Simply Trinity Study (part 7)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Our great sovereign Lord, we come before you this morning thankful that we have the opportunity in this country to freely worship you.

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We think about our brothers and sisters around the world who don't have that opportunity. We would pray for them today.

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Father, as we gather here today, I pray that we would be mindful of what you've commanded us to do, namely, bear one another's burdens, have fellowship today, but most of all to worship our risen

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Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, as we look to things today, talking about the

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Trinity, some things that are quite difficult, I pray that you would, by your spirit, enable us to grasp them, that we would be encouraged by them, that by them we would look at the scriptures and just really be delighted to learn more about you,

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Father, Son, and Spirit. We pray for these things in Jesus' name, amen. So sometimes questions come up, we'll get to last week's quiz and we'll finish it and then we'll start on this week's quiz,

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I think. But something came up, you know, I have a problem with this particular class.

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And that is, it's you people, no, it's the people online.

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That is, I have a few particularly inquisitive students, people who ask questions, and don't do so within the confines of this class.

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So without naming names, somebody on the way home last week, what?

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We took other people home. We took other people home, she says.

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Okay, that's not true, she'll repent later. But somebody said, well, you know, you kind of said that, and you know, how many times we said that if you're talking about the

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Trinity, it takes about, you know, a minute to wander into unstable ground, maybe even heresy.

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She said, oh, sorry, did I give it away? This person said, this student said, you said that because, or Jesus had to be born of a virgin, you know,

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Isaiah 714, a fulfilling prophecy, he had to be born of a virgin so they didn't have a sin nature, you know, and was it

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Mary's virginity that assured us that Jesus didn't have a sin nature, okay?

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So let me ask that. Was it Mary's virgin status that assured Jesus didn't have a sin nature?

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No. So what was it that assured us that Jesus did not have a sin nature?

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His essence? Well, I mean, in the fact that he's deity, right? But in terms of his humanity, how can we know that he didn't have a sin nature?

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Okay, good answer, because his father was God. And let's, let's look for a moment at Genesis chapter three, right?

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The, it, the virginity part makes it plain that he did, he had no earthly father.

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There was no earthly paternity. And in terms of spiritual paternity,

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Genesis three, when God is cursing, well, he's cursing the serpent, which later on is revealed to be

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Satan. Genesis 315,

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God says to Satan, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

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He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. And here's, you know, the key part of that is her offspring.

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If, if we look at it this way, each of us is born, close.

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Each of us is born in Adam. That is to say, with Adam as our federal head.

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When Jesus is born, is Adam his federal head? No. I, I like to say, one of my favorite things to say is, who's born with a free will in the

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Bible? Who has a free will? I mean, obviously God does. And we'll see that in the sermon later on today.

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God has a free will, but who are the people who have a free, free will?

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Adam and Eve, when they're created, they have no sin nature and Jesus.

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Why does he have a free will? Because he's not in Adam, simple as that.

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Adam is not his federal head. I mean, I guess we could say, you know, he's his own federal head.

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So thoughts or questions about that?

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Seeing none and being assured that I'll get some on the way home. We'll, we'll, we'll go back to the quiz.

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All right. Number, we, we ended, I believe on number 24.

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Talking about it is not wrong to worship the spirit. It says it is wrong. Well, that was false.

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Number 25, the Nicene Creed was fine for its day, but the church knows better now.

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That's something, you know, that could probably be on every quiz. It is false because the highlighter says it's false.

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And the highlighter was infallible yesterday. So I think it's back in its infallible groove. What, what makes the statement false?

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The Nicene Creed was fine for its day, but the church knows better now. It's probably not coffee,

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Andrew. Okay. There's been no new revelation since the

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Nicene Creed, you know, and, and beyond that, I would say, you know, have, how do we have a better understanding of the issues that the

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Nicene Creed addressed? In other words, the nature of Christ, basically, do we have a better understanding of that now than we did then?

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And I think the answer is no. Barrett says, and by the way,

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I don't mean to plug the book, but the book is really good. And oh, two other things.

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If you don't have a copy of the glossary of terms that we handed out a few weeks ago, if you want a copy of that, you know, raise your hand and we'll get you one.

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And also, if you wanted one of the handouts on double consubstantiality that we talked about last week, sounds like a mouthful.

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I emailed it out. I think it's really excellent. The little picture really is, is very helpful.

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Even if you got nothing else out of it, the picture is very helpful. So what does Barrett say about the

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Nicene Creed was fine for its day? In AD 381, bishops, pastors were summoned once more, this time

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Constantinople. Unfortunately, Athanasius and Basil of Caesarea had died by then, by 381.

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They were at 325, the Council of Nicaea, but not at this one. Nevertheless, their contributions were not forgotten, but echoed and celebrated by the

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Eastern bishops who arrived in Constantinople. In many ways, Constantinople retrieved and reaffirmed the

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Creed of Nicaea in 325 AD as binding and authoritative. But the

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Creed Constantinople gave birth to is known as the Nicene -Constantinople

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Creed. That's a mouthful. Or simply the Nicene Creed. They just kind of drop kicked the whole

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Constantinople thing. Questions? No. Number 26, true or false?

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The Nicene Creed was composed by the Roman Catholic Church. False. I mean,

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I could have put it this way. The Nicene Creed was a conspiracy where a bunch of people got into a smoky room and decided what books would go into the

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Bible and kicked out a bunch of other books. Have you heard that one before? I mean, usually if you're talking to,

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I'll just be plain here, a cultist. A cultist will tell you that. That a bunch of people got together and conspired against some books of the

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Bible and kept other ones in there. The Mormons will say that. The Jehovah Witnesses will say that.

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Other groups will say that. Why will they say that? Some will say that, right?

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If I could say it this way, especially liberal, so -called liberal

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Christians will say that. Some books were kept out of the Bible. Of course, my favorite, and you've probably heard this before, but my favorite is they like to say, what about the

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Gospel of Thomas? Well, a few problems with the Gospel of Thomas. First of all, it's not a gospel.

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Secondly, it's not written by Thomas. And thirdly, it's a Gnostic so -called gospel.

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And so, we won't go deeply into Gnosticism, but one verse, and I'm like,

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I don't understand why liberals try to force this into the Bible. Because in one verse, Jesus, the alleged

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Jesus, says that unless a woman becomes a man, she cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.

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Now, today, that might be really cool and hip. But, you know, I don't think most women would like that.

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Some might these days, because we live in a warped world.

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But the Nicene Creed was composed by the Roman Catholic Church. You hear that sometimes, too. In fact, the Catholics like to say that one.

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They're responsible for all these creeds and confessions and putting the

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Bible together. The problem is the Roman Catholic Church, we're not going to study this, but probably didn't come into being until around 600

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AD, the Roman Catholic Church as we know it today. They like to say that it came into being when? Yeah, basically at the crucifixion.

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You know, as soon as Jesus was crucified, the keys of the kingdom went over to Peter, and that was that.

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Okay. Yes. Awesome.

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Some truth, you know, that most people don't.

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I mean, you know, what do you, if you say something in a rote fashion, then it just kind of, you know, it's in and out, and it's gone.

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It's down the rote. Never mind. Okay. So Barrett says, yeah,

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Barrett says, we should not overlook this, that second to last line of the Nicene Creed. We believe in one holy, ready?

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Catholic and apostolic church. Thankfully, I've had my coffee this morning.

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Otherwise, when I said Catholic, I might get a little wobbly in the knees. How can

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I say Catholic and not shudder? Lowercase C, which means what?

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That word just means universal. So we want to be careful. You know, I mean, I say it kind of slipshod fashion, but you see,

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I didn't get slipshod in my question. It says Nicene Creed was composed by the Roman Catholic church, which is, you know, its official title.

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I didn't say Catholic church because that would be wrong, right? Well, it would be true, but then

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I'd have to change the question to true. Yeah, yeah, the high layer would be an error.

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Barrett says, this is no throwaway line. This is not a reference to the Roman Catholic church. That would be anachronistic, which means, no, anachronistic is not false or fraudulent.

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It means, if you just think about it, A, meaning the opposite or false or negated,

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Tron, having to do with time. So it would be out of time. It would be, in this case, the

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Nicene Creed would precede the advent of the Roman Catholic church.

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I like that, advent of the Roman Catholic church. There's a certain irony in that phrase. The Nicene Creed comes before the

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Roman Catholic church is formed. So he says that would be anachronistic, since it did not yet exist as we know it today.

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Rather, it is a reference to the church, universal, as was said. And this church is not only universal, but holy and apostolic, because we ascribe to the same beliefs that the apostles did.

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It is universal because it is holy and apostolic. The fathers are claiming, in other words, that this trinity they confess is none other than the trinity of the scriptures, the same scriptures penned by the apostles.

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For that reason, the creed carries authority in the church, and not just the church of the fourth century, but the church universal across all lands and spanning all eras, east and west.

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Now, people get, you know, hung up on this. And we'll probably mention this phrase more than once or twice or a dozen times.

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No creed but Christ. In other words, we want nothing to do with the Nicene Creed. What's wrong with that?

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If you go to a church website and it says, you know, our beliefs, we have no creed but Christ. Okay, which

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Christ? And as soon as you start defining who is Christ, then what are you doing? Creating a creed.

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So it's pretty rough, right? To just say we have no creed but Christ. And then you pack everybody in and you start talking about, you know, the

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Bible or Jesus or something. Somebody says, wait a minute, that's not the Jesus I believe in. That's not what I signed up for.

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Well, because nothing was spelled out. Everybody has a creed.

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The question is, you know, is it the right creed? Does it agree with Scripture?

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And by the way, if the Nicene Creed disagrees with Scripture, then what do we do? Yeah, we alter it, right?

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We change the creed. What we don't do is say, well, the creed disagrees with Scripture.

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Therefore, Scripture gets the boot. That would be the Roman Catholic method.

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Sorry. Sorry, not sorry.

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Barrett goes on, that said, the Nicene Creed is not a dead letter. Rather, it carries authority to this day.

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No, it is not on par with Scripture. It is not the source of divine revelation. But since it conforms to Scripture, it is to be adhered to, confessed, and celebrated in the

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Church to this day. What he's saying is, essentially, the Nicene Creed is a good summary of teaching about the

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Lord Jesus, about the nature of the Trinity. Okay, thoughts, questions, concerns?

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Anybody want to know? I don't want you to cite the Nicene Creed. Forget that. Number 27, true or false?

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It is wise to approach creeds and confessions with suspicion. Highlighter could be fallible here.

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I don't know. I'm looking at it going. I don't know, bro. What do you think, true or false?

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Well, it depends. So let's read the question again and see if we can come to a true or false or whether we want to, you know, kind of mush.

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True or false, it is wise to approach creeds and confessions with suspicion. I just,

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I don't like the question. So I'm going to say that, you know, you could probably answer this either way.

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So highlighter. Highlighter is okay in this case, I guess. But listen to what

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Barrett says and you'll understand why I'm saying that. Because I think if I said this, or sorry, if the quiz said this, it would be okay.

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It is wise to approach historic creeds and confessions with suspicion. Then I would say false.

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And there's a reason I would say false. Barrett says this, he says, Our default instincts should not be a hermeneutic of suspicion, but a hermeneutic of trust.

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One that breeds humility and eagerness to sit as a people at the feet of orthodoxy rather than stand over it as its

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Lord. So that anytime we hear anyone, no matter how many degrees they have, or they have attached to their names, dismiss or reject the creed, our natural apostolic instincts should kick in.

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We should ask brother or sister, why is your first instinct to distrust the

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God of our fathers and their credo? In other words, why are we just drop kicking that creed or confession?

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There may be a good reason for it, but we should try to find out. He says if we are to default in one direction or the other, it should be in the direction of orthodoxy, not heresy, right?

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How many people want to sign up for heresy? Unfortunately, with the arrival of the modern era came a hailstorm of modern theologians pelting the church with a hermeneutic of distrust toward the

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God of our fathers, determined to either dispose of orthodoxy altogether or modify the trinity of orthodoxy so that it could meet their social agenda.

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And that's what we're going to be talking about. Here this morning in chapter three, chapter three, notice the night, nice, neat breaks.

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Number one, assuming there are no questions about chapter two, seeing none, I like Robert's rules of order.

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So number one, true or false, the most recent understandings of the trinity are the result of a growing depth of biblical knowledge.

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The more recent understandings of the trinity are the result of a growing depth of biblical knowledge.

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True or false? False is correct. And I know that because the highlighter says false.

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Thank you. Dr. Barrett says, I see the 20th century renewal of Trinitarian theology as depending in large part on concepts and ideas that cannot be found in patristic, medieval or reformation accounts of the doctrine of the trinity.

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This, by the way, is Stephen Holmes, not Barrett. He's quoting Stephen Holmes. It's right at the beginning of the chapter.

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He says, in some cases, indeed, they are points explicitly and energetically repudiated as erroneous, even occasionally as formerly heretical.

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In other words, he's saying that a lot of what's being talked about in the 20th century and carrying on to our day in terms of the trinity is new.

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It's not founded on creeds and confessions and the ancient church fathers or even the reformation.

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Another expert on the trinity, Lewis Ayres, tells us that there is a great divide between the biblical orthodox doctrine of the trinity, which can be traced back to the

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Nicene Creed and the modern understanding of the trinity over the last hundred years.

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However, this modern trinity has snuffed out the biblical orthodox trinity, even pretended to be orthodox trinity, until there is little orthodoxy that remains.

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It is not merely that, quote, modern Trinitarianism has engaged with pro -Nicene theology badly.

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The situation is way worse. It was barely engaged with at all. As a result, the legacy of Nicaea remains, paradoxically, the unnoticed ghost at the modern

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Trinitarian feast. What's he saying? He's saying that most, in fact, he names names.

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I don't think we'll get to all the things that are said here this morning, because that would be all the quiz. But for example, you know, we may still have copies of it.

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We probably do. At the bookstore, Wayne Grudem has a faulty understanding of the trinity.

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Many prominent theologians of the 20th century have a deficient non -Nicene view of the trinity.

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And there are many reasons for it, and we'll talk about some of those. But those reasons are not founded, they're not based in the ancient fathers or the ancient creeds.

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They're new. And what do we say? New and improved is not new or improved.

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So, okay, number two, true or false? Traditional views can get in the way of understanding

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Jesus properly. Okay, it's odd, because I have false here.

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The highlighter does. Why do you say true? Traditional views can get in the way of understanding

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Jesus properly. Tradition, come on.

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If I was a rich man... Okay, but the

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Mormon views... Good point. What about the Mormons? Those people are not...

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When we say traditional, let's just define that for a moment. When we say tradition, what do we mean?

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Right, we're talking about truths that are founded in the writings of the church fathers and in the confessions and the creeds.

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So traditional views can get in the way of understanding Jesus properly. False. This is what's been going on, you know, basically, and Barrett says this explicitly, and we'll see it later on.

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Since the Enlightenment forward, the understanding of the Trinity, the understanding of Jesus in particular, has been degraded.

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What was the Enlightenment all about? I think it's important that we talk about that for just a moment.

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What's the core of the Enlightenment? What's that? Humanism.

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The idea of man as the center of the universe, or the idea that man is the supreme intellect anywhere, and everything must be kind of filtered through the prism of human understanding.

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We are ultimately the judge of what is true and what is not true. Yeah, the sense that humanity is capable of growing and transcending.

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I mean, this is where we would get, you know, philosophies like psychology, you know, where Nietzsche would say, essentially, that the answer to our problems is what?

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Not external, but internal. We have all we need. We are self -sufficient.

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The Übermensch. So Barrett says liberalism's founding father was a man named

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Friedrich Schliermacher. Schliermacher.

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I mean, some of the German phrases I learned in Greek.

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You know, you go to Greek class and you learn German. And one of them was from Schliermacher.

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It's a German term called Geschichte, and basically what it is, it's history, but it's kind of mythological history, and he was big on that.

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But anyway, back to Barrett. Liberalism's founding father was a man named Friedrich Schliermacher, and he believed there was one word that captured the nucleus of the

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Christian faith and life, and that was Gefühl. It's a German word. See, there you go again.

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And it refers to a self -conscious feeling of absolute dependence.

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Absolute dependence. Dependence on what? On whom? And he says the infinite, the divine, or what some call

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God. The Gefühl set Jesus apart, for example.

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He was the ultimate example of a man who came into contact with the infinite, the poster boy for that self -conscious feeling of absolute dependence.

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Now, is there a kernel of truth to that? In what sense was

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Jesus totally dependent? Okay, he submitted himself to the

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Father. What's that? He was fully human, right?

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And if we look at the scriptures, we could see that he was often, well, scripture would describe him as filled with the

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Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit impelled him to go out in the wilderness. You know, the Holy Spirit did this, the

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Holy Spirit did that, and so there's this sense in which we see as a man leaving aside his divinity.

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And you notice what Schleiermacher does there. I mean, this is Barrett paraphrasing him. A man who came into contact with the infinite.

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So Jesus is kind of set up as a man par excellence, the preeminent man, the pinnacle of humanity, which kind of goes nicely with an

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Enlightenment view, right? If we're to look at Jesus as a man and say he is the best man, the best example of humanity, and thus, you know, maybe the best teacher, the best example of self -sacrifice, all the things that we're learning about, by the way, on Saturday morning.

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And, you know, for the handful of men that are there, thank you very much. But when we're talking about liberal

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Christianity, that's what they do, right? The deity of Christ is kind of minimized or ignored altogether, and the humanity of him, and, you know, this kind of poster boy mentality, just looking at him and marveling at the man,

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Christ Jesus, and forgetting about the God -man. But that works for Schleiermacher.

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Because if you're coming at it from a rational point of view, that is to say, a philosophical rational point of view, then there is no deity.

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You just look at Jesus Christ as the pinnacle of manhood. So, Barrett also says this, he says, traditional doctrines and dogma, however, get in the way.

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Take the eternal distinction in the Supreme Being between the persons of the

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Trinity, the Father unbegotten, the Son begotten, and the Spirit spirated.

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Such distinctions do not concern the religious consciousness, for there it could never emerge.

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In other words, here's what... If you start reading a philosopher like Schleiermacher and some of these other people, they come up with all these complicated terms, all these ways of understanding

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God that essentially turn God into some mystical force that we can't understand and we shouldn't try to understand.

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Schleiermacher takes issue with eternal generation, in other words, the Father eternally generating the

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Son, because it makes the unbegotten Father, in his mind, superior to the begotten

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Son. He acknowledges... And, you know, what's the first problem that should jump out at you when you read that?

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Schleiermacher says, the unbegotten Father is superior to the begotten Son, the eternally begotten

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Son. So what's your response to that? I'm sorry?

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Right, the equality is lost. So where would you come to understand the equality of Jesus with the

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Father? I mean, we could say scripture, right?

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I and the Father are one. And, you know, you could walk through all that. Or you could say the creeds and confessions.

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What he's doing is he's tossing aside the traditional understanding of Jesus and the

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Trinity and saying, well, it's clear to me, it's clear to my thinking as I perceive things, as I filter truth through my mindset.

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And, of course, the problem with that is what? Who's Schleiermacher? What makes him, you know, the reinterpreter of scripture and the re -understander of creeds and confessions?

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I mean, his fallen mind, he decides is better than everybody else's.

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He acknowledges that the Church Fathers believed generation is eternal, but still he protests.

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It conveys the Son is dependent. And if dependent, then inferior.

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Likewise with the Spirit. In sum, Schleiermacher says, if such distinctions are made, the equality of the persons is lost.

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By contrast, Schleiermacher chooses the side of equality.

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In fact, he goes further, wondering whether the heresy of Sabellianism might be the right view of the

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Trinity. After all, Sabellianism being, sorry,

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Modalism, which is, what's Modalism, Patrick? Okay, it says,

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Modalism says, it denies that there's more than one. So there's one God and here's the important part, one person.

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One God and one person, but that one person then shows up in three different forms or modes.

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Hence, Modalism. And again, if you don't have these terms, you might want them.

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I'm just saying, have a list. It's all right here. I feel like I should, you know, surreptitiously just kind of offer them or something.

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Okay, so Schleiermacher is a heretic of the first rank, but he and his thinking infects many people who would consider themselves

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Christians and would follow in his footsteps. Number three, true or false?

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Christianity is more about doctrine than it is morality. I think,

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I don't know, I hear brains wrestling here right now. Christianity is more about doctrine than it is morality.

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What do you think? What's your impulse? I heard a true.

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You know, when I wrote it, I wanted it to be true. And then the more

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I thought about it, I think I went with false. And here's why. I mean, and I could be argued out of this.

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You know, you could, this could be the fallible highlighter. It's about,

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Christianity is about doctrine and doctrine is important. But it's also about morality, right?

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I mean, in other words, when we say it's about doctrine and not morality, well, what are the

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Ten Commandments? So, I mean,

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I think it's kind of hard to separate the two, right? I mean, it's kind of a, if I could put it this way, that's a terrible question.

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And I can't put it that way since I wrote it. Thank you very much. Yeah, true, false, or both.

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Yeah, really, really horrible questions. In fact, if I, yeah, they're almost modal.

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Well, yeah, they pretty much are. Because they could show up in three forms, true, false, or both.

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Are you complaining about the question? We already seeded that, right?

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The question's bad. But see, when I, you know, because when you write a true -false question,

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I mean, I could write like a paragraph and then we could go, or I could just try to keep it short.

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But if we say, if I added, is more about biblical doctrine than it is biblical morality, now what are you going to choose?

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I think you're going to choose false. And that was my intent. That's why I gave it a false. Okay, so Barrett says, the

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Trinity is irrelevant, the liberals write, because it has nothing to contribute to society's moral advancement in Christian values.

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It doesn't help the world improve that doctrine. Christianity, they argue, is not about who

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God is. That's a metaphysical obsession that occupied the church fathers.

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It's not important today. What's important is making the world a better place.

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That's what they say. And I'll read the rest of it from Barrett. That's a metaphysical obsession that occupied the church fathers so much as what

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God does in society. That's what's important. And what society ought to do in cooperation with God.

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In short, Christianity is not about dogmas, but ethics.

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Not about doctrine, but values. So I think initially, that's what

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I mean. When I wrote the question, it was in response to this. And I thought, well, actually, it's true. Because they're trying to say it's false.

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And I want to be the opposite of the liberals. So I want it to be true. And then the more I thought of it, the more I talked myself into false.

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But if I just added biblical doctrine, biblical morality, well, you can't have one without the other.

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But their point is, what we think or what is true even about God isn't as important as how

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Christianity can impact the world. How it can change the world for the better.

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How it can be a social force for good. Okay, number four, true or false.

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And this one, this is going to be really tough, because I didn't use the highlighter. Oh, man, I'm stuck.

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True or false, social trinity. And by the way, I put that ST in there, because we're going to use it several times.

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And I got tired of typing social trinity. Social trinity or ST is an updated version of the orthodox doctrine.

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Yeah, I guess I should have put, you know, again, an updated orthodox version of the orthodox doctrine.

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Yeah, that's false. It's definitely intended to be false. And it is false. Observing the disconnect,

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Barrett says, between the doctrine of God and the church's agenda for society, modern theologians believe they had the answer.

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If liberals said the trinity was irrelevant, unless proven expedient to ethics and social justice, theologians in the 20th century exclaimed, it is relevant.

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It really, really is. But to prove it, they needed a trinity radically different from the historic orthodox model.

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They needed a social trinity that matched their vision for society. The theologians and pastors who took up this new challenge are innumerable and sometimes diverse.

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In other words, we're going to see men from the left wing of Christianity to the right wing of Christianity.

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And they're all going to redefine the trinity in non -historic, non -credal, non -confessional terms.

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Okay, number five, and we might end here. Number five, true or false. The term economic trinity or the terms economic trinity and imminent trinity only differ in their spelling.

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Now, I'm proud of that question because it actually is possible to answer it true or false. I mean, yeah,

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I had so many bad questions. This is a good one. Economic trinity and imminent trinity.

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In other words, are they the same thing? And the answer is no, they are not. So what's the difference between the two?

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The imminent, I -M -M -A -N -E -N -T trinity refers to who the triune

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God is in himself, apart from creation or the economy of salvation.

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Just him. Three persons of the trinity. The economic trinity refers to how the triune

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God acts in relation to creation and in the economy of salvation.

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In other words, when we see the different roles of the trinity, we'll say, oh, that's the economic trinity.

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That's the trinity in action. The imminent trinity is just who they are, who they eternally have been.

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So if we say, you know, the eternal father, the eternally begotten son, the spirated spirit, that just refers to the imminent trinity.

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If we start talking about who is electing, who is sealing, who is saving, then we're talking about the economic trinity, the trinity in action.

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Does that make sense? I hope so, because we're going to use the terms a few times. Again, I have sheets here that define all these things.

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So if you want those, raise your hand or sneak one on the slide. In the past, in the past, theologians were careful to distinguish between imminence, who they are, and economic, what they do, the persons of the trinity, lest the two be confused, conflated, or collapsed to become one.

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We would not want to project qualities into, or in creation, onto the creator, creating a god in our own image.

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In other words, well, I mean, as a simple explanation, if God is love and only love, then who goes to hell?

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The answer is no one. And this is done often in the world, and we ought not to do it as Christians.

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Barrett goes on, when the gap between imminence, who they are, and economic, what they do, the persons of the trinity, closed when it became, when these two truths became nearer in the minds of some theologians, the trinity and society were linked together.

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In other words, they started comparing the trinity with the world, started linking them together so that the society must be who the trinity is, must reflect the trinity, and who the trinity is must reflect the world, must reflect society.

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But if this link was to stick, an even more radical move became necessary. The very

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DNA of the trinity had to be redefined. No longer could historic orthodoxy be followed, but a new doctrine, a social doctrine of the trinity, was now expedient.

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At least if the trinity was to be relevant for the social concerns of society.

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Now, I'm going to give you an example of this, one that I probably have used,

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Pastor Mike has probably used, you've probably heard many times, and it's wrong.

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You know, this is a confessional hour. Stop the tape. How many times have you heard this?

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Wives are to submit to their husbands. I hope you've heard that a time or two.

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And they say, but you know what? It's not really so bad, because Jesus submits to the father.

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And in fact, Jesus has always submitted to the father, even though they're equal.

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So in the same way, husbands and wives are equal, but the wives have to submit to their husbands.

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What's wrong? What's wrong with that? You're talking to the eternal submission.

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What is the ultimate problem with the idea that Jesus is eternally submitted to the father?

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Separate wills. Why does that indicate separate wills? And I'm going to make it real simple, because we need to close.

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There's a difference, right? If I submit to Andrew's wisdom, then what am

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I saying? If I say that I submit to Andrew's wisdom, what am

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I... There are two possibilities. One is that I'm joking. And the other one is that there's a difference of opinion.

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And I think I should listen to Andrew. Right? So if we say, well,

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Jesus is eternally submitted to the father, that means the father is all wise, all knowing.

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And Jesus is just like, I don't know if I agree with that, but I'll submit to the father.

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And there's a real problem with that. And the problem is, now we've got two different wills, two different ideas.

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And, you know, it's like, okay. I mean, did Jesus kind of get forced into coming into earth to redeem the people?

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Was he outvoted? It was like two to one, and he was like scuffing at the ground, you know? Well, I guess

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I'll go. I don't really want to, but two to one, I lose. Yeah, it makes it pretty schizophrenic.

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They're no longer unified. They're just kind of like, you know, it's like we see, you know, in movies.

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And I mean, you shouldn't be watching these heretical movies I do. But when there are these so -called pantheon of gods, and they all, you know, have different opinions, and they argue and fight.

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And I mean, they're like the Roman or the Greek gods, right? And all of a sudden you start thinking to yourself, these gods really aren't very much like gods.

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They seem like stronger, better, faster versions of me.

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Because that's what they are. And so when you hear, you know, Jesus is eternally submitted, well, what are they trying to do?

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They're trying to make it easier for women to say, well, I don't necessarily agree with that.

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But if Jesus could do that for all eternity, then I better do it too. We do it because it's right, not because that's what

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Jesus did. Because that's the whole, you know, in other words, this manipulating, this bending of Trinitarian truth to make it applicable to us is wrong.

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The Trinity is what he is. It is what God is. It's not meant to be an example for us, you know, in the sense that, oh, well, we should mold ourselves after the persons of the

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Trinity. No. So quick thoughts or questions, Andrew.

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And so this idea that the

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Trinity is what the Trinity does is a very human, this whole study has been, by the way,

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God is not like us. And don't bother trying to get your head around it. Yeah, newsflash.

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You know, God is not like us, and we're pretty much not like God either, right?

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And understanding that chasm, it helps us, it really does help us to love and worship

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God as we ought to, right? And, but yeah, God is not like us.

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We need to close because some of us have to preach here. So, Father, I thank you for this time.

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I thank you for just the fact that you've granted us so many truths, so many things that we can understand about you and all these speculations and these manipulations that would seek to undermine our confidence in your word or in the historic understanding that you've granted your church.

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Father, I pray that you would keep us from those things and that we would rely on what is tried and tested and true, understanding that throughout the centuries, the

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Lord has given faithful men to the church who grappled with these issues, understood them, and handed down these creeds and confessions, these teachings to us that we might stand in solidarity with them.

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Father, help us to understand, help us to avoid heresy and to learn to trust what your spirit and what you have granted your church.