Simply Trinity Study

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Our Father in heaven, as we enter this holiday season, we just rejoice in thanksgiving and praise for all that you have done for us in granting us life and breath and all the common graces that you provide to everyone.
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But Father, we thank you particularly for the special grace, the redeeming grace that you have granted us that you have called us to yourself, that you've given us newness of life, newness of thoughts, newness of heart through your spirit and in your son.
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Lord, we would pray that you would bless us today as we look at difficult doctrines and try to break them down and make them comprehensible.
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And Father, I pray that you would aid us in that and grow us in Jesus Christ's name we pray, amen.
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So, you know, last week as we were going home, Janet and I had a conversation and, you know, this week she bit the bullet for everybody and watched
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Sunday School again last week a second time and wrote down all the terms that we use that might be unfamiliar to people.
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And so I would like to, you know, publicly thank her for that and then point out that most of the terms that we need are in the book.
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There's a glossary in the back of the book. If you don't have the book, I just really cannot commend it enough.
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And I thought just to illustrate that, I would go to the back of the book in the glossary.
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We're talking about the Trinity and what it says about eternal, just eternal, the word, timeless.
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Then it says the Trinity has no succession of moments.
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The Trinity has no succession of moments. What does that mean?
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I mean, when we, because if, and the reason I bring that up is because, you know, we've been talking about begottenness and the eternal begottenness of the son that he's eternally generated.
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And so when we think the Trinity has no succession of moments, Jesus is eternally generated.
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Well, what does that mean? That means he's generated in a timeless time. So yeah, so what
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Andrew said was, you know, the way he likes to think of it is there was never a time where God the
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Father said, you know, I have a really cool idea. I'm going to, you know, generate the son and spirate the spirit.
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That never happened in the sense that never means there was no time then,
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Corey. The other book by Barrett, he does not experience time, which is good.
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You know, I like that. The way I've come to think of it is for God, and this is a faulty analogy too, but time is more like a place, right?
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Thing that he can see. Yeah, he can see it all, right? It's all laid out for him like a picture, like a map.
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It's not something he experiences. It's not something that he journeys through. It's something that just is revealed all to him simultaneously.
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And that's mind boggling to us, which is good because it helps keep the creature creator difference.
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So we were talking about, we started talking about the Trinity last week and we got up to number 10.
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Number 10, and number 10 is true or false that Jesus, does anybody not have a copy of the quiz by the way?
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If you don't have a copy of the quiz, we have extra copies here. I'll let Brian distribute those. And he just runs right up and does that.
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Number 10, and remember these will be graded. That Jesus is called the son necessarily means there was a time when he did not exist.
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Well, we just gave the spoiler for that. The answer is obviously true.
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Oh, wait, no, false. What happens by the way, and I'll read what
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Barrett said, but what happens if you say that there's a time when the son did not exist? What's the significance of that?
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Charlie, God can make more of himself, right? I like that answer.
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What else? Janet, he changes, right?
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Okay, which is another problem. We'd be
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Mormons where we'd be on our way to Mormonism. Charlie, okay.
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Impossibility where he doesn't have emotions, but I think, yes, yeah, he doesn't experience want.
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So the idea maybe that Jesus is created would be that God the father discovers something's lacking and decides to act upon that.
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So that would be false because that would indicate some kind of deficiency in the father.
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Any other thoughts about the negation of this? In other words, the idea that Jesus did come to exist in time.
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Charlie, okay, okay, that would mean that there's a part of God that exists outside of his fundamental nature.
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Let me be more basic than that. If the answer to number 10 is true, then
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Jesus is not God, he's not divine.
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The Mormons get around this. Gary brought up the Mormons, the Gary's. The Mormons get around this, how?
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How do they get around, well, the fact that there was a time Jesus did not exist, but now he exists and yet they call him
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God. How do they get around that whole conundrum of a non -eternal God? He becomes
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God, he's promoted to God, just like they would say the father was promoted.
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I mean, it's a whole convoluted system. But Barrett says this, he says, the son is called son in scripture because he has a father.
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That should be pretty basic, right? Think of it this way, he is from his father, begotten by his father from all eternity.
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In other words, and again, we have to get out of this time concept. So let's just, you know, before time was created, before time existed, when there was no time, because this all takes place outside of time.
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Again, I think the idea of time as a location is somewhat helpful.
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He says, or we might say the son is generated, the words begotten and generated are synonyms from the father's divine nature from all eternity.
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That is, after all, what it means to be a son. This is called, and here's the 25 cent word, which again, is in this book, affiliation, right?
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Affiliation is the word. And it says affiliation, the son's personal property.
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He is eternally begotten from the father. I get absolutely none of the proceeds from that book, but I really do commend it.
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Okay, that Jesus is called the son necessarily means that there was a time when he did not exist, false.
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Number 11, true or false? The Holy Spirit is basically third in command behind the father and the son.
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Basically, it's false, basically. Okay, false. The Spirit is called the
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Spirit in scripture because he proceeds from the father and the son from eternity.
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Again, these ideas of time do not, we don't wanna put the
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Godhead, constrain the Godhead by time. He is not another son. So he's not a brother of the son, nor a grandson.
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And he says, this is like how you know something is written, not as a textbook, but it's written in the language of the common man.
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He says, he is not a son or a brother, nor a grandson. That would be weird. So we should not say he is eternally begotten or generated.
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Rather, he is spirated from the father and the son. This is called spiration, a label that captures the biblical meaning of the word spirit.
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Spiration is S -P -I -R -A -T -I -O -N. When you see it, it's easy to just think spirit.
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Okay, questions about the Holy Spirit before we move on here. Seeing none. It's like any objections, seeing none.
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Number 12, true or false, this phrase helps us to define the Trinity. And the phrase is eternal relations of origin.
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Now that would be an extremely weird phrase for me to come up with on my own. How many would agree with that?
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I was just sitting around thinking to myself, what about that phrase? Barrett says it's true, by the way.
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Barrett says, I should also mention that there is a phrase that sums up all three of these biblical names, eternal relations of origin.
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That is a phrase to remember, highlight it, underline it, circle it. It sounds sophisticated, but its meaning is quite simple.
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The word origin is fitting because we are describing what these three persons come from or where these three persons come from, e .g.
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the son from the father and the spirit from the father and the son.
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The word eternal is appropriate since this is God we have in view. And the word relation is another way of referring to the persons of the
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Trinity, specifically what is so unique about each of them. So here's what's unique about each of the three.
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The father is unbegotten, the son is begotten, and the spirit is spirated.
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Again, the father is unbegotten, the son is begotten, and the spirit is spirated.
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Number 13, true or false? If the son is not eternally generated, he is not equal to the father.
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Now I posted this on Facebook and I actually got a false.
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Somebody gave me a false and who gave me, because the answer is true, who gave me a false?
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I won't mention him by name, but he is a pastor and a master seminary graduate. Why would he say such a thing?
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Why would he say false? No, not because, unfortunately, it wasn't because he misunderstood the question.
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He had a reason and his reason was, it was the word generated and he didn't like it because you can't go to a scripture verse and say, boom, it says there that Jesus is eternally generated.
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So, and we'll talk more about that, but I think that's an interesting way, if you look for a single verse to explain the
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Trinity, what happens? You wind up probably not being a
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Trinitarian. The eternal characteristic of a trinitarian God, I like that, and I think words like generation, why do they use that?
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One of the reasons why theologians use that and they've come to use that is because the, if we go back to like the
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Nicene Creed, if we go back to Athanasius and the early people in the church who wrestled with these things and tried to stomp out heresies, the idea of generation means that the father and the son and then the spirit from the father and the son, all are of the same essence or substance, right?
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And so it gets back to what Charlie was saying, it's important that we understand these kind of things as being the nature of the
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Trinity. And some of these things seem lofty and difficult, and that's why we're talking about them.
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He says, Barrett does, Christianity's best Bible interpreters confessed a doctrine like eternal generation ever since the church's conception, but they believed such a doctrine safeguarded the deity of Christ from the most dangerous of heresies.
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To be clear, we are talking about a belief so essential to the Trinity, distinguishing the son as son from the father as father, that when the deity of Christ was questioned in the fourth century, the church fathers gathered at the
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Council of Nicaea, perhaps the most important council in all of church history and wrote a creed to affirm the eternal generation as a condition of true orthodoxy.
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In other words, if you don't believe that Jesus is eternally generated, one of two things is true, you don't understand what it means, which, okay, or you're a heretic.
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So it's okay if you don't understand it yet, we're going to work on establishing this.
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Thoughts or questions? Objections? Okay. Number 14, true or false, the equality of the
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Trinity is a picture of the equality we should want in society. The three persons are equal and yet they have different roles.
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So what about that? So does that mirror what our society should look like? This is what
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Barrett says, because people write books like this. I took up a book by one of the most influential theologians of the late 20th century.
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His agenda was explicitly the Trinity is our master plan for politics. Just as the
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Trinity is a community or society of equal persons cooperating with one another, so too power structures in human society should favor a community of cooperation and equality.
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God is not a unitary monarch nor is the Trinity a hierarchy with the father as authority, both of which would result in a dictatorship in society.
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Rather, there is an equality among the persons and that equality and community is our model for a socialist society.
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Yes, comrade. I mean, we're going to see all sorts of distortions here of the
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Trinity, people trying to use it as a platform for their personal hobby horse. But one of the things
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I found interesting here, I mentioned this yesterday morning for the men who were here.
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I belong to a Facebook group that follows a particular person that I'm not really fond of theologically.
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That's not the point. The point is this, that the leader of the group posted this thing.
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And by the way, if a moderator of a group on Facebook is anonymous, it's a little scary.
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And this person is anonymous. But they said, you know, we believe, they didn't tie it to the
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Trinity, so I'm kind of, but basically they said, we believe in egalitarianism in terms of marriage, the equality of the father or the husband or wife.
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And to this extent, they said that the husband should never pull out the Trump card and say, well, you know,
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I'm biblically responsible. We don't agree. So there it is.
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And here's my point. My point is when I asked this person who is a confessional reform person,
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I said, well, can you tell me who the earliest theologian is that you are citing here for your belief?
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Nothing. Can you tell me who holds this view of Ephesians 5, 21 that you do?
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Nothing. And I'm just like, this is not good. We want to be, and that's his point here.
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We don't want to be innovators, right? And this person is trying to say, unlike anyone for 2000 years, this person looks at the
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Trinity and says, well, this is what our society is supposed to look like, equal and living in peace and harmony, just like a socialist society.
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Survey said, eh. Okay, so number 14, false. Number 15, true or false?
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The Trinity is not a blueprint for religious pluralism. That is true.
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It is not a blueprint for religious pluralism. Barrett says in another book, the authors also appealed to the cooperative unity between the persons of the
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Trinity, but this time as a master plan for ecumenism. Unity between different religions.
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And I was thinking about this just yesterday. I think it's, you know, there are a lot of memes running around and one of them is, you know, a picture of the
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Pope with these other religious leaders. And, you know, it says essentially the
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Pope says to these other religious leaders, we all worship the same God. And the meme says, that's not what the
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Bible says, right? And there is a problem. If we just even think about the monotheistic religions,
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Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, do they all worship the same God?
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And that relates directly to the Trinity. Why don't they worship the same God? Watch yourself,
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Brian. Okay. Oh, a
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Saturday morning tradition is introduced in Sunday morning, the self obliteration. Oh, those are good times.
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So, yeah, I mean, if we just think about it this way, Islam denies that Jesus was God, okay?
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They say that only Allah is God, so they don't have a Trinity. Jewish faith obviously denies that Jesus is
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God. So there again, we have not the same God because they don't worship the
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Trinity. I mean, that would be like saying, we're just like the Mormons, we're all the same. We're just like, no, we're not.
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Okay, now we get to a why question, number 16. Why do some theologians make the
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Trinity out to be a model for environmentalism? Why would somebody do that?
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They have an agenda and they wanna make, I mean, what an awesome way to make you feel guilty about your life.
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You left the light bulb on. Brother, the Trinity wouldn't do that. Barrett says,
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I thought another stack of books and papers were misplaced because they had a lot to say about environmentalism, but I was mistaken.
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These authors have transfigured the Trinity for the sake of ecology. They warned against ecological heresies that treat humans as superior to the environment and subordinate nature to man's power.
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Creation and humankind share the same essence, imaging the son's equality with the father in the
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Trinity. Yeah, they turn the description into prescription. In other words, they turn what the Bible just is explaining into commands, things for you to do.
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They're just new laws, as Pastor Mike would like to say. I mean, this whole idea, but I mean, just think about this part.
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Humans superior to the environment. Was that true or not? In other words,
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I mean, this is kind of, sorry, this might get a little touchy, but this is the war of the world right now, which is this.
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Which is more important, people or the earth? And there's a group around who say the earth is more important.
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And if a few billion people have to die for the earth, it's worth it. Without further comment,
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I'll just say that the earth doesn't have a soul and God is going to either destroy or utterly transform it depending on your eschatological viewpoint.
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So, number 17. Does the equality of the persons of the Trinity tell us anything about complementarianism or egalitarianism?
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Which I already gave you the spoiler for. And the answer is no. What are complementarianism or egalitarianism?
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Seeing no volunteers to go to the guillotine. Both have to do with marriage and I see
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Bob. Bob Dunn is willing to put his neck in the noose. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
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Yeah, they have different roles. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Complementarianism, different roles for the husband and the wife, right?
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Equal in value, but different roles. Wife created as a helper. Egalitarianism, they're both equal.
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They both have the same role. Which kind of makes it interesting, right? Then what happens if there is a dispute?
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I mean, some essential discussion they're having and they can't agree. Some decision has to be made and they don't agree.
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So then what? It's one -to -one and no decision gets made? I don't know.
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And nobody's responsible. But the persons of the
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Trinity don't tell us anything about this. Here's what he says. These authors were convinced that the equality, he's talking about another book, were convinced that the equality between the persons of the
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Trinity is our justification for equality between the sexes in church as well as society.
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Just as there is a society of equal persons in the Trinity, so too are the sexes, male and female, equal in human society.
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An egalitarian Trinity should result in an egalitarian society. Some books on this shelf were so bold as to call
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God a woman. That's bold, all right.
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I mean, you've probably been around people who think it's funny to do that.
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And I'm just like, what's your response when people say things that are just like denigrate God? You know, like, well,
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I hope she, or something like that. What do you do then? Correct them?
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Okay. The Al Mohler response? Yeah, I was talking about the
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God of the Bible. Yeah. Yeah, the one that actually exists, not the one in your imagination.
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That's an excellent idea. And just for the record, what he said was, you know, if you wanna make that analogy of marriage to the
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Trinity and suggest that therefore they should be equal, or even, you know, looking at some other models where they say, okay, if the husband actually is the head of the wife and there is some sort of extra responsibility he has, then that mirrors the
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Trinity. And it suggests to us that the son was eternally subordinate to the father because, you know, the hierarchy of the
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Trinity. And so, yeah, that model is totally wrong. And like Charlie said, it would also suggest one will, which, you know, if you've been married before, you pretty much know that that is a lie from the pit of hell.
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So, yeah. And excellent point, too.
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You know, just in this idea of ecumenism, that would suggest then that the Trinity have different ideas, you know, and they're -
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Eternal disagreement. Yes, eternal disagreement, which again comes down to then what? Three different persons and three different wills because that -
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It turns into polytheism. Yeah, it turns into tritheism rather than a Trinity.
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Three gods rather than one God in three persons. Okay. Yes, right.
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Yeah, the analog is Christ and the church, not Christ and his father. Absolutely. Okay, number 18.
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And this is one that is quite the Twitter war these days.
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Is - How many of you are on Twitter? Tell the truth and shame the devil. I could say something else, but I won't.
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Okay, number 18. Is eternal functional subordination, or EFS for short, biblical and orthodox?
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No and no. Well, what is eternal functional subordination? Brian. The idea that -
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Okay. The idea that Jesus was eternally subordinate to the father and equal to him, okay?
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Equal in substance and everything else, but that there is this hierarchy in the
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Trinity, a functional hierarchy. Is it biblical?
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No. And what Brian said, why does it appear to be biblical, this idea of eternal functional subordination?
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And it appears functional because what did Jesus say? He said, I came here to do -
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Okay. But the difference is it's in time as a human being that Jesus is subordinate, not out of time, not in all eternity was he subordinate to the father.
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And again, let's just think about this. What does it suggest?
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Let's just go with the eternal functional subordination for a moment, that in a time where there was no time, in other words, in eternity past, the idea that Jesus submitted to the father says what?
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There's a difference in wills because you don't submit to somebody that you agree with, you submit to somebody that you disagree with.
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A wife doesn't submit to her husband when she says, I agree with that guy, right?
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That's not submission. You don't submit to the elders when you think, those elders, they're always right.
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You submit to the elders when you go, man, those guys, they got this one wrong, but it's okay.
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I can live with it. That's submission. I can live with it. Okay, you're using big words here.
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Saiety, impassibility. You know, when
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I was in basic training, we learned this one. When you get ready to throw the grenade, was anybody in the army?
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Anybody? What did they teach you to say before you threw the grenade? Anybody remember this?
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Maybe this is like from World War II when I was in. They'd say, cover me while I throw a grenade, right?
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That meant somebody was supposed to lay down suppressing fire while you stood up boldly, willing to risk your life to throw a grenade, right?
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Anybody gonna cover Charlie? All right, okay. All right.
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Yes, we can rephrase the question. Did there always have to be a physical
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Jesus, right? If God never changes. And Andrew says, okay, we perceive change in God, you know, and we would perceive a change in God because the eternal son had no body and then he does have a body.
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And so maybe that in our minds, that might constitute change and Brian wanted to add.
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Okay, so let me stop you there. When he adds a body, deity doesn't change. He doesn't add anything to his deity and therefore it can still be said,
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God never changes. Okay, so go ahead, Brian. Okay, Jesus the man had a different will than the father.
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At what point in time did Christ come into that will? Yeah. You know, we should have a song now about the very first Christmas.
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Yes, yeah, yeah. No man has seen or ever can see the father.
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But yeah, there is no change is the answer, right? There is no change. And you know, this is why theologians, another reason why theologians before Jesus is even born, when there are theophanies in the
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Old Testament, which is to say physical manifestations or appearances of God, those are said to be
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Christophanies or appearances of a pre -incarnate Christ in his pre -incarnate body.
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Why? Because the father doesn't do that. Only Jesus appears as a human being.
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Okay. Yes, I see that hand. You may.
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Okay, good question. Why is it critical to see that Jesus is only submitting to the will of the father when he comes to earth?
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Okay, so why is it important? Because when Jesus is incarnated, then we have one being with two wills, right?
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He has a human will, which has to be submitted to the father, which means there are times where like he says, you know, not my will, but thy will be done.
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And he says, if it'd be possible, let this cup pass from me. Well, who is it who's asking that?
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It's Jesus, the man. Who is it who learns obedience? It's the man,
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Christ Jesus, not the son, not the eternal son. Bob? Well, he was doing the will of God.
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He was doing the triune will. In other words, there was no separate will there. So that would, right. Yeah, I mean, you said one thing that I don't know if we could say that he didn't have human flesh because there are certainly times like when he wrestles with Jacob and other times where he's touched and he eats and stuff like that.
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So, I mean, it's a little, yes, pre -incarnate, definitely. Did he look the same?
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I don't know, you know, comparing yearbook photos, like the prototype, you know, the
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T -1000. Yeah, but yeah,
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I don't think that is necessary.
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Yes, yes, but yes, and I think we have to be careful there.
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I think the road to Emmaus is a special occurrence. I think they're prevented from seeing him initially.
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Yes, he's truly man, truly God. I mean, I don't think it's wrong to say 100. I mean, it just is, yeah, 50 -50 is wrong, right?
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He's 100 % God and 100 % man, you know, so 200 % or something.
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Yes, yeah, that would be wrong. Yes, Janet. Okay, when
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God, right, well, okay, fair question.
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Does the Trinity ever experience time? Well, yes, in the person of Jesus Christ, right, as a man.
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But the Trinity, as God, is not bound by time, therefore does not experience time, is, you know, entirely outside of time.
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Well, see, I don't know that we know enough about these theophanies to say, because he's not suffering, he's not getting sick, he's not deteriorating, he's not doing any of these things.
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This is a miraculous appearing of God, right? Well, okay, but, and you know, here's what
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I would say about angels. You know, angels are creatures and they are entirely a separate category than mankind because they don't undergo what we undergo.
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Well, they're out of time and they're in time, but, you know, so are out of space.
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Space and time and all those things are creations. Yes, Charlie. Okay, go ahead. Physical body of Jesus, okay.
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Okay, after our resurrection, are we gonna be able to walk through walls and disappear and do all kinds of cool stuff?
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I don't really know, but I don't think we'll be very amused by it if we can all do it.
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I mean, the answer to that is, I think we're going to be, I don't think we really know, but here's what
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I would say about Jesus. You know, there's some controversy about whether he actually went through a wall or not, be that as it may, what really matters is he's now able, post -resurrection, to fully exercise all the powers of, yeah, divinity.
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And so we don't really, you know, there's no human explanation for what he does, right?
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I mean, we should not try to, I don't think, sort all that out and wonder if we're,
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I mean, I do think we're going to, when we have glorified bodies and we'll be just as he is, 1
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John tells us, you know, are we going to be able to do things that we can't do now? I think absolutely, you know, they're going to have to raise the height of the rim because I'm going to wreck that bad boy.
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No, let me just read this and then we need to close. Talking about eternal functional subordination.
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So this idea that Jesus eternally subordinated himself. And again, that gets to separate wills, all kinds of issues like this.
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Barrett says, other books on the same shelf were written by evangelicals, but instead of using the Trinity to argue for gender equality, these authors used the
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Trinity to introduce hierarchy. They appealed, and some evangelicals do this because they want to distinguish between equality and yet a hierarchy because they want to establish that men can have authority over their wives.
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And so they want to use the father and the son. Bad analogy, like Charlie was saying, the analogy is
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Christ and the church. They appealed to a functional subordination of the son to the father in eternity as justification for the subordination of wives to their husbands and women to their pastors.
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Just as the father and son are equal in essence, but distinct in their roles, so too the wife is equal as a person, but subordinate in the role to the authority of her husband.
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Like many before them, these authors redefined Orthodox Trinity as hereditarianism substituting
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Orthodox categories like simplicity and eternal generation for social categories such as relationships.
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So we'll talk more about these things, eternal functional subordination and all these kinds of things, and we'll try to break it down more in the weeks to come.
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But for now, I'll just say any kind of human analogy, and I think this was
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Charlie was after earlier, any kind of eternal analogy to temporal relationships is going to be faulty, right?
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No matter what it is, it's going to fall apart eventually. So we ought not to do that.
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Let's pray. Father, thank you for the discussions we've had this morning. Lord, I pray that as we look at this, as we study through this book, as we look to your word, that we will grow an understanding of the
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Trinity, that we'll have a better appreciation of the Lord Jesus Christ, of his condescension, of his willingness to leave this, the perfection of heaven, the perfection of the relationship with the
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Father and the Spirit, and to experience difficulty here on earth and trial and sorrow and sickness and all the things that we experience.
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And Father, we thank you that even though he was tempted in many ways, he never failed as we always, well, not always, but often do.
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Lord, we praise you that he lived the perfect life, died a substitutionary death in our place, and then was raised on the third day.
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And Lord, help us to better understand the Trinity and to understand the historical development of it, the biblical reasons behind it, and why we should care about it.