Debate: Monarchianism and the Godhead

This is Apologetics Live, to answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

Well, we are live. This looks different.

Yes, it is, because I am traveling. And therefore, what we got for you tonight is a little bit different.

It will be prerecorded,.

Therefore you cannot join, ask questions. You could chat away, and well, I'll probably read them later, because it's fun to see your comments. And see actually if you guys are paying attention.

But this is Apologetics Live,.

Where usually we answer your most difficult questions about God and the Bible.

But what we have for you tonight is a debate.

My friend, Matt Slick, and I teamed up together. Usually we debate each other, but we teamed up together to debate two guys on, well, kind of a version of oneness Pentecostalism. You can listen for yourself and see if it makes any sense, just saying.

But I hope you enjoy this. This is a debate on basically the Trinity. And we will let you guys enjoy this. So without any further ado, I will give you the debate. And I'll be back at the end, maybe to say goodbye.

Enjoy.

All right, all right. Thank you for joining me on this episode of The Gospel Truth. I'm your host, Marlon Wilson, and we have another fantastic debate for you today. We have a 202 debate. I have Matt Slick, Andrew Rappaport,.

And I have Dan, always a very interactive debate.

When we begin to talk about the salvation of one, can they lose it or not? So hopefully you'll be able to join us at that time. All right, after that, I have Abiyal and Stacey Cumberville, and they're gonna be debating, does the son and the father have the same nature?

All right, so this is gonna be a fun one. So hopefully you'll be able to join us on this one as well. Then after that, I have a universalist debate. William Fallenkamp, I believe it is Fallenkamp, against James Hunt, did God save the whole world?

So this is coming up here soon on The Gospel Truth, so hopefully you guys are looking out for that one. And Matt Slick is here today, and he will be here about a month from now. He'll be debating, ah, man, Josh Hink.

Man, all these names, I'm trying to remember. Josh Hink, and they're gonna be debating total depravity. You know, basically, is total depravity biblical or is it true, all right? So that's gonna be a fun debate as well.

So I'm excited to have these shows coming up, and I hope that you are looking forward to them as well. And as you know, we have a bunch of guys with us. All right, this is gonna be a two-on-two debate talking about monarchism and the Godhead.

So I'm excited for this one. Matt Slick just came on last week and had an interesting, I say interesting debate, I'm gonna leave it at that. And Andrew Rappaport is, last time, Andrew hasn't been on for quite some time, man.

Last time Andrew was on, I think I was just first getting started with this back in, I wanna say 2018, I think it's been. Andrew can correct me, I think 2018, 2019. So Andrew, it's been quite a time for Andrew being on.

And so this is also Daniel and Caleb's first go-around on the Gospel of Truth. I have seen Caleb on Standing for Truth with Donnie, but this is his first go-around on the Gospel of Truth. And Caleb is actually a member, I believe, for the Gospel of Truth.

So he's a monthly supporter. So I'm very thankful for Caleb as well for his monthly support of the ministry and definitely am appreciative of that. So let me bring these guys in so they can further introduce themselves to you guys and sort of let you know some stuff.

What's up, fellas, how y 'all doing?

Doing all right.

Hey, Marlon, thanks. Doing good.

Thanks for having us, Marlon.

All right, glad you guys joined me. Appreciate you guys for coming on. And we are gonna have a fun debate concerning monarchism and the Godhead. But before we get into it, I wanna give you guys a chance to introduce yourselves to the audience, tell them what you do, blogs, YouTube channels, everything.

Let them know so they can come check you guys out, all right? Start with Matt and Andrew. I want you guys to go ahead and give a quick introduction yourself, Matt.

Go ahead, Andrew.

Okay, I was gonna default to you first, but age and beauty before me.

So go ahead, Matt. All right, my name's Matt Slick, and I run karm .org, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G. Been doing it for 28 years, written thousands of articles, been doing radio for over 20 years, and love to defend the Christian faith and uplift the true living God, the Trinity, and the incarnate Son, and justification by faith alone in Christ alone.

So that's what I like to do, and hopefully we'll do that tonight.

And my name's Andrew Rapp. Before I really introduce myself, I wanna talk to the audience here so you guys know how much Marlon cares about this audience, because for folks who don't know, Marlon was at the Shepherds Conference all week and left the pinnacle of the Shepherds Conference where John MacArthur would close out the conference so that he could be here tonight, get home in time to be here for this.

So for the audience, just understand, he cares enough about this program that he's not gonna enjoy a conference. He's make sure that you guys enjoy the show. So just a shout out to Marlon. But my name's Andrew Rapport.

I'm with a ministry called Striving for Eternity. You can check us out at strivingforeternity .org. I am also not only the executive director of that, but also the executive director of the Christian Podcast Community.

We have over 50 vetted podcasts. Matt Slick Live is one of the ones we have on there. My regular ones are Andrew Rapport's Wrap Report, a weekly show. We do Bible interpretations applications. And I also have Apologetics Live.

You can go to apologeticslive .com. We air that live stream on Thursday nights where I can answer any question that anyone has about God and the Bible. Just remember, if I say, I don't know, that's a perfectly good answer.

People find it interesting. I grew up in a Jewish household. I come from a Jewish family. I'm actually a Levite, technically what's called a Korhine. So there'd be a family that takes care of the temple's elements.

I have two books out. One is called What Do They Believe, which covers the major Western religions. And What Do We Believe, which is a Christian systematic theology, both available at strivingforeternity .org.

All right, all right.

Thank you guys for those introductions. Appreciate it. All right, Daniel and Caleb, you guys are up next. Go ahead and give a quick introduction to yourself, man.

Do you want to go first, Daniel?

Yeah, I can, brother. So my name's Daniel Evans. I'm 26 years old. I'm a disciple and servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I absolutely love the Lord. I grew up in a Christian household. And it was kind of Pentecostal, charismatic backgrounds, you know, where emphasis on following the Holy Spirit is very strongly advised.

If not, you know, it's very highly advised. And I started street preaching a few years ago. And I was like amazed at how the public proclamation of the gospel is just so powerful and effective. You know, people kind of look at you strange nowadays because it's not a common practice anymore.

But that's what the Lord called the prophets of old. He called them to go out into the highways and the byways and to compel them to come in. So that's what I want to do as a disciple of the King. And I'm currently featured on, I'm a feature, I'll say it like that.

I'm a feature on my brother Caleb's channel, God is Walking on Water, YouTube channel. You should check it out if you haven't ever watched it. It is hours of material that will just make you fall in love with the one King and ruler, Jesus Christ, who is our heavenly father wrapped in flesh.

So brother, take it away.

Brother Daniel. Well, that actually too much, it's given to me brother, but Jesus is worthy of all glory. And I think, you know, Matt and Andrew and Marlon as well, all of us in the audience know that there is only one who is good, God, Jesus Christ.

And a quick story. I'm from Switzerland. I was born and raised in Geneva. I did my Swiss military service in Switzerland. So I grew up in the church background, Pentecostal church background. And oh, brother, don't forget to mute your mic.

And basically I was brought up in the Pentecostal background where I was taught the doctrine of the Trinity and the oneness doctrine that diverges to lots of doctrine. So that caused a lot of confusion in my upbringing as a Christian.

I unfortunately, fortunately left this assembly and I became a father at a very young age. And to cut long story short, I had the drugs in Amsterdam on psychotropic mushrooms. And basically after that experience, I was confronted with the reality of hell because I had a vision of hell, a short vision.

And that basically brought me to tears. I called to God at 3 a .m. in the morning and he revealed himself and he said, I am Jesus Christ. So I have a YouTube channel called God is Walking on Water channel.

And again, Marlon, thanks for inviting us on. My goal and intent for tonight, I just have to say this, and brother Daniel's as well, is not to shame, it's not to demean the opposing view, but it's to discuss in the spirit of this, a gentleman-like spirit and to reason as the scripture says, we need to reason with each other.

So yeah, God bless you all.

All right, all right, thank you.

For that very well done introduction. Appreciate you guys for that. So now we're gonna jump into this debate. Once again, the topic of this debate is monarchism and the Godhead. And so basically what we're arguing, is it biblical, right?

That's the premise, the foundational premise is monarchism, understanding of the Godhead biblical. So obviously Caleb and Daniel, you guys are arguing affirmative, and Andrew and Matt are arguing negative.

So we're gonna start with 15-minute opening statements. We're gonna follow that with seven-minute rebuttals. And then we're gonna have a 40-minute crosshairs. Both teams, we get 20 minutes each to ask questions.

And then we're gonna follow that with five-minute closings and we're gonna have a 30-minute Q &A from the audience. Sounds good? All right, all right. All right, so Caleb and Daniel, you guys are up first for your 15-minute opening.

Are both you guys splitting that up or is one person presenting your opening?

I will be presenting the full presentation.

All right, sounds good. I'll be giving you the full screen, man. So I'll have it timed every time up in your upper left-hand corner, so of the big screen with just you on it. So you'll see the time up there.

Also, you'll hear this chime. That will be your one-minute indication to start wrapping it up. You have one minute left in your presentation. So with that said, Caleb, I'll start your 15-minute timer as soon as you begin to speak.

Thank you, Marlon, for inviting us. And thank you for giving us the opportunity to present our respective view. As Christians, specifically as Monarchians, we affirm and believe that God the Father was incarnate.

So this will be a presentation going through the Monarchianist position based on the scriptures and with early church history references. The Father was incarnate as a true human son. Many Trinitarian theologians and adoptionists throughout history have misapplied the term son with an assumption that it's referring to an individual who is distinct from God the Father.

None of the early church believers, called Monarchians by Hippolytus and Tertullian in the apostolic age before the first Council of Nicaea, believed this doctrine. Instead, they saw a distinction of two natures, a conscious state of being or existing, belonging to the same individual in which both natures were experienced by the same individual or same person in a way that allowed him to simultaneously experience and exist in two distinct dimensions, namely in heaven and on earth at the exact same time.

See Matthew chapter six, verse nine to 13, the famous Our Father prayer where Jesus is expressing that God the Father has a will in heaven and on earth. See also Genesis chapter 28, verse 12 to 13 and John chapter 49 to 51.

Jesus is mentioned in these passages as king of Israel, both on earth and in heaven. In the Bible, the term father in reference to God is consistently talking about the spirit who gives life and creates, but the term son always refers to the forgotten, generated earthly or biological human existence of the same individual.

God generated himself a body of flesh and blood to live inside for a specific dispensation and experience personhood through the eyes of man while sojourning for a short time here on earth. A man on earth possesses seed or life in him in order to give life or generate offspring.

He becomes a father when he begets or generates a child. In the same vein, here are four important passages showing that God is a life-giving spirit and identifies the act of giving breath, life, and creating with the term father or life giver.

Jesus Christ is explicitly described by the Apostle Paul as the life-giving spirit in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 45. So here are four passages we will be examining and they are alluding that the term father is synonymous with the term life giver, creator, one that gives life, that gives breath.

He is the one that generates life, being. So he is ultimately the source. This is what the term father implies. And we see it here in the scriptures, Hebrews chapter 12 verse nine, furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence.

Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the father of spirits and live? Acts 17 verse 28, for in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring.

Genesis two verse seven, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. A man became a living soul. Zechariah 12 verse one, the burden of the word for Israel, said the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens and layeth the foundation of the earth and formeth the spirit of man within him.

So we see clearly with these passages that we've just examined that the term father is showing that God gives life. God the father gives breath. And this is how we should understand the term father as it implies, not only in the sense of giving life, creating, but also in the covenantal sense.

So it's synonymous. Many of the prophetic and descriptive passages about the son are evoking God's dwelling on earth, living as a man described in the scriptures as the son of God and the son of man. So we clearly see here the two natures within the same person.

He has a divine, his preexisting divine nature and his generated nature, namely the nature of man. So he has a human nature. Father, born of a virgin, compare Hebrews chapter seven, verse one to three with John chapter eight, verse 56 to 59.

Also compare John chapter one, verse 48 to 51 with Genesis chapter 28, verse 12 to 13. All these passages are pointing to the preexistence of Jesus Christ as Lord God, the supreme ruler of heaven and earth.

There is no contradiction nor controversy as 1 Timothy 3, 16 stipulates. Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh without controversy, to be precise. Great is the mystery of godliness.

So there is no controversy whatsoever in the fact that he experienced prayer, suffering, human weakness, and human emotions in the flesh as a man and as one who submitted that same flesh to his preexisting divine spirit that dwelt inside, overcoming sin by sinless, pure, and irreproachable life.

1 John 3, verse one to three is evidence in plain sight showing that Jesus Christ is truly God the Father incarnate. This is why 1 John 3, verse one to two is so pivotal because it clearly teaches that the world knows us not because it knew him not.

You see the direct antecedent in verse one is the Father. So clearly John knew that the Father became a man, that he was incarnate. He became flesh. Just as it says in John 1, 10, he was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not.

By comparing these passages of scripture, we can see that it was the Father who veiled himself in the flesh and those who were not born of the spirit but were carnal in their approach to the scriptures could not perceive this mystery.

This accords precisely with Isaiah 45, verse 15, where it says, verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Savior. The early Christians were undoubtedly monarchians. Scholars frequently refer to figures from the second century as modalists or monarchians.

The term modalist was coined by Adolf Harnack in History of Dogma, volume three, in reference to the monarchians. So the proper term for those who hold to this view as that the Father became flesh, the Father was incarnate as the Son, are to be properly referred to as monarchians and not modalists.

For example, American writer Campbell Boner called Melito of Sardis theology naive modalism. This loose labeling by modern theologians like Campbell is eerily similar to Tertullian's slander in his treaties against Praxeas concerning the monarchians of being simple-minded and the majority of the faithful who when presented with a hard distinction between the term Father and Son in relation to God would reply two or three gods are preached by the Logos party and boldly proclaim the rule of faith based on Deuteronomy 6, for we hold to the monarchy of God or we hold to the principle of one ruler, the monarchia, as this is based on the Shema.

Evidence in patrology of the second century for monarchian Christology. Reinhard Habener, a Roman Catholic theologian specialized in patrology, in his studies concerning the writings of Ignatius of Antioch and Melito of Sardis asserts that Noetus antedated them and that they were drawing on his monarchian theology in his book entitled Der Paradoxe einer antignostischer Monarchianismus im zweiten Jahre hundert.

The term monarchia from the Greek meaning ruling of one or the principle of one ruler and ismos meaning practice or teaching. The definition of monarchia or monarchy according to Tertullian in his treaties adverse as Praxean or against Praxeas, this is how he expresses the definition of monarchia.

But if I have called any knowledge of both languages know that monarchy means nothing else but the rule of one single person. And quote, very simple. To him, the definition of a king or a ruler sovereign it implies and is to be understood in its most basic form.

One ruler. And here are some passages that show you clearly that there can be only one king. So by definition, a king, there is no higher authority than a king. So how can we have three divine persons that are essentially one king?

It just defeats the argument provided by Tertullian himself in his definition of monarchia, one ruler. Psalms 47 verse seven, God is the king of all the earth. Psalms 22 verse 27 to 29. For the kingdom is the Lord's and he is the governor.

So third person singular pronoun used for the Lord. I will not be reading all the passages. I will only be reading the specific parts of the passages that I'll be providing alluding to this fact. Psalms 95 verse three, for the Lord is a great God and a great king above all the gods.

1 Samuel 12 verse 12. Here clearly, we see that they asked for a human king, a human king instead of God. And he tells us, when the Lord your God was your king. Zechariah 14 verse nine, and the Lord shall be king over all the earth.

In that day shall there be one Lord in his name.

One king.

Jesus Christ is referred to as the king, eternal, immortal and invisible, the only wise God. That means there is no other God except Jesus Christ. This is what 1 Timothy 1, 16 to 17 is implying. We have the sentiment echoed in 1 Timothy chapter six, verse 14 to 16.

Until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, the second coming, which in his times, he shall show who is the blessed and only sovereign ruler. Potentate means the only sovereign. So you cannot serve two masters as Matthew six, verse 24, stipulates the king of kings and Lord of the lords.

And in Revelation 19, verse 15 to 16, he shall rule them with a rod of iron. And he is referred to as the king of kings. That means above kings and Lord above lords. Romans nine, verse five, Jesus Christ is referred to as the one who is overall God.

That means the authority, the supreme authority above all. And I will finish with this last slide in 1 Chronicles 29, verse 11. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all. That's chief above all.

So you cannot serve two masters. Thank you, Marlon, again, for giving me the time to present this.

All right, thank you, Caleb and Daniel for that opening. And we're gonna transition to Matt and Andrew for their 15-minute opening. And Matt and Andrew, will it be Matt giving the opening or Andrew?

He's doing the opening.

All right, Matt, I'm gonna give you full screen, buddy. Go ahead and I will start your time as soon as you begin to speak.

All right, you can hear me. Okay?

Yep, we can hear you.

All right, well, first of all, thank you for having me on. And I do hope that by God's grace, I can present the truth of God's word and represent him properly. And if I fail to do that, then it's only due to my sin and my ineptitude.

Nevertheless, from scripture, I can get into this a great deal, talk about it a lot. But I would say that from scripture, we see clearly that there's only one being. The question is, who is this one being?

Who is God, I should say. In monarchism, from what I understand, is that it is the position that God is a strict unity and that he is a single person, not a plurality of persons. And where the Trinity teaches, God is three distinct simultaneous co-eternal persons.

But monarchism is the position that there's only one person in God, which is why you'd have then the father becoming incarnate. The Christian Trinity is the teaching, as I said, one God and three distinct simultaneous co-eternal persons.

We have in Christian theology in the Trinity, we have what's called the Economic Trinity. And it means that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have differences, let's just say, in functions of how they relate to creation.

The Father sent the Son, the Father and Son sent the Holy Spirit, only the Son became incarnate, et cetera. We have what's called the Ontological Trinity in that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each obtain are of the same divine essence, the one being of God, who in his divine simplicity is simply triune.

Some people assert that the Trinity is polytheism or that the Trinity is illogical. It is certainly not polytheism because by definition, it is monotheistic. And anyone who would disagree with that simply is not well-versed in the doctrine of the Trinity.

To say that it's not monotheism at that point, I would say, well, then you're not arguing the Trinity. We could discuss that at a later point. And then there's the issue of the logical impossibility of the Trinitarian being existent.

I've never heard a sound argument where they have demonstrated any logical contradiction between the idea of God being one being with three persons. And maybe it'll happen tonight. It's not a knock a chip off my shoulder offering.

It's just, I've not heard any, and I have heard challenges to the doctrine of the Trinity. So the Trinity is, again, it's one being, one God who exists as three simultaneous persons. We know from the scriptures in Isaiah 43, 10, 44, 6, 44, 8, 45, 5, that the Bible clearly teaches us that there's only one being, one God, one being who is God.

All right, my opponents, our opponents, and myself are monotheists in that position, in that belief. So the issue here is whether or not God is one person or three persons. So we've got to define our terms as I've defined a Trinitarianism, the Trinity and monarchism.

Now I'll define what it means to be person. So it's defined as an individual substance of a rational nature. Contemporary theologians emphasize the rational nature of personhood. This is out of Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms.

But within this, we also have what are called characteristics of personhood. So personhood, I'm a person, and you who are listening are also persons, and we're human persons, and we're encased in the human body.

But God, as three persons, is not encased in the human body in all three in that sense. But nevertheless, personhood entails such characteristics as self-awareness, the awareness of others, has a will, can love, can have relationships, recognize people, say you and yours, me and mine, and things like that.

And we see that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each exemplify these attributes of personhood. So hence, we'd say that they have these qualities of personhood. And the reason we, as Trinitarians, say that they are distinct is because they speak to each other, and they talk about each other, and they have different wills.

And we have in 1 Corinthians 2, 16, the mind of Christ. We have in Romans 8, 27, the mind of the Holy Spirit. We have Jesus saying, not my will, but your will be done, Luke 22, 42, we can get into the nuances of that later.

But these are some of the aspects and the areas that we discuss and believe in and establish the doctrine of the Trinity. So, excuse me, on the CARM website, carm .org forward slash Trinity, you'll see a chart that I put up years ago.

And it demonstrates, a table actually, it demonstrates how the doctrine of the Trinity is arrived at. Is arrived at systematically and logically. And this is what I mean when I say systematic and logically.

There's only one being, one God, who is God, as in 43, 44, and 45 tells us this. And then what we do is we look and we say, well, the Father's called God, the Son's called God, the Holy Spirit's called God.

And the Father speaks, the Son speaks, the Holy Spirit speaks. The Father has a will, the Son has a will, the Holy Spirit has a will. So they each have attributes of personhood, but their distinction is established by the fact that they speak to each other and about each other, which is exactly what distinction in persons is and is demonstrated in scripture.

So I like to tell people that the doctrine of the Trinity is not arrived at by a single verse, nor is it refuted by a single verse. No single verse in the Bible either affirms it or denies it. Now, my opponents, the monarchists, will say and might say, not to put words in their mouths, but to say that God speaks in the singularity.

And we would expect that as a Trinitarian, because what we would say is that God is divinely simple, one being, and he has distinguished, he distinguishes himself as he reveals himself to us in what we call persons.

And they are eternal and simultaneous. So what we'll see is both the singularity and the plurality being spoken of. So God, and we know this, the good Lord God, he speaks, I will do this. In Exodus 3 .14, say to the sons of Israel, I am.

He's talking about himself in the singularity. Now, some have said that when we talk about plurality, that can show a lot about plurality of God in the Old Testament. We don't have time for that here.

But when God says, for example, in Genesis 1 .26, let us, notice this, God says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. And there's three plurals there, which I think is interesting. I think it's personally, I believe it's a veiled hint at the doctrine of the Trinity.

And I can get into some more stuff about that in Theophanies, Christophanies, the Old Testament stuff. Don't have time though, but you know, it's a deep topic. So the Trinity's arrived at systematically.

Now some say, well, it's arrived at by twisting scripture. No, it's not. It's just the father has a will, the son has a will. Jesus has not my will, but your will, it's distinction.

That's it.

And so we try and be very simple when we come to the word and recognize the truth of what God's word says in those areas. So again, the Trinity is a distinction of persons, yet there are one in essence, and that's the ontological Trinity, yet they relate to us in creation.

It was distinction, differentiation, as called the economic Trinity. All right, so we, like I said, we will expect that God will speak in both singularity and plurality. Some people, and he does in the Bible, some people say that the plurality is what's called the royal we.

That is not the case. It was never been the case, and it's not how God spoke of himself or in reference. It was not a Jewish concept, at least not that I've ever studied that it is or ever heard that it is, that was introduced later in the second millennium.

So when he speaks of himself, let us make men in our image or let us go down and compound their language. Or the Lord rained a fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of heaven. That's Genesis 19, 24, and the previous one, let us go find our languages, Genesis 11, seven.

So there's lots of this kind of thing in the Old Testament and even hints of it in the New. All right, so I could go on defending the Trinity and teaching on it for quite a bit, but let me use a little bit of logic without getting into it too deeply, because I can't because we don't have the time, but there are logical problems and challenges to monarchism.

One of them is what I call the static mind problem. If the monarchist God exists eternally and he knows all things, then can he contemplate? If he knows all things that he will contemplate from eternity past, can he think about what he'll contemplate?

Why do that if he's already contemplated everything and knows eternally what he'll contemplate? We could say there is in a sense an eternal generation of all knowledge at simultaneous and eternal within the monarchist God and the Trinitarian one also, but there's a differentiation between them.

And so I call it the static mind problem. We could talk about that if it comes up again, but then here's another issue. In 1 John 4, 8, it says, God is love, and the nature of love is other centered. God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son, John 3, 16.

Jesus says in John 15, 13, he says, greater love has no man than this, but he lay his life down for his friend. Well, the nature of love is other centered. So I could ask the monarchists, all monarchists, what was your God doing from eternity past, from forever ago?

Was he experiencing love? Not the contemplation, that's different. Was he experiencing his own nature of love in the other centeredness and the object, subject object distinction, which is what love is and is necessitated as.

I love my wife. She loves me most of the time. We also have an issue, no experience of fellowship. God is faithful to whom we're calling the fellowship with his son, Christ Jesus. 1 Corinthians 1, 9. And in the last verse of 2 Corinthians 13, 14, it says that we have fellowship with the father, son, and the Holy Spirit.

There's distinction between them. We have fellowship with each one. And that's really an interesting verse I'd like we could talk about. So if the monarchist God was existing eternally, then there was no one to fellowship with.

There was no one to love, no experience of love, no experience of fellowship. And then we have the static mind issue. These are challenges to that position. Perhaps they will address those. There are philosophical advantages to the Trinity in that, I got three minutes left, in that the inter-Trinitarian communion, the eternal love in the members of the Godhead in the triune nature, no problem.

The same with fellowship, not a problem. The static mind problem isn't a problem either because they are enjoying each other and their fellowship of existence and the singularity of their ontological nature.

And so they can consider, and we get into the nuances of that, break that down quite a bit more, but I have to go through these quickly. There are advantages philosophically and logically. Some people denounce the idea of using any philosophy, but this is just logic.

Philosophy is man's attempt to be logical, to explain actuality. We are not to be held captive by vain philosophy, Colossians 2 .8, and Paul certainly quotes Epimenides, Menander, and Erastus, pagan philosophers.

He had studied them and he used them to the glory of God. Anyway, so we see in the created order of Romans 1 .20, it says that the nature of God, his invisible attributes are made known in creation. Well, creation exists of three things, a trinity of things, time, space, and matter.

Time, space, matter. And this is reflective of God's nature and time itself is past, present, future. Space is height, width, depth, and matter is solid liquid gas. So there's a trinity of trinities that comprise our existence.

Now there's another aspect that I could get into which only the trinity can solve. And it's a problem, this is a little more heady, but it's a problem that's been around for about 2 ,500 years and it's the issue of what is the ultimate nature of the universe?

Is it one thing or is it many things? If it's one thing, there's no distinction between objects and therefore truth is undermined. If the nature of the universe is many things, there's no coherence between these objects and truth values are undermined.

Now you've got to understand, I'm going through this very quickly and narrowing this down, but this is a very, very, very serious issue. And the monarchist view, which includes Jehovah's Witnesses, which includes Christadelphians and includes Islam, not to guilt by association, they also have this problem of solving the problem with the one and the many.

And if you're not familiar with it, that's okay, we can study and teach on it sometime, where the trinity is equally one and many. And so there's no ultimacy of one or the other, but the equal necessity of both existing that way.

And so the trinity solves all kinds of problems. It's biblical, it's logical, it's philosophically astute, and in it, we can explain the incarnation and the work of God, and we can explain why Christ would pray to someone other than himself in Trinitarianism.