. Now, how do we understand this?

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Is this the second person of the trinity speaking? If it is, then obviously the second person of the trinity does not know what the first person of the trinity knows.

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This is a real problem. We have to see that as referring to the humanity of Christ.

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Jesus as a human being did not know the day or the hour. And that's a mystery to us.

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How can Jesus, who is God in the flesh, he is a hundred percent

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God, a hundred percent man, but one person, you know, how can he say that?

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Well, it has to refer to his human, or when the Bible talks about Jesus growing in wisdom and in stature, we understand the stature.

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It's clearly his human body. But at the same time, he's growing enough. That's his human mind.

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That's his human nature. Right. So there were certain non -communicable attributes. Certain non -communicable, that's correct.

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He forwent, or, you know, I'm trying to come up with the best language to keep within the bounds of orthodoxy here.

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That's right. And remember, the Bible will sometimes talk about, you know, it'll talk about God, and then

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God purchased the church with his blood. And you're going, God, blood. So what the scriptures do is a lot of times they'll talk about one nature of the person of the son, but apply it to the whole person.

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Right. So sometimes it'll talk about the divinity of Christ, but yet it's also relating, you know, in other words, it's really only to the whole person.

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And then sometimes it'll say something about the humanity of Christ. But again, it's related to the whole person. So that's why you can get something like, again, almost like God has blood in certain passages, you know, like, wait a minute.

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All right. So the submission, it's interesting though, because what you're talking about here, I think does have, these are the passages that they'll go to.

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Jesus submits to the father. So what do you do with that? And what you're saying, it sounds to me, Liz, that, well, of course he does, but the submission is in his human nature, in the mission that he had as a human being on this earth, increasing in wisdom and stature as he grew was to be about his father's business.

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That's correct. And that's much different than saying there is an ontological, another $400 ,000 word, that difference between the son and the father, that they're ontologically, that difference doesn't exist there.

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Yeah. When we say ontological, we're talking about in the very being of God, the very being of the

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Trinity. That's right. Now also we'll say this, in the, we talk about the

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Trinity in its being, but we also talk about the Trinity in its works.

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When the Trinity reveals itself in working out the one divine

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Trinitarian plan for the, you know, for creation, providence, and especially the doctrine of redemption, there's this one divine

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Trinitarian plan. Now, as that plan is executed by the father and the son and the

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Holy spirit, there is something that people call a relative subordination.

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In other words, it's not, it's a subordination relative to their roles in redemption or in the works of creation and providence.

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So as the Trinity reveals itself to us, there is a relative subordination where the father sends the son and things of this nature.

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But again, that does not go back to the Trinity in itself. It's not a real subordination in the

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Trinity where again, the son is somehow inferior to the father, but as the working out of the plan of God by the father and the son and the

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Holy spirit, they have roles. You know, I don't know what else to call it.

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They have roles that they are functioning as, or if you want a more fancy terminology, they have modes of operations.

30:59

That sounds better than roles. They have manner of operations so that the father is sending the son, the father and the son send the

31:09

Holy spirit. Okay. So there is a relative subordination, meaning there's not an essential subordination in the

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Trinity itself, but in its, in its working out of its one divine will, there's a relative subordination in the manner of the operations of the

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Trinity. If that's not, you know, ontologically a subordination, would,

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I mean, would the word ordering fit there better that there's an ordering in the Trinity? There's an ordering in the

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Trinity that is true. Again, when you say the father, the son and the Holy spirit, there's a certain order there.

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And again, when you say the father begets the son and the son, the father and the son, this

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Holy spirit proceeds from the father and the son, there is an order, but this is not an order of, let's say superiority.

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They're still equal in power and glory in every way. But again, there is sort of a, in the mode of their, or the manner of their subsistence as father, son, and Holy spirit, there is an order.

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But again, don't, we don't want to look at this as a hierarchy of, we have God 1A and then the son is 1B and not in that sense, you know, but again, when you ground it in authority and submission, there you've got a problem.

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And another, see, here's what's a problem with that too. It all, it really makes the notion of different wills in the

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Trinity. So if the father expresses his will through authority, the son and the

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Holy spirit must present their own wills by submission.

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This implies multiple wills in the Trinity. And even Bruce Ware says, no, no, that you can't have this.

33:09

It's inescapable. Yeah. Let's hit the pause button just for a moment because this is a lot for some people to take in.

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And I think it's good to, for those who are still listening, maybe some of you might've tuned out.

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Maybe you're sleeping. Some of you, I don't know. Cause this is some very good for theology classroom or not.

33:31

Well, it's important stuff. I think people are curious. It's dense and somewhat abstract.

33:38

So you have to put on your thinking cap. So, so, so let's just kind of put a cap on this and then we'll get into the, you know, here's what

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Bruce Ware says here. Here's what he's actually written or said, or his students say, or whatever. Um, and Owen Strawn and whoever else.

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So the view that you're arguing for that we both believe is that ontologically, uh, at a, at a base level, fundamentally, the

34:03

Trinity, these are, uh, this is a, a Godhead with, um, one will.

34:11

Okay. And they're co -equal co -eternal, uh, persons in the

34:16

Godhead. There's an ordering, uh, in the Godhead, but there is not a hierarchy in the

34:22

Godhead such that, uh, the father is superior or his will is superior, uh, and, you know, forces itself upon the others or anything like that.

34:33

That's, that's what we want to stay away from. So, so we believe in this ontological, um, union of one, one will in the

34:41

Godhead, not even a union. That's not even a good way to put it. There is a one will. There's one divine being or essence.

34:49

And part of that is the will. The will is not in the persons. The will is in the essence and therefore they have one will, not three wills.

35:00

Three wills would mean we have three gods. That would be tri -theism. Right. Scary. That's what we cannot have.

35:07

We don't want to go into polytheism here. And if you think about Judaism and Islam, that's exactly what they say about us, that we believe in a tri -theism really.

35:18

We believe in multiple gods and we say, no, no, no. We believe what the Bible teaches. God is one.

35:26

But if one God, and again, now what Bruce will say is, well, I agree with what you just said,

35:32

John, when it comes to, um, the divine being, there's pure equality, but in their relations, there's, there's an ordering of superior, uh, of, um, authority and submission.

35:48

And then he'll say, but those are, that's not, he'll say, that's not an attribute because you see, if you say an attribute, then you're saying it's an essential part or an attribute of something that essentially defines something.

36:04

So if you say red barn, you are essentially, um, distinguishing that barn from other barns because it's red.

36:14

Okay. So you're giving a, an essential distinction. When we talk about the attributes of God, they're, they're essential, uh, defining characteristics of God.

36:29

Okay. And you can't have like the father having more of one attribute than another.

36:36

Now he'll say, now, wait a minute, authority and submission are not attributes. They're relations.

36:42

But no, I believe authority is part of the power of God. It's even part of the truth of God.

36:49

And so I think authority is really connected to many of the, and perhaps all of the attributes of God.

36:59

And it's clearly also part of the glory of God as well. You see his authority.

37:05

And so for the son to have, or the Holy spirit to have less authority, really authority is just a subset, uh, or it's something included in the attributes of God.

37:17

So in my opinion, these things go to the very, again, being of God, he wants to separate authority from the being of God.

37:26

That's just, that's in a relationship. That's all it is. It's a relational thing, but I think that's wrong.

37:31

I think that's seriously wrong. Yeah. So are we going to get into a conversation about irreducible complexity or are we going to, uh, all right, so, uh, you, you had given me some notes on this.

37:44

One of the things you said is that, um, Bruce Ware's view fails to distinguish between the Trinity in itself and the

37:50

Trinity in its works. Trinity in itself is perfectly, uh, there, there is perfect equality.

37:56

Same is true with the Trinity, um, in its works. So it's interesting cause, um, this reminds me a little bit in some ways of the, the debate over women pastors,

38:09

I suppose, where there, there people want soft complementarians want to make this distinction, right?

38:15

They want to say, no, there's a role here. Uh, and then there's, uh, there's a function over here and that these are two different things.

38:23

And that, and I think we have said that, no, no, no, you can't separate these things. You know, the, these are, and that's,

38:30

I think something similar to what you're saying here on a different topic, obviously, but that we should not separate these things.

38:38

That's right. We don't want to separate the being of God with the relation of the persons within the being of God.

38:46

We don't want to separate those so that you can have a equality in the being, but an inequality in the relationship between them.

38:55

You see, I think this is, uh, something that is again, uh, misguided.

39:02

Okay. Well, let's, um, should, should I read your conclusion before we move on just to really drive this home?

39:09

Cause you, you, you put it in, yeah, it's one little paragraph here. This is your view.

39:15

The eternal relations of authority and submission, um, is a dangerous departure from biblical orthodoxy.

39:21

It undermines the unity of the Godhead by asserting multiple wills in the Trinity, which is tri -theism, three gods.

39:28

It further undermines the unity of the Godhead by making the relations of the Trinity unequal. This creates a functional and relational subordination in the very nature of the

39:37

Trinity, which is dangerously close to a form of Arianism. Now that is a serious charge to say that this is close to Arianism, because of course,

39:46

Arianism has been condemned throughout most of church history, uh, officially, and it's recognized today in cults like the

39:54

Jehovah's Witness cult, right? So when you start saying that, well, it's kind of like Arianism, I mean, that's like saying it's kind of like Islam.

40:01

It's like saying it's kind of like, uh, you know, some, some pagan religion out there. Uh, that's right.

40:07

It has, um, again, when you say that there is an inequality in the

40:14

Trinity, now again, they're going to say, no, we're not saying that they're equal in being, but yet their relations are unequal.

40:23

And so they have a functional, a relational subordination that is really imminent in the

40:32

Trinity. I mean, it's in the Trinity by its very nature. And that's why I say you're getting close to some type of form of Arianism here.

40:41

And again, in Arianism, now, if you look at, you know, classical Arianism, they would say that again, the father and the son are not of the same being.

40:51

Okay. They, they claim they are of the same, they are the same being in the sense of they're one divine substance.

40:58

However, in their relations in their being, or, you know, they want to almost separate these things.

41:05

They're not. And so again, this is creeping towards an

41:11

Arian either. Again, I would call like functional Arianism here, or relational Arianism, because in their relations, it is

41:20

Arian. There's a superiority and there's an inferiority. One has authority, the other, they're not equal in their relations with each other.

41:29

Let me just bring everyone else in the audience into a discussion we started before I pressed record.

41:37

I said that there are theistic evolutionists out there who we would condemn the

41:42

Darwinist understanding of creation. That's obviously erroneous in a way that I think we would safely say is heretical.

41:52

And, and there's all kinds of problems with it. Death before sin being one of them. But there are people who are theistic evolutionists who say they believe in Darwinism to some extent.

42:02

They think we got here through cosmological and biological processes, but that somehow also

42:08

God created this world and created Adam and his image. And they believe the

42:13

Genesis story, at least the theological, important theological ramifications of the

42:19

Genesis story. And so what do you do with someone like that? That was just one of the examples that I gave.

42:24

And, and, you know, they, they put up guardrails because they're not connecting the dots. They're not connecting their view over here, right?

42:31

On the one hand with their view on the other hand, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.

42:37

And so, you know, some of these people, I think many of them are going to, we're going to be in heaven with them.

42:42

They're going to be, they believe they trust in Christ for their salvation. They they, they trusted in the right

42:49

Jesus, but they had a view. They never really worked out over here that they also advocated. Right. And this is dangerous stuff.

42:56

I know there's some who might even disagree with me and say, John, that that's not possible for someone who believes in Darwinism or evolution.

43:02

And I would just say, we can have that discussion some other time, but I think that whether you pick this topic or another topic, we can certainly agree.

43:10

There are, there are different positions out there that if taken to their conclusions are heresy and damnable heresy, but thank

43:20

God that the people who advocate some of these views do not take them to their conclusions. And they're very quick sometimes to put guardrails up and say, no, no, no, no.

43:28

I don't believe, you know, that they, that there's this in this case, let's say and inequality in the

43:36

Trinity. Of course, I don't believe that. I, I just believe it's this relational thing. It doesn't actually get into the ontology.

43:42

And so they try to, to keep keep the virus from escaping the lab.

43:48

Right. Right. And I think what you're saying is like, I mean, there's, there's really no way logically to prevent this from happening.

43:56

This is just where it's going to lead. But, but, but that is, you know, I guess it's an admirable effort to try to also hold on to orthodoxy on the other hand.

44:05

So, so that being said, and, and with that understanding, which I think we both agree with Bruce Ware, Wayne Grudem, Owen Strawn being kind of the biggest names in this, have they connected these dots?

44:19

Have they said things like, well, there's three wills in the Trinity? Have they or is this just the logical implications of their position?

44:28

Well, I think it's a little bit of both. I think there's times when people have looked at their views who are very sympathetic to them and their views and said,

44:37

Hey, this view really is based upon three wills in the

44:42

Trinity. And we'll look at something like that in a second. But there's also cases where people who are advocating this have advocated for three wills.

44:53

Now you read my conclusion. Let me just say one more thing about the conclusion. Now, again, the, the people who were behind, you know,

45:01

Bruce and them would disagree with me saying they believe in three wills because he's going to say,

45:07

I told you, I don't believe in three wills. Okay. But I think their distinction here really is between the nature of God and the relationship between the, the, the members of the

45:21

Trinity. I think the nature drives the relationship and to make a distinction between them so that you can get an inequality in this way.

45:33

I believe you are creating this and that's why I said it the way I said it. But now if you want to, we can look at what some people have said that shows that this is a lurking danger, the three wills in the

45:45

Trinity. Yeah. Let's do that. Do you want to start with the Al Mohler article?

45:51

Yeah. Let's talk about how Al Mohler is involved in this. When the critics of Bruce Weir's view started to say,

46:01

Hey, look, this is, this is not orthodox. This is a matter of fact that many of them were calling it heresy.

46:07

Many of them were using, you know, this is Aryanism. This was some of the things while Al Mohler responded and in his response let me just read one line out of what you're showing on the screen right now.

46:21

He now, again, the reason Al Mohler's brought into this is Bruce Weir was a professor under Al Mohler at Southern seminary.

46:30

And so Mohler was not only defending his professor, but he was defending himself for allowing, knowingly allowing a professor to teach such doctrine at Southern seminary.

46:44

And so here's a comment he makes in this work. Let me. Is it the recent changes of violating the

46:51

Nicene creed? I think I have it pulled up. Yeah, but there's a line above it. That's a very, very important.

46:57

And here's what he says right above that. It says, Mohler says, affirming separate wills within the

47:04

Trinity would be a heresy, but we lack adequate human categories for understanding how exactly to define these doctrines comprehensively.

47:14

But notice he's saying, if someone were to affirm three wills in the Trinity, he goes, look, this would be heresy.

47:22

Okay. Then if you'll, if you'll highlight that paragraph again. Oh yeah. There there's the line right there.

47:29

Yeah. Then if you go down to the other one, now he sharply rebukes the critics of Bruce Weir and Wayne Grudem and so forth.

47:43

And if you notice here, he, he makes the statement, he goes to the,

47:49

I'm reading at the very end of it. To the contrary, both theologians affirmed the full scope of Orthodox Christianity and have proven themselves fateful teachers of the church.

47:58

These charges are baseless, reckless, and unworthy of those who make them.

48:04

So again, this is a very sharp rebuke that Mohler's bringing. However, Mohler didn't realize at the time that a book had come out before he made this charge.

48:16

And by the way, I will give you some in an inside scoop. I do know that Mohler was advised, don't,

48:23

I don't want to get into names, but I do know Mohler was advised, don't come out with that statement.

48:29

You're going to get hurt. They're going, there's people who are going to embarrass you if you come out like you're about to do, but he didn't listen to the advice and he wrote this and the embarrassment did come.

48:45

What you, what happened was Carl Truman noticed in this book right here,

48:50

One God in Three Persons, Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life.

48:59

In this book, there is an author named Kyle, and I hope I get his name right, Clunch.

49:05

He is currently a professor of theology at Southern Seminary. And at the time of the writing of this book,

49:11

I believe he was like a teaching assistant to Bruce Ware.

49:18

And he was also his PhD advisor.

49:23

So really Kyle did his PhD under Bruce Ware. And so.

49:31

So, so before we go on though, Bruce Ware wrote this book or was one of the authors on this book?

49:37

He's one of the authors and he's one of the editors, which means he's responsible. I think that's important for everyone to understand.

49:44

That's right. He's responsible for everything written in this book because he's, he's not just a contributor.

49:51

See, if you notice Chris Cowan over here is a contributor, right? But Bruce A.

49:57

Ware is the author and so was John Stark. They're the authors. So people don't know sometimes how this works.

50:03

And I think it's important for them to know in academia, when you have numerous people working on a book of some kind, which happens quite a bit, most,

50:14

I'm sure you've been part of this where you'll contribute a chapter, someone else will contribute a chapter, but there's an editor or, or series of editors who go through the whole thing and they make sure that there's integrity and a connection that, that these things are hand in glove and fit together so that you can have a good book and from multiple authors, which is actually a challenge.

50:38

Most people don't realize how much of a challenge it is to get multiple authors. You have to do a lot of work reconciling things.

50:44

That's right. But here Bruce has to just keep an eye out on what people say he believes, you know?

50:51

Right, right. It's pretty easy, right? Yeah. Because this book is really promoting his position. So he does not want anybody misrepresenting his position.

51:00

And especially Kyle Clunch, who is, who, who should know

51:06

Bruce Ware's view very well. Because he was his student. Very close student. Not just a, like when

51:11

I talked about Owen Strand being in my class, he was just in one of my classes. Okay. This is a different situation.

51:18

This is Kyle was, again, he did his PhD. So he worked very closely with Bruce for quite a while.

51:27

So Bruce was his advisor, his thesis or his dissertation. Oh yes. So this is a very close relationship.

51:34

And again, Kyle is a current professor at Southern Seminary. So again, they were, they've been very close for a long time.

51:40

So what does the book say? Okay. When you look in the book, I'm going to read what

51:48

Kyle Clunch said. He goes, in order for the son to submit willingly to the will of the father, the two must possess distinct wills.

51:58

Now he is, again, describing the view. It's not his view, but he's describing the view of, again,

52:04

Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem. This way of understanding the imminent trinity, meaning the trinity in itself or ontologically, does run counter to the pro -Nicene tradition.

52:14

He's exactly right. This is not Nicaea. I don't know.

52:19

Athanasius would have none of this. Kyle is right. And then he says this, as well as the medieval reformation, post -reformation reform tradition.

52:28

That's right. This teaching of Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem has not been seen ever in 1500 years.

52:36

By the way, I did ask Bruce once, I said, what you're teaching, do you see it in some of those early church fathers?

52:44

And he goes, oh no. He goes, what we're doing is something that's sort of advancing it or develop it further in the direction where they were going.

52:52

Well, I don't think they would agree with that. I seriously don't. But what Kyle is saying here is correct.

52:57

Let me read a little bit more here. He says, he goes, by arguing for eternal authority and submission in the

53:07

Godhead, Ware, Grudem and others are not abandoning in all traditional

53:12

Trinitarian categories. Obviously, they're abandoning in many of the categories, but not all of them.

53:19

Rather, drawing on the distinction between the one divine essence and the three divine persons, a distinction that is basic to Trinitarian orthodoxy from its earliest mature expressions, they are making a conscious and informed choice to conceive of will as a property of the person rather than the essence.

53:42

The model of a three -willed Trinity then provides the basis for the conviction that structures of authority and submission actually serve as one of the means differentiating the divine persons.

53:59

Kyle Clutch clearly believed at this time that Bruce Ware was teaching three wills in the

54:07

Trinity, the very thing that Moeller had said, this would be a heresy.

54:13

Well, guess what? Some of the best and closest students of Bruce Ware, they're coming out with, they're saying, hey, this is what it is.

54:22

I mean, this is logically what's being said here. What happened though, because this was what, 2016?

54:29

Yeah, 2016, that's right. Bruce Ware had to have gotten some blowback, and it's embarrassing for Al Moeller.

54:35

How did they rectify this to try, because Bruce Ware's still teaching at Southern Seminary.

54:40

Yeah, he might be retired, but he's still probably a retired professor teaching there. He wasn't fired for -

54:46

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Moeller called heretical. I'm the one that got fired. You're the one that got fired, right?

54:53

He retired. Yeah. I think he has retired. I think he has. But either way, whether he, my only point is that there was a view that Moeller called heretical.

55:03

Correct. And here's Bruce Ware endorsing his own

55:08

PhD student who's representing his view, and it's directly in violation of that heretical view

55:15

Moeller says that should not be believed, but he kept his job. So what happened?

55:20

How did he keep his job? Well, as soon as Mark Jones, and again, Carl Truman put this out,

55:29

I like Mark Jones, he called his response, the irony of Moeller's post on the

55:37

Trinity. Yeah, there's quite an irony there. Mark Jones is right about that. What happened was, as you're putting up on the screen now, there was a very quick, let's say, correction.

55:52

As you said a minute ago, the virus has come out of the lab and now we're in cleanup mode now.

55:59

I mean, we've got to shut everything down and get this COVID virus cleaned up that we've released.

56:07

And so Claunch writes, and let me read the first part here, in the interest of full disclosure,

56:15

I should state openly that I am currently pursuing a PhD in systematic theology under the supervision of Bruce Ware at Southern Seminary, where Dr.

56:24

Moeller is president. You can imagine I was greatly disquieted by the fact that my published works have been used to discredit the claims of the president of my seminary and the orthodoxy of my supervising professor.

56:39

Yes, this is very difficult. He goes on to write, and I'm just going to read just a part of it here,

56:49

Ware has told me through private correspondence that he holds to one will in the

56:55

Godhead, each person exercising the one divine will according to his hypostatic identity as father, son, and Holy Spirit.

57:05

So there was a, let's say, correction. Then Bruce later came out and clarified his position even more.

57:16

Bruce, let me see if I can kind of give you what he said so that I can say it accurately here.

57:22

Bruce said about the wills. I don't think I have this. Yeah, you don't, well you do on my, on the outline, but anyway, he says this, the one will is activated, basically you have one will, but then each member of the

57:39

Trinity activate that one will in their own way. So you've still got three wills to be honest with you.

57:45

And so here's what he says, each member of, each person of the Godhead activates the one will to their own, to their own will basically.

57:56

But that still does not, that still is three wills practically speaking.

58:03

And again, how can you have, well, let me say this real quick. How does it make sense?

58:10

What's the meaning if you are, you're exerting authority and submission, but it's the same will, it's the same one will, how can that be?

58:22

How can you at the, at one time, the father is exerting his will and authority.

58:28

The son is exerting his will in submission, but that's all part of one will.

58:35

Right. It seems meaningless. It seems meaningless. Let me ask you this. That's why, that's why

58:40

Cal Clunch understood it the way he understood it. I mean, it's, otherwise it's meaningless.

58:48

Do you, I mean, do you think honestly, maybe this is speculative, but like that Bruce Ware just said,

58:53

Oh no. And then had to, had to kind of tweak something. Or do you think this was view all along that there's this one will that is then somehow ascertained and manifested in three,

59:07

I guess, applications of that one will that are different in some kind of hierarchy.

59:13

I don't know, but see he, all the critics of his were already pointing this out that, look, it looks like you're teaching three wills.

59:21

Okay. And, but this, but in Bruce defense, I will say this, this stuff happened very quickly.

59:28

I mean, it didn't take long for this to erupt, but the, but when you can't, but what

59:34

Bruce is a very competent theologian, I mean, he's, he's no, he's no fool on this.

59:39

He's not incompetent. And so as he's coming up with this, he's even in his, by the way, he came out with an article on it and he goes, now

59:49

I'm going to explain to you my view. And then he, at the very end of it, he goes, now this is not simple or easy, or he said something like that.

59:55

Cause he recognizes it's hard to get away.

01:00:01

It's almost impossible to get away of not seeing three wills in the Trinity.

01:00:06

When you bring this hierarchy of submission and authority, it's.

01:00:12

Where did you get the quote that you just read from him? That kind of was, I guess, sounded contradictory and awkward.

01:00:22

Where was that from? So show people who are listening. Yes. Hold on here.

01:00:27

I've got it. Just give me just a second. Um, at least I hope I do.

01:00:33

Was it in a book? Was it in a video? It's a, it's, it's a, you could, you could, uh, look this up on the, on the web, knowing the self -revealed

01:00:41

God who was father, son, and Holy spirit guest posts by Bruce Ware. And I'll read it to you since, uh,

01:00:49

I'm here. Let's see here. He goes this, when he talks about the three wills, he goes, here's the question and ask him.

01:00:56

Okay. Listen, closely related is the next question regarding the will of God as it pertains to the one and undivided divine nature and the three distinct persons.

01:01:07

Can there be a will of authority from the father and a will of submission from the son without conceiving of separate and separable divine wills?

01:01:18

It's a very good question. That's, that's, that's very well done. Here's his answer. And I'm just going to be part of it in short.

01:01:25

My answer is yes. But the issue is anything but simple. Exactly.

01:01:31

And so here's what, here's what he, here's this sort of this conclusion on this. Um, yet while each and he's talking about each person of the

01:01:41

Trinity possesses the same volitional capacity, each also is able to activate that volitional capacity and exercising the one will in distinct yet unified ways according to their distinct identities and mode of subsistence.

01:02:01

Again, it gets quite complicated there and I, I'm sorry, I'm doing this, but basically there's one divine will and each of them separately are able to activate their own will basically out of the one unified will.

01:02:20

That's basically what he's saying here. Uh, cause again, he goes, I know,

01:02:26

I know, I don't know. I'm just kind of like, I gotta read this part or even three distinguishable acts of willing.

01:02:35

You see? So there's three distinguishable acts of willing, but yet there's one will.

01:02:41

I mean, how can you, or he'll say it this way, along with the three inflections of the unified divine will.

01:02:49

So again, he has to, he's forced into saying there's like, there's one divine will, but they, but that one divine will can be activated three different ways according to the persons of the

01:03:04

Trinity. Oh, it's still three wills. I mean, it really is.

01:03:10

Um, but the funny thing to be, I guess the reason I was smiling is I think of a, uh, like,

01:03:17

I know there's complex doctrines, but I think of the, the, the pew sitter there, right?

01:03:22

The, the person who just wants to follow the Bible hearing this and saying, what Bible verse, you know, where do you even start?

01:03:30

Where this is, this, this just seems to me like what you get in academia. And it's, it's not just obviously theology.

01:03:37

I've seen this in philosophy and history and every discipline you get on this Island where you just get, it gets weird, man.

01:03:43

You get, you've seen this syndrome. Just real quick. There are some

01:03:49

Bible verses. Now, again, it doesn't say they have one will, but when it says this, when it says thing like Jesus is about the being in the form of God, in other words, he, he is, he's got the very form of what

01:04:03

God is. He is okay. Or Jesus will say, you know, my father and I are one, one in what, you know, one in being, well, if you're one in being, you have one will.

01:04:19

If you're two in beings, you have two wills, right? So when he says, I and my, my father and I are one, you see, what do you mean by one?

01:04:29

What is one God? What is monotheism you see? And so that's where it comes from.

01:04:37

And for, and I know for the average person in the church, they're going to hear this, the eyes are going to start glazing. Why is this important?

01:04:44

We're talking about the God that we worship. Who is the God that we worship?

01:04:51

So it's a, it's an, it's an absolutely essential doctrine. And I know it's being,

01:04:57

I know we have to use fancy words. We do. There's just no getting around it.

01:05:02

But the practical implication for everyday believers is very important.

01:05:10

How do we, are we monotheist? Or do we believe that God, that they're equal in power and in glory and in all their attributes?

01:05:21

Do we believe that? Or what else? Or how are we going to believe this? And are we going to have superior, inferior, greater, lesser in the

01:05:28

Trinity? What's that say about who our God is? So this really strikes at the very roots, the very foundation of what we believe as Christians.

01:05:40

You can't get more foundational on what we're talking about. So even though once, you know, you wake up from the nap, you really want to grapple with this because this is vitally important to how we read scripture and in every other way.

01:05:55

Um, yeah, well said. Uh, there was one last thing I think you wanted me to share, which is, uh, this, uh,

01:06:02

Josh Summers, who's actually been on the podcast years ago, was a student of Owen Strahan. And, um, he had something to say about his experience in Owen Strahan's class.

01:06:10

Is it, is now a good time for me to play? Yeah, let's play this now. Okay. Testimony.

01:06:16

All right, start here. Kind of a personal testimony, uh, in terms of my own experience with, with Dr.

01:06:23

Strahan. I had Dr. Strahan as a professor in class, um, for a, a master's level theology one course.

01:06:32

Okay. In that class, uh, he taught

01:06:37

ERAS. And I distinctly remember one, uh, one day where, uh, the classes were like three hour blocks a piece.

01:06:47

So it was like three hours worth of lecture every time we were in there. And I think it was twice out of the week or something like that. And this was at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

01:06:56

Uh, Strahan is no longer at MBTS. Uh, he is, he is at, um, he is at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in, um,

01:07:05

Conway, Arkansas with Jeff Johnson. So, um, the day that I recall him teaching on, on the doctrine of the

01:07:15

Trinity in particular, um, he affirmed three wills in the Godhead.

01:07:20

He was teaching ERAS. It was either myself or someone else who asked whether or not he would go on to affirm what seemed to be the implication that there are three wills in the

01:07:29

Godhead. And he quite unashamedly and, and plainly without any, you know, need to think about it, affirmed three wills in the

01:07:38

Godhead. So that's my personal experience with, with Dr. Owen Strahan. I know a lot of people are asking, you know. Okay.

01:07:44

So, uh, that's Josh Sommer, who was a student of Dr. Owen Strahan, who, for people who don't know,

01:07:51

Owen Strahan, uh, teaches, I guess, the same understanding of the Trinity that Bruce Ware, who we've been talking about, teaches.

01:07:59

He's also, he happens to be, I believe, the son -in -law of Bruce Ware, if I'm not mistaken, right? And so there's a family relationship, not saying that's why he holds that position, but they are, they're close.

01:08:10

We'll put it that way. Very close. And, and so Josh Sommer, another student says, well, this is what

01:08:15

Owen Strahan's saying. Now you, you, you didn't have at least a publicly available quote from Owen Strahan saying that exact thing.

01:08:22

So it's just the testimony of the student. Um, but it would be consistent with what

01:08:28

I guess you've brought to us concerning Bruce Ware and it would be consistent with the logical implications of their view.

01:08:36

Yeah, that's true. But also I hope our viewers will go to get a podcast because, um,

01:08:43

Owen Strahan did a podcast. Oh, Owen Strahan did. Yeah. Okay. And it's called The Antithesis, Trinitarian Truth in Divisive Times.

01:08:52

And if you'll go there, he will talk about his view and I could give you some quotes. And again,

01:08:57

Josh also referred to this. He goes, Hey, listen, what you hear in, in, on this podcast is what he was teaching in the classroom.

01:09:05

And let, let me give you just a few, um, quotes from this. Listen, listen to this quote.

01:09:12

It comes at the, about the 31 minute mark of this. Um, the son is not here to execute a generic

01:09:22

Trinitarian divine will, but the father's will that in terms of the son's own confession, he is not here to execute a generic

01:09:36

Trinitarian will, a generic divine will. He's here to do the father's will. And then he goes on to say, the father's will has the primacy, meaning over the son's will, over the

01:09:48

Holy spirit's will. Obviously the father's will has primacy. What do you mean the primacy?

01:09:53

And again, by the way, Bruce Ware says in one of his online things that the father has the ultimate authority, ultimate authority over whom over the son and the

01:10:05

Holy spirit of relationally, but he has the ultimate authority. So again, again, let me read that again.

01:10:10

The son is not here to execute a generic Trinitarian divine will, but the father's will meaning the father's will, as opposed to the will of the son and the

01:10:19

Holy spirit. Then he goes on to say that the Bible emphasizes the father's will, not the son's nor the

01:10:24

Holy spirit's will. That what the new Testament emphasizes over and over and over again is not the son's will or the spirit's will, but the father's will.

01:10:35

Then he talks about the greater authority. If you go to about timestamp 3930, he says, this is the father speaking.

01:10:45

This is, this is the speaking to the father's authority as greater than the son's.

01:10:51

The father has greater authority. The son will not sit down at the same level as the father.

01:10:58

This is speaking to the father's authority. Doesn't mean that the father is a better divine person than the son.

01:11:04

Not in the least does mean that the father has greater authority. The father is the one who sent the son.

01:11:11

The son is going to sit down at the father's right hand when his work is done. He's not going to sit down in the same throne.

01:11:18

He's not going to sit down right beside the father at the same level. He sits down at the father's right hand.

01:11:26

Now, if you ask me, will the father have a higher authority than the

01:11:32

God man in the sense of the humanity of Christ? Well, yes, but see, that's not what he's referring to here.

01:11:37

He's referring to the second person in the Trinity as the son. You see, again, they confuse these things.

01:11:44

And therefore what he's saying is the first person of the Trinity, you know, the second person does not have the same level of authority.

01:11:54

And again, that's what he's teaching. He also mentions that they don't have the same glory. Listen to this.

01:12:00

He talks about the father having a quote, unique glory and the son having a unique glory.

01:12:06

Let me even narrow in just a little bit. We won't understand the unique glory of the father as his own distinct person.

01:12:16

And we won't understand the unique glory of the son as his own distinct person. But again, they're equal in power and glory.

01:12:24

So let me just say it this way. The father has glory, the son has glory, and the

01:12:30

Holy Spirit has glory. That's not three glories though. That's one glory.

01:12:37

If you've got three glories, again, you've got three persons. And so you've got to be very careful that again, we don't end up in tritheism as again, the

01:12:49

Jews will say about us and Islam will say about us. Okay. So very, very important.

01:12:54

Okay. So again, Strahan's teaching is like out of the laboratory, you know, it's out there in the wild.

01:13:04

And so you can hear it. And again, it is, and again, he makes virtually no distinction between the second person of the

01:13:12

Trinity and Jesus. I mean, it's, and so therefore, again, when

01:13:17

Jesus says, no man knows the day or the hour, I'm not sure how he would handle it. I'm sure there, he's going to have to say,

01:13:23

I don't know how else he can do it. That's the humanity of Christ. He's going to have to. But usually when he sees the sun, he'll immediately say, he'll say basically that's the, you know, the second person of the

01:13:36

Godhead's really what's been talked about here. And he'll say things like this, you know, the sun is the same before the incarnation, during the incarnation and afterwards.

01:13:46

Well, there's a sense in which that's true, but yet there's a difference. The sun took on a true body and a reasonable soul.

01:13:54

So it's not quite the same. And you have the God man at that point, you see. So, but again, he's, he's reading a lot of their, like the way they reveal themselves in creation, in providence, in redemption as the father sending the son.

01:14:11

And he's reading that right back into the Trinity itself as an evidence that there are levels in the

01:14:19

Trinity. There is a superior and inferior, not in being, but in, again, relationship.

01:14:28

Okay. In function. And again, this is, this is not what the scripture teaches.

01:14:34

This is a doctrine that this is a major overhaul of the

01:14:40

Trinity. And I believe we ought to reject it. So the, I guess the cap on all of this is that you're concerned, we didn't even really talk about Wayne Grudem, but we talked about more

01:14:53

Bruce Ware and Owen Strawn. You're concerned, you know, these guys have platforms. They're still very respected and not just respected because of their general theological knowledge, but specifically even their knowledge on this subject.

01:15:06

And but if it taken to its conclusions, logical conclusion, it leads to a heresy at the very least.

01:15:16

I think you are comfortable just calling it heresy saying this actually is heresy. Yes. I mean, it is a major error, you know, and therefore

01:15:26

I will call it a heresy. Now look, when we say that people will immediately jump and say, you just consigned him to hell.

01:15:32

No. Listen, what I'm saying is if you put me on a church council and we're going to determine whether this is going to be acceptable, or he's either got to repent of this, recant of this in order to teach in the church or in the seminary.

01:15:48

Yes. I'm going to say this is outside the bounds of orthodoxy. My opinion, it is heresy.

01:15:55

Only God can, you know, consign the heretic and everyone else to hell.

01:16:02

Not me. But yet he has given the church courts, as it were, censures where they can approach issues like this.

01:16:11

And all I'm saying is if you put me on a faculty committee as a professor to investigate this,

01:16:19

I would have to vote this is out of bounds. And clearly the founders of Southern Seminary, Boyce and Broadus.

01:16:26

Now let me say one more thing. Just real quick. I got to get this in. If you read some of Owen Strawn's stuff, he will constantly be quoting

01:16:33

Charles Hodge, J .I. Packer. And he claims that they hold to the same view he does.

01:16:42

And, you know, Augustine does. None of them held to the view that there's this this authority subordination relationship that we distinguish the

01:16:54

Trinity. Not one of these people do this. What he's confusing again is when these people like Charles Hodge, when he says things like, you know, the father sends the son and it's never reversed and so forth.

01:17:10

He's talking about their modes of operation again. He's not talking about the inner workings or the inner being of the

01:17:18

Trinity. Strawn is just not understanding these guys.

01:17:23

None of these guys teach this this doctrine. They don't.

01:17:29

OK, they don't do it. And so I wish Strawn wouldn't do. He's being I mean, it's either incompetency or it's deceptive.

01:17:39

I'm telling you, these guys did not teach this doctrine. They didn't.

01:17:44

It's new. And so these guys do have big platforms. I mean, if you think of Wayne Grudem, his textbook on systematic theology is probably the most used textbook in America and maybe around the world.

01:17:59

Yes. And this is making big inroads there. Bruce Ware, again, taught at a major seminary.

01:18:05

Again, he speaks all over America, all over the world. And no one Strawn does. I mean, Strawn is well known on the

01:18:11

Internet, but also he's taught at he taught this stuff at Midwestern for years, Midwestern Seminary.

01:18:18

And now he's at a Grace. Grace Baptist Theological Seminary, I believe.

01:18:23

Yeah, Grace Baptist in Conway, Arkansas. He's like the provost. So, I mean, you know, he is.

01:18:31

Yeah, he's headlining G3, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, there's. And so,

01:18:37

I mean, these guys are being accepted and their doctrine is going far and wide and it's making this this stuff is making headways.

01:18:48

Things may be kind of quiet right now, but let me assure you, these things are making headways. And that's why

01:18:54

I want to come on today. Yeah, well, I appreciate it. Yeah. I'm coming on to say. We should reject this.

01:19:00

This is very dangerous and it must be rejected. And it's if we go this direction, we are really changing the foundation of our understanding of who

01:19:13

God is and we can't get more fundamental than that. And again, it really lands us into more of a tritheism or or and again, in the very nature of the relations and the functions of the

01:19:25

Trinity, there is superiority, inferiority, but this way they're not equal in authority.

01:19:33

They're equal in power and glory. They're equal in, you know, all their attributes, but not authority.

01:19:40

I just can't I can't take that. And I think maybe the good thing to put the cap on all of this is because some people are probably mad.

01:19:48

Some people are confused. Some people need to go watch this podcast again. Theological drift happens in ever so slight increments sometimes, like the social justice stuff that I witnessed at Southeastern.

01:20:05

As I looked back, I thought, you know, in 2014, I saw this. I didn't notice it at the time, but it was there.

01:20:11

It was creeping into their chapels. I was sitting there wondering why we kept talking about the Black experience in chapel.

01:20:18

What was this about? You know, it's OK, whatever. I mean, I'm here to learn the Bible, but it just it started with these slight drifts, these slight assumptions that, well, we need other perspectives to understand the

01:20:29

Bible better. And it lands you in. And in 2020, we all realized, oh, no, this is where this is going.

01:20:37

And I think that it's like that with a lot of heresies and a lot of false teachings. They just they start with something that is barely detectable sometimes or just, you know, seems innocuous, seems like, oh, that's a good brother with a different view.

01:20:51

And wait one generation, wait till their students start talking about. Oh, yeah. Students always take things to two steps farther.

01:20:58

Right. You know, you have John MacArthur and then the MacArthurites and the MacArthurites are the students. Sometimes the students are more consistent.

01:21:06

They're more. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Well, that's I mean, that's the thing at Southeastern. Walter Strickland students,

01:21:12

I was I was told where they were the more radical students, more radical than he was.

01:21:17

And so that's that's how this stuff over time creates wedges. And I think you love the church.

01:21:25

You love you're not doing this out of any. This doesn't help you. No, not make any friends for you.

01:21:31

And again, I really love Bruce. I've always had good relations with Bruce.

01:21:36

I'm not. Uh, this is not a personal vendetta, but look, this is something that we have to stand for.

01:21:45

And I you asked me to you said, hey, would you like to come on and talk about this?

01:21:52

And I'm like, oh, yeah, because you were you jumped at it because this issue is very, very important in the

01:22:07

God and our duty toward him. This is very, very important.

01:22:13

And so I think we've got to. This doctrine,

01:22:18

I know it sometimes it look, it does the same to me. Sometimes I read it. I got to stop for a while and go outside and cut the grass or something, because it's

01:22:28

God is incomprehensible, not completely, but we can't comprehend him completely.

01:22:35

And so when we talk about these things, it is difficult. Right. But at the same time, we've got to understand that this is a very important issue.

01:22:47

And what I would hope for is that, again, Wayne Grudem, Bruce Ware, Owen Strand and the others who are promoting this would stop doing this, to be quite honest with you, because it's it is shifting the basis of our faith.

01:23:03

Well, with that, thank you, Dr. Fuller. People can go to your website, RussellTFuller .com.

01:23:09

If you want to take courses from Dr. Fuller in theology or languages or New Testament, Old Testament, and I appreciate it.