Simply Trinity (part 16)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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perfect life, to be the spotless lamb, to take away our sins, to pay the price for them on the cross, and then to be raised on the third day that we might know that our sins are paid for.

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We thank you for that. We thank you for the sealing work of the Holy Spirit. We thank you for His constant ministry in our lives.

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We thank you for how He works through your word and through your people to sanctify us.

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Father, would you help us this morning to better understand you, Father, Son, and Spirit, as we wrestle with these concepts that have been firmly taught by the church for centuries.

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Lord, help us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, last week we started chapter 7.

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Who doesn't have a chapter 7 quiz? Tell the truth and shame the devil, as my seminary prof used to say.

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I don't know why he would say that, you know, but it kept us entertained at 730 in the morning.

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Okay, so we began this quiz last week, as I said, and we got up to number five.

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First four, true or false, eternal generation is necessary to successfully argue, with that little typo there, argue for the

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Trinity, and the answer is true. In fact, you know, to just...

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John Gill was the source for that one, but if you think about it this way, if the Son's not eternally generated, then what is true of the second person of the

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Trinity? If he's not eternally generated, he is created.

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There was a time when he didn't exist, and if there's a time he didn't exist, then you don't have a triune

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God. You have a God who subsequently has different parts, which is erroneous.

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True or false, God does not rest on the

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Sabbath, because if he... Now people say, wait a minute, didn't he rest on the seventh day?

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Who wants to explain that apparent contradiction? Which is the fancy word, antinomy. Yes, Miss Cooley.

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Okay, he's still upholding and sustaining and working, yes, because otherwise the universe would cease to exist. So he rested from his created, his creative work, but not from all labor entirely.

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Number three, true or false, the Father gives the lifeless Son life which he has forever, which is obviously false, because we already said that, having to do with eternal generation.

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If he was, in fact, the lifeless Son, the lifeless second person of the

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Trinity, whom the Father gave life to, then he wouldn't be eternal. He would be a created being.

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Number four, there is no text that teaches eternal generation. I think that's true, yeah.

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That's what we said last week, and you know, here's the problem with that. The problem with that is, if you are only looking for a specific text that says things, then you will wind up being an

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Aryan. What you need to do, because what do we believe? Do we believe that only things that are mentioned directly in the

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Bible can be taught or can be true? If that was the case, then we wouldn't have this class, because we wouldn't believe in what?

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The Trinity. We would be modalists, or we would be something else.

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Even our confession of faith says that we believe what the Bible says, and those things that are necessary implications of the text.

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So when we see things like, we know that Jesus is eternally God, we would figure that out from a multitude of texts, including

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John 1, we'd go to Colossians 1, we could go to multiple places and sort that out. And then we know that the

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Father is eternally God. We know that the Holy Spirit is eternally

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God, because he's there, you know, at the beginning of creation and all these other things. So what would we wind up with? This multitude of gods or something else?

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So we have to work out all the inferences of Scripture so that we can understand them.

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Now, number five, now that I've completely muddied the waters, number five, true or false?

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If we use logic and reason, we will eventually believe in eternal generation. I see that hand.

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Thank you very much. That's exactly where I was going with that question. I was going for Descartes, Rene Descartes, who will be out in the parking lot after church.

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No, that's not true. Famous philosopher, if you believe in logic and reason and that's what you hold to, eventually you will believe in nothing.

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So the answer is false. Barrett says this, those who adopt a critical stance toward eternal generation sound a lot like Socinians.

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Who wants to define Socinians? Well, what's that?

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The early modalists? Well, let's listen to, because it just so happens that Barrett cites a

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Rakovian catechism, and for those of you who don't know, it doesn't really matter what

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Rakovian is. They're Socinians. So listen to this, this generation out of the

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Father's essence involves a contradiction. For if Christ had been generated out of the essence of the

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Father, he must have either taken, he must have taken either a part of it or the whole.

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Okay, this is logic and reason. He could not have taken a part of it because of the divine essence is indivisible.

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Neither could he have taken the whole, for in this case, the Father would have ceased to be the Father and would have become the

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Son. And again, since the divine essence is numerically one and therefore incommunicable, this could by no means have happened.

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Now, the way they describe the divine essence, when I listen to that, I'm like, it sounds to me like, sorry, sorry, a football.

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Like the Father has it, and if the Son has it, well, only one of them can have it.

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You can't divide a football, you know, you can't cut a football in half during the game, so therefore either the

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Son has it or the Father has it. Who's got the divine essence? Well, that's logic.

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What's wrong with logic here? Okay, God is above it. You know, when we're talking about, Charlie, we're trying to use human logic to explain something that is beyond our five senses, that's beyond our experience, that's beyond our ability to reason.

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It doesn't make sense to us. And so we start, you know, what happens every single time, this is true, what happens when we try to define

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God only using our reason and ability?

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There's a one word answer for that, and it's heresy. Every single time you just try to figure things out using your brain and reason, you wind up in heresy.

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Why? Because what you're going to do, ultimately, is you're going to lower God, make him less than what he is, and you're going to elevate man.

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This is like the road to heresy over and over and over again. I've said on many occasions, you know, the brilliance of Joseph Smith is that he made

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God comprehensible. The problem with that, of course, is

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God is not comprehensible. But if you say, for example, hey, God is a man just like we used to be, only he's better, well then you go, okay,

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I sort of understand God. But if we study the scripture for any amount of time and we, you know, we see

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God say things like, if I was hungry I wouldn't tell you, you know, before me there were no gods, after me there will be no gods, etc, etc, etc, we understand that God is other.

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He's above us. He's ultimately incomprehensible, except in the sense that he condescends to us to make himself known, right?

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The Puritan John Owen responded to this Rakovian Catechism this way.

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He said, this is the fruit of measuring spiritual things by carnal. Trying to understand the divine by using our own fallen reason.

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Trying to understand, he says, the infinite by finite. God by ourselves, the object of faith by corrupted rules of reason.

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But what is impossible in finite limited essences may be possible and convenient to that which is infinite and unlimited as to that whereof we speak.

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So he's saying, trying to grasp the ungraspable, trying to fully understand

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God by our own limited reasoning, within the confines of our fallen nature, is impossible.

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Then he says, but what is impossible to us is convenient, is useful to God.

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In other words, he can teach us using our own limited capacity. But again, if we use logic and reason, we will eventually believe in the eternal generation.

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No, we have to carefully examine the scriptures and then understand the implications of the scriptures. Number six, true or false, that the father consecrated the son means that he was eternally generated.

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That's a difficult one and you probably wouldn't get it unless you read the book. That's true. He says, the connection between being sent and being begotten, or being sent meaning consecrated, set aside for a specific use, and being begotten is conspicuous in John 10 .36,

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for example. When the Jews are ready to stone Jesus, well, let's just read that.

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John 33, we'll start there. So many interesting aspects in the

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Gospel of John because he really does emphasize the deity of Christ. In fact, we'll back up and we'll say to verse 29, my father who has given them to me, the sheep, the elect, who has given them to me, is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

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I and the father are one. And the Jews say amen, amen, and no, no, no, that's not right.

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The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, I have shown you many good works from the father, for which of them are you going to stone me?

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The Jews answered him, it is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy.

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Blasphemy meaning saying something about God that is not true. Here's how they define it, because you, being a man, make yourself

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God. You're just a man, Jesus, and yet you are claiming to be

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God. So they understood exactly what he was saying. Now, back to the question.

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The connection between being sent and being begotten is conspicuous in John 1036.

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So we should read 1036. Do you say of him whom the father consecrated and sent into the world, you are blaspheming because I said

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I am the Son of God? If I am not doing the works of my father, then do not believe me.

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But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and understand that the father is in me, and I am in the father.

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Again, they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands. Okay, so the word consecrated means something more than the father sending his son into the world.

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Like his self -attested title, Son of God, the word consecrated takes the reader back to eternity.

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For there, as Jesus said already, we see not only that he is pre -existent, but also one with God the

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Father. Consecrated by God is another Johannine way of John saying something, of referring to the son as the only begotten, eternally generated by the father.

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So that's Barrett's claim, and we'll see more of that here in a moment. Number seven, true or false, it is of little import that the word monogenes, monogenes, was translated one way for 400 years, namely in the

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King James Version. It is of little import that the word was translated one way for 400 years, true or false?

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That's false. One reason Bible -reading Christians today find the language of begotten so foreign and strange is because they, unlike all

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English readers of the Bible before them, have been fed new translations of the

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Bible. I complained about this several weeks ago when we talked about John 316.

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I don't like the way the ESV translates it. He says, Barrett says, I'm not a stubborn skeptic always grumbling that they don't make translations like they used to.

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I am, for the most part, happy with many contemporary translations of the Bible. As a pastor and a professor,

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I use contemporary translations like the ESV and NIV when preaching and lecturing.

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However, when it comes to the Gospel of John, a misstep has been made, and it is no small one.

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Its theological consequences are serious. As I shared at the start of this book, when

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I was young, when I was a young, eager student and was taught the doctrine of the Trinity by evangelical teachers at evangelical institutions, never had

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I heard a word about eternal generation. When it was mentioned, they said it was nowhere in the

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Bible. But here's the problem. All the Bible translations I was given to read and memorize,

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NIV, ESV, RSV, HCSB, etc., excised only begotten from John's Gospel as well as from his first epistle.

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For over four centuries, those who translated the New Testament from Greek to English translated the word monogamous as only begotten.

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For example, consider the famous passage John 3 .16, which reads in the King James Versions, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten

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Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.

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We talked about it. What does the ESV say? His only

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Son, which again, that's a big difference there.

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John says something similar in his first epistle. In this way, this is 1

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John 4 .9, in this way was manifested the love of God toward us because God sent his only begotten

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Son into the world that we might live through him. Only begotten language is found throughout

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John's writings, and then he cites as examples John 1 .14, John 1 .18,

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and John 3 .18. However, in the 20th century, scholars erased only begotten from John's corpus and replaced this phrase with only or unique instead.

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Starting with the Revised Standard Version, translators followed suit. God so loved the world that he gave his only

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Son or his unique Son. Whether it was always intentional or not, generations of Christians were never introduced to the concept of eternal generation, nor could they see why the concept was so ingrained in Scripture's presentation of the

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Son of God, not even in a gospel like John's. Again, that word monogamous has to do with more than just only.

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You wouldn't say, you know, I only have one Son. There would be something unique about him.

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He's one of a kind or one of a of a genus or species.

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There's something very unique about him, which you know, you could just say, well, he's unique or he's the only one, but that doesn't tell the whole story.

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And so only begotten really explains it much better than just only or unique.

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You mean the only Son part? Only begotten, right.

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Yes, I would say that that has to do with his eternal begottenness, you know, his uniqueness in that sense, not in the virgin birth sense.

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Let's just go to John 1.

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And you know, we could come to a conclusion like that. And let's look at verse 14 for a moment.

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And the Word became flesh, the Word being the eternal second person of the of the Trinity became flesh and dwelt among us.

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And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only

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Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. I mean, if you argue, and I'm not saying you are arguing this, but if you argue that this has to do with the virgin birth, and therefore, that's why we can see the glory.

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I think it misses the mark here because he's the only

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Son from the Father full of grace and truth. Well, when did he become the Son? If you say, you know, at the virgin birth, then what have you done?

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I think you've, I was about to say adopted. I think you've basically taken the language of adoptionism, right?

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And you've traced it back to the virgin birth. You've made it so that there's a special promotion when

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Jesus takes on, takes to himself human flesh. So I wouldn't want to do that.

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But I would also point, you know, just back to verse one, in the beginning was the

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Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Makes it very plain that he was,

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I mean, I know you're not arguing this, but he was always God. And when it says, in the beginning was the

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Word, there's a special form of was there that's used.

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And it really, it's got a timeless quality about it. It's not the same word that's used elsewhere in the passage.

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There's a timeless quality to it because I think John is trying to emphasize the eternality of Jesus.

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So I think it's essential that we understand it in the fullest theological context or sense that he is, in fact, the eternally generated

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Son of God. Other thoughts or questions? What does begotten mean? Well, I mean, we've talked about it a little bit.

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In a human sense, we understand, again, you know, I said somebody sent me an email yesterday, last evening, which is, you know, fine, except it's just like, okay, it's

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Saturday night. But the question essentially was, you know, about the language of accommodation, right?

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And here's what we're talking about when we talk about begotten. We understand that when, you know, when

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I was begotten, what did that mean? I was born. So when we use that of Jesus to say that he's eternally begotten, what does that mean?

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Does it mean that he has a starting point? Because it, for me, it means that I have a starting point.

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But to be eternally begotten, again, you know, there's just only so much that language can convey.

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You know, let me just, I'll park it there for a second. I'll come back to it. If we think about this, when we get to heaven, true or false, we're going to understand everything about God.

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Well, why not? Because he's eternal.

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And as non -eternal beings, that is to say creatures, we can't fully grasp the idea of something, someone, without a beginning and without an end, right?

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So now we say, well, what does eternally begotten mean? What does it mean that he's begotten? Does that mean he has a starting point?

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Well, okay, I'll say yes. And you're going to go, what's the starting point of the father or the son?

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It's the father. Well, the father being eternally, listen carefully, eternally the father, what does that mean?

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It means that he eternally has a son. Otherwise, he can't be the father. You can't be an eternal father if you don't have an eternal son.

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So what does that mean? You know, how do we explain eternally generated? We say there was never a time when he wasn't.

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The Bible says, you know, teaches that he's eternally begotten.

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You know, is there a verse that says that? We've already covered that. No. You know, when was he begotten? Well, that's the wrong question.

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You just go, well, I don't get it. Okay. I mean, does that make sense?

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In other words, you know, somebody wants to understand, well, what does that mean? When was he begotten? How was he begotten? Well, for us, you know, so -and -so begot so -and -so.

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Who begot so -and -so? Who begot so -and -so? Yes. Yes. The father of somebody. Right.

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Yeah. You know, like if I begot my son, what does that mean?

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It means I sired him. It means he was my son, right? I produced him, which is important.

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He's begotten, not made. He's not created. And that's, you know, the essence of this whole thing.

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This is the, we were talking about a Friday night at the Bible study, the home group, I shouldn't say

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Bible study, the home group. Arius said, you know, applying human reasoning, using human logic to this, he said, obviously,

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Jesus is created. He has to be the first created being. He's the greatest of all creations, but he's a creation.

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And the problem with that is, well, there are a multitude of problems with it. First of all, then you don't have an eternal father.

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You have a father who becomes a father. He's not a father, then he is one. So we have a, we introduce change within God.

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We introduce change within God because we've gone from not a Trinity to a Trinity. You know, we have all kinds of theological problems.

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So, are we, okay. Yes. Well, what is the purpose of eternal generation, theologically speaking?

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Well, yes, it is for the purposes of the tape. Why is eternal generation important?

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Well, it's important because we are avoiding subordinationism, which is to say that the son from, you know, before all time was always subordinate to the father because they're equal.

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They're of the same essence, same substance, same authority, same everything, except they're different persons.

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So that's one purpose of it. Also, like I said before, we don't have a triune God unless we have eternal generation.

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Well, because then we would have no particular relation between them and we would have three gods who like formed a union and became, you know, became one.

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It's like, you know, the teamsters, the mobsters, and the, oh, sorry, you know, all decided to work together.

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No, right?

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You could, but the Bible describes there, you could have a triune

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God where three persons share the same essence and have no particular relationship to one another, except the

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Bible tells us about their relationship. It says that the father sends the son.

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It says the son and the father send the Holy Spirit. It tells us these things, right?

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But it also makes plain that there is no hierarchy within the

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Trinity, right?

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Right. If he's not eternally begotten, we can't have confidence that he will save us, and that's true because, well, he'll tell us.

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But thank you for reading the book, by the way. But I think, you know, to get back to Charlie's question,

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I think it's essential for us to understand eternal generation in this way and for this reason because it tells us about the

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Trinity. It helps us to explain, you know, you said, aren't we sort of projecting, seeing what we have in Scripture and projecting it into the past, into eternity past.

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I think what we're doing is taking what we have presented to us in the

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Scripture and explaining it in a way that's coherent and consistent with both church teaching and with Scripture.

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In other words, this is the historical understanding of the Trinity. Even as we were reading the other night in this book by Nathan Busenitz from Master's Seminary, men as early as, he's citing in there, like 150

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AD, so within, you know, 100 years or so of the

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New Testament being written, I mean, let's say it's finished in 95 AD, these men are already writing these things and repeating these things that we hold and are teaching here today, that this is the nature of the

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Trinity, that this is what the church has always believed. And these men would have been taught by, you know, the

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Apostles themselves and then their and then their disciples, etc.

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So the early church believed this and this is still what we believe today. I don't know if that helps, yeah.

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Yes, it describes, you know, rather using the ontological word here, it describes the nature of the being of God, right?

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The father -son relationship. And, you know, I would only quibble with one thing that you said, because, you know, when he calls himself the

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Son of God, they do want to stone him, right? They do want to kill him. But when the

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Apostles, even as I'm teaching through Acts, when the Apostles teach that Jesus is

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God, the Jewish people, who are the first to hear this, don't say, wait, wait, wait, wait,

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I have a question here. There's only one God. Hear, O Israel, you know, the

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Lord our God is one, etc., etc., from the Shammai in Deuteronomy 6. They don't say that.

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Why don't they say that? Because they come to faith in Christ. They understand that he's

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God, and they're able to piece together the teaching of the Old Testament, which is ultimately the

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Trinity. They understand that the Spirit is God, and that the Father is God, and that Jesus is

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God. And there aren't any big problems with that, you know, except for the religious authorities.

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They're the ones who set about persecuting the church. So, okay, now that we straighten that out, and we all grapple with, yes, go ahead.

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Okay, okay.

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It's an excellent question. You know, why put an emphasis on the King James Version instead of, like,

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Tyndale's translation? Who can give me John 3 .16 out of the

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Tyndale? That's why, you know, in shorthand.

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But I'm guessing, and I haven't read the Tyndale, I probably have it on one of my computer programs, but it probably says, only begotten.

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It does? Okay, well, God bless him. I think, technically, you could translate it, which is why they do it.

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You could translate it, only Son. I think the reason for translating it, only begotten, which, again, is legitimate.

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Why do you suppose that I favor only begotten? I mean, if there are a multitude, and there are, you know, you can...here,

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let me put it this way, and I don't really have a good example in my head, but if you want, if you're writing a paper, for example, and you want to say a specific, you have a specific idea in your head that you want to insert into this thing, can you use any word that means that and just plug it in?

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You know, just bust out the thesaurus and just plug away? And the reason the answer is no is because sometimes, if you do that, what happens?

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It gets distorted. And so what I'm going to suggest is that it's okay to translate it, only

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Son. Technically, if you did that on a Greek test, you're not getting a big red mark. You know, they're not going to go, shame on you, you're a heretic.

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What I'm going to suggest, though, is that if only begotten is an acceptable translation,

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I think it's better, and the reason I think it's better is because it tells us more. It tells us more about Jesus than just only

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Son. Only Son could also be, I mean, if I were the, no,

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I have to be careful here, because, you know, why would Arians, that is to say, followers of Aries, who say that Jesus is a created being, why would they be okay with only begotten?

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Why would the Mormons be okay with that? I'm sorry?

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Okay, referring only to his human nature, which is what they would say. Of course, they believe that Mary had relations with the deity, which is where Jesus came from, but that's a whole other, you know, can of worms there.

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But they would have no problem with saying only begotten if they understood that only begotten had to do with his human nature only.

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But even so, I like, I personally like begotten, only begotten, because it tells us more.

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It refers back to the eternal generation of the Son, so I prefer that, because I think it's more theologically rich.

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Yeah, a unique nature, because, yeah, he is the only Son, yes, and the only begotten

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Son, yeah. Okay, number eight.

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All right, number eight, true or false, when determining how to translate a word, here we go, oh, and we get right to the nub of this here, when determining how to translate a word, one does not simply choose from the dictionary, and I just gave that away, it's true.

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Barrett says, consider John, for example, in the five times monogamous occur, appears, its context is familial and filial, meaning it's relational, it has to do with this father -son relationship, he says, every single time.

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In other words, the context assumes a biological metaphor is applied to God, he is called the

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Father, and his offspring is called the Son. In order to understand the incarnation,

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John takes us back to the beginning. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was

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God. John intends his readers to know from the start that Jesus' divine existence didn't begin like every other man's existence.

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In fact, it never began. He is pre -existent. His past is unlike our past, without a

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Genesis, which is to say, without a beginning, and is to be traced to God Himself in eternity.

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Never was there a time when God the Father was without His Word. That's John 1 .1.

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and as John will soon reveal, this

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Word is none other than God's Son. So, that's his basis for saying that he doesn't, you know, he prefers, you know, begotten

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Son as to just, you know, or only begotten Son, as opposed to just only

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Son. Questions? Thoughts? And again,

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I think it better explains, as he says here, it better explains the relationship between the Father and the Son than just saying only

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Son. That's true, but it's not as much truth as we can, you know, wedge, reasonably wedge in there.

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So, number nine, true or false, in his incarnation the

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Son reveals the Father to us. In his incarnation the Son reveals the

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Father to us. True. Begotten by the

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Father in eternity, Barrett says, the Son can be sent by the Father to become incarnate in history.

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This explains why he alone, as the Word, can reveal the Father. God as God is hidden from our finite gaze, but if he who is begotten, who is in the very bosom of the

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Father, becomes flesh and dwells among us, then God is made known to us. As John moves back and forth between eternity and incarnation, the context in which he does so is filial.

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Again, having to do with the relationship between the Father and the Son. Thus, John 1 .14

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and 1 .18 are of crucial importance for demonstrating that John's monogamies cannot be reduced to only of his kind, but must have a metaphorical, biological meaning.

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Only begotten. John views Christ as the only begotten Son of God in the sense that he is the

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Father's only proper offspring, deriving his divine being from the

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Father. In sum, there is a lesson here, sonship and beginning go hand -in -hand.

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They define each other. To put forward monogamies as if it means only, and has nothing to do with Jesus' pre -existent, eternal,

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Trinitarian origin from the Father, is to rob the word of its meaning and to treat the context of John 1 out of context altogether.

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So now concerns, complaints, comments. Number ten, true or false, we can say

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Jesus is, quote, one from one, end quote. I don't know how to say this word, but I'll just, it's either

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Hillary of Poitiers, which I think it probably is, or Poitiers, depending on if you're from Mississippi or not.

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Hillary, or Southern California, Hillary of Poitiers captures many of these biblical images and metaphors when he says, listen, the

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Son is, quote, the offspring of the unbegotten, one from one, true from true.

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Right, even our confession says he's true God, truly God, and truly man.

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True from true, living from living, perfect from perfect, the power of power, the wisdom of wisdom, the glory of glory, the likeness of the invisible

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God, the image of the unbegotten Father. Again, why do we like that begotten language?

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Because it also tells us something about the Father, right? If the Son is begotten, the

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Father is unbegotten. He's the source, as it were.

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Thoughts, concerns, questions? Anybody want to correct me about Hillary? I don't know what his last name is.

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His last name. This is where he's from. I don't know where that is in France. I don't know how to say it.

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Never been to France, but I kind of like the music. Okay, number 11, true or false?

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Psalm 102 verses 25 to 27 are not teaching about Jesus. I guess we should read it and then decide.

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Psalm 102 verses 25 to 27. Of old, you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

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They will perish, but you will remain. They will all wear out like garments.

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You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away. But you are the same, and your years have no end.

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He says, Barrett says, and lest we think otherwise, the author then identifies the Son with the

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Creator Himself rather than the creation, naming the Son as the sustainer of the universe.

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He will do the same at the end of Hebrews 1 by appealing to Psalm 102. So we're understanding

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Psalm 102 by virtue of the end of Hebrews 1, a passage that speaks of God as Creator, concluding that what the psalmist says should be said of the

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Son Himself. You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

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Then he says, one could hardly ask for a more direct affirmation of the Son's co -eternality and co -equality with the

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Father. Okay, thoughts, questions, concerns as we conclude here.

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Seeing none, I'll anxiously await your emails. Let's close in prayer. Father, again, these are weighty things, and sometimes it just, it demands more thoughts, more prayer, more study.

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It is very difficult for us to grasp what happened before time existed.

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Even the thought before time puts a temporal stamp on something that has no time whatsoever.

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Father, help us to just wrestle with these things to better understand you, our triune

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God, Father, Son, and Spirit, that we might worship you better, that we might remain in awe, even as we attempt to better understand what your word teaches, what the church has taught for 2 ,000 years.

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And Father, help us as we seek to not just assemble these truths in our own mind, but to be able to pass them on to the next generation in the best way that we possibly can.

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We thank you again for your word and for faithful men throughout the generations who have taught us correctly.